Being Russian: Past and Present

Yesterday, we went to the Russian Museum after classes. We intended to go the Ethnography Museum too but we ran out of time (and it was actually closed). The Russian Museum houses more modern art, 1800s through the present, but really modern things like realism and cubism are prominent. The great thing about the museums here is that even if you don’t really appreciate what they have inside in terms of art, they all have free entry tickets for students of the Russian Federation. And our student IDs say that we are students of the RF. Win. The museum was interesting but honestly in some of the rooms the ceilings were more beautiful than the art on display. Although there were some paintings in one room that I found particularly interesting. After the Seige of Leningrad and many of the other tragedies that befell Russia during WWII, artists were amongst the first (besides soldiers) to reenter the damaged cities. There were paintings of the artists’ first impressions of what they saw, and the devastation portrayed in there is intense.

After a run through of the museum, we hit up Stolovaya Nomer Odin (Number 1) for dinner on the cheap and called it a day. A young Russian woman (my age) by the name of Amelina has been staying at my host-mom’s apartment for the past few days, and when I got home from sightseeing for the day, we hung out. We watched an American movie dubbed into Russia, ate ice cream, had tea, ate cookies, had tea, finished the movie, had tea, talked until 1:30am, had tea, and went to bed. She’s cool and it’s nice to have someone my age around to hang out with at home, even if it is only for a few more days. This morning we had Russian cocoa-puffs and oranges with our coffee for breakfast while we watched Russian MTV morning edition. All and all the situation probably looked hilarious, but it was a great way to start the day and we had a great time talking about the music videos we saw.

Today was gross. It was chilly and rainy all day. Our original plan of “let’s go to Petrogradskaya Tuesday if the weather is nice” turned into “rain or shine, bitches.” We hauled ass up to Peter and Paul Fortress where, once again, our student IDs afforded us free entry to the museums and the cathedral. We really only wanted to check out the cathedral since that’s where the Romanovs and their descendents are buried. The cathedral was beautiful, and it was so cool to see all the tombs of the once-royal family. We were doubly fortunate because right as we pushed our way into the cathedral it started to absolutely pour. “The sky opens up and drops everything” pour. “Thunderstorm in N.C. in the summer” pour. After seeing the cathedral, since the weather was persistent on continuing to drizzle, we went to Alexander Park near the Gorkovskaya metro station where there is a mini-Petersburg set up with 3 foot high replicas of all the major landmarks laid out like they are in the city. Since it was raining, the fence that encloses the mini-Peter was locked, but we want to go back another day and take Godzilla style pictures!

Since it was cold and drizzling, the only logical thing to do was to buy ice cream and find some place dry to eat it.  So we settled ourselves down under a Baltika 7 umbrella by an ice cream stand. There we were confronted with a group of drunk Russian college students (probably celebrating the end of their exams, this is the last week for them) who overheard us speaking English and wanted us to settle their dispute over what “to justify” meant. Attempting to explain the notion of justification to 8 drunk Russians who speak broken English was no easy feat, but Hannah did it with grace and style as Kara and I laughed our asses off.

Later I went out to dinner at a Eurasian restaurant that had great sushi, definitely something I’ve been craving since I got here. I had a spicy eel roll, some greens, tea, and a desert sushi (kiwi, strawberries, bananas, and chocolate wrapped in a blini and cut up sushi style). A roll only cost about 210 rubles or about $8 which is pretty good for sushi. And it was totally worth it! I’m definitely going to go back sometime with the girls! I stopped by the Piyatorechka (Russian grocery store) on my way back to the apartment and stocked up on snack supplies for the next week and half or so. And I bought a bag of Skittles. Yes, they cost me 64 rubles ($2.30). Yes, they are the best damn bag of Skittles I have ever tasted. And yes, it was totally worth it. If I can’t have peanut butter, I might as well have American candy in Russia!

Oh! And on the way home I saw the largest mosque in the Saint Petersburg area. It’s a city landmark. It’s a HUGE mosque, with glided domes and beautiful blue ceramic mosaics on the walls and Arabic script suras tiled into the mosaics. You can’t go inside unless it’s service time, but even seeing it from the outside was stunning!

But now it’s time for sleep, as there is yet more class tomorrow! Hugs and love to all as usual!

xoxo

Alieh Parusa!

At the end of each academic year, St. Petersburg has a two day festival to honor those graduating high school and sometimes the younger military academy graduates. This year it was held from the 18-19 of June, that is, this weekend. Basically the whole idea is to commend the graduates and promote the idea of possibilities for the future, which is kind of b.s. here. However, it also an excellent excuse for anyone under the age of 35 to get fabulously drunk for a night and not be bothered from their frivolity by the police. When we got back from Novgorod at 9pm, Nevsky Prospect was closed down and there were people everywhere. On every block there were groups of police and sometimes OMAN (Russian equivalent of SWAT) just chilling, acting more as a preemptive measure than as an attempt to intimidate people. We jumped off the bus, eager to join the celebration, and made plans to meet on Dumskaya Ulitsa at 10pm. Which ended up being 10:30 or 11pm because we severely underestimated the number of people on the streets and metro. Most of the clubs were charging a 100 ruble ($3-4) cover, which is 100 rubles that could be better spent covering the cost of a half-liter of beer, so we decided to hit up the produkti next door for beer at 36 rubles ($1.30) a pop for a half-liter. Oh how sweet the exchange rate is!

There must have been a half a million or more people on the streets last night! It was absolutely insane! People were drinking everywhere, signing, shouting; you name it, they did it. And the militsia just stood there watching everyone. There was an event in Palace Square that required purchase of tickets, but we decided to forgo that and instead headed through the Field of Mars to the Troitskiy Bridge where we could sit on the bank of the Neva and watch the bridge go up. Last night the bridge was all done up with sparkling lights in honor of the holiday and it was very cool to watch it go up. At about 1:30 am (when it finally got dark) a massive fireworks display started that far surpassed anything I have ever seen. There were even lazers (or lights, I couldn’t tell) to play off of the smoke left behind by the fireworks in the sky. Then the Ship with Red Sails floated down the Neva, supposedly symbolic of the possibilities of the future, but it really just invokes lots of cheering and more drinking. The whole display was so beautiful and awesome, definitely worth sitting on a cold stone wall during a typical chilly St. Petersburg night.

When the fireworks were over and the ship had sailed, the massive party broke up all at once. We attempted to go back to Dumskaya to go to a bar, but there were simply too much people. So, we decided to grab some food and then to split up and go home once the bridges closed and the metro restarted. All and all I got home around 6am this morning and promptly passed out till 2pm. Well deserved rest, if I do say so myself!

Last night was awesome and it’s been a fabulous past three weeks in St. Petersburg! But now I need to hit the books because I have a quiz in class tomorrow and I need to prepare myself! Love and hugs to all back home!

Xoxo

Road Trippin' to Novgorod

Friday was marked a chill day (and the last of thus) because the other girls had advising meetings all afternoon and Saturday morning required us to be at Kazan Cathedral at 7:30am. So after a chill day of meetings and venturing into the Russian equivalent of Canal Street, we all went home and hit the hay early, at about 9:30pm. Saturday morning I hauled my happy ass out of bed at 5:30 am, showered, and hopped the metro to Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky, right outside of Kazan. A short trip for me really. We were all loaded onto the bus and on our way by 8am, which made our dear leader David very happy with us. He said in previous years, people were always late and that’s rough because Novgorod is 3-4 hours away depending on the poor roads, weather, and traffic.

To get to Novgorod we passed through 3 hours worth of Russian country side, dachas, and small towns all which snoozing on and off on the bus. (Bless our bus driver for continuously driving around 30 rowdy college students who do not like sitting in one place for too long.) Novgorod itself is one of the oldest cities in Russia, first mentioned in the annals around 583 or so. Most of the city was destroyed when the Novgorod oblast (region) was taken during WWII, but it has been rebuilt beautifully. Before they started reconstruction, some of the intellectuals in the area got license to do historical digs in the area because of the history of Novgorod. Novgorod itself is beautiful; we got a tour of the original fortress and the Church of Saint Sophia with its surrounding monastery, which is beautiful and usually cited as the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. The icons inside the church were beautiful. I would even dare to say that on a scale of intricacy, St. Sophia outranks the Lavra. In Novgorod, there is also a branch of the eternal flame, lit from the one on the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg, to honor those who died in Novgorod during the sieges of WWII. (I’ve found that when you’re in Russia, you kind of begin to have a problem with Germany…) In the city center of Novgorod there is a statue/monument to the founders of Novgorod and Russia that has a total of 156 figures on it and text in old Slavonic. Our guide told us about the individual figures who include the first Prince of Russia, Ruric (invited to rule from the Nordic area), Peter the Great, and Vladimir (?) who helped to normalize Russian Orthodoxy. 

Novgorod Fortress

Eternal Flame at Novgorod

Saint Sophia's Cathedral

Traditional Russian Village

People must have been small back then..

After touring around main Novgorod for a while, we went to a very nice hotel where we ate a traditional 4 course Russian meal: some sort of salad and bread, borsht (!!!), Chicken Kiev, and a small tort with kiwi for dessert, followed by coffee or tea. I’ve become a serious tea whore since I moved here, and I think I might just have to continue my tradition of daily tea time when I return. After lunch, we went out further into the countryside and saw a few more churches/monasteries, a very cool windmill, and we visited a recreation of an old Russian town (which was by far our favorite thing of the day, go figure). Following some souvenir shopping, we loaded ourselves back on the bus to journey back to St. Petersburg after a day in Novgorod.

We got back around 9pm to find the city in the very first hours of what was to become an intense 10 hour city-wide celebration called Allia Rosa, which is where my next post begins….

xoxo

An American in St. Petersburg

(NOTE: 10 posts were put up at once, this is the most recent of all of them, scroll down to work your way from top to bottom to read them in order!)

Thank god for slow days. All I've done today is go to class, learn things, eat a pastry, take a nap, play solitaire, and now I'm at an ChainiCoffee with Kara abusing the shit out of their free WiFi. Tomorrow's classes are all grammar so I'm sure by the end of the day I'll want to shoot myself. And on Saturday we're doing a day in Novgorod for which we have to be at Kazan on Nevsky at 7:30am. Which means getting up at 5am. Ugh.


I miss everyone and it's nice to have the chance to use WiFi and chat on Facebook. 


Shout-out to my people who are back in Boone, probably enjoying weather very similar to mine. And a big HI to Dr. Barnes if you're reading this! 

Love and hugs to all!

Time is Slowing Down

(NOTE: This is the most recent of about 10 entries all posted at the same time, scroll down to the Vodka Museum post and begin with the one after that if you’ve been following me for a while.)

Things have slowed down considerably here in St. Petersburg in the past week or so. We’ve gone through about three-fourths of the sightseeing here and school is finally starting to get to all of us. We had another extended school day today, which on top of the rain and cold almost led to a student mutiny. I know some people are going out to the club again tonight, but I’m simply too bone tired to do anything other than lay here, eat cookies, and do my homework. Russia is wonderful but there are some days I simply want to be home!

The Jean-Jacques Rousseau wine bar was awesome. We split an 800 ruble/27 dollar bottle of wine four ways for two glasses a piece. The wine was surprisingly good for that little and the atmosphere of the restaurant was perfect for a rainy evening! Also, we discovered that they had Happy Hour from 1-4 every day when the whole menu is 20% off. We’ll be going back it seems!

Tuesday we had a fascinating lecture on Russian perspectives of American people and the West as a concept. Since all of our lectures are taught by Russian professors, it’s interesting to see their points of view versus the official figures we’re taught at home. The lecture actually really made me think about Russia as a whole and what its people have endured over the past century alone. During the past 100 years, the population of St. Petersburg has gone from over 3 million to approximately 500,000 and back again twice. The tragedy of Russia is certainly something to behold. And I am of the opinion that this country does not receive what it is owed by the world. Perhaps an interesting topic for another paper?

On Tuesday night we got a little dressed up and went to the St. Petersburg Philharmonic to see the orchestra perform. What we saw was part of a series of concerts in honor of 90 years of the St. Pete’s Philharmonic. The music was beautiful and the theater itself was stunning! The poor old Russian lady who was stuck in the middle of all of us found us completely amusing, luckily enough! We’ve found that the majority of Russian people (save those on waitstaff in restaurants) are patient enough with us and appreciate our (often botched) attempts to speak Russian to them. After the performance, in all our dresses and patterned tights-ness, we hit up the Datscha Bar on Dumskaya Ulitsa for a post-theater beer and to avoid going home to do homework. The bar was great, the bartenders were hilarious, and they had an excellent DJ. Thus, we didn’t leave till about 11pm. Datscha also has tshirts (!!!), and I wouldn’t be surprised if I can come home with one, ha! 

St. Petersburg Philharmonic

St. Petersburg Philharmonic

Even though this morning was rough because of the extra para and the unexpectedly cold weather (coat and jeans), I’m still having a wonderful time here in the Motherland! Two and a half weeks in St. Petersburg and five weeks in Moscow to go!

xoxo