Floating down the Neva

(NB: Once again, there’s a week’s worth of entries here, so go back to the post about the wine bar and with the post following that day!)

The plan for Saturday was to go to the Hermitage again at noon, but that turned out to be a fatalistic idea. The line was long to get in, but we decided to stick it out and got our free student tickets after about 20 minutes. We spend this trip on the second floor looking at French, British, and German art from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The art was beautiful, but I’m not really much of an art museum person. The real reason to go to the Hermitage, and what works well for us with our free tickets, is to look at the rooms of the building themselves. The Hermitage is housed in part of the Winter Palace, ergo the rooms were designed for royalty. The wing that houses Flemish art has the most beautiful painted ceilings, and it was our mission yesterday to find those in particular. After we found those rooms, we stumbled upon a sign directing us to a room with a display on knights. In that room where several full suits of armor, weapons from all different countries, and four suits of armors set up on fake horses to full scale, which was really cool. On our way out of the Hermitage we found ourselves in one of the old libraries of the winter palace. It was beautiful and everything I’ve dreamed of having one day! It was a two story library with a staircase and more bookcases on the balcony. Hannah took some illegal pictures and I was about to, but then the room attendant turned her evil eyes on us and we scurried away.

After the Hermitage, we met up with Corbin and Joe in the park outside Kazan Cathedral while we waited for the rest of the UA group to arrive. The excursion planned for that evening was a boat tour of St. Petersburg on the Neva.  The tour was 99% of things we have already seen, so everyone spent most of the time talking and relishing the chance to sail down the Neva on a boat. Unfortunately it was raining, so our time was spent below deck looking out the windows. We were all jittery because we planned a beach party following the boat tour and it started raining (following a completely sunny day) right when the tour started. But we got lucky! When the tour ended, we could see it clearing in the distance over the beach at Primorskaya!

me chilling in the park in front of Dom Knigi (on right)

Hannah and Joe hamming it up for the camera

arch we saw on the boat tour

Ergo, we staged our second party on the beach in Russia. We once again had delicious sashlyk and the boys got happy with the lighter fluid as usual. It was colder this time around, but it didn’t matter since we all had sweaters and a roaring fire to keep us warm. We used a door (yes, a door) that we found washed up on the beach to protect the fire from the wind coming in off the Gulf of Finland and all was well! The original plan for everyone else (I live a block from the beach) was to head out in time to catch the metro, but when the time rolled around, the majority of us decided to stay out on the beach. The boys found a stash of good wood, so we had a good fire going from 8pm to 5am. It was a lot of fun to just hang out with people, and since we’re 4 of 5 weeks through our time here in St. Pete’s, everyone is getting tired and just wants to chill. And I’m down with that. 

After getting home at 6am, after seeing everyone off, I passed out for about nine hours. And just before I typed this up I had the glorious experience of washing smaller pieces of clothing in the bathtub. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but definitely not an experience I care to repeat. I miss my washing machine! (Oh, first world problems!) But now I have internet for the next few hours since I’m at a café in Petrogradskaya with Kara, so all is right with the world!

Love and hugs to all! (Postcards going out sometime this week before I leave St. Petersburg!)

xoxo

Slava Leningrad!

Today was the last day of double grammar class for St. Petersburg, and may I say a huge FINALLY. I love class, it’s great and I learn lots, but 4 hours of grammar is enough to make anyone want to kill themselves. Anyways! After class today the girls and I walked past the Cherneshevskaya metro station to the Leningrad Blockade Museum. Once again it was our student IDs to the rescue and everything was vesplatna! I’ve written before about the mentality of St. Petersburg and how even the young people who live here still feel the burden of the blockade, and when you go through the museum you can truly begin to understand why. There were pieces of recovered planes (with full records of the pilots who went down with them), the personal effects of soldiers who never made it home, lots of WWII era posters, several pieces of decommissioned artillery, and many other interesting objects. In 2006, an excavation crew pulled a tank out of the Neva River in St. Petersburg. The tank was cleaned off and put on display in the city center the following year. Just sit there for a second and read that sentence again. They pulled a tank out of the river. How many places back home can recover such things from their city centers? Part of the museum was dedicated to recent excavations of the front line and the blockade mass graves. There are pictures showing people who have found full skeletons (sometime soldiers still holding their rifles with their shoes on) or buried artillery with multiple rounds of ammo buried alongside. 

Leningrad Blockade memorial ribbon

The museum was sobering and extremely interesting. You can’t really even begin to understand the Blockade until you see things like this in person. As someone who studies Russia, I thought I had a decently good grip on things such as this. However, now that I’m here in person, I’m realizing there’s so much more to the Russian mentality than what you read. Everyone here carries with them a generally sense of weariness over things that are far past or in the backs of their minds. If you’re ever in St. Pete’s, I highly recommend you make a visit to the Blockade Museum; it’s not big but well worth the visit, especially if you’re interested in WWII.

After a visit to the most sobering museum I’ve ever been to, it would only back sense to stick it to sobriety, or so to speak. Following a quick nap and some food, the girls and I met up on Dumskaya Ulitsa to hit up our usual bar haunts. Fidel was less crowded, so we sat our happy little butts down on barstools and ordered half-liters of beer. Our intention was to make the metro, so we started early at around 9pm, and by 10pm we were on our second round and had made friends with the group of Russian guys sitting next to us at the bar. I think there’s a misconception in the mind of Russian men that American women don’t drink because they constantly seem amazed to see us put away more than a liter of beer in a sitting. But we made some new friends and hauled ass to the metro, safely landing on the last train out. I got home and promptly passed out, which only serves to fuel my speculation that I don’t sleep much/well here. I’ll take sleep where I can get it, thank you!

All in all, it was a good Friday! Love and hugs to all!

Xoxo

Raskolnikov and Co.

Today was a looooooong class day. I had a conversation class followed by a newspaper reading class, which normally isn’t that bad. But today we had a sub for newspaper and she was horrible. We’ve had her before, and we were hoping to never see her again. She seems to think that when we don’t understand what she says, repeating it over and over again will somehow make us suddenly understand. Our normal newspaper teacher is awesome, so today was really rough for that last hour and a half. But after we had lunch and tea, and listened to the guys regale us with stories of their Wednesday drinking escapades, we headed out to today’s adventure.

Our quest of the day was to walk down Suvorovsky to Nevsky to Ligovsky to find the F.M. Dostoevsky Memorial Apartment on Kuznechny Per. Dostoevsky lived the final years of his life in that apartment and it’s also where he wrote and finished Brothers Karamazov. The apartment was remodeled by the state historical committee to look exactly like it did when Dostoevsky lived there. Since Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite books of all time, it was very cool to see where Dostoevsky lived and worked. Dostoevsky was fascinated with St. Petersburg and most of his stories are based in the city. Having lived in Peter, I can now understand how the setting is perfect for a story like that of Raskolnikov’s. The city’s character changes depending on the time of day and year; you can get lost or know exactly where you are; the streets and the architecture provide a texture to the life here in St. Petersburg that you cannot find anywhere else. The museum was small (and free! Hooray for student IDs) but totally worth the trip, especially for me!

After the museum, we hopped on the metro at the Dostoevskaya Station and headed over to my island in search of an underground market someone told us about. We don’t think we found the market, but we did find a trinket/souvenir shop where Hannah bought a Soviet style watch for her boyfriend back home. Also a plus, there was some sort of Russian Navy event going on in the street as we were walking through Vasileostrovskaya, so there were lots of handsome men in uniform just chilling on the street. (Good in any country, yes?) They were obviously just messing around and checking out the women walking by, and their superiors’ attempts to keep them in line were laughable. We decided it was just a rehearsal or an informal event or something. My island is the hub for the ports and the Navy, so I’m accustomed to seeing sailors and naval officers everywhere, especially riding the metro with them.

I scrapped my plan to walk home (my feet hurt so much) and took the metro back up to Primorskaya instead. When I walked into the hallway, I ran into my host father who reopened the door for me with a huge smile (he’s a jolly old Russian man), and when I walked into the kitchen, my host mom was sitting there with her daughter, who was excited to meet me. They made an attempt to speak slowly so I could understand but when it became apparent that I was understand what they said, they sped up and lost me a little. She was impressed with what I was able to discern and it was good practice for me because she asked me tons of questions. I always enjoy having multiple people to talk to, so it was nice to come home to that.

Interesting Tidbits from This Week:

1) I have been told that I speak Russian quickly when I know what I want to say.

2) I have been told that I speak Russian with a Ukrainian accent.

3) I have been mistaken for a Russian 9 times.

4) I have been told that I look and dress like I’m from eastern Europe and that’s why no one bothers me here and why the militsia haven’t stopped me for my documents.

5) Someone asked me for directions again: I understood them but had no idea where they were trying to go.

6) A man gave up his seat on the metro for me today, that’s a first.

7) People were speaking English in my metro station the other day, I turned around and answered their question and by the looks on their faces, I totally freaked them out.

8) I have acquired a black and orange blockade ribbon, and I intend to tie it onto my rear-view mirror in my car like everyone here does. 

9) Before I leave St. Pete’s, I will have to do laundry in a bathtub, wish me luck.

10) I have officially had ice cream every day for the past 11 days. Record?

Love and hugs to all at home!

xoxo

Oh, hey, Lenin

Today we had classes as usual and ate lunch at the stolovaya. After that was all said and done, we headed over to the Smolny Institute next to where we’re studying for a group tour of Lenin’s office and apartment around the time of the revolution and before the Bolshevik government moved the capital to Moscow. The office itself is in a building that now houses the local government and the office of the governor herself. As a result, security is tight and we all had to show our student IDs to even be let on the property. Our guide, a delightful Russian history grad student named Vladimir, took us on a tour of the rooms were Lenin stayed. Since the tour covered rooms on multiple floors, we actually got to see parts of the local governmental offices, although photography was forbidden in the hallway.

I remember reading about how starkly Lenin lived with his wife during the time of the revolution, and may I say how true that is! All of the rooms are sparsely furnished and simple. Many of his personal effects were in the offices behind glass. On one of the desks was an original draft of the soviet constitution from 1913 in Lenin’s actual handwriting. What we saw is kind of hard to describe, so I’ll put some pictures here so you all can see Lenin’s office!

At the end of the tour we went into the White Room where the first soviet congress was held in St. Petersburg and where they still hold special events today. The room is as it looked in 1913 excepting the microphones and newly installed LCD screen in the corner of the room. We were allowed to go up to the speaker’s bar and platform and sit for pictures, which we thought was a total riot and probably had a little too much fun with. If you look in the bottom right of the full-room picture here, you can see our personal militsia escort who followed us around to make sure we didn’t do anything stupid. Actually, I think he liked us; we made him smile a few times and I’m sure that half of us were pretty, young women didn’t hurt. 

democracy at work

After Lenin’s apartment, we called it a day and headed home to get some rest. After all, we need the energy because the sightseeing continues till the day we leave!

Xoxo

P.S. Today marked 60 years since the start of World War II for Russian and beginning of the Leningrad Blockade on June, 22 1941. (For those who don’t know, Leningrad and St. Petersburg are the same city.) There were ceremonies and the like all over the city today. It was very cool to see the veterans with all their medals out on the streets. St. Petersburg is very characterized by its history, and the Blockade has a lot to do with their modern mentality. Everyone here has orange and black stripped ribbons around their houses and on their cars that represent solidarity in the Blockade. Hence, the ribbons were everywhere today.