Better than nothing, I suppose...

Three days left in Russia. THREE DAYS. Holy Crap.

If I weren't so busy trying to get everything in order right now, I'd take this time to stop and reflect on all the memories from this semester, good and bad, and maybe on what I've learned as a result of living in a foreign country for the last four months.

Unfortunately, I have seven more pages to write about the Mongol Invasions, plus a hell of a lot of packing left to do. This introspective walk down Memory Road (or Memorii Prospekt) will have to be postponed for a later date.

Also, for some reason, I decided not to take a cab home last night, and instead walked all the way from Nevsky Prospekt down to Frunzenskaya, by way of Sennaya Ploshchad and Moskovskii Prospekt. I did this despite the temperature being close to 0 degrees (Fahrenheit), and also despite the rather heavily-falling snow...in hindsight, this seems a tad foolish. BUT I SAVED MONEY. And that is what counts.

Apologies, Past and Future:

Hey again, everyone.

I know, I know...I've been more than remiss in posting, AGAIN. The thing is, I'm currently trapped in the middle of that hellish time of year known as finals week, and right now, I'm looking at a minimum of 3 essays, 2 finals, and 2 presentations, all of which are either scheduled or due at some point in the next THREE DAYS.

Suffice it to say, I will be pulling a couple of all-nighters, that's for damn sure.

This is still no excuse for me neglecting to keep all of you (well, those of you who still bother reading this, at any rate) updated on what I've been up to...as soon as I am through with the rest of my "Hell Week", you have my deepest assurances that I will resume posting, and at greater frequency than I've previously been doing.

This is assuming that I don't choose to drown myself in the canal rather than finish this frigging essay for Civilization class.......man, I hate finals.

Moscow Concluded

So, I believe I left off with my visiting the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, yes? Well, shortly after that, I made what may have been the most stupid decision that I've made in all of Russia....that's right, I ate the shashlik. It was from a cheap kiosk next to the metro station, I was hungry, and it smelled REALLY good. Little did I know what sorts of agonies it would inflict on my digestive tract less than 24 hours later.

A Cheap, Delicious Mistake of Epic Proportions

Of course, I was not aware of this until much later...at the time, it was tasty and affordable, which are my top criteria when it comes to food.

Anyway, getting back to my narrative...the next morning, I went with some friends to the Izmailovsky market located behind the hotel. I have never seen a more insane hodge-podge of stuff in my life. There were vendors selling just about everything...i saw mammoth ivory, tasers, chess sets, nesting dolls, wolf skins, icons, daggers, old Soviet medals, and even a guy who looked to be selling Kalashnikovs. (And NO, Mom, I didn't buy one.....although you'll probably have enough of a heart attack over what I did buy, hahaha)

Random souvenir-buying aside, the market was a very interesting place...later, I had lunch at the Moscow Hard Rock Cafe (not exactly my choice, but my friends wanted to go, so whatever). We took some silly photos with the monument to Alexander and Natalia Pushkin, and then Hillary and I made tracks for Kazansky Voksal (Kazan Station) to await our train.

Oh, except for one little problem: we didn't actually have our tickets yet (I'd purchased them online).

Yep, the one thing that we absolutely needed to get on the train, we did not have.

Fortunately, there was an E-ticket registration booth in the station, and the lady working there was EXTREMELY helpful...she managed to figure out what we were trying to do, despite ou mangled Russian, and after several minutes of searching through the station database, she found a way to print out our tickets, allowing us to embark on the Train Ride From Hell.

(The events of that train ride are in no way her fault, however, and I am still eternally grateful to her for being willing to put up with our shitty, shitty Russian and taking the time to check for our tickets despite my lack of a proper receipt)

This concludes Moscow....tomorrow, I will begin writing about Kazan.

More Moscow

So, time to wrap up Moscow, if I can. The second day we spent here can be divided into two halves: the first, which I spent in the Kremlin with the rest of the group, and the second, where I went off on my own to do a little exploring.

Our Kremlin tour that morning was pretty cool...the weather was significantly less frigid than the prior evening. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had actually been able to get any sleep the night before. As such, I was in a bit of a mood when we started our tour, and it didn't really dissipate until much later in the day. Which is a shame, because there was some awesome stuff to see in the Kremlin, including Empress Elizabeth's ridiculous carriages, some of the more famous Faberge eggs, and Peter the Great's coronation throne. Oh, and this thing:

This thing is the so-called Tsar Cannon, built by Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible. At the time, it was the largest artillerypiece in the world, and still has the largest caliber for any cannon in history. According to our tour guide, when Boris Yeltsin came to power, he looked out the window of his office and saw the cannon was aimed directly at his window. Twenty minutes later, Yeltsin had moved to a new office.

After a lot of cathedral touring, during which I saw the tombs of some of the most illustrious rulers of Old Muscovy, including Dmitrii Donskoi and Tsar Alexei, everyone split up and went their separate ways...which, to be perfectly honest, I can't say particularly bothered me. There's nothing that's been more annoying in Russia for me than having to go through tours with some of my fellow students, many of whom couldn't give a damn about Russian history.

Anyway, I decided that with my free afternoon, I was going to go visit the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which had been demolished in the 1930's on the orders of Josef Stalin. In its place, after deciding that his 'Palace of the Soviets' was physically unbuildable, he built......wait for it......a giant swimming pool. (sigh)

...As you can see, this thing is both gorgeous and absolutely GIGANTIC. Once you get past the Kremlin, it absolutely dominates the skyline of central Moscow from all directions. It's lovely enough on the outside, but on the inside, the beauty and elegance are magnified by a factor of 10.....upon stepping inside, I honestly felt that I had somehow entered a purer, more spiritual place, as cliched as that may sound. The beauty was unquestionable, but not excessively so, and the decoration didn't constantly clamor for your attention like it does in other places, such as Westminster Abbey. Alas, as a working Orthodox cathedral, photography of the interior is strictly forbidden.

Tomorrow, I PROMISE that I will finish up with Moscow and then move on to more interesting crap. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Travel Week Continued

Er. Sorry again. It's been a busy week; I was up rather late last night studying for my ethnic studies test today, and thus never got around to posting last night.

So, where was I? Oh yes, Moscow. Well, after our bus tour finally wrapped up, I went back to my hotel room and just CRASHED...I feel bad for not trying to go see some of the local sites during the afternoon, but I was so worn out that I just wanted to get in a quick nap to offset my lack of sleep during the train ride. Around 4:30 - 5pm, I finally got up and decided to grab dinner with my friends Hillary and Claire. We didn't feel like spending the money to catch a metro ride into downtown Moscow, at least not on the first night, particularly considering how expensive Moscow prices can be. Instead, we decided to walk around the Ismailovsky district and see what sort of restaurants we could find there.

Oh, take a quick look up at the picture at the top of the page, by the way. (It's me and my friend Tom in front of St. Basil's Cathedral) Weather looks pretty decent, right? Maybe a little windy, but definitely dry. Now take a look at the picture below, which was taken less than six hours later.

Looks pretty damn cold, eh? Turns out that during the time that I spent napping in the hotel room, a mini-blizzard rolled into town and dropped close to four inches of snow on Moscow. Most of that fell during the time that the three of us were desperately looking for a restaurant in Ismailovsky...turns out, aside from wildly overpriced sushi joints, there isn't all that much to eat there. After half an hour of aimless wandering, we were getting a touch desperate (and starving)...guess where we finally ended up eating?

(USA! USA! USA!)

Yep, we went to Mickey D's. And it was glorious. Afterwards, we hit up a local produktii for some snacks and beers, and spent the rest of the bitterly cold evening in the nice warm hotel room, watching Indiana Jones dubbed into Russian. Good times.

Assuming I get back from the hockey game early enough, I'll post some more tomorrow....oh, did I forget to mention that? Well, I managed to get hockey tickets for the game tomorrow evening between CKA and Dynamo Riga (CKA is the St. Petersburg club which was formerly owned by the Red Army). Should be fun; I'll take LOTS of pictures, haha.

Summarizing Travel Week...if I can

I really wish I'd had some sort of reliable internet access over travel week, because then I would have been able to summarize each day individually...instead, I'm stuck trying to summarize the entire ten days, lazy bastard that I am. I'll try my best not to fall into the temptingly-easy pattern of bullet-pointing everything I did, so in this post, I will just stick to what I did in Moscow for the first three days. In the next one, I'll talk about Kazan, and so on from there.

SO.

We took an overnight train from St. Petersburg's Moskovskii Station...of all the trains I rode on during travel week, this was probably the only one that I can say I actually enjoyed at all. We were in a four-person room on a sleeper car, and for once, I wasn't stuck with one of the numerous crazies or assholes (of which our program seems to have a near-unlimited supply). I also got to watch the movie "The Big Lebowski" for the first time, which was a further plus.

The next morning, around 6-7 am, we arrived, whereupon we headed straight for the hotel for breakfast...and only breakfast. Since we were running a little behind schedule, we didn't even have time to put our luggage in our rooms, but instead had to file back on the bus for a city tour. We drove around for a while, while our guide did his best to hold everyone's attention with interesting facts and anecdotes about Muscovite history and geography. Unfortunately, most of us were dog-tired from the late ride (a substantial number were also hungover), and so only two or three of us were awake to listen to our guide's awesomely corny jokes.

When we finally arrived at St. Basil's, we were given approximately 45 minutes to rush around Red Square and take photos...hardly enough time to properly do justice to one of the most history-rich locations in the entire Russian Federation. Still, I did manage to get some awesome shots of the cathedral, the kremlin towers, and the State History Museum (plus G.U.M., the largest shopping mall in Russia), before we were whisked back aboard the bus to continue our city tour.

The next stop was Novodevichy Convent, an old religious complex housing, among other things, the graves of numerous important Russians, as well as the lake which is said to have inspired Tchaikovsky while he composed Swan Lake. There were also some bronze duck statues donated by then-First Lady Barbara Bush, for some obscure reason that I've already forgotten. It's a very pretty setting, despite the cold and cloudy day, and I'll post pictures of it very soon...definitely a great place to take a relaxing walk on a fall afternoon.

After that, we drove around Moscow for a while longer, passing such varied sights as the Olympic ski jump, Sparrow Hill, Moscow State University, the White House (former house of Russia's parliament, and current office of Vladimir Putin), the Arbat district, the Bolshoi Theater, and the deceptively nonthreatening Lyubyanka, former headquarters of the KGB....

Man, is it already 3 am??? Crud, I'm supposed to wake up early to go to the Hermitage tomorrow morning.......aaaargggh, why do I DO this to myself? (Mom, don't answer that)

Okay, I'll just post this now and resume where I left off tomorrow evening. Night, everyone!

Feverish Rantings from Tatarstan!!!!

[Warning: The following post may at times lapse into mild profanity and/or excessively graphic details regarding the effects of Russian cuisine on Brian's digestive tract. Those of you with weak constitutions may wish to cease reading at this point. You have been warned.]

I am going to discuss the three days that I've just spent in Moscow in a later post, when I am in a less-hostile state of mind. Right now, I'll stick to a brief account of my journey to Kazan.

The train I took from Moscow to Kazan (the capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Tatarstan) was a third-class cabin, meaning that I got to spend a lot of time in close proximity to a lot of my fellow passengers. Fourteen-hours' worth, to be exact. The train was reasonably comfortable...for the first half-hour, at least. After that, my memory kind of fades into one long, horrific blur of stomach-retching agony.

That's right, I spent my first journey along the Trans-Siberian Railroad in my own private gastrointestinal hell. From 8:30 until roughly 11:00, I was either puking up my guts, shitting out my own intestines or some combination thereof. It didn't help that there was only one bathroom on the car for some 40 people, nor that my command of the Russian language grows significantly worse when I'm doubled over in torment on a toilet seat in a wildly-lurching train car.

Oh yeah, and the bathroom "facilities" on this car? 'Primitive' is about the politest adjective I can bestow upon them. The bathroom itself was about the size of my bedroom closet, complete with a stunted dwarf of a toilet and a metal sink that took me almost twenty minutes to figure out. All this took place with an irate babushka hammering her fist on the door and demanding that I finish up and get out (or something to that effect).

That was probably the worst of it, but I spent a decent chunk of the rest of the night hopping out of my bunk and dashing for the toilet as well...when I actually managed to sleep, I kept having weird dreams where I was in the middle of the Odessa Stairs sequence from Eisenstein's movie Battleship Potemkin, with a deuce of a lot of Cossacks trying to kill me. Goddamnit, Russia.

[By the way, I'd like to express my thanks here to the middle-aged Russian woman on the train who was so kind as to let me switch bunks with her...originally, I was to have a top bunk, but she decided to save me the trouble of having to constantly clamber in and out all night long...seriously, words cannot adequately express my gratitude to her for that.]

When we finally arrived in Kazan this morning, I was feeling better...until I stepped off the train, whereupon I had to sprint to the station's toilets (which cost money)....God, that was the saddest excuse for a toilet I've ever seen in my life. It was basically a porcelain hole in the floor that one had to carefully squat over and pray that they don't fall in. Naturally, I ended up doing exactly that.

We finally got to the hotel, where the staff was extremely friendly and accomodating, and I have proceeded to spend my entire first day in Tatarstan crapping like there was no tomorrow.

Aside from that, our hotel is quite pleasant (if on the cheap side), and is actually located directly across the street from the Kazan Kremlin, a gorgeous medieval fortress overlooking the Volga River. Maybe tomorrow, I will actually be able to leave the building for a little and get to see something....so I hope, anyway.

The moral of this story? Don't eat shashlik (kebabs) from a late-night kiosk in Moscow, no matter how hungry you are or how good the might smell.

I swear, this country is trying to kill me....

In Soviet Russia...

Well, I had my first run-in with the Russian police (militsiya) yesterday...I was walking into the Mayakovskaya metro station, on my way home for dinner, when a Russian militsiya officer stepped in front of me and asked to see my documentation. I handed over my spravka and explained to him that I was a student at St. Petersburg State University. He nodded, but told me to follow him to the militsiya office in the station. Figuring it's best not to piss off an officer, I complied. When we got there, he told me to have a seat in what basically amounted to a holding cell (because they didn't have anywhere else for me to sit) and asked me if I was carrying narcotics. I responded that I did not, to which he raised a skeptical eyebrow and ordered me to empty my pockets. Feeling a little ridiculous, I did as I was told. The officer proceeded to thoroughly go through everything I had with me, while attempting to make small talk at the same time ("Where you from? Philadelphia? That's nice. Do you like Russia?" and so on). After he finished reviewing all my stuff, he then frisked me, just to make ABSOLUTELY sure I was not carrying narcotics, and then let me go, reminding me to carry my passport with me at all times. So basically, I was profiled by the Russian police as a possible narcotics trafficker....goddamn it, Russia.

Travel Week

A brief update for everyone regarding my travel plans for the next week and a half:

Unfortunately, it looks like I will not be going to Perm and the Urals after all...according to my research, there are no connecting trains from Perm to Kazan during this period, and as much as I would love to see the Urals, I don't want to be stranded there for an entire week either.

Instead, after spending three or four days in Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod, I will be taking the train back to Moscow and spending the remainder of my vacation visiting some of the surrounding areas, such as the cities of Yaroslavl, Vladimir, and Suzdal, and possibly the battlefield of Borodino. My friend Hillary and I even managed to find a really cheap hostel not too far from Red Square (seriously, what are the odds?), so I've got a pretty decent alternative, all things considered. It's still a shame that I won't get to see the Perm-36 gulag or the Kungur ice cave, but as they say, shit happens, and you've got to roll with the punches when it does.

Regardless of what else may happen, I promise you that I am going to photograph the living HELL out of Moscow and the other places that I visit.

Swan Lake: A Photo Essay

The world-famous Mariinsky Theater (formerly known as the Kirov)

Panel featuring the Imperial Double Eagle in the the atrium of the Mariinsky

Ceiling fresco in the atrium

Original character sketches for Odile (the Black Swan) and the Princess-Regent

Character sketch for the evil wizard Rothbart

Interior of the Mariinsky

Act One curtain call, with Odette, Prince Siegfried and a legion of Swan Maidens

Act Two curtain call: Odile takes her bow

(the same dancer plays both Odette and Odile)

Odile and Siegfried, with assorted members of the Kirov in the background

Act Three curtain call....damn, that's a lot of Swan Maidens

The conductor of the flawless pit orchestra takes his much-deserved bow

Diana Vishneva, Prima Ballerina of the Kirov troupe

(She's the dancer who played Odette and Odile)

Post-Tallin Happenings (Excluding Swan Lake)

Since my computer is close to dying, and I cannot presently locate my charger, the following, like one of its predecessors, will be presented in bullet form.

• My Hermitage internship is going well; I've been busy translating stuff for their English newsletter from the original Russian. It's tedious work, but what internship isn't?
• I saw the Museum of Political History, with its truly massive collection of old Soviet propaganda posters, as well as the room which was Vladimir Lenin's former study, maintained almost exactly as he left it.
• I visited the Artillery Museum, where one can see the vehicles, arms, and munitions used by the Russian and Soviet armies from the first millenia to the present day. (pictures later!)
• I ate at a Kroshka Kartoshka, the potato-based Russian fast food chain, which truly has no American equivalent...the baked potato with cheese was truly amazing, although incredibly filling (like most Russian dishes, unfortunately).
• I also had my first experience with Russian vodka and Russians....I won't go into the details (especially since I can't remember most of them, anyway), but long story short, I woke up around noon the following day, feeling like I'd been kicked in the face with an iron boot.

Tomorrow, assuming I can upload my photos, I will do my best to narrate my experience the other night when I went to see a performance of Swan Lake (Лебедное Озеро) at the world-famous Mariinsky Theater.

Tallinn, Part Two

I know you are all tired of hearing my apologies for the frequent gaps between posts, so I won't bother wasting your time with them. As a consolation, however, I promise to post TWICE today, one to wrap up my Tallinn experiences and the other to update everyone on what I've done since then.

So, down to business: aside from all the Hesburger and honey beer, I spent a majority of my time wandering the previously-described Old City, looking at the various examples of medieval architecture and trying not to get rained on. This was a considerable problem, because it basically rained the entire time that we were in Estonia. I understand that this is merely a byproduct of being in the Baltic region, where nice weather is an exceedingly rare phenomenon (for example, in St. Petersburg, it is estimated that there are only 60 days a year when they don't receive at least some sort of precipitation), but I have gotten so sick of Russian rain that it was utterly dismaying to realize that, weather-wise, Estonia was no better.

Still, even in the pouring rain, the Old City is utterly charming, and the view of the Tallinn skyline from the top of the castle is absolutely magnificent. See for yourselves:

Both Friday and Saturday night, I spent a fair amount of time at Beer House, although, despite what pictures may indicate, I actually didn't drink THAT much. Beer House is a Germanic-themed bar/restaurant, indicative of the strong historical influence that the Germans have had upon the upper Baltic region. The beer is expensive but good, as are the appetizers, and the entertainment is great...believe me, you have not lived until you have listened to an Estonian band perform "YMCA" in Estonian. I even danced at one point, shocking as that may seem to anyone who knows me in the slightest.

On Sunday morning, after a little souvenir shopping, we all got back on the bus for Narva, an old fortress on the Estonian border which has historically changed ownership more frequently than Shaq changes teams. After a three-hour ride through the Estonian countryside, during which I had to grit my teeth and endure watching the film "Confessions of a Shopaholic", we arrived in Narva and ate lunch in the old fortress. The subsequent tour of the fortress was quite interesting, even if the view from the top was a bit difficult for photography, due to its narrow windows.

Once we left the fortress, we got back on the bus...and stayed there. For about five and a half hours. The Estonian border guards took forever to process our documents, and once they let us across the border, the Russians took even longer (although they did have an adorable little cocker spaniel sniff our luggage for drugs, which was hilarious). All this while, I was stuck on a bus with more than 70 American students, most of whom are pretty okay, but some of whom are incredibly loud, rude and annoying, so much so that I was seriously considering asking the Russian guards to shoot me and put an end to my misery (I would still have to endure another three hours of this once the Russians finally allowed us to reenter their country).

And so ended my Estonian vacation.

Tallinn, Part One

Let's face it; at first glance, Estonia hardly seems like an attractive travel destination. It's cold, tiny, rainy and used to belong to Russia....on paper, it's got virtually nothing going for it.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. My weekend in Tallinn has easily been one of the highlights of my semester thus far. In the Middle Ages, Tallinn was a stronghold of the Livonian Knights of the Sword (an offshoot of the more famous Teutonic Knights), and that knightly heritage is reflected in the Old City...I swear, it's like stepping straight into the pages of a fairy tale. Cobblestone streets, grey stone walls and towers, the incessant ringing of churchbells, and in every direction you look, there's a half-dozen cathedral spires reaching towards heaven. You honestly feel like you've completely left the 21st century for an era of crusaders and castles...it's a pretty cool feeling.

And then there's the food...oh my god, there is the food. To be fair, a lot of traditional Estonian cuisine is similar to Russian, with lots of pork and potatoes, although it's a bit less heavy on the dairy products. I ate at a pair of traditional Estonian restaurants, both of which were quite tasty, and the fried garlic bread was especially good. But nothing that I had this past weekend can compare to that pinnacle of Baltic eating, the one and only HESBURGER.

How to explain Hesburger? Well, it's kind of like an Estonian Burger King or McDonald's, except not nearly as health-conscious. The classic Hesburger is a double-decker burger, along the lines of the Big Mac, but comes with a little cardboard ring around it to keep the sauce and toppings from exploding out the sides. It's huge and messy and greasy as hell; you can literally feel your life expectancy decreasing as you eat it...and I absolutely love it. I love it so much I ate TWO. (for those of you who haven't been following this regularly, the thing that I've been craving more than almost anything else in Russia is a big, juicy cheeseburger...and boy, did Estonia come through for me!)

Life-threatening junk food aside, Tallinn also had two other foods that really stuck with me (okay, one of them is technically a beverage). The first would be the Medovar Honey Beer from Beer House, one of the most awesome bars in Estonia. Medovar Honey is basically beer, but with a healthy dose of fermented honey, giving it a much more palatable taste than the standard German pilsner (not that I dislike pilsner, mind you)...but, compared to the other stuff that I've drunk this semester, Medovar goes down a whole lot more smoothly, and goes really well with mozzarella sticks, too. But perhaps more importantly, they serve it in 1-liter steins that are larger than your head. Case in point:

The second, even more delectable bit of Estonian food is what in English we would call Sweet Almonds, made specially by the Olde Hansa restaurant...basically, these are almonds that are slow-roasted and mixed with sugar, cinnamon, and over 30 other kinds of spices until they are positively caked in this sugary dullish-red mixture. The taste is practically indescribable, and downright addictive; much like Cheezits or Pringles, you simply cannot stop with just one. They are served fresh throughout Old Tallinn, from medieval-style wooden carts by VERY attractive Estonian girls in medieval attire (who are more than happy to offer you free samples every time you pass by). As wonderful as they taste, it is the smell which really makes them great; it's hard to describe, but it's a little similar to the smell of spiced apple cider, with a little something else that I can't quite pin down....it is utterly intoxicating. I tried to buy some to bring back home, but they smelled so delicious that I couldn't help myself...I ate the whole box before I even made it back to the hotel. Yes, they are THAT good.

Anyway, that's all that I've got time for today; I'll finish off my Tallinn Tales tomorrow evening, hopefully.

A Belated Update

Okay, AGAIN, apologies for not posting more often....as dumb as it sounds, I've been reading Joseph Conrad's Nostromo for the last week and a half, and it's just been too engrossing for me to put down. If you haven't read Conrad, I strongly recommend that you check him out.

Anyway, I should probably summarize what I've been up to for the last week or two. Unfortunately, I've done quite a lot, so in the interest of saving time, I will present it to you in bullet form.

• I had my first Russian theatre-going experience...went to see Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Tsar's Bride" at the Mikhailovsky Theater, which is next to the Russian Museum. The music was good, if a bit flowery for my taste, and the set was absolutely gorgeous. I honestly felt like I was in the throne room of Tsar Ivan, and I was sitting in the back row!
• I've toured three of the five major cathedrals of St. Petersburg: the elegant Kazansky Sobor, the massive and stately Isaakyevsky Sobor and the entrancingly beautiful Xram Spassa na Krovi (Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood). In Kazansky, I witnessed my first Orthodox liturgy, while in Isaakyevsky, I got to climb to the colonnade on the main dome and take pictures of what might be the finest view in the entire city. In Spilled Blood, I got to see the stunning interior of the most beautiful building in all Russia, as well as the site of Tsar Alexander II's assassination.
• I went to an Anglo-Russian pub with my friend Marina (not my host mother) to watch the World Cup qualifier between Russia and Germany...great game, with an unfortunate ending (Germany won), but I have never felt more Russian than when I sat with a bunch of drunken soccer hooligans laughing and cheering when the camera cut to Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin in the skybox, wearing their Team Russia scarves.
• Speaking of Putin and Medvedev, I went to see their presidential meeting hall, which is located at Konstantinskii Palace, in the southeastern suburbs. I even got to see Putin's private billiards room, which is as nice as you would imagine it to be.
• I'm making friends with some non-American students finally, and not only Russians, but also some Georgian and British students.
• I went to a Russian restaurant called Hot Wings, and ate - you guessed it - hot wings for the first time since leaving the states. And it was glorious...maybe not quite the same as in America, but my stomach wasn't picky.
• I have a volunteer internship at the State Hermitage Museum, one of the largest in the world, and might even get to write an article for their English newsletter.
• In another day or two, I travel to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, for a weekend...it ought to be a lot of fun, and I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures!

That's all I really have time for; in my next post, I'll be sure to add some pictures as well!

Cravings

My god, what I wouldn't do for a cheeseburger right now. And not just any cheeseburger; no, I want a burger so big and unhealthy that I can literally feel a year of my life slipping away into oblivion. I have this glorious image in my mind of a huge, juicy burger, with melty pepperjack cheese and an unholy amount of bacon, fresh off the grill and slathered in A1 sauce, all on a golden brown, lightly-toasted sesame seed bun......[drools]

Of course, they do not have such a thing in Russia. And it is KILLING ME.

And now for something completely different:

I can’t seem to remember whether or not I said anything about my trip to the Hermitage last week…in any case, I wanted to take a moment here to write about a particular exhibit in the Classical Wing that left a pretty strong impression on me. I ask for your patience while I go off on one of my tangents:

To be fair, the Hermitage’s entire collection of Greek & Roman art is magnificent to look at, even if a fair number of them are actually Italian reproductions. The fact that you are looking at something more than two thousand years old, something which represents a completely different stage of human development, is a very moving experience. But in spite of that, a lot of the ancient sculptures have a very familiar quality to them, particularly the busts of the early Roman emperors. Nearly all of them are monuments of self-glorification (if not self-deification), portraying the rulers of Rome as handsome, dignified and heroic figures, filled with limitless strength and untold wisdom. The bust of Tiberius, for example, makes him look like a distinguished patrician, famed for his charity and judgment, when in reality, he was a paranoid and murderous old pervert. The robust and affable-looking Nero was actually a brutal megalomaniac (and serial rapist) who had Rome set on fire for his own amusement, then built a colossal palace over the ruins left behind. Even the bust of Caesar is misleading; while he was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant generals and statesmen in history, the means by which he achieved that reputation are far from noble. He was a ruthless political manipulator, and his conquest of Gaul is estimated to have killed over a million people. He was murdered because the senators of Rome feared he was plotting to overthrow the Republic (his nephew Augustus ended up doing just that).

All this is why I was so shocked when I entered one of the numerous exhibition rooms in the Hermitage and found myself in a room full of emperors from the 3^rd Century. During a period dubbed “the Crisis of the 3^rd Century”, the Roman Empire tottered on the brink of annihilation, subjected to a near endless parade of plagues, earthquakes, assassinations, slave revolts, hyperinflation, barbarian invasions and civil wars. Amidst this sea of calamities, there surfaced one positive development: Realism.

Looking at the busts of the 3^rd Century emperors, I was struck by how much more honestly they were portrayed than their predecessors: some were fat, some were ugly, some were sickly, and some were disgustingly hairy. You can even see real emotions in some of their stony faces; the portly and unshaven Balbin looks like any middle-aged man might when receiving a piece of bad news (as well he might, since half the empire tried to secede during his reign). In the sightless marble eyes of Caracalla, you can see the naked cruelty and ambition that marked his tenure as emperor, as well as his rather awesome sideburns.

Perhaps the most interesting statue, for me at least, was that of Emperor Philippus Arabicus, more commonly known as Philip the Arab. He came to power at a particularly bleak time in Roman history, with the economy in ruins, the Persian army overrunning the eastern borders, and the powerful Dacian legions in open revolt. Philip’s statue shows a military man with a receding hairline, clearly uncomfortable with his new civilian dress and duties, who is just beginning to grow fat. His face is tired and worn, with fresh wrinkles appearing at the news of the latest disaster, and he has precious little time to waste posing for a sculptor, much less bothering to see whether he looks good. The Roman world, the only world he knows, is ending; a thousand years of civilization on the brink of destruction, and his job is to find some way to save it.

Emperor Philip the Arab

Whatever their other faults (of which there were many), the emperors of the 3^rd Century didn’t try to conceal who or what they truly were. For that, if nothing else, perhaps we owe them the small courtesy of remembering them at all.

Again, apologies for the delay...

Sorry everyone, I know I've gotten really lax in posting stuff...the last week has been incredibly stressful and busy, and I simply haven't had the time or energy to keep up with it.

My biggest problem at the moment is the Russian Language. At the moment, I am in Group 7 (out of 9), and every single class I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of unintelligible words. My conversation class is particularly bad, because my Russian vocabulary is extremely limited, and I just feel completely out of my depth...at this point, I'm seriously considering dropping down a level, because in my current class, I'm not absorbing anything that they're teaching me (the entire class is in Russian, and I understand maybe 5 words out of every 10 the teacher says).

Outside of class, the language barrier isn't quite as bad; Marina and I have worked out a reasonable system of communication (approximately 80% Russian and 20% charades), and even grocery stores aren't quite so difficult anymore...still, in the classroom, all that progress falls by the wayside, and I'm entirely convinced the teacher thinks I'm a complete idiot.

My other major concern is where to go for travel week (November 8 - 15)...obviously, cost is a factor, and the two cheapest options are (oddly enough) located at opposite ends of Europe. I could go West, to merry old England, where I've got 3 or 4 friends living at the moment, and just couch-crash for the entire week without paying for a hotel (I'd also be able to speak the language, which is a HUGE plus). My other option is to ride the Trans-Siberian Railway eastward, towards Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and possibly even Yekaterinburg (located in the Urals, where European Russia meets Siberia)...this would probably be a little cheaper, but so far, only one, possibly two of the other American students is showing interest in coming along, so I need to figure out what's what by the end of this weekend if at all possible.

Anyway, here's some more pictures, this time from my visit to the Hermitage:

The Winter Palace

Arch of the General Staff Building

Ionic Colonnade in the Classical Art Wing

...now, a summary of the last few days.

Well, it happend; I finally got sick in Russia. Now, I'd had a cold for the last five or six days, but nothing major...then yesterday, I woke up with a violent headache. God, it felt like there was a little man inside my skull whacking away at my brain with a sledgehammer. I probably slept close to fourteen hours yesterday, and had to drink one hell of a lot of ТЕРАФЛЮ (that's Theraflu in Cyrillic, haha). In any case, I woke up feeling much better today, and even my cold seems to be gone...mostly.

This weekend was considerably more interesting, involving a trip to Peter the Great's royal palace of Peterhof (nicknamed "the Versailles of Russia") on Saturday, despite the rotten weather. Sunday was considerably nicer, and I spent the day with a couple of new friends from the program travelling around the general area of Nevsky Prospekt.

Unfortunately, because I did NOT charge my computer battery, that's really all the information I have time for at the moment....I'll elaborate further on it tomorrow, I promise.

Here's a few pics of Peterhof to tide you over until I do:

Grand Cascade of Peterhof

Samson Fountain

A sample of Peterhof's elaborate landscaping

The Gulf of Finland, viewed from the terrace of Monplasir Palace

Because no Russian photo montage is complete without some onion domes :)

First, an apology....

Sorry it's been a little while since I last posted anything - it's just starting to get a little annoying with the wireless situation, having to charge up my computer before I go to class, and then stay at school for an extra two or three hours in order to take care of everything that's accumulated. Once I get my hands on one of these elusive wireless modems that everyone else seems to have, I'll post with a bit more regularity.

Also, please feel free to comment on anything I've posted. If you'd like to know more about any of the places/monuments I've visited, then please, go right ahead and ask!

My First Taste of Russian Cold.....

So the other day I went shopping at Lenta, which is the Russian equivalent of Walmart/Target....got myself a pair of running shoes, some undershirts, a leather jacket and a beer (Byeliy Medved, which tastes like crud but came in a cool bottle) for approximately $130.00. I LOVE THIS EXCHANGE RATE.

...anyway, I figured that I'd try to get in some exercise to counteract all the butter I've been ingesting recently, and went for a run yesterday morning before class. BIG. MISTAKE.

You see, because the previous day had been warm, I assumed that yesterday would be similar, and thus I wore gym shorts. I was wrong; it was windy, overcast and absolutely freeeeeeeeeeeeezing...also, I was running in the city, which I've never done before, and spent half my time dodging pedestrians who gave me the strangest of looks...apparently, Russians don't go running in the morning, or at least they're smart enough not to do it in shorts.

Today, I might be going to the Russian Museum for a little....if they let me take photos, I'll be sure to post some for all of you!

Also, the picture at the top is from last wek's excursion to Peter & Paul Fortress...more about that later!

Weekend in Novgorod, Part II

Above, you see the Millennium of Russia Monument, erected in 1859, celebrating a thousand years of Russian history. It's a massive bronze sculpture, adorned with hundreds of brazen figures from Russian history. Here's a couple of the major ones:

Grand Prince Rurik, the first Viking overlord of Kievan Rus

Tsar Mikhail Romanov, founder of the Romanov Dynasty

Orthodox monks at the court of Prince Yaroslav the Wise

For someone as insanely into Russian history as I am, you can imagine how cool it was to see this thing up close and scrutinize the various little details. I was particularly interested to see Mikhail Romanov's statue; for the progenitor of such an illustrious family, historians tend to pay him very little attention, and I'm not entirely sure why that is.

After dinner back at the hotel restaurant, I was somehow talked into going to the Banya (a kind of Russian steam bath) by my friend Nastia, who is a Russian university student assisting our program directors with excursions like this one. About five guys and twelve to thirteen girls went on the banya trip, which would ordinarily sound promising, until one realizes that the Banya has separate facilities for males and females. Going to the Banya is kind of like going to a sauna, only a lot more so...you alternate your time between a steam room and a cold room, where you rapidly cool down with buckets of ice-cold water (or, for the more adventurous, you can plunge into the Volkhov River across the street). Oh, and did I mention that you do all of this stark naked?

Let's just say that my visit to the Banya has been one of the more awkward experiences of my semester in Russia, and leave it at that. I tried my best to keep my neck craned far enough back to avoid viewing any unpleasant "scenery", as it were, but I still ended up seeing MUCH more of Russia than I am comfortable with seeing. Also, the "steam room" is a bit of a misnomer; "scalding oven of death" would be a more appropriate name. No sauna I've ever been in can hope to rival the Banya in overall heat intensity. You know how our bodies are supposed to be 75% water, or something like that? Well, by the time I exited the steam room for the fourth and final time, my body was down to 35%, and that's a HIGHLY optimistic figure. I'm all for keeping an open mind culturally, but the Banya is one aspect of Russia that I can't quite see myself embracing anytime soon.

I'll finish up my Novgorod tales tomorrow; for now, enjoy a few more pictures:

Cathedral of Saint Sophia

Volkhov River

Weekend in Novgorod, Part I

This weekend, the CIEE program took us to the ancient city of Novgorod, one of the most powerful Russian principalities during the Middle Ages. Also known as Velikiy (or Great) Novgorod, the city was one of the only ones to escape destruction by the Mongols, and later successfully resisted incursions by the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights. At the same time, Novgorod also became one of the major trading cities in the Baltic region, and established itself as a bastion of learning and culture in a relatively barbaric corner of the world. It was even semi-democratic, being ruled jointly by an elected Prince and a council of free men known as the Veche. Ironically, this prosperity came to an end not at the hands of foreign invaders, but fellow Russians. Tsar Ivan the Terrible, suspicious of the city's loyalty to Muscovy, had 3,000-12,000 of the citizenry massacred by his troops over a period of several weeks. (There's a reason they didn't call him Ivan the Huggable)

In any case, our trip to Novgorod was far less gruesome in nature. The bus ride took us about four hours, during which we saw the "real" Russia - endless stretches of field and forest, with the rare town flashing by on occasion. On Saturday, we saw the Court of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, as well as the Kremlin of Novgorod (not the same as the one in Moscow). Going inside the Cathedral of Saint Sophia was a particularly moving experience...outside, it's yet another large, white Kievan-style church, but inside...well, inside is completely different. Massive gllomy shadows abound, which makes it so much more shocking when you suddenly come across the bright golden gleam of the Russian icons. These, of course, are absolutely gorgeous, and there are hundreds of them, from floor to ceiling, throughout the cathedral. Sadly, I was not allowed to take photographs inside, but here's a picture of an icon from one of the other cathedrals I visited, just to give you a basic idea:

.....Yeah, you get the idea. The sheer splendour of the cathedral's interior, combined with the general feeling of extreme ancientness, is a potent combination; unlike a lot of the cathedrals I've seen in Italy, Saint Sophia had at least as many pilgrims and actual believers inside as it did tourists.

My computer battery is close to dead right now, so I'll have to sign off here. I'll continue this post tomorrow.

Dining a la Russe

Above is pictured a Bliniy, one of the most popular dishes in Russian cuisine. It's sort of like a crepe/pancake folded over several times, with some sort of filling - it can be either sweet or meaty - stuffed inside. This particular one is an Apple Bliniy from Chainaya Lozhka.

This naturally raises the topic of what else I've been eating while I'm over here...better get comfortable; I could go on for quite a while.

Sir Winston Churchill once famously remarked that Russia was "...a mystery inside a riddle, wrapped in an enigma." He failed to mention that it was also slathered in about fifty kilos of butter. You see, the Russians love their butter, to the point where they will add it to foods that were never, ever meant to be buttered. I can understand butter on toast, or perhaps in an omelet, but in SOUP??? That's just wrong.

And speaking of omelets, Marina Vasilevna has made some of the strangest ones I've ever seen in my life...I can understand cheese and ham and even peppers in an omelet, but spaghetti and meatballs makes no sense whatsoever. Although the fried chicken-and-potatoes omelet she made the next morning was, if anything, even more ridiculous.

Marina Vasilevna also just cooks way too much...she routinely serves borsch in bowls that are nearly the size of my head, along with a healthy portion of sour cream. And by "healthy portion", I mean about a pint of it. Because it isn't just the butter; Russia takes their love of dairy products to a whole different level. I will freely admit that the yogurt here is fantastic, but I can only take so much butter in my food before I start to literally feel my arteries clogging.

I could go on and on, (for instance, I have yet to discuss the primacy of the cucumber and potato in Russian recipes) but I think I'll spare you the details for now. Maybe tomorrow.

What is new?

Okay, a quick summary of Monday night's Russian Conversation Hour:

Well, turns out we haven't formally been assigned partners yet; what actually happened was more like speed-dating, with the Russian students (eight of them; three guys, five girls) sitting at different tables and the American students (nine of us; three guys and six girls) rotating slowly around the room (this all took place in a small restaurant/bar, I should add). I spent approximately five minutes or so with each of the Russkiy students, attempting to converse in a mixture of English and horribly mangled Russian...it's sort of depressing to see how much better they are at English than I am at Russian. Oh, and we also had free drinks...the Nevsky beer was surprisingly good. At the end of the "speed-dating", we each had to fill out a card specifying which conversation partners we enjoyed talking with, and they'll match us up with one later this week. I'm personally hoping for either Yulia or Marina (not the same as my host-mother), since we seemed to have the most in common.

After all that was finished, I went and grabbed some quick dinner from one of the carts on the sidewalk....dinner was not provided at RCH, and the restaurant was a bit pricey for my budget. So I got a hamburger and a Coke from one of the street-meat vendors and went to eat it in the shadow of the Church on the Spilled Blood, listening to some nearby street musicians playing jazz for about thirty minutes or so.

Tuesday night was much less eventful. I did my homework and watched Russia's version of Sesame Street to help boost my vocabulary a little, (don't laugh, it actually helps!) then got bitten half to death in the night by mosquitos....man, I can't WAIT until it gets cold enough for the damn little things to die.

PICTURES!!!! ....oh, and Pavlovsk too.

Okay, so here's my new Flickr account...hopefully this will allow all of you who aren't on Facebook to see what I've been seeing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42272251@N06/show/

This weekend, we went to see the Imperial hunting preserve and palace of Tsar Paul, son of Catherine the Great. It was raining the entire time, so the gardens and park were more or less a waste of time, but at least the interior of the palace made the trip worthwhile. Paul was a relative failure as a Tsar, but he did a pretty snazzy job on his personal hunting villa...the Neoclassical decor is a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it, it's really quite pleasing to the senses. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take pictures of all this resplendency, so there's next to no evidence of my visit, sad to say.

Tonight, I have conversation hour with a Russian student, which will be a chance for each of us to practice speaking in one another's languages. I've got my fingers crossed, hoping for a pretty young devushka...hahaha, well a man can dream, can't he?

Oh, for those of you who don't speak Russian, devushka means girl...although I imagine most of you could figure that out on your own, eh?

Pictures

Still trying to figure out how to get my pictures up on the blog, but for those of you who have a Facebook, I've uploaded the first album of my travel photos for your enjoyment.

I'll let the rest of you know when I get around to making them accessible for everyone.

Also, we went to see a Russian movie the other day - Kanikuli Ctrogovo Rezhima (Loosely translated, it means "Vacation from the Harsh Regime"...I think). The plot is basically that two hardened Russian criminals escape from a Siberian prison and go into hiding as counselors at a Russian children's day camp. Obviously, a rather slapstick comedy, but still fairly enjoyable to watch.

Do Svidanya!

Блокад муэей

So last week, we went to see Victory Square (Ploschad Pobedyi) and the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad. It's a rather interesting design, particularly for a late Soviet-era work...it consists of a massive stone obelisk rearing towards the sky, encircled by a ring of stone that is broken in just one place - representing the liberation of the city. All along the circle walls are huge torches which burn as constant reminders of the sacrifices of the fallen. On either side of the breach in the circle are the words 900 Dyen and 900 Noch - Nine Hundred Days and Nights - which was the period of time for which St. Petersburg, or Leningrad, was besieged by the German Wehrmacht. From September 8th, 1941 until January 27th, 1944, the entire city was subjected to a lethal rain of bombs and artillery shells at all hours of the day and night. Over one million people died in that time period, both military and civilian, German and Russian. As they told us during orientation, you cannot hope to understand the city of Saint Petersburg without understanding what its people endured in the siege (or blockade, which is the term most Russians prefer).

Underneath the monument is a museum, full of somber plaques to departed heroes and various detritus from the war that has been dug up all around the city. There are also nine hundred burning candles lining the entry tunnel...except that each candle is made from the remains of German artillery shells recovered from the surrounding area. At each end of the exhibition room, one can see a gorgeous mosaic covering the entire wall; one depicts life before the siege, and one shows its aftermath.

You know how they often tell you that there's really no way to describe something to a person who's never been there before? Well, this is something similar. My words really can't do justice to the monument, the museum or the siege. It's just something that has to be experienced firsthand. If you ever have a chance to go to Saint Petersburg, in between visiting the gorgeous cathedrals and palaces, make sure you take a little time to travel down Moskovskii Prospekt and see this as well.

A Brief Description of My New Home:

As I have mentioned previously, I am living in a small apartment (kvartira) located on Moskovskii Prospekt. It is one of the busier roads of Saint Petersburg, and the Russian drivers are notorious speeders, making jaywalking a serious hazard to one’s health. My apartment, which is to say Marina Vasilevna’s apartment, is situated almost directly across the street from one of the city’s numerous Metro stations. This particular one is known as Frunzenskaya, after the famous Bolshevik commander Mikhail Frunze. Also nearby are several cheap bistros and Lenta, which appears to be the Russian equivalent of Costco...I know this, because Marina Vasilevna took me shopping yesterday evening.

Being in a Russian grocery store is something else, my friends. It's noisy, crowded, and the shopping carts come at you from all sides. Also, the numerous produkti come in very different sizes and containers. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, there IS a special aisle just for vodka. Floor to ceiling, nothing but bottle after bottle of Smirnov, Popov, Stolichnaya and about 70 other brands.

But back to my home. The bedroom I live in is small, but fairly cozy. There is a TV, a bookshelf (amply stocked with Russian literature, none of which I am fluent enought to read yet), a divan, a workdesk....and a piano. Apparently my bedroom was once the living room. The bathroom is larger, but not by much, and there is a washing machien right next to the toilet, making it a bit of an odd experience going to the bathroom while a machine the size of a small hippo rumbles ominously less than an inch or two from the side of your head.

Also, there is a mosquito in my room. Only one, but I have been trying to kill the blasted thing for the last three nights, and yet the filthy little bugger (pun fully intended) somehow continues to elude me. It's nothing major, but still, annoying to have to deal with.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about the trip to the Blockade Museum and the Column of Victory, which actually happened half a week ago, but I forgot to write about.

Live from Saint Petersburg....

My apologies for having been out of touch for the last couple of days...internet service is difficult to come by in this part of the world, and it doesn't come cheap. I have a ton of awesome pictures, but unfortunately, my laptop is having some difficulties, and I can't upload them yet. I've only got 200 rubles-worth of WiFi at the moment, so I'll try to be as brief as I can.

Okay, so let me summarize the last few days: I and my fellow American students checked out of our hotel yesterday morning, and I met my host family last evening. And by "host family", I mean "host mother", since Marina Vasilevna Barbarovich lives all by herself. She is a very pleasant Russian babushka, friendly and helpful and a very good cook. She also speaks absolutely no English whatsoever. That's right. NYET ANGLISKIY.

As you can imagine, this has led to a number of awkward silences as I struggle with my broken Russian, desperately flipping through my insufficient Russian-English dictionary to try and express myself with some small modicum of clarity. Marina Vasilevna has been very, VERY patient with me, but I will freely admit that it would be nice if I had a host family with at least one broken-English speaker to help me get my words translated.

Also, 90% of the students on the program live on Vasilevksy Island. I am not part of that 90%. I live on Moskovsky Prospekt, which is a nice street, filled with Stalinist architecture and the occasional monument to Comrade Lenin. I'd much rather live within a few blocks of fellow English speakers, to be perfectly honest, but such is the hand that I've been dealt, and I suppose I'll just have to roll with the punches. So to speak.

Anyway, my less-than-ideal housing situation aside, Saint Petersburg is actually quite pleasant. The buildings are all gorgeous. Over the last couple days, I've seen most of the major cathedrals, including St. Isaac's and Kazansky Sobor, and I've heard the guns of Peter & Paul Fortress (Petropavlovskaya Krepost) announcing midday with their ground-shaking blast. Our bus-driver, Nikolai Luschkov, looks a bit like an ex- Chechen warlord, but he is friendly and good at his job. Our program directors, Dr. Longan and Ms. Shuliakovskaya, are also very nice and helpful...Ms. Shuliakovskaya actually bears an uncanny resemblence to my Russian professor, Lina Bernstein, if the latter were wearing a peroxide-blonde wig.

The other students on the program are all really cool kids, from completely different parts of the country. Over the last three days, I've made friends with Ohioans, Californians, Oregonians, New Yorkers, New Englanders, and whatever it is that you call people from Illinois. (Illinoisians? Illinoisites? Illini?) They come from an equally diverse range of colleges, from Lewis and Clark College to Harvard University. We're a fairly quirky bunch...one minute, we're talking about the Hermitage, and the next minute, we're debating what the best games for Nintendo 64 were. All in all, a pretty awesome group.

I've even made my first Russian friend, Nastia (a diminutive of Anastasia), who is a Psychology student at St. Petersburg State. She was a volunteer tour guide with us on the first two days, and is extremely knowledgeable about Russian and American customs. She and I spent a lot of time talking the other day, and she was kind enough to allow me to address her with the informal "Tiy" as opposed to the formal "Viy", which I view as a huge compliment.

It looks like my WiFi time is about to expire, so I'll sign off now....hopefully this has been a sufficient account of my activities for the last few days, da?

Do svidanya, my friends.