Fontanka SUP festival
The largest standup paddleboarding (SUP) festival in Eastern Europe, Fontanka SUP offers you a unique opportunity to sail through St. Petersburg’s rivers and canals surrounded by picturesque city views and fellow paddleboarders dressed in some real funky ‘fits. To safeguard the participants, this year’s festival will be organized in compliance with all the government-mandated sanitary norms and safety precautions. Participation is free of charge, but make sure to register (in Russian) if you want to attend. The kick-off is at 10am on Saturday, August 8 from the Moyka River Embankment near the Field of Mars (across from Rossi’s Pavilion).
Online opera exhibition and performances
The Met’s Nightly Opera Streams continue to delight and surprise, with two dazzling performances set to stream this weekend: Wagner’s Parsifal, a tale of a wise fool on a quest for the Holy Grail (available for a day from 2.30am MSK on Saturday, August 8), and Handel’s Agrippina, a modernized Baroque masterpiece offering a satirical look at the political maneuverings and personal entanglements of the Roman court (available for a day from 2.30am MSK on Sunday, August 9). Head to The Met’s website to have a look after the clock strikes 2.30am on the day of the performance!
If you just can’t get enough of this highbrow goodness, the State Museum and Exhibition Center Rosphoto offers a virtual exhibition of works by the renowned Austrian photographer Lois Lammerhuber, dedicated to one of the most famous opera houses in the world — the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera). Available on Rosphoto’s website free of charge, the exhibition tells a story that unfolds beyond the auditorium and shows the inner workings of the theater.
Geek Picnic Online 2.0
Geek Picnic is one of Russia’s largest open-air festivals dedicated to science, technology and geek culture. This year, of course, it’s being held online (read more in this article by ITMO.NEWS) – on August 6-8, so if your workweek doesn’t leave you any respite, you can still dedicate your Saturday to some thorough geeking out. The program (in Russian) for Saturday, August 8 includes a multitude of fun events on all kinds of topics from space, sci-fi, and neurophysiology to mythology and slow fashion, including a lecture on the festival’s main topic, Multiverse, by Ian McDonald, a Belfast-based science fiction novelist writing about nanotechnology, postcyberpunk, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies. Participation is free, sign up here as soon as possible to attend.
