Catherine the Great fell ill when she came here, and was cured by a stiff shot of it – well, that's the story.
But after all, the connection between Amsterdam and St .Petersburg goes way back to the time when Peter the Great fell in love with this Dutch city and decided to build a new Russian capital in the image of Amsterdam, the most prosperous city in Europe at that time.
Figures published by the Met Office reported wind speeds of 106mph at Great Dun Fell in the Cumbrian north Pennines and 102mph in Edinburgh.
Gale force: The worst-hit areas High winds caused havoc across the country with 106mph gusts recorded at Great Dun Fell in the north Pennines in East Cumbria; gusts of 102 mph in the Scottish capital; and gusts of 97mph to the west, in North Lanarkshire.
The premiere, commissioned by Eos from Jake Heggie, its composer in residence, is "A Great Hope Fell: Songs From Civil War," drawn from the writing and poems of Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Emily Dickinson and Stephen Foster, as well as letters and traditional songs of the Civil War era.
His new 25-minute work for baritone and orchestra, "A Great Hope Fell: Songs From Civil War," came across as rather derivative, with wanly contemporary arrangements of Civil War-era songs, like "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and more ambitious settings of historical documents and poems by Maya Angelou and others.
The strongest gust of wind ever measured in England and Wales up to that time - and I doubt whether it's been exceeded since - was recorded by instruments on the summit of Great Dun Fell, Cumbria, on my birthday, January 15, 35 years ago - 1968.
The record gust on Great Dun Fell was 134mph, but in January 1974, when the fiercest gust measured up there was 130mph, there was a period of one hour early on the Saturday morning when the gale blew continuously at an average speed of 108mph.
The Met Office said a wind gust of 112mph was recorded at Great Dun Fell, in the Pennines - the strongest wind gust on land of the recent storms.
So when the curtain comes down on Fuld there is an element of Greek tragedy about this potentially great man felled by his fatal flaw: overweening arrogance.
At the end, the house is emptied and a great tree is felled.
