Monday, June 7, 10:50pm. I’m sitting in the Parque Federico Garcia Lorca, blogging and enjoying the lovely nighttime weather. I know, it seems strange to be hanging out in a park at 11pm, but (1) it’s almost empty, (2) it’s a two-minute walk from my homestay, and (3) Granada’s nightlife is just beginning. I’m a little tardy (okay, very tardy) on this first blog entry, for which I do apologize. Let’s see if I can capture the slightly overwhelming flood of impressions of this past week.
So I arrived in Granada, took a taxi from the airport with one of my program-mates, and showed up in a traffic circle filled with construction. If Granadans thought traffic was bad before, it’s been made far more confusing by the beginning of construction on a Metro system. (Honestly, the city doesn’t need it. The buses are comprehensive and cheap, and the city is easily traverseable on foot, as well. But, progress is progress.) Monday was a getting-to-know-you day in several respects, with regard to my host mom, the city, another time zone change, the works. Tuesday was orientation, Wednesday, classes, Thursday and Friday days off, and today, classes began again in earnest.
I, along with a GMU softball player named Beth, have been adopted into a large, warm, loud, constantly moving Andalucian family. Sra. Encarnacion Ventura insisted from the beginning that we call her Encarna (even our professors tell us to call them by first names. Very different from the Russian formality to which I’ve grown accustomed). I’ve met three of her seven children so far, and five of her eleven grandchildren, the youngest of which (five-year-old Cristina) has attached herself to me and Beth like a chattering chick. Beth and I are the only ones who actually live with Sra. Ventura, but it’s very rare that at least three other people aren’t over for lunch. The kids eat in one room, the adults (including us!) in another, with the television on in the background and practically inaudible under multiple lightning-fast conversations. It took me about a day and a half to stop injecting Russian words into my conversations; now, I speak about 80% in Spanish, including among our group (occasionally to their annoyance). The cultural transition has taken much less time than I expected. :)
Bueno, so, the rest of the week. We met on Tuesday at the Centro para Lenguas Modernas (Modern Language Center), tucked away in some aristocratic family’s old summer house in the center of the city. Professor Ramos, our coordinator, was very pleased to finally meet me and passed on her best greetings to Mom. :) We took our placement tests, received a boatload of introductory information, spent a while standing around between meetings (this quickly became a common theme), and were eventually dismissed and told to meet at a similar house in the far northern part of the city at 9pm. That evening, after a very welcome siesta and some more unpacking, the eighteen of us met for dinner, had a little too much wine (thanks to the generosity of the servers), and spent three hours socializing, taking photos, and (eventually) dancing in the garden.
We were informed on Tuesday that we had arrived in the middle of Granada’s biggest party of the year, the Feria de Corpus Cristi, so Thursday and Friday were days off for pretty much the entire city. As it turns out, half of Wednesday was, too; our second professor dismissed us after about five minutes of class to go see the parade making its way down the Gran Via. This one was mainly for the kids, so I understand, but I still enjoyed it immensely: the people on stilts and wearing giant costumes, the bands, the completely random collection of costumed individuals throwing smoke bombs on the street. The centerpiece of this parade was a statue of a flamenco-costumed woman riding a dragon, called La Tarasca. (I’m not sure whether that’s the name of the woman, the dragon, or the statue.) Why the woman riding a dragon is so important, I have no idea, but at least it was pretty.
Even our days off were busy. Beth and Sra. Ventura decided that we would spend Thursday at the beach, accompanied by Beth’s friend Tara and Sra. Ventura’s cousin Pilar. So, we did. I remember now one of the many good reasons I don’t spend much time at the beach. I do love to relax, but even after applying what must have been a quarter of my bottle of SPF 50 sunscreen, I STILL managed to return to Granada the shade of a freshly cooked lobster. Thankfully, four days later, the burns have stopped hurting; even so, I carry a tube of aloe in my purse. When you’re as pale as I am, you can’t be too careful. :P Most of the group went to a different beach on Saturday, an opportunity which I politely declined on grounds of preserving my sanity. I was oddly satisfied to note that some of them returned roughly the same color as myself. -grin-
Friday was a little more like what I’m used to for a study abroad program: two excursions, to Fuente Vaqueros and the Albaicin. Fuente Vaqueros is a little town about half an hour outside of Granada, noteworthy for being the birthplace of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. I brought several of his works with me to Granada (thanks, Mom!), and I happen to actually like them, so I found this trip to be really kind of neat; most of the rest of the group looked a little bored, but the guide did her best. Our guides for our excursions are two professors from the CLM, named Maricarmen and Elios, and they’re actually pretty amazing. :) Maricarmen was also responsible for leading us through the winding maze that is the Albaicin, basically the historic Arab-inspired quarter of Granada. We passed many a palace belonging to the rich folk of the time, picked our way down tiny cobblestoned alleys, and took dozens of photos of the views that only got better as we climbed. I like to think I’m getting better at landscape photography, though that may only be because there are SO MANY opportunities here. :D
I almost forgot to mention: as part of the festival of Corpus Christi, there’s a giant fair on the far western end of the city, where I spent two wonderful evenings (Wednesday and Saturday). It’s sort of a combination of a county fair and…well, to be honest, I’m not sure what to compare it to. There’s a section full of rides for the kids, sweet sellers everywhere, and games (and people carrying around the ludicrous stuffed animals won from said games), and then there’s the part that’s truly Spanish. A good two hundred tent enclosures are arranged in streets in the back part of the fair, all of which are sponsored by clubs, the university, the local government, and the like, and all of which are places to gather, socialize, drink, and dance. Considering that almost the only dancing I know how to do is Latin, and also considering that nobody judges anybody else because they’re all too busy having fun, this was by far my favorite part. I spent both nights dancing until well after two in the morning, and went home by the convenient Feria shuttles, which were running until something like six a.m. (I also tried both sangria and some sort of local wine sold in shots. A shot of cheap vodka is generally fairly vile; a shot of cheap, dark wine is REALLY awful, but hey, it’s a tradition. Sangria is quite tasty, but I limited myself to one glass a night. ‘Vino de verano,’ literally ‘summer wine,’ is possibly even better; it’s basically just a red wine spritzer, heavy on the spritz.)
So…chronological order be blasted, where was I? Saturday. Right. After the walking tour, most of us were honestly exhausted, so we went home and went to bed. While most of the group spent Saturday tanning/burning on the beach, I slept in, read for a while, enjoyed the air conditioning, then set off in the late afternoon to go explore. I rather like taking the back streets in this city and just seeing where I end up. I know where the dangerous neighborhoods are, but they’re on the other end of the city from my homestay, so as long as I pay SOME attention to where I’m going, the results are generally quite pleasant. I ended up back in the Albaicin on Saturday, where I sat in a little hole-in-the-wall Moroccan tea shop for a couple hours and savored a book and some lovely herbal tea. On my way back, I passed an artisans’ market in an alley and stopped to browse (why not?), and ended up buying an inexpensive and very comfortable dress. At some point when it doesn’t showcase my sunburn quite so brilliantly, I’ll post pictures. :) I did a little souvenir shopping and returned home to meet a thoroughly tanned Beth, chat for a while, enjoy dinner with Encarna, and head out to the Feria.
We spent Sunday in the old capital of the Umayyad (I think) Caliphate, the city of Cordoba. While Granada is hot, Cordoba, situated right atop a river, is hot and muggy. Thankfully, Elios’ stories about the Madina Al-Zahar kept us plenty distracted from the weather. About the only problem with the whole day is that I will forever associate the Madina (the ruins of the Caliph’s palace) with the phrase ‘sexo, drogas, y rock-and-roll,’ thanks to our guide. :) We then spent a pleasant hour or so in the Mezquita de Cordoba, the mosque-temple-cathedral that is a wonder of mixed medieval architecture. Seriously, there’s no way I can explain this place, although my photos might begin to give an idea (once I upload them). I thought I’d had enough of gorgeous religious architecture in St. Petersburg, but this was completely different…and mind-blowing.
And so we come back to today, and classes, and all that important stuff. The bookstore is out of the Level 6 textbook, and has been for a while, but they should have it in by Thursday; in the meantime, our professors are liberal with their photocopies. Gracia engaged us in a conversation about idioms, hand gestures, and general untranslateables, while Montserrat fired every aspect of the past tense she could think of at us, and Mariangeles explained the system of autonomous communities in Spain. Five hours straight of Spanish is kind of a lot, but hey, I knew what I was getting into when I started this program. I sort of feel sorry for the students in the Initial levels…they’re probably at least a little overwhelmed.
The park closes at midnight, so I should probably get a move on towards going back home. Beth will be asleep (although I’m not sure how, as she took a five-hour siesta), Encarna will be watching another talk show or travel program, and I will set my alarm for seven hours from now to wash the dust and sweat from my hair. I’ll be back here soon, though. Palm trees line the dirt paths of the park, and a huge rose garden blooms just around the corner. The whole city smells like dust and roses.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Of Sand and Sunburn
Sunday, May 30…no, actually, Monday, May 31. Greetings from the weirdness that is Madrid-Barajas Airport! I thought about retitling the blog ‘Of Sand and Sunburn’ for the part that takes place in Spain, but I’m not exactly sure how to do that…so, let’s just call it ‘Of Fish and Frostbite, Part 2.’
I didn’t post after I came home from Russia, but that’s mostly because I was in contact with just about everyone who reads this blog when I came home. Suffice it to say, it was great to be home, even if I’d only just gotten used to Eastern Standard Time when it was time to leave it again. I miss St. Petersburg, and I especially miss my host mom and my friends, but I’m starting a brand-new adventure today, so I’m not giving myself time to think about what I miss. (Except sleep.)
We were flying United on an Aer Lingus plane, which has spoiled me for intercontinental entertainment systems. In between rounds of Garcia Lorca’s poetry, I watched The Princess and the Frog twice (so cute!!!) and an old episode of Glee, which I may need to check out in more detail when I return stateside. (I said MAY. That is not an invitation to start bombarding me with Glee-related information, my friends. Thank you.) I’m not even tired after the nearly-eight-hour flight to Madrid, oddly; I have a feeling that’ll catch up with me in about six hours. I’ve managed to switch mostly into Spanish, except for ending my breakfast order at the airport’s McDonalds (don’t look at me like that, Mom, that’s all there was) with ‘pozhalusta’ instead of ‘por favor’. Actually, I’ve managed to impress a couple of the airline people with my combination of an American passport and a Castilian accent. This may not be so hard after all. :)
Madrid-Barajas seems to be put together mostly for shopping and scenic views, with the occasional informational board informing you that your flight information is not yet available. I’m boarding in an hour, but the information available as to what gate I’m boarding at is ‘either Gates H, J, or K.’ This narrows it down to three fifty-gate sections out of seven in this terminal. :P That, and there’s no place to sit down, so in the middle of a crowd of people pacing in front of the departures board, I’m perching beside of an elevator writing my blog. (I’m not even the only one sitting here with a netbook. -grin-) The ‘Free Public Wifi’ network is not, in fact, free (or working), so I’ll end up posting this from Granada. Only one more flight, baggage claim, and the negotiating of a taxi still stands between me and my homestay! :)
I didn’t post after I came home from Russia, but that’s mostly because I was in contact with just about everyone who reads this blog when I came home. Suffice it to say, it was great to be home, even if I’d only just gotten used to Eastern Standard Time when it was time to leave it again. I miss St. Petersburg, and I especially miss my host mom and my friends, but I’m starting a brand-new adventure today, so I’m not giving myself time to think about what I miss. (Except sleep.)
We were flying United on an Aer Lingus plane, which has spoiled me for intercontinental entertainment systems. In between rounds of Garcia Lorca’s poetry, I watched The Princess and the Frog twice (so cute!!!) and an old episode of Glee, which I may need to check out in more detail when I return stateside. (I said MAY. That is not an invitation to start bombarding me with Glee-related information, my friends. Thank you.) I’m not even tired after the nearly-eight-hour flight to Madrid, oddly; I have a feeling that’ll catch up with me in about six hours. I’ve managed to switch mostly into Spanish, except for ending my breakfast order at the airport’s McDonalds (don’t look at me like that, Mom, that’s all there was) with ‘pozhalusta’ instead of ‘por favor’. Actually, I’ve managed to impress a couple of the airline people with my combination of an American passport and a Castilian accent. This may not be so hard after all. :)
Madrid-Barajas seems to be put together mostly for shopping and scenic views, with the occasional informational board informing you that your flight information is not yet available. I’m boarding in an hour, but the information available as to what gate I’m boarding at is ‘either Gates H, J, or K.’ This narrows it down to three fifty-gate sections out of seven in this terminal. :P That, and there’s no place to sit down, so in the middle of a crowd of people pacing in front of the departures board, I’m perching beside of an elevator writing my blog. (I’m not even the only one sitting here with a netbook. -grin-) The ‘Free Public Wifi’ network is not, in fact, free (or working), so I’ll end up posting this from Granada. Only one more flight, baggage claim, and the negotiating of a taxi still stands between me and my homestay! :)
Friday, May 21, 2010
Final post from Russia
Friday, roughly 2:30 am. I just got back from watching Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge go up. (The bridge normally featured on the postcards and the White Nights advertisements is either Palace Bridge or Troitsky Bridge. However, (a) those are both much further from my homestay, (b) I didn’t want to have an hour’s walk back home in the small hours of the morning, and (c) Troitsky Bridge is currently closed for repairs.) Except for a couple of wandering Russians not much older than myself, the embankment was quiet, and almost majestic in the industrial light…which is weird, considering that I’m calling Soviet apartment blocks and a bank ‘majestic.’ The bridge did not rise in its entirety, which is probably good, because it was one of those round latticed bridges and I wasn’t quite sure how that was going to work. Instead, just the center section rose, but it was still amazing to watch. I have once again discovered the difficulties of photography in very little light, but here’s one of my better attempts.
I can’t believe I’m leaving in less than a day. I just can’t. The last two weeks since Victory Day have been an absolute blur of last-minute activities. Visits to museums I hadn’t yet seen, my last orchestra rehearsal, my last session at the Times, evenings with friends, the weekend in Peterhof, finals (oh, yeah, those), souvenir shopping, photo-taking…it’s a wonder I’ve slept. I’ve said goodbye to a few people so far, including Andrei Vladimirovich, who did his best to wish me a wonderful summer in English; my host mom’s best friend Larisa Nikolaevna; and my conversation partner Ilya. But I’m not looking forward to the goodbyes over the next day and a half.
It’s been in the seventies and sunny almost every single day since Victory Day, and I think I may have worn a coat once during the past week and a half (though I have had my shawl with me). Last Saturday, we boarded a hydrofoil (commuter boat for tourists, basically) and journeyed to the summer fantasy land that is Peterhof. I was kind of disappointed at the beginning of the semester when this wasn’t on our list of excursions, but I am sooooooo glad they saved it for when the weather was good. We stepped off the boat into a garden lit by the blazing sun, met a few very enthusiastic tour guides, and set off for a tour of the major landmarks of the gardens, including the big central statue of ‘Samson tearing open the jaws of the lion.’ Incidentally, it’s hard to pick out Sampson’s long hair on that one. Other highlights included trick fountains, which squirt at you if you step on a certain rock, or which only spray once every hour at a particular minute. I got slightly less than soaked (hey, someone had to!) and dried off very pleasantly in the sun and the Baltic breeze. We even toured the tsars’ imperial bath house, where the tour guides even ran one of the ingenious fountain-shower-constructions for us. Finishing the day with some wandering around the parts of the garden we hadn’t visited on the tour, sitting with Brenna and Evan staring out at the Gulf of Finland and making small talk…it was perfect. Simply perfect.
Other highlights of the past week and a half: attending a concert at the Large Philharmonic Hall, for FREE, thanks to Hayley and her host mother; a beach party Saturday night, complete with campfire, songs, and a group of eight Russian girls coming over and joining us in the singing; and losing my ATM card to a machine at the Cherneshevskaya metro (aaaaaaaaaargh) and receiving and activating the new one within three days (hurrah!). I’ve visited at least three museums, too, in between writing papers and cramming my brain full of six cases and perfect verbs. (I understand, at least enough to use them, why the difference between perfect and imperfect verbs exists. What I can’t wrap my head around is why whoever designed the Russian language cared enough to create AN ENTIRE SEPARATE SET OF VERBS WITH ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME MEANING.) And in between it all, Lyudmila Afanasyevna has been doing her best to spoil me with her cooking. I left my bedroom for a quick break from writing my Civilization essay, and when I came back from the bathroom, there was a plate of fresh strawberries sitting on my night table. Just the little things like that make me think…no, okay, I’m not thinking about it anymore. It’s going to be tough to leave on Saturday.
One of the coolest parts of this week was thanks to the folks at the St. Petersburg Times. I’m a published writer now (well, I will be as of tomorrow morning)!!! Toby and Shura approached me last Thursday with the idea of writing a restaurant review, so I invited Erica along to a restaurant on a small side street by the Sportivnaya metro station. I won’t go into too much more detail, but I can invite you to read the review somewhere on the sptimes.ru website. Both editors and Sebastian complimented me on it today, so I think I passed the test. :D
…anyways. I’ve taken well over 1600 photos this semester, and I was tempted to spend tonight putting them in some sort of order, but I really do need to sleep. I’m mostly packed, except for the loads of laundry I’ll be doing tomorrow evening. After the boat ride, I plan to come home and bake something special as a parting thank-you gift for my host mom. I’m thinking chocolate-orange biscotti. :)
My next post will be written in Russia but posted from either Germany or the US. I’m almost home! :)
I can’t believe I’m leaving in less than a day. I just can’t. The last two weeks since Victory Day have been an absolute blur of last-minute activities. Visits to museums I hadn’t yet seen, my last orchestra rehearsal, my last session at the Times, evenings with friends, the weekend in Peterhof, finals (oh, yeah, those), souvenir shopping, photo-taking…it’s a wonder I’ve slept. I’ve said goodbye to a few people so far, including Andrei Vladimirovich, who did his best to wish me a wonderful summer in English; my host mom’s best friend Larisa Nikolaevna; and my conversation partner Ilya. But I’m not looking forward to the goodbyes over the next day and a half.
It’s been in the seventies and sunny almost every single day since Victory Day, and I think I may have worn a coat once during the past week and a half (though I have had my shawl with me). Last Saturday, we boarded a hydrofoil (commuter boat for tourists, basically) and journeyed to the summer fantasy land that is Peterhof. I was kind of disappointed at the beginning of the semester when this wasn’t on our list of excursions, but I am sooooooo glad they saved it for when the weather was good. We stepped off the boat into a garden lit by the blazing sun, met a few very enthusiastic tour guides, and set off for a tour of the major landmarks of the gardens, including the big central statue of ‘Samson tearing open the jaws of the lion.’ Incidentally, it’s hard to pick out Sampson’s long hair on that one. Other highlights included trick fountains, which squirt at you if you step on a certain rock, or which only spray once every hour at a particular minute. I got slightly less than soaked (hey, someone had to!) and dried off very pleasantly in the sun and the Baltic breeze. We even toured the tsars’ imperial bath house, where the tour guides even ran one of the ingenious fountain-shower-constructions for us. Finishing the day with some wandering around the parts of the garden we hadn’t visited on the tour, sitting with Brenna and Evan staring out at the Gulf of Finland and making small talk…it was perfect. Simply perfect.
Other highlights of the past week and a half: attending a concert at the Large Philharmonic Hall, for FREE, thanks to Hayley and her host mother; a beach party Saturday night, complete with campfire, songs, and a group of eight Russian girls coming over and joining us in the singing; and losing my ATM card to a machine at the Cherneshevskaya metro (aaaaaaaaaargh) and receiving and activating the new one within three days (hurrah!). I’ve visited at least three museums, too, in between writing papers and cramming my brain full of six cases and perfect verbs. (I understand, at least enough to use them, why the difference between perfect and imperfect verbs exists. What I can’t wrap my head around is why whoever designed the Russian language cared enough to create AN ENTIRE SEPARATE SET OF VERBS WITH ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME MEANING.) And in between it all, Lyudmila Afanasyevna has been doing her best to spoil me with her cooking. I left my bedroom for a quick break from writing my Civilization essay, and when I came back from the bathroom, there was a plate of fresh strawberries sitting on my night table. Just the little things like that make me think…no, okay, I’m not thinking about it anymore. It’s going to be tough to leave on Saturday.
One of the coolest parts of this week was thanks to the folks at the St. Petersburg Times. I’m a published writer now (well, I will be as of tomorrow morning)!!! Toby and Shura approached me last Thursday with the idea of writing a restaurant review, so I invited Erica along to a restaurant on a small side street by the Sportivnaya metro station. I won’t go into too much more detail, but I can invite you to read the review somewhere on the sptimes.ru website. Both editors and Sebastian complimented me on it today, so I think I passed the test. :D
…anyways. I’ve taken well over 1600 photos this semester, and I was tempted to spend tonight putting them in some sort of order, but I really do need to sleep. I’m mostly packed, except for the loads of laundry I’ll be doing tomorrow evening. After the boat ride, I plan to come home and bake something special as a parting thank-you gift for my host mom. I’m thinking chocolate-orange biscotti. :)
My next post will be written in Russia but posted from either Germany or the US. I’m almost home! :)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Stalin Brigade
Sunday, late. Happy Victory Day! You wouldn’t think 65 years after the end of the siege of Leningrad was a particularly big anniversary to celebrate, but Petersburg would prove you wrong. The city has been plastered with red hammer-and-sickle-festooned decorations for weeks now, and while they look rather silly strung up between office buildings on Nevsky or plastered all over the metro, they make for a very dramatic setting when the celebration rolls around.
A rainy Victory Day kicked off with a parade in Palace Square at 10 am. I was informed by text message that this was probably not a good idea to go down to, as Ella, who’d gotten down there an hour early, was positioned a good half a kilometer away from the square and ended up watching the whole parade on a giant TV screen. Add to that the fact that it was raining…so I stayed home and watched the Moscow parade on TV. I was fascinated by the inclusion of American, British, and French regiments in the parade, a tribute to the fact that the victory was not only Russia’s (though Russia does take most of the credit). Medvedev continues to be a less than engaging speaker, but that’s okay, because I understood the important parts (and the many Oorah’s shouted by all the speakers and the military). Long live Russia’s great victory!
The rest of the afternoon was pretty peaceful; Lyudmila Afanasyevna was tickled pink by the bouquet of Mother’s Day orchids I presented to her! :) After lunch, she went to her dacha with her best friend, and I went downtown to meet with a large group of friends to see the parade. Or so I thought. In fact, so many streets branching off of Nevsky were closed, and the bus routes were so tangled up, that there was no way we were going to make it to the Admiralty, so I hopped a couple of alleys over from a closed street and seized a pretty good spot near the Arch. The parade was done in fine style, with marching regiments, lots of veterans from all around the city and the surrounding regions, a large band, some cute kids in uniform, even a band of communists near the end. The only people near me cheering the communists were the kids, who were just seizing the opportunity to scream ‘oorah!’ at the top of their little lungs, but apparently there were quite a few people along the parade route who were still cheering Stalin. I’m not sure how much applause the flags of Che Guevara and Jesus got, but hey, what’s victory without Che?
I did a little shopping after this and headed home in the rain, braving the bollixed-up bus routes. The fireworks were to start at ten, and I was home long enough to drop off my purchases and leave again for the Bronze Horseman. I met up with Katie, Claire, and four rather drunk Russian guys, and we stood in the square sharing shashlik-flavored potato chips (mmmm) and hoping the rain would hold off. Crowds and crowds of St. Petersburgers in varying states of sobriety or non-sobriety were singing patriotic songs, including the anthem, with which I joined in. The fireworks themselves were over too quickly, but against the Peter and Paul Fortress, they were very, very impressive.
The buses were still snarled up after the fireworks, but I hopped onto one and sat until it was finally cleared for takeoff. By that point, the weather had returned to the St. Petersburg norm (cold and rainy), so even sitting on a bus for half an hour without going anywhere wasn’t too bad; the buses are heated, and I had my Solzhenitsyn novel with me. I finally made it home about quarter of midnight and crawled into bed, but not before mounting my little Russian flag above my bed. I hope the city is slow in taking down the decorations, so I can get some even better pictures over the next two weeks. :)
A rainy Victory Day kicked off with a parade in Palace Square at 10 am. I was informed by text message that this was probably not a good idea to go down to, as Ella, who’d gotten down there an hour early, was positioned a good half a kilometer away from the square and ended up watching the whole parade on a giant TV screen. Add to that the fact that it was raining…so I stayed home and watched the Moscow parade on TV. I was fascinated by the inclusion of American, British, and French regiments in the parade, a tribute to the fact that the victory was not only Russia’s (though Russia does take most of the credit). Medvedev continues to be a less than engaging speaker, but that’s okay, because I understood the important parts (and the many Oorah’s shouted by all the speakers and the military). Long live Russia’s great victory!
The rest of the afternoon was pretty peaceful; Lyudmila Afanasyevna was tickled pink by the bouquet of Mother’s Day orchids I presented to her! :) After lunch, she went to her dacha with her best friend, and I went downtown to meet with a large group of friends to see the parade. Or so I thought. In fact, so many streets branching off of Nevsky were closed, and the bus routes were so tangled up, that there was no way we were going to make it to the Admiralty, so I hopped a couple of alleys over from a closed street and seized a pretty good spot near the Arch. The parade was done in fine style, with marching regiments, lots of veterans from all around the city and the surrounding regions, a large band, some cute kids in uniform, even a band of communists near the end. The only people near me cheering the communists were the kids, who were just seizing the opportunity to scream ‘oorah!’ at the top of their little lungs, but apparently there were quite a few people along the parade route who were still cheering Stalin. I’m not sure how much applause the flags of Che Guevara and Jesus got, but hey, what’s victory without Che?
I did a little shopping after this and headed home in the rain, braving the bollixed-up bus routes. The fireworks were to start at ten, and I was home long enough to drop off my purchases and leave again for the Bronze Horseman. I met up with Katie, Claire, and four rather drunk Russian guys, and we stood in the square sharing shashlik-flavored potato chips (mmmm) and hoping the rain would hold off. Crowds and crowds of St. Petersburgers in varying states of sobriety or non-sobriety were singing patriotic songs, including the anthem, with which I joined in. The fireworks themselves were over too quickly, but against the Peter and Paul Fortress, they were very, very impressive.
The buses were still snarled up after the fireworks, but I hopped onto one and sat until it was finally cleared for takeoff. By that point, the weather had returned to the St. Petersburg norm (cold and rainy), so even sitting on a bus for half an hour without going anywhere wasn’t too bad; the buses are heated, and I had my Solzhenitsyn novel with me. I finally made it home about quarter of midnight and crawled into bed, but not before mounting my little Russian flag above my bed. I hope the city is slow in taking down the decorations, so I can get some even better pictures over the next two weeks. :)
Where does the time go?
Saturday, 5:30 pm. The last few weeks in Russia are coming up really fast, and I’m realizing quickly how much I still have to do, or want to do. But at the same time, the weather’s been so nice, and it’s a shame to spend more time inside than we have to. This week sort of reflected that, really.
Monday was a holiday, so there was no orchestra rehearsal. I’d intended to spend the day hopping from museum to museum, but it was so sunny and warm (nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit!) that I couldn’t bring myself to stay inside. Instead, I strolled through some of the city’s many parks, tried to find a souvenir market at Yelizarovskaya station (and failed), and ended up celebrating Ella’s birthday in the Tauride Gardens with cake, philosophical discussions, and tree-climbing. It was truly lovely, even though we all agreed that pine nuts are not a suitable ingredient for a cake. Tuesday, on the other hand, was rainy and back down to about fifty degrees, so I came home after classes and reviewed the instrumental case.
Wednesday afternoon, I museum-hopped for a little while, visiting Anna Akhmatova’s apartment-museum and the Museum of Music. Below is a picture of the collection of miniature violins they displayed! That evening, I joined in a lovely event that would become a tradition if we had more of the semester left: poetry night! Eight of us met at a little café near Primorskaya station and shared all sorts of poetry, in English, Spanish and Russian, and good times were had by all. I quote to you the hit of the night, entitled ‘Abraham Lincoln is My Name,’ by none other than (gasp) Abraham Lincoln:
-quote-
Thursday was mainly taken up with preparing for a job interview, and I’m pretty happy with how it went…let’s just hope they’re happy with me too! I booked it over to the Times as soon as the interview was over and got there in plenty of time, walking in on Toby shouting ‘noooooooooooo’ again (it’s not a normal evening unless he does that two or three times). I find it funny that I noted the several interesting errors I dug up this evening with pride. Friday night I spent in, getting more and more into The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn’s account of life in a specialized concentration camp.
I hadn’t actually planned to spend Saturday with a large group of friends; I ran into them purely by accident at the Udelnaya station flea market. I’d hoped to find some more souvenirs there, but it turned out to be almost entirely second-hand clothes. Eight of us set off for Peter and Paul Fortress to do a little more shopping there, stopped to enjoy some ice cream in the park near Gorkovskaya, then wandered around the fortress for a while. Brenna and Evan texted the rest of us with a great find: a full-fledged beach behind the fortress, with sand, volleyball, too many guys in Speedos, the works. Delighted, we promptly kicked off our shoes and flopped down in the sand, abandoning all thoughts of the world for a sunny hour. When it started to cloud over, we fled the beach for a café just in time to avoid the torrential downpour. Later in the evening, someone (I think it was Wes) scouted out a dance club with REAL ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC, played by a REAL LIVE BAND! For at least myself, Wes, and Fred, this was an incredible break from the seemingly inescapable techno, and we danced a good part of the night away (and ended up in conversation with the band between sets). :)
I shouldn’t give away my next post, but let’s just say that Sunday was the exciting finish to a very exciting week! :)
Monday was a holiday, so there was no orchestra rehearsal. I’d intended to spend the day hopping from museum to museum, but it was so sunny and warm (nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit!) that I couldn’t bring myself to stay inside. Instead, I strolled through some of the city’s many parks, tried to find a souvenir market at Yelizarovskaya station (and failed), and ended up celebrating Ella’s birthday in the Tauride Gardens with cake, philosophical discussions, and tree-climbing. It was truly lovely, even though we all agreed that pine nuts are not a suitable ingredient for a cake. Tuesday, on the other hand, was rainy and back down to about fifty degrees, so I came home after classes and reviewed the instrumental case.
Wednesday afternoon, I museum-hopped for a little while, visiting Anna Akhmatova’s apartment-museum and the Museum of Music. Below is a picture of the collection of miniature violins they displayed! That evening, I joined in a lovely event that would become a tradition if we had more of the semester left: poetry night! Eight of us met at a little café near Primorskaya station and shared all sorts of poetry, in English, Spanish and Russian, and good times were had by all. I quote to you the hit of the night, entitled ‘Abraham Lincoln is My Name,’ by none other than (gasp) Abraham Lincoln:
-quote-
Thursday was mainly taken up with preparing for a job interview, and I’m pretty happy with how it went…let’s just hope they’re happy with me too! I booked it over to the Times as soon as the interview was over and got there in plenty of time, walking in on Toby shouting ‘noooooooooooo’ again (it’s not a normal evening unless he does that two or three times). I find it funny that I noted the several interesting errors I dug up this evening with pride. Friday night I spent in, getting more and more into The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn’s account of life in a specialized concentration camp.
I hadn’t actually planned to spend Saturday with a large group of friends; I ran into them purely by accident at the Udelnaya station flea market. I’d hoped to find some more souvenirs there, but it turned out to be almost entirely second-hand clothes. Eight of us set off for Peter and Paul Fortress to do a little more shopping there, stopped to enjoy some ice cream in the park near Gorkovskaya, then wandered around the fortress for a while. Brenna and Evan texted the rest of us with a great find: a full-fledged beach behind the fortress, with sand, volleyball, too many guys in Speedos, the works. Delighted, we promptly kicked off our shoes and flopped down in the sand, abandoning all thoughts of the world for a sunny hour. When it started to cloud over, we fled the beach for a café just in time to avoid the torrential downpour. Later in the evening, someone (I think it was Wes) scouted out a dance club with REAL ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC, played by a REAL LIVE BAND! For at least myself, Wes, and Fred, this was an incredible break from the seemingly inescapable techno, and we danced a good part of the night away (and ended up in conversation with the band between sets). :)
I shouldn’t give away my next post, but let’s just say that Sunday was the exciting finish to a very exciting week! :)
Friday, May 7, 2010
Someday, I will write a poem about frogs...
Monday, 12:45 am, roughly (was when I started writing this post). I have never in my life been so happy to see dandelions as I was this weekend. Our excursion to Pskov, Pushkinsky Gori (Pushkin Hills), and the surrounding small towns was supposed to be about history and great literature, but the most memorable parts of the weekend were definitely spending spring outside in lovely weather. Being barefoot in the grass again…so, so nice.
We met at Kazansky Sabor at seven am on Friday and prepared for what the schedule said would be a seven-hour bus ride. For once in the history of CIEE, we were early; the trip took about five and a half hours, each way. The roads were…not quite up to the standards of Petersburg…okay, they were bumpy enough that it was almost ludicrous to attempt to sleep. Adding in the fact that our driver was obviously in a hurry to be rid of us, five and a half hours was PLENTY of time on a swaying, bumping, occasionally jolting bus. :P The hotel was a further two hours outside of the actual city of Pskov. Factor in the distance to and from the various monasteries and museums, and the result is a looooooooong time in a non-ventilated bus. Fresh, non-diesel-scented, country air was fantastic.
Friday’s main events were the tour of the Pskov Kremlin, the historical fortress at the center of the whole region, and an Alexander Nevsky monument. The Kremlin appears no worse for Wednesday’s fire, at least from the view inside the walls. Mostly it’s a big stone wall, punctuated by towers, with a church in the center of the grassy enclosure inside. The history was appreciated, certainly, but the chance to sit on the grass in the sun and just absorb the sunshine was not to be missed. (Nor was the GIANT sword hanging over the entrance to the Kremlin. It’s supposed to be a symbol of the city, and I really hope it’s only symbolic, because that thing HAD to be eight feet long.) Our guide, named Svetlana and clad in bright yellow, explained the large statues of Alexander Nevsky and compatriots to us, then seemed bemused when we (after requesting permission) climbed up onto the monument to take pictures. I believe Svetlana was a Pskov native, so I’m not sure she understood just how much we’d all grown to miss large, green open spaces.
Side note: The restaurant where we stopped for lunch on Friday and Sunday, somewhere behind the Kremlin complex, opened onto a yard full of frogs! We quickly befriended them and christened them, and Jarlath and Claire even raced them. That’s one of my favorite images of this weekend: a tiny frog sitting in my cupped hands, sharing the view with me.
We finally arrived at the hotel Friday evening to discover that it was a large wooden lodge, complete with porches onto which every room opened. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of this place, but it felt quintessentially Russian. (It was named after Pushkin’s nanny. That’s how Russian it was.) From this picturesque location, it was but a short stroll down to a real working mill, the historical village surrounding it, and the lake that fed the mill’s water wheel. This was supposedly the setting for most of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, so our very enthusiastic guide grabbed Nick and Zoltan to stage a duel. :) We wandered through the village and tried our hands at threshing grain, and even at swinging in the barn! According to local tradition, couples would swing in the barn during Maslenitsa, and if the girl fell off, she was considered a poor marriage prospect; I hung on, despite Zoltan’s best efforts to pitch me into the grain pile. The guide told me at the end of the tour to come back when I had a wedding ring…and was looking at Zoltan as he said it. I may have gotten myself into something here…
Still on the agenda were the village of Mikhailovskoe, where Pushkin spent his exile, and we spent nearly as long in his house; the village of Trigorskoe (Three Hills), where the guide didn’t want to let Jarlath translate, so the Area Studies program didn’t figure out why we were there until after the fact; and two monasteries. Mikhailovskoe was beautiful, but it reinforced the feeling of the whole weekend, where we really wished for a few less scheduled activities and a little more time to wander around. Pushkin’s grave at Svyatagorsky Monastery is…kind of unimpressive, actually. I mean, considering how the man is worshipped all through this country, I guess I’d just expected something bigger than the little white obelisk that’s surrounded by flowers.
Sunday, we wandered around the historic fortress of Isborsk, taking in lots and lots of pretty views, but we missed most of the history due to the scattered nature of our group along the trail. Still, the waterfalls were gorgeous, wet shoes from running through them be damned. The Petrovskoe Monastery came next, where the main attraction was the ancient cemetery called the Catacombs. I’m nearsighted as is, but I hadn’t realized just how scary a pitch-dark walk through a cemetery would be. We were given tiny, pencil-slim tapers, which (individually) barely illuminated the hands we used to shield them and (collectively) gave the tunnel a ghostly quarter-light. Following those in front of us more on faith than on actual confidence in where we were going, led by a priest murmuring in barely audible Russian, we processed through the tunnels, stopping occasionally to peer at graves inscribed in Church Slavonic none of us could read, stopping more than occasionally to relight our candles or those of our companions. Stepping out into the sunlight was an incredible relief, and almost a mystical experience in itself.
But probably the best experience of the entire weekend was Saturday night at the hotel. Lodge. ‘Otel’ means ‘not quite an actual hotel,’ so I’m not quite sure what to call it…but anyways. The hotel had its own banya out back, and Katya organized two groups of girls (Jarlath took the guys) to experience a true Russian banya, in the comfort of just our own group. Eight of us met Katya outside the banya at ten-thirty pm, chatting with the red-faced and wet-haired guys as they came out, gearing up for a similar experience…but there was really nothing like this. The banya experience is sort of a combination of a sauna, an ice-cold pool, massage therapy, and general fantastic girl bonding. Take a shower first, so you’re wet enough to steam. Sit in the steam room long enough to get slightly dizzy, then run out and jump into the barely-above-freezing pool outside. (In the winter, we would have been jumping into the snow. I was putting off my first banya for precisely that reason.) Run back in from the pool, steam for a while, then don towels and go have some tea in the outer room (which is still heated). Greet Irina Borisovna, who came in fully dressed (trenchcoat and all), and pose for pictures in towels. (I’m reasonably certain those pictures have not left her camera…) Steam again, cool off again, a few more times. Somewhere in there, lie down on a bench and have Katya whip you with a leafy bundle of birch branches to restore circulation. Steam some more. The whole process lasted an hour and a half, and I came out of it feeling like I could take on an entire new day as soon as I’d dried my hair. Too bad it was midnight. :)
So, all in all, a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. I apologize for how long it took me to write this, by the way; the week has been busy enough that, every time I sat down to write, I dozed off before getting much of anywhere. I hope I haven’t caused any similar reactions among those reading this! :) Next post: the rest of the week, then Victory Day celebrations on Sunday!
We met at Kazansky Sabor at seven am on Friday and prepared for what the schedule said would be a seven-hour bus ride. For once in the history of CIEE, we were early; the trip took about five and a half hours, each way. The roads were…not quite up to the standards of Petersburg…okay, they were bumpy enough that it was almost ludicrous to attempt to sleep. Adding in the fact that our driver was obviously in a hurry to be rid of us, five and a half hours was PLENTY of time on a swaying, bumping, occasionally jolting bus. :P The hotel was a further two hours outside of the actual city of Pskov. Factor in the distance to and from the various monasteries and museums, and the result is a looooooooong time in a non-ventilated bus. Fresh, non-diesel-scented, country air was fantastic.
Friday’s main events were the tour of the Pskov Kremlin, the historical fortress at the center of the whole region, and an Alexander Nevsky monument. The Kremlin appears no worse for Wednesday’s fire, at least from the view inside the walls. Mostly it’s a big stone wall, punctuated by towers, with a church in the center of the grassy enclosure inside. The history was appreciated, certainly, but the chance to sit on the grass in the sun and just absorb the sunshine was not to be missed. (Nor was the GIANT sword hanging over the entrance to the Kremlin. It’s supposed to be a symbol of the city, and I really hope it’s only symbolic, because that thing HAD to be eight feet long.) Our guide, named Svetlana and clad in bright yellow, explained the large statues of Alexander Nevsky and compatriots to us, then seemed bemused when we (after requesting permission) climbed up onto the monument to take pictures. I believe Svetlana was a Pskov native, so I’m not sure she understood just how much we’d all grown to miss large, green open spaces.
Side note: The restaurant where we stopped for lunch on Friday and Sunday, somewhere behind the Kremlin complex, opened onto a yard full of frogs! We quickly befriended them and christened them, and Jarlath and Claire even raced them. That’s one of my favorite images of this weekend: a tiny frog sitting in my cupped hands, sharing the view with me.
We finally arrived at the hotel Friday evening to discover that it was a large wooden lodge, complete with porches onto which every room opened. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of this place, but it felt quintessentially Russian. (It was named after Pushkin’s nanny. That’s how Russian it was.) From this picturesque location, it was but a short stroll down to a real working mill, the historical village surrounding it, and the lake that fed the mill’s water wheel. This was supposedly the setting for most of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, so our very enthusiastic guide grabbed Nick and Zoltan to stage a duel. :) We wandered through the village and tried our hands at threshing grain, and even at swinging in the barn! According to local tradition, couples would swing in the barn during Maslenitsa, and if the girl fell off, she was considered a poor marriage prospect; I hung on, despite Zoltan’s best efforts to pitch me into the grain pile. The guide told me at the end of the tour to come back when I had a wedding ring…and was looking at Zoltan as he said it. I may have gotten myself into something here…
Still on the agenda were the village of Mikhailovskoe, where Pushkin spent his exile, and we spent nearly as long in his house; the village of Trigorskoe (Three Hills), where the guide didn’t want to let Jarlath translate, so the Area Studies program didn’t figure out why we were there until after the fact; and two monasteries. Mikhailovskoe was beautiful, but it reinforced the feeling of the whole weekend, where we really wished for a few less scheduled activities and a little more time to wander around. Pushkin’s grave at Svyatagorsky Monastery is…kind of unimpressive, actually. I mean, considering how the man is worshipped all through this country, I guess I’d just expected something bigger than the little white obelisk that’s surrounded by flowers.
Sunday, we wandered around the historic fortress of Isborsk, taking in lots and lots of pretty views, but we missed most of the history due to the scattered nature of our group along the trail. Still, the waterfalls were gorgeous, wet shoes from running through them be damned. The Petrovskoe Monastery came next, where the main attraction was the ancient cemetery called the Catacombs. I’m nearsighted as is, but I hadn’t realized just how scary a pitch-dark walk through a cemetery would be. We were given tiny, pencil-slim tapers, which (individually) barely illuminated the hands we used to shield them and (collectively) gave the tunnel a ghostly quarter-light. Following those in front of us more on faith than on actual confidence in where we were going, led by a priest murmuring in barely audible Russian, we processed through the tunnels, stopping occasionally to peer at graves inscribed in Church Slavonic none of us could read, stopping more than occasionally to relight our candles or those of our companions. Stepping out into the sunlight was an incredible relief, and almost a mystical experience in itself.
But probably the best experience of the entire weekend was Saturday night at the hotel. Lodge. ‘Otel’ means ‘not quite an actual hotel,’ so I’m not quite sure what to call it…but anyways. The hotel had its own banya out back, and Katya organized two groups of girls (Jarlath took the guys) to experience a true Russian banya, in the comfort of just our own group. Eight of us met Katya outside the banya at ten-thirty pm, chatting with the red-faced and wet-haired guys as they came out, gearing up for a similar experience…but there was really nothing like this. The banya experience is sort of a combination of a sauna, an ice-cold pool, massage therapy, and general fantastic girl bonding. Take a shower first, so you’re wet enough to steam. Sit in the steam room long enough to get slightly dizzy, then run out and jump into the barely-above-freezing pool outside. (In the winter, we would have been jumping into the snow. I was putting off my first banya for precisely that reason.) Run back in from the pool, steam for a while, then don towels and go have some tea in the outer room (which is still heated). Greet Irina Borisovna, who came in fully dressed (trenchcoat and all), and pose for pictures in towels. (I’m reasonably certain those pictures have not left her camera…) Steam again, cool off again, a few more times. Somewhere in there, lie down on a bench and have Katya whip you with a leafy bundle of birch branches to restore circulation. Steam some more. The whole process lasted an hour and a half, and I came out of it feeling like I could take on an entire new day as soon as I’d dried my hair. Too bad it was midnight. :)
So, all in all, a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. I apologize for how long it took me to write this, by the way; the week has been busy enough that, every time I sat down to write, I dozed off before getting much of anywhere. I hope I haven’t caused any similar reactions among those reading this! :) Next post: the rest of the week, then Victory Day celebrations on Sunday!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Zombie Pushkin will eat your brains in blini
Friday, 11:30 pm. I’ve kind of given up on the day-to-day post for this week, based on the stunning realization that I really haven’t done very much of interest. The last month of the semester seems to be divided by a series of milestones: the ball, Pskov, Victory Day, our last [insert last event here], and then going home. Between the ball and Pskov, another week of classes, another orchestra rehearsal, another evening at the Times. I’ve found out that there will not be another orchestra concert while I’m here, so I’m considering bowing out of the last rehearsal or two to go do something different. I somehow doubt it’ll be a serious problem; it’s not for a grade, after all. :)
Tuesday evening, about fifteen of us made our separate journeys to Vladimir Nabokov’s unassuming apartment for a screening of the Stanley Kubrick movie of “Lolita.” Normally, if I’ve read the book, I’ll certainly be interested to see the movie…though I may make an exception and watch “War and Peace” before finishing the book. :P Hanging out here with two literature majors who can’t let the subject of Lolita drop, I’ve taken more than a passing interest in this book. Matt told me the tagline for this movie—“How could they make a movie of Lolita?”—and I can’t help but feel that it fit. Nabokov himself wrote the screenplay, but the transformation from first-person-singular diary-like novel to a movie, which really can’t be first-person-singular, was a little shaky. Being able to actually see the narrator, even, was somewhat disorienting. No disrespect to Nabokov, or to Kubrick, but Matt, Erica and I are all going to try to forget we saw the movie and go read the book again.
One other discovery from Nabokov’s apartment-museum: the man knew his stuff about butterflies. Granted, they were pinned and preserved under glass, but the collection showed his obvious connoisseurship and respect. (Also, Word has just informed me that I can’t spell the word ‘connoisseur.’ I’m slipping.)
Wednesday after classes, we tramped down the bank of the Moika (river? canal? Not sure) to Pushkin’s apartment-museum, where, as it turned out, he lived for the last eight months or so of his life, then expired. The museum was very inspirational, certainly, and the pictures of Pushkin’s wife and four children lent a charming domesticity to the otherwise bardic image of the poet. We saw the very couch on which he died, and replicas of the pistols with which he and a minor nobleman whose purpose is largely lost to history conducted the fateful duel.
May 9 will be Victory Day, the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII, and the city’s been buzzing for weeks over this celebration. The square outside the provisional government’s offices, right next to Smolny, is now hung with red and orange banners, and assorted military divisions have been practicing in Palace Square for weeks now. (On my way to orchestra rehearsal, I texted Ella at one point before the ball, ‘The navy trying to march sort of looks like our group trying to waltz.’ Thankfully, they seem to have gotten their act together.) Victory Day also involves breaking out all the old Soviet army jeeps, loading many of them with missiles that appear to be at least as old as the jeeps, and…sitting along the bank of the Moika blocking pedestrian traffic. I’ve become convinced that they were strategically positioned there because of rumors that Pushkin would soon be stalking the streets of Petersburg as a zombie (never mind the fact that he’s buried not far from Pskov). ZOMBIE PUSHKIN WANTS YOUR BRAINS. (Note to self: look up the Russian word for ‘brains’.)
I appear to have digressed again. Wednesday evening turned out to be my last English class, actually, which was both exciting and sort of bittersweet. Listening to the seven students I’ve been coaching and joking with all semester delivering their final oral exams, I felt probably more of a sense of accomplishment than I deserve, but accomplishment all the same. All the topics we covered in that class sometimes made no sense, but they made for fascinating conversations, and I’ll never forget talking about Shakespeare with Sergey, marriage with Ksenia and Natasha, Rome with Alesia and Anastasia, snakes with Elena, or Paris Hilton with Nikolai. Not to mention trying out my Russian with Olga Vladimirovna. :)
In between articles on police corruption and airline losses due to the ash crisis, I was chatting with Sebastian and his visiting brother Richard at the Times this evening when the subject of Pskov happened to come up. Toby called across to me, ‘you know the Kremlin there burned down today, right?’ Well. As a matter of fact, no, I had not known. Sebastian hopped onto his computer and pulled up a RIA-Novosti article stating that, in fact, two of the seven towers of the Pskov Kremlin caught fire, thanks to the restaurant located inside one of them. This happened in the small hours of Wednesday morning, and the main concern voiced in the article was why the fine imposed on the restaurant was so small. I understand the damage wasn’t serious, but it’s still a lovely omen, coming right before we’re supposed to leave for Pskov. Just another demonstration of the fact that you can’t plan in this country, I guess.
Morning comes very quickly indeed, so I’m going to put up this post and go to bed. We’ve been told that the hotel in Pskov does not have internet, so I’m not going to bring my computer along. I have four novels from the CIEE library, my grammar book, and my camera…to keep me busy over seven hours of rough roads. Expect a long post on Monday after we return! :)
Tuesday evening, about fifteen of us made our separate journeys to Vladimir Nabokov’s unassuming apartment for a screening of the Stanley Kubrick movie of “Lolita.” Normally, if I’ve read the book, I’ll certainly be interested to see the movie…though I may make an exception and watch “War and Peace” before finishing the book. :P Hanging out here with two literature majors who can’t let the subject of Lolita drop, I’ve taken more than a passing interest in this book. Matt told me the tagline for this movie—“How could they make a movie of Lolita?”—and I can’t help but feel that it fit. Nabokov himself wrote the screenplay, but the transformation from first-person-singular diary-like novel to a movie, which really can’t be first-person-singular, was a little shaky. Being able to actually see the narrator, even, was somewhat disorienting. No disrespect to Nabokov, or to Kubrick, but Matt, Erica and I are all going to try to forget we saw the movie and go read the book again.
One other discovery from Nabokov’s apartment-museum: the man knew his stuff about butterflies. Granted, they were pinned and preserved under glass, but the collection showed his obvious connoisseurship and respect. (Also, Word has just informed me that I can’t spell the word ‘connoisseur.’ I’m slipping.)
Wednesday after classes, we tramped down the bank of the Moika (river? canal? Not sure) to Pushkin’s apartment-museum, where, as it turned out, he lived for the last eight months or so of his life, then expired. The museum was very inspirational, certainly, and the pictures of Pushkin’s wife and four children lent a charming domesticity to the otherwise bardic image of the poet. We saw the very couch on which he died, and replicas of the pistols with which he and a minor nobleman whose purpose is largely lost to history conducted the fateful duel.
May 9 will be Victory Day, the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII, and the city’s been buzzing for weeks over this celebration. The square outside the provisional government’s offices, right next to Smolny, is now hung with red and orange banners, and assorted military divisions have been practicing in Palace Square for weeks now. (On my way to orchestra rehearsal, I texted Ella at one point before the ball, ‘The navy trying to march sort of looks like our group trying to waltz.’ Thankfully, they seem to have gotten their act together.) Victory Day also involves breaking out all the old Soviet army jeeps, loading many of them with missiles that appear to be at least as old as the jeeps, and…sitting along the bank of the Moika blocking pedestrian traffic. I’ve become convinced that they were strategically positioned there because of rumors that Pushkin would soon be stalking the streets of Petersburg as a zombie (never mind the fact that he’s buried not far from Pskov). ZOMBIE PUSHKIN WANTS YOUR BRAINS. (Note to self: look up the Russian word for ‘brains’.)
I appear to have digressed again. Wednesday evening turned out to be my last English class, actually, which was both exciting and sort of bittersweet. Listening to the seven students I’ve been coaching and joking with all semester delivering their final oral exams, I felt probably more of a sense of accomplishment than I deserve, but accomplishment all the same. All the topics we covered in that class sometimes made no sense, but they made for fascinating conversations, and I’ll never forget talking about Shakespeare with Sergey, marriage with Ksenia and Natasha, Rome with Alesia and Anastasia, snakes with Elena, or Paris Hilton with Nikolai. Not to mention trying out my Russian with Olga Vladimirovna. :)
In between articles on police corruption and airline losses due to the ash crisis, I was chatting with Sebastian and his visiting brother Richard at the Times this evening when the subject of Pskov happened to come up. Toby called across to me, ‘you know the Kremlin there burned down today, right?’ Well. As a matter of fact, no, I had not known. Sebastian hopped onto his computer and pulled up a RIA-Novosti article stating that, in fact, two of the seven towers of the Pskov Kremlin caught fire, thanks to the restaurant located inside one of them. This happened in the small hours of Wednesday morning, and the main concern voiced in the article was why the fine imposed on the restaurant was so small. I understand the damage wasn’t serious, but it’s still a lovely omen, coming right before we’re supposed to leave for Pskov. Just another demonstration of the fact that you can’t plan in this country, I guess.
Morning comes very quickly indeed, so I’m going to put up this post and go to bed. We’ve been told that the hotel in Pskov does not have internet, so I’m not going to bring my computer along. I have four novels from the CIEE library, my grammar book, and my camera…to keep me busy over seven hours of rough roads. Expect a long post on Monday after we return! :)
Friday, April 23, 2010
Every five-year-old girl's dream: Amanda's first ball!
Saturday, 12:33 am. My feet hurt. As a matter of fact, my feet hurt a LOT. However, I’m only noticing it because I’m sitting down and out of costume. The best night of the semester, without question, ended at about ten this evening. :D (The post about the rest of the last week is below this one; might I suggest reading that first?)
Friday morning started off normally enough, except that on most Fridays, I don’t pack heels and pantyhose in my bookbag. After two thankfully uneventful classes, Leonid Vladimirovich cut Ethnic Studies halfway short, explaining that he’d rather save the lesson for a class when there were more than three attendees. Not a problem for me. My dear friend Kristin brought a violin to Russia and was going to play it for the ball, but she changed her mind; being amazing, she gladly let me play her violin for the day anyway. I spent the extra forty-five minutes practicing in an empty classroom and left in a fantastic frame of mind, which always happens when I’ve done my first decent fiddling in a while. :)
Getting ready for the ball was nothing short of madness, with a good thirty girls all trying to do each other’s hair and makeup in the same tiny classroom—in hooped petticoats. Apparently the costumer double-booked a few of the dresses, so I ended up with the second dress I’d tried on the day I went, but honestly, the one I thought I’d be wearing looked fantastic on Meghan. And I pulled off the purple sparkly number with crushed velvet sleeve things quite well, if I do say so myself. I don’t really have to, though; you can judge for yourselves from the picture below. :D (I made the bag myself, out of a plain white handkerchief. Why do ball gowns not have pockets? :P) Megan (yes, we have two Megans) did something lovely with my hair without putting any sort of sticky stuff on or into it, which I greatly appreciate, and I made my escape from the green room and set about my normal activity at a formal dance function: taking silly pictures of people. :)
Eventually, Anya managed to herd us all into the Bolshoi Zal (creatively named ‘Big Room’), and the ball began in earnest. We stood in a circle to listen to Katya encouraging us all to flirt in her opening remarks, toasted each other with glasses of champagne, then paired up for the polonaise. I’m not sure whose idea of a circle we were processing in, but Hayley and I acquitted ourselves very nicely. Right after this, I played a set of five fiddle tunes that I could probably play in my sleep at this point, but which sound appreciably complicated. I informed the group beforehand that ‘this is not stand-at-rapt-attention music; this is go-be-sociable music,’ but they seemed to pay rapt attention anyway. Best of all, several couples started dancing when I got to the two reels that finished my set. :D:D:D:D It was a blast to play, a blast to watch, and very, very well received. Ella was even kind enough to get a few pictures of me playing in the ball gown; I think the one below shows me playing that old favorite, the Tuning Song. :) Russian Chorus sang right afterward, and I accompanied our duet and (cunningly, so I thought) set the tune *beforehand*. I can’t say it was a great success, but Irina Gennadyevna was happy, and we didn’t manage to embarrass ourselves too badly. :)
But, at some point, the violin was stashed back behind the podium, and the dancing continued. I waltzed with five different men and experienced five vastly different versions of the waltz: girl leading (Daniel), nobody leading (Matt), girl and guy both trying to lead (Adam), guy leading with the wrong foot (Wes), and a normal waltz, but slightly faster than the tempo of the music (Eric). I polka-ed with Liz and managed to not step on either of our gowns, though I can’t say the same for Dasha in front of me. I took part in a ball game that was sort of a cross between London Bridge, tag, Red Light Green Light, and the polka. And in between these dances, I socialized, took more silly pictures, and availed myself of the refreshments in the next room. (Whoever thought to provide sandwiches was very, very smart, because almost none of us had eaten dinner.) I don’t have a large number of pictures from this event, but there will be more and much better photos than the ones I have, because three professional photographers captured the entire event. They even caught such memorable moments as Lou and me dancing the ‘eighth grade waltz’ and Lauren adjusting my hairstyle. :)
Nominally, there was a story woven into the evening, based on a play by Mikhail Lermontov that vaguely resembles Shakespeare’s Othello in its summary. Basically, Katya was supposed to lose a bracelet, and Jeremy (playing her husband) was supposed to assume she had given it to someone else, as a sure sign of infidelity. In fact, the bracelet was stolen by three crafty thieves. After trying and failing four times to start this drama with a musical cue, on the fifth try, Katya fainted into a chair and Nick, Adam and Daniel dashed out the door. I screamed something about Katya’s honor being maligned and accused the three boys on the path of having stolen her bracelet…at least, I think I did, having made up everything except ‘Gospoda!’ (Oh my God!) and ‘He stole the bracelet!’ about an hour before the ball. Jarlath took this as his cue to call the Three Musketeers (himself, Brent, and Jay) together to save the hostess’s honor. (The Three Musketeers weren’t in Lermontov’s play, and I’m reasonably sure they weren’t in Othello…but, you know what, who cares?) They dashed out the door, and so did half the audience, for the better view. Sadly, I left my camera inside, but I’m sure someone got some good shots of the six-person (okay, three two-person) swordfight(s) that followed. They actually didn’t look half bad, for amateurs; Nick told me later that they’d been beaten into something resembling shape the day before by a professional fencing instructor. The bad guys were vanquished, the good guys returned Katya’s bracelet, assorted young women swooned over the Musketeers, and we all returned to the hall for our last round of dancing.
At some point in here, Brent took charge of the playlist, so the waltzes were replaced by more traditional prom music: heavy beat, not a lot of melody. We were all getting fairly tired by this point, though, so it was just as much fun to groove to the new beat in our ball gowns and velvet suits. Even Irina Borisovna got in on the action, and watching our diminutive Belorussian coordinator dancing to rap in a white ball gown was just…amazing. :D Just before the end of the dancing, Katya called us all together to announce the King and Queen of the Ball. We’d been submitting our votes all evening, along with little ‘post of love and affection’ notes (-grin-), at a table just outside the dancing room. I’d been expecting it to be a close race between Melissa and Sasha, so I was COMPLETELY taken by surprise when my name was announced! I accepted the tiara Katya slid into my hair and the rounds of applause from my friends with no small degree of embarrassment, but…you know what? It’s kind of nice to be the center of attention sometimes. :) Becca, who’d come in male costume and had been acting the part superbly all evening, was elected King, and the two of us celebrated with a dance and the following photo, courtesy of Wes. (I did give the tiara back, so it can be used for next year’s Queen.)
After one or two more dances, the ball was over, and forty-some tired attendees made their way downstairs and changed out of costumes. Many of the group went out for a post-ball party, and I would have liked to as well, but I realized when I sat down that my feet would probably fall off (or maybe just shrivel up and disappear) if I tried to walk as far as the Metro. Instead, I walked home, made a cup of tea, downloaded my photos, and sat down to write my week’s worth of blog posts. And now, I’m going to bed, in the hope that my muscles will recharge quickly. Maybe I could have danced all night, but I think four hours was enough. :)
Friday morning started off normally enough, except that on most Fridays, I don’t pack heels and pantyhose in my bookbag. After two thankfully uneventful classes, Leonid Vladimirovich cut Ethnic Studies halfway short, explaining that he’d rather save the lesson for a class when there were more than three attendees. Not a problem for me. My dear friend Kristin brought a violin to Russia and was going to play it for the ball, but she changed her mind; being amazing, she gladly let me play her violin for the day anyway. I spent the extra forty-five minutes practicing in an empty classroom and left in a fantastic frame of mind, which always happens when I’ve done my first decent fiddling in a while. :)
Getting ready for the ball was nothing short of madness, with a good thirty girls all trying to do each other’s hair and makeup in the same tiny classroom—in hooped petticoats. Apparently the costumer double-booked a few of the dresses, so I ended up with the second dress I’d tried on the day I went, but honestly, the one I thought I’d be wearing looked fantastic on Meghan. And I pulled off the purple sparkly number with crushed velvet sleeve things quite well, if I do say so myself. I don’t really have to, though; you can judge for yourselves from the picture below. :D (I made the bag myself, out of a plain white handkerchief. Why do ball gowns not have pockets? :P) Megan (yes, we have two Megans) did something lovely with my hair without putting any sort of sticky stuff on or into it, which I greatly appreciate, and I made my escape from the green room and set about my normal activity at a formal dance function: taking silly pictures of people. :)
Eventually, Anya managed to herd us all into the Bolshoi Zal (creatively named ‘Big Room’), and the ball began in earnest. We stood in a circle to listen to Katya encouraging us all to flirt in her opening remarks, toasted each other with glasses of champagne, then paired up for the polonaise. I’m not sure whose idea of a circle we were processing in, but Hayley and I acquitted ourselves very nicely. Right after this, I played a set of five fiddle tunes that I could probably play in my sleep at this point, but which sound appreciably complicated. I informed the group beforehand that ‘this is not stand-at-rapt-attention music; this is go-be-sociable music,’ but they seemed to pay rapt attention anyway. Best of all, several couples started dancing when I got to the two reels that finished my set. :D:D:D:D It was a blast to play, a blast to watch, and very, very well received. Ella was even kind enough to get a few pictures of me playing in the ball gown; I think the one below shows me playing that old favorite, the Tuning Song. :) Russian Chorus sang right afterward, and I accompanied our duet and (cunningly, so I thought) set the tune *beforehand*. I can’t say it was a great success, but Irina Gennadyevna was happy, and we didn’t manage to embarrass ourselves too badly. :)
But, at some point, the violin was stashed back behind the podium, and the dancing continued. I waltzed with five different men and experienced five vastly different versions of the waltz: girl leading (Daniel), nobody leading (Matt), girl and guy both trying to lead (Adam), guy leading with the wrong foot (Wes), and a normal waltz, but slightly faster than the tempo of the music (Eric). I polka-ed with Liz and managed to not step on either of our gowns, though I can’t say the same for Dasha in front of me. I took part in a ball game that was sort of a cross between London Bridge, tag, Red Light Green Light, and the polka. And in between these dances, I socialized, took more silly pictures, and availed myself of the refreshments in the next room. (Whoever thought to provide sandwiches was very, very smart, because almost none of us had eaten dinner.) I don’t have a large number of pictures from this event, but there will be more and much better photos than the ones I have, because three professional photographers captured the entire event. They even caught such memorable moments as Lou and me dancing the ‘eighth grade waltz’ and Lauren adjusting my hairstyle. :)
Nominally, there was a story woven into the evening, based on a play by Mikhail Lermontov that vaguely resembles Shakespeare’s Othello in its summary. Basically, Katya was supposed to lose a bracelet, and Jeremy (playing her husband) was supposed to assume she had given it to someone else, as a sure sign of infidelity. In fact, the bracelet was stolen by three crafty thieves. After trying and failing four times to start this drama with a musical cue, on the fifth try, Katya fainted into a chair and Nick, Adam and Daniel dashed out the door. I screamed something about Katya’s honor being maligned and accused the three boys on the path of having stolen her bracelet…at least, I think I did, having made up everything except ‘Gospoda!’ (Oh my God!) and ‘He stole the bracelet!’ about an hour before the ball. Jarlath took this as his cue to call the Three Musketeers (himself, Brent, and Jay) together to save the hostess’s honor. (The Three Musketeers weren’t in Lermontov’s play, and I’m reasonably sure they weren’t in Othello…but, you know what, who cares?) They dashed out the door, and so did half the audience, for the better view. Sadly, I left my camera inside, but I’m sure someone got some good shots of the six-person (okay, three two-person) swordfight(s) that followed. They actually didn’t look half bad, for amateurs; Nick told me later that they’d been beaten into something resembling shape the day before by a professional fencing instructor. The bad guys were vanquished, the good guys returned Katya’s bracelet, assorted young women swooned over the Musketeers, and we all returned to the hall for our last round of dancing.
At some point in here, Brent took charge of the playlist, so the waltzes were replaced by more traditional prom music: heavy beat, not a lot of melody. We were all getting fairly tired by this point, though, so it was just as much fun to groove to the new beat in our ball gowns and velvet suits. Even Irina Borisovna got in on the action, and watching our diminutive Belorussian coordinator dancing to rap in a white ball gown was just…amazing. :D Just before the end of the dancing, Katya called us all together to announce the King and Queen of the Ball. We’d been submitting our votes all evening, along with little ‘post of love and affection’ notes (-grin-), at a table just outside the dancing room. I’d been expecting it to be a close race between Melissa and Sasha, so I was COMPLETELY taken by surprise when my name was announced! I accepted the tiara Katya slid into my hair and the rounds of applause from my friends with no small degree of embarrassment, but…you know what? It’s kind of nice to be the center of attention sometimes. :) Becca, who’d come in male costume and had been acting the part superbly all evening, was elected King, and the two of us celebrated with a dance and the following photo, courtesy of Wes. (I did give the tiara back, so it can be used for next year’s Queen.)
After one or two more dances, the ball was over, and forty-some tired attendees made their way downstairs and changed out of costumes. Many of the group went out for a post-ball party, and I would have liked to as well, but I realized when I sat down that my feet would probably fall off (or maybe just shrivel up and disappear) if I tried to walk as far as the Metro. Instead, I walked home, made a cup of tea, downloaded my photos, and sat down to write my week’s worth of blog posts. And now, I’m going to bed, in the hope that my muscles will recharge quickly. Maybe I could have danced all night, but I think four hours was enough. :)
Genitive Fungus (sorry, I swear that's the worst pun today)
Friday, 11:45 pm. Wow. First of all, I’m really sorry for the delay in posting. I keep putting off writing this post because there are more and more exciting things I want to put in it, when what I really should have been doing is writing them down all along. But, rest assured, I’m still alive and as busy as ever. This evening’s ball will have a separate entry all its own: for now, the last week.
I left off on Thursday after classes, neglecting to mention the adventure at the Times, which wasn’t very different from previous weeks, but lovely nonetheless. The other copy editing intern, a British university student named Sebastian, and I have developed somewhat of a rhythm, and Shura and Toby, the editors, frequently consult me on minor points of British versus American English. (Was anyone aware that the phrase ‘drunk driving’ becomes ‘drink driving’ in Britain?) Friday was also pretty normal, and I ended up spending the evening in with a headache and a Ken Follett novel.
My motivation to get going Saturday morning was the chance to meet Adam and Melissa at an art museum on Vasilievsky Island; not that art museums are my idea of Saturday morning excitement, but they’re awesome people. Alas, it was not to be, for we apparently wandered around two separate floors of the museum and missed each other entirely (I’m not sure how, because it was a very small museum). I walked further down the Neva embankment to the Church of the Very Shiny Domes, once home to an order of what I think were Ukrainian monks (also with very shiny domes, perhaps?), now really just another pretty church. I’ve grown to really enjoy spending time in these churches, even just to admire the art; this one also had what had to be fifty-gallon drums of holy water (see photo). Unless they did their baptisms right in the tanks, I have no idea what you need THAT much holy water for, especially when there’s a whole river right outside your door. I finally caught up with the duo at dance rehearsal, at which the only bit of dance training I’ve been able to really retain came in extremely useful: Mom teaching me to polka. :D I think we’ve all got the one-two-three-and-one-two-three in our feet now, even if we can’t waltz without crashing into each other. Saturday night was also a quiet evening with a book; if I’m going to go out with friends, I’d rather not start off the adventure with a pressure headache. Bloody weather. I spent Sunday with my delightfully quirky friend Hayley, wandering the city and polka-ing down Nevsky Prospekt. It was so much fun, and definitely worth the stares. :D
Monday rolled around, as it tends to do, and classes began again, as they must. We’ve spent three-quarters of the semester in our grammar class reviewing concepts we’d either already learned or briefly touched upon, and acquiring new vocabulary by osmosis. Now, all of a sudden, Albina Vitalievna springs the genitive case on us (and, more importantly, genitive plural—there are at least twelve different ways to pluralize things in this one case, depending on spelling, pronunciation, and the phase of the moon), and we’re all lost. Not lost to the point where it will be detrimental to my grades, Mom, just lost when we try to do something as radical as form our own sentences with this case. Grr. The beginning of my week ran as follows: three hours of grammar class, orchestra rehearsal (lovely, but disorganized, with nobody able to answer the simple question of ‘so when’s our next concert?’), and three more hours of grammar class the next morning. Vastly exciting, as I’m sure you can tell.
Wednesday was civilization class, Russian chorus, and English class. Russian chorus was spent preparing a number for the ball, which was supposed to be a duet between the gentlemen of the group and the ladies; however, we had one gentleman and eight ladies. God bless Eric for continuing to show up in the face of overwhelming gender discrepancies. In any event, we managed to convert four of our ‘sudarinas’ into ‘sudars,’ split ourselves into two voice parts, and then get completely lost once Irina Gennadyevna left and Katya and Anya tried to teach us a dance to go with the song. Considering that most of the group is going to be holding the lyrics anyway, we’ll see how this goes. After classes, we had the opportunity to tour the rooms where Lenin worked at the Smolny Institute, next door...but I have to admit, the tour was given in very fast Russian and summarized in about four sentences per monologue by Jarlath, so I probably didn't absorb as much as I could have. I mean, sure, seeing Lenin's desk was pretty cool, but the most memorable part of the whole visit was the rather munchkin-like statue of Lenin outside (see photo). Wednesday evening’s English class wrapped up the unit on ‘the mind’, with discussion topics as varied as apartheid and the film Kingdom of Heaven. (Olga Vladimirovna calls it ‘a load of b.s.’ I can’t say that it’s the best film I’ve ever seen, especially in terms of historical accuracy, but I like the fight scenes.)
Thursday was the best part of the week, hands down; I left school right after phonetics (ugh) to go pick up my parents’ package! FINALLY! Two and a half months passed since Mom mailed the bloody thing, but at least it made it here in enough time that I can make use of the contents! I made my way to the Alexander Nevsky Square metro station, clutching my passport and the package slip, and nearly tripped over the post office at the far end of Old Nevsky Prospekt. I waited half an hour with a mixed crowd of rather impatient Russians because the station was closed for its ‘technical break’, which I guess is sort of like a siesta in Spain, except not standardized across anything. Finally, the post office ladies finished their vastly important technological maneuverings and opened the door, and I got in line behind another gentleman holding his passport. I managed to confuse the woman at the desk by signing my name in English letters, even after I’d handed over my American passport, but eventually she dragged out a burlap mail sack, slit the plastic tie, and handed me a box weighing nearly twenty pounds. It seems very American of me to be made so happy by the acquisition of material objects, but then again, this was a slice of home. My familiar Russian textbook (with which I will kick the figurative behind of the genitive case!). A jar of peanut butter. Two of my favorite t-shirts, including one from Brookside Gardens. Real American chocolate. Paul Mitchell shampoo. Even a copy of the latest Redwall book to come out in paperback. I’m rather glad Lyudmila Afanasyevna wasn’t home, because I literally cried for five minutes in a mixture of happiness and homesickness. Thank you once again, Mom, for making my life so much better. :D
Thursday evening at the Times was a very slow process, as Shura and Toby went back and forth on which articles to use and which ones to cut, and Sebastian and I had a paper airplane war and occasionally took a break to do something radical like edit a page. :) I finally left the paper at about ten-fifteen, having finished the novel Doomwyte twice by the time I got home. I polished my heels, had some tea, and lay awake for a long time. The night before the ball, I had a lot to think about…as you’ll see in the next post! ;)
I left off on Thursday after classes, neglecting to mention the adventure at the Times, which wasn’t very different from previous weeks, but lovely nonetheless. The other copy editing intern, a British university student named Sebastian, and I have developed somewhat of a rhythm, and Shura and Toby, the editors, frequently consult me on minor points of British versus American English. (Was anyone aware that the phrase ‘drunk driving’ becomes ‘drink driving’ in Britain?) Friday was also pretty normal, and I ended up spending the evening in with a headache and a Ken Follett novel.
My motivation to get going Saturday morning was the chance to meet Adam and Melissa at an art museum on Vasilievsky Island; not that art museums are my idea of Saturday morning excitement, but they’re awesome people. Alas, it was not to be, for we apparently wandered around two separate floors of the museum and missed each other entirely (I’m not sure how, because it was a very small museum). I walked further down the Neva embankment to the Church of the Very Shiny Domes, once home to an order of what I think were Ukrainian monks (also with very shiny domes, perhaps?), now really just another pretty church. I’ve grown to really enjoy spending time in these churches, even just to admire the art; this one also had what had to be fifty-gallon drums of holy water (see photo). Unless they did their baptisms right in the tanks, I have no idea what you need THAT much holy water for, especially when there’s a whole river right outside your door. I finally caught up with the duo at dance rehearsal, at which the only bit of dance training I’ve been able to really retain came in extremely useful: Mom teaching me to polka. :D I think we’ve all got the one-two-three-and-one-two-three in our feet now, even if we can’t waltz without crashing into each other. Saturday night was also a quiet evening with a book; if I’m going to go out with friends, I’d rather not start off the adventure with a pressure headache. Bloody weather. I spent Sunday with my delightfully quirky friend Hayley, wandering the city and polka-ing down Nevsky Prospekt. It was so much fun, and definitely worth the stares. :D
Monday rolled around, as it tends to do, and classes began again, as they must. We’ve spent three-quarters of the semester in our grammar class reviewing concepts we’d either already learned or briefly touched upon, and acquiring new vocabulary by osmosis. Now, all of a sudden, Albina Vitalievna springs the genitive case on us (and, more importantly, genitive plural—there are at least twelve different ways to pluralize things in this one case, depending on spelling, pronunciation, and the phase of the moon), and we’re all lost. Not lost to the point where it will be detrimental to my grades, Mom, just lost when we try to do something as radical as form our own sentences with this case. Grr. The beginning of my week ran as follows: three hours of grammar class, orchestra rehearsal (lovely, but disorganized, with nobody able to answer the simple question of ‘so when’s our next concert?’), and three more hours of grammar class the next morning. Vastly exciting, as I’m sure you can tell.
Wednesday was civilization class, Russian chorus, and English class. Russian chorus was spent preparing a number for the ball, which was supposed to be a duet between the gentlemen of the group and the ladies; however, we had one gentleman and eight ladies. God bless Eric for continuing to show up in the face of overwhelming gender discrepancies. In any event, we managed to convert four of our ‘sudarinas’ into ‘sudars,’ split ourselves into two voice parts, and then get completely lost once Irina Gennadyevna left and Katya and Anya tried to teach us a dance to go with the song. Considering that most of the group is going to be holding the lyrics anyway, we’ll see how this goes. After classes, we had the opportunity to tour the rooms where Lenin worked at the Smolny Institute, next door...but I have to admit, the tour was given in very fast Russian and summarized in about four sentences per monologue by Jarlath, so I probably didn't absorb as much as I could have. I mean, sure, seeing Lenin's desk was pretty cool, but the most memorable part of the whole visit was the rather munchkin-like statue of Lenin outside (see photo). Wednesday evening’s English class wrapped up the unit on ‘the mind’, with discussion topics as varied as apartheid and the film Kingdom of Heaven. (Olga Vladimirovna calls it ‘a load of b.s.’ I can’t say that it’s the best film I’ve ever seen, especially in terms of historical accuracy, but I like the fight scenes.)
Thursday was the best part of the week, hands down; I left school right after phonetics (ugh) to go pick up my parents’ package! FINALLY! Two and a half months passed since Mom mailed the bloody thing, but at least it made it here in enough time that I can make use of the contents! I made my way to the Alexander Nevsky Square metro station, clutching my passport and the package slip, and nearly tripped over the post office at the far end of Old Nevsky Prospekt. I waited half an hour with a mixed crowd of rather impatient Russians because the station was closed for its ‘technical break’, which I guess is sort of like a siesta in Spain, except not standardized across anything. Finally, the post office ladies finished their vastly important technological maneuverings and opened the door, and I got in line behind another gentleman holding his passport. I managed to confuse the woman at the desk by signing my name in English letters, even after I’d handed over my American passport, but eventually she dragged out a burlap mail sack, slit the plastic tie, and handed me a box weighing nearly twenty pounds. It seems very American of me to be made so happy by the acquisition of material objects, but then again, this was a slice of home. My familiar Russian textbook (with which I will kick the figurative behind of the genitive case!). A jar of peanut butter. Two of my favorite t-shirts, including one from Brookside Gardens. Real American chocolate. Paul Mitchell shampoo. Even a copy of the latest Redwall book to come out in paperback. I’m rather glad Lyudmila Afanasyevna wasn’t home, because I literally cried for five minutes in a mixture of happiness and homesickness. Thank you once again, Mom, for making my life so much better. :D
Thursday evening at the Times was a very slow process, as Shura and Toby went back and forth on which articles to use and which ones to cut, and Sebastian and I had a paper airplane war and occasionally took a break to do something radical like edit a page. :) I finally left the paper at about ten-fifteen, having finished the novel Doomwyte twice by the time I got home. I polished my heels, had some tea, and lay awake for a long time. The night before the ball, I had a lot to think about…as you’ll see in the next post! ;)
Friday, April 16, 2010
With the mind, Russia cannot be understood...so true.
Wednesday, 4:45 pm. I swear, my quest to lose weight before the ball was doomed from the start. First, we went out for Indian food for Erica’s birthday yesterday; then, Lyudmila Afanasyevna surprises me for breakfast with fried eggs instead of the interminable kasha (awesome!); and now, I’m making an apple pie for Ethnic Food Week. Is this Russia’s way of telling me that I need to wait until Spain to diet?
Among the many little gimmicky things the Political Science faculty scatters throughout the year is Ethnic Food Week. As far as I can tell, this is meant to engage the international students with the Russians through everyone’s favorite medium: food! Several CIEE students have been recruited to prepare food for tomorrow…and Jarlath and Katya are making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. :P For me, apparently, my reputation as a cook has gotten around; Irina Borisovna and Katya both asked me, separately, to make an apple pie for tomorrow. I have never actually made an apple pie in my life, but I’d like to think I’ve picked up a few things from Mom…so I have a huge bowl of sliced and spiced apples on the table, and an explanatory note for my host mom. Now, time to leave for English class and do the pie crust significantly later this evening.
11:45 pm. English let out an hour early today, hence the surprisingly short time in which I have a pie! Granted, the top crust is kind of on the thick side, but I was afraid of having it split. Let’s just hope it’s okay for tomorrow…
Thursday, 11:15 pm. We can thank Nina Mikhailovna for this one.
Умом Россию не понять
Пока не выпито 0.5.
А если выпито 0.5
То дело кажется не хитром.
Попитка глубже понимать
Уже попахивает литром.
With the mind, Russia cannot be understood
Until you drink half a liter.
And if you drink half a liter,
It may still seem tricky.
Try to understand it deeper
When you have consumed a liter.
-Nina Mikhailovna Philippova
Off-color translations of the national text aside, it’s been a very good couple of days. Monday’s rehearsal was a little on the strange side, because we were handed six new pieces, read through each of them twice, then went home. -shrug- I must admit that I will be VERY happy to get back home, to a conductor who doesn’t believe in the magical power of the polka. After classes on Tuesday, I bought two SPRING shirts for less than $10 on 5-a Sovietskaya Ulitsa (hurrah!!!), then Erica invited eight of us to dinner for her birthday. We had a lovely time eating Indian food (spices! Good Lord, did I miss spices!) and joking with each other, aided by the Bollywood movies playing on a nearby screen. Why one of the movies involved a dance sequence running through Paris, we will never know.
We spent English yesterday discussing alternate explanations for supernatural phenomena. My class is thoroughly amused by the fact that I still wish on stars. :) Class let out at eight because Olga Vladimirovna had to take her husband somewhere (she explained it in rapid Russian, only about half of which I caught), so I came home early. I assembled a rather thick-crusted but presentable pie, apparently set the oven temperature too low out of paranoia, and took the pirog out an hour and a half later. I cut a slice for Lyudmila Afanasyevna to try, then took it to school today, covering it with my platka until lunchtime. It was a great success with Russians, Chinese, Brits, and Americans alike! :) All three of the coordinators tried it too, and pronounced it ‘ochen vkusni’. Happy Amanda is happy. :D
Among the many little gimmicky things the Political Science faculty scatters throughout the year is Ethnic Food Week. As far as I can tell, this is meant to engage the international students with the Russians through everyone’s favorite medium: food! Several CIEE students have been recruited to prepare food for tomorrow…and Jarlath and Katya are making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. :P For me, apparently, my reputation as a cook has gotten around; Irina Borisovna and Katya both asked me, separately, to make an apple pie for tomorrow. I have never actually made an apple pie in my life, but I’d like to think I’ve picked up a few things from Mom…so I have a huge bowl of sliced and spiced apples on the table, and an explanatory note for my host mom. Now, time to leave for English class and do the pie crust significantly later this evening.
11:45 pm. English let out an hour early today, hence the surprisingly short time in which I have a pie! Granted, the top crust is kind of on the thick side, but I was afraid of having it split. Let’s just hope it’s okay for tomorrow…
Thursday, 11:15 pm. We can thank Nina Mikhailovna for this one.
Умом Россию не понять
Пока не выпито 0.5.
А если выпито 0.5
То дело кажется не хитром.
Попитка глубже понимать
Уже попахивает литром.
With the mind, Russia cannot be understood
Until you drink half a liter.
And if you drink half a liter,
It may still seem tricky.
Try to understand it deeper
When you have consumed a liter.
-Nina Mikhailovna Philippova
Off-color translations of the national text aside, it’s been a very good couple of days. Monday’s rehearsal was a little on the strange side, because we were handed six new pieces, read through each of them twice, then went home. -shrug- I must admit that I will be VERY happy to get back home, to a conductor who doesn’t believe in the magical power of the polka. After classes on Tuesday, I bought two SPRING shirts for less than $10 on 5-a Sovietskaya Ulitsa (hurrah!!!), then Erica invited eight of us to dinner for her birthday. We had a lovely time eating Indian food (spices! Good Lord, did I miss spices!) and joking with each other, aided by the Bollywood movies playing on a nearby screen. Why one of the movies involved a dance sequence running through Paris, we will never know.
We spent English yesterday discussing alternate explanations for supernatural phenomena. My class is thoroughly amused by the fact that I still wish on stars. :) Class let out at eight because Olga Vladimirovna had to take her husband somewhere (she explained it in rapid Russian, only about half of which I caught), so I came home early. I assembled a rather thick-crusted but presentable pie, apparently set the oven temperature too low out of paranoia, and took the pirog out an hour and a half later. I cut a slice for Lyudmila Afanasyevna to try, then took it to school today, covering it with my platka until lunchtime. It was a great success with Russians, Chinese, Brits, and Americans alike! :) All three of the coordinators tried it too, and pronounced it ‘ochen vkusni’. Happy Amanda is happy. :D
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Right foot forward, left foot back, both feet on your partner's toes
Sunday, 7:30 pm. Spring has sprung! Actually, I’m reluctant to use the word ‘sprung’, as that implies a degree of subtlety, sort of as though spring snuck up on us. Spring didn’t so much sneak up on St. Petersburg as fall out of the sky. I swear, I came back from Tallinn, and…no more snow! I can walk outside with just my red hooded sweater instead of my giant winter coat! There is actual GRASS in places, among the mud! The paths around Smolny are made of cobblestones and sand, not ice! Temperatures have been in the fifties! This is mind-boggling after the winter we thought would never end. And it’s fantastic. :D About the only problem is that I brought perhaps four shirts that are appropriate to this weather…three of which are black. A bunch of us girls are planning an excursion in the near future to a couple of nearby second-hand shops, to see if we can’t find some really cheap spring clothing.
It’s been kind of a slow week, which is why I haven’t posted previously. Monday and Tuesday just consisted of classes and evenings at home, which were very nice indeed. I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping this week…I think I can blame my allergies for making all of my muscles feel like they’ve been shrunk in the dryer. I’ve managed to make a leetle more progress in War and Peace, too…which is good; if I’m going to finish that book by the end of the semester, I have work to do! Specifically, over 800 pages of work to do. :P I may be taking a few days to read Crime and Punishment, if I can get my hands on a copy, before the Crime and Punishment Walk sometime in May. It’s supposed to be THE quintessential St. Petersburg novel, so what better time to read it than while I’m here?
Steering back from my literary rambles now…Wednesday: Civilization class, chorus (six girls, and Moskva Zlatoglavaya, a new tune I rather love), and English class. We spent English class talking about fears, superstitions, and the supernatural, then somehow segued from that into vegetarianism. That class rambles almost as much as my own language classes, and I LOVE it. :D Thursday, after classes, I went back to the Times and chased down misplaced commas and the substitution of ‘Poland’ for ‘Putin’ in one caption. Nobody takes a lot of notice of the rather quiet copy editing intern when I’m there, though the editor-in-chief, Toby, is very impressed with how fast I work. And thoroughly, let me add, because I know you’re going to ask, Mom. :)
Then came Friday, where about thirty of us stayed after classes for a dance rehearsal for the ball. Katya and Anya, our coordinator and her friend who are organizing the event, actually hired two professional dance teachers to whip us into shape on the polonaise and the waltz. I’d be willing to say they succeeded…maybe forty percent. The polonaise mostly consists of processing (proceeding? Walking in a procession, anyway) in straight lines and circles, in pairs, with a little bit of fancy pair work in the middle. It’s the particular not-quite-in-three pattern of walking that continues to elude most of us. The waltzing instruction was possibly more frustrating, as everyone already knows how to waltz, but we all know how to waltz…differently. Eventually, Eric, who made it through the polonaise with me relatively unscathed, got frustrated and led me out into the hall to teach me to waltz properly. (I can waltz just fine solo. It’s the partner bit that I can’t quite manage.) I am proud to report that I can now follow a lead, as long as the guy is actually leading (yes, Adam, there DOES need to be someone leading a waltz). There may be hope for the family that doesn’t dance, after all. :D
Yesterday and today were the most exciting parts of the week! Yesterday afternoon was our excursion to Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was murdered. The actual palace looks much the same as the other, um, dozen or so palaces we’ve toured at this point, though it did have some cool chandeliers. The rooms where the plot to murder Rasputin was carried out were pretty cool…and they’re populated by wax figures of the conspirators and the victim. Rasputin’s actual body was destroyed, so you can’t visit him like Lenin, but I’m sure he’s nearly as scary in wax as he was in person. Not to mention the wax figure of Prince Felix Yusupov, who looks like he’ll be offering visitors some poisoned fruit at any moment. It’s a relief to get back into the sunlight after that one.
Saturday evening, five of us ventured to the end of the Orange Line of the metro, Ulitsa Dybenko, and met the ball costumer at her apartment. I still don’t know her name, actually, but this woman welcomed Devon, Lizzie, Julia, Eric and myself into her home, two rooms of which were stuffed almost to bursting with costumes. While some of us played ‘fetch the squeaky ball’ with the costumer’s two tiny dogs, Busik and Margo, we tried on gowns one by one and marveled at the transformations. I won’t post the pictures here, partly not to spoil the surprise and partly because the one of myself is, in fact, a terrible photo. But I will say that Devon looks like a Disney princess; Julia looks straight out of Gone with the Wind; Lizzie looks like English royalty; Eric looks like he’s just stepped offstage from The Nutcracker; and I? I’m quite happy with my Renaissance Fair look. :D The next step will be figuring out what to perform for the between-dance acts. I have some fiddle music ready in my head, and if possible, I’ll do a couple of vocal numbers as well. There’s also figuring out what to do with my hair, but I already have a line of friends who are plotting elaborate creations, so I don’t think I have much of a choice in the matter. ;) The ball is two Fridays from now, and it’s a welcome addition to the list of things to think about when not mulling over the dative case or the Chechen war.
Today, seven of us went to a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters at a library-cum-performance space near Ligovsky Prospekt. The play was three hours long and entirely in Russian, so it was rather a challenge; however, we had an English-language summary to hand, which helped quite a bit. Plus, I’d read the play in English (two years ago). Actually, though, once I started watching, it was a very pleasant surprise just how much I understood. It was slightly disorienting to be watching a play about three twenty-something sisters when all of the actresses had to be at least forty, but then, all theater involves some suspension of disbelief, doesn’t it? :) Anyway, it was a very interesting experience, and very well done. Not the Mariinsky, but I’ll make it there, don’t worry. It’s a very nice day outside, but sitting for three hours is surprisingly tiring, so Kim, Ella and I walked to a little bakery by the Vladimirskaya metro, where I had what I swear will be my last dessert before the ball…that was probably a week’s worth of chocolate, right there. :P We split up afterwards and Ella and I both came home to eat a proper dinner and write our blogs.
I’m spending the rest of the evening in, folding laundry, practicing my viola a bit, and reading up on the Revolution of 1905 in preparation for tomorrow’s history class. We’ll be polonaise-ing into class tomorrow, and I may or may not be waltzing through the apartment. There’s nothing quite as exciting as a girl’s first ball, now, is there? :)
It’s been kind of a slow week, which is why I haven’t posted previously. Monday and Tuesday just consisted of classes and evenings at home, which were very nice indeed. I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping this week…I think I can blame my allergies for making all of my muscles feel like they’ve been shrunk in the dryer. I’ve managed to make a leetle more progress in War and Peace, too…which is good; if I’m going to finish that book by the end of the semester, I have work to do! Specifically, over 800 pages of work to do. :P I may be taking a few days to read Crime and Punishment, if I can get my hands on a copy, before the Crime and Punishment Walk sometime in May. It’s supposed to be THE quintessential St. Petersburg novel, so what better time to read it than while I’m here?
Steering back from my literary rambles now…Wednesday: Civilization class, chorus (six girls, and Moskva Zlatoglavaya, a new tune I rather love), and English class. We spent English class talking about fears, superstitions, and the supernatural, then somehow segued from that into vegetarianism. That class rambles almost as much as my own language classes, and I LOVE it. :D Thursday, after classes, I went back to the Times and chased down misplaced commas and the substitution of ‘Poland’ for ‘Putin’ in one caption. Nobody takes a lot of notice of the rather quiet copy editing intern when I’m there, though the editor-in-chief, Toby, is very impressed with how fast I work. And thoroughly, let me add, because I know you’re going to ask, Mom. :)
Then came Friday, where about thirty of us stayed after classes for a dance rehearsal for the ball. Katya and Anya, our coordinator and her friend who are organizing the event, actually hired two professional dance teachers to whip us into shape on the polonaise and the waltz. I’d be willing to say they succeeded…maybe forty percent. The polonaise mostly consists of processing (proceeding? Walking in a procession, anyway) in straight lines and circles, in pairs, with a little bit of fancy pair work in the middle. It’s the particular not-quite-in-three pattern of walking that continues to elude most of us. The waltzing instruction was possibly more frustrating, as everyone already knows how to waltz, but we all know how to waltz…differently. Eventually, Eric, who made it through the polonaise with me relatively unscathed, got frustrated and led me out into the hall to teach me to waltz properly. (I can waltz just fine solo. It’s the partner bit that I can’t quite manage.) I am proud to report that I can now follow a lead, as long as the guy is actually leading (yes, Adam, there DOES need to be someone leading a waltz). There may be hope for the family that doesn’t dance, after all. :D
Yesterday and today were the most exciting parts of the week! Yesterday afternoon was our excursion to Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was murdered. The actual palace looks much the same as the other, um, dozen or so palaces we’ve toured at this point, though it did have some cool chandeliers. The rooms where the plot to murder Rasputin was carried out were pretty cool…and they’re populated by wax figures of the conspirators and the victim. Rasputin’s actual body was destroyed, so you can’t visit him like Lenin, but I’m sure he’s nearly as scary in wax as he was in person. Not to mention the wax figure of Prince Felix Yusupov, who looks like he’ll be offering visitors some poisoned fruit at any moment. It’s a relief to get back into the sunlight after that one.
Saturday evening, five of us ventured to the end of the Orange Line of the metro, Ulitsa Dybenko, and met the ball costumer at her apartment. I still don’t know her name, actually, but this woman welcomed Devon, Lizzie, Julia, Eric and myself into her home, two rooms of which were stuffed almost to bursting with costumes. While some of us played ‘fetch the squeaky ball’ with the costumer’s two tiny dogs, Busik and Margo, we tried on gowns one by one and marveled at the transformations. I won’t post the pictures here, partly not to spoil the surprise and partly because the one of myself is, in fact, a terrible photo. But I will say that Devon looks like a Disney princess; Julia looks straight out of Gone with the Wind; Lizzie looks like English royalty; Eric looks like he’s just stepped offstage from The Nutcracker; and I? I’m quite happy with my Renaissance Fair look. :D The next step will be figuring out what to perform for the between-dance acts. I have some fiddle music ready in my head, and if possible, I’ll do a couple of vocal numbers as well. There’s also figuring out what to do with my hair, but I already have a line of friends who are plotting elaborate creations, so I don’t think I have much of a choice in the matter. ;) The ball is two Fridays from now, and it’s a welcome addition to the list of things to think about when not mulling over the dative case or the Chechen war.
Today, seven of us went to a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters at a library-cum-performance space near Ligovsky Prospekt. The play was three hours long and entirely in Russian, so it was rather a challenge; however, we had an English-language summary to hand, which helped quite a bit. Plus, I’d read the play in English (two years ago). Actually, though, once I started watching, it was a very pleasant surprise just how much I understood. It was slightly disorienting to be watching a play about three twenty-something sisters when all of the actresses had to be at least forty, but then, all theater involves some suspension of disbelief, doesn’t it? :) Anyway, it was a very interesting experience, and very well done. Not the Mariinsky, but I’ll make it there, don’t worry. It’s a very nice day outside, but sitting for three hours is surprisingly tiring, so Kim, Ella and I walked to a little bakery by the Vladimirskaya metro, where I had what I swear will be my last dessert before the ball…that was probably a week’s worth of chocolate, right there. :P We split up afterwards and Ella and I both came home to eat a proper dinner and write our blogs.
I’m spending the rest of the evening in, folding laundry, practicing my viola a bit, and reading up on the Revolution of 1905 in preparation for tomorrow’s history class. We’ll be polonaise-ing into class tomorrow, and I may or may not be waltzing through the apartment. There’s nothing quite as exciting as a girl’s first ball, now, is there? :)
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес! We know, he's воскрес'd already!
Sunday, 1:10 pm. Христос Воскрес, everyone! Christ is Risen! He is truly risen! My host mom’s at her dacha for the day, and Misha just came over and is searching the nooks and crannies of the apartment for his Easter gift. He’s thirty. Some things never change, I guess. :)
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a service at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan last night. I took notes throughout the whole thing – on spare prayer cards, because I’d forgotten to bring any sort of notebook, and I wanted to remember the experience in detail. Following is a verbatim transcription of my notes on the Easter service in one of the largest cathedrals in Russia.
Up, down, right, left. Bow your head. Get down on your knees and touch your forehead to the ground, if you so desire. Kiss the icon. Light a candle, murmur another prayer in your language of choice.
It’s about nine o’clock, and except for closing the church for half an hour ‘for technical reasons,’ nothing has really gotten started yet in Kazansky Sobor. So far it’s mostly a milling crowd, stopping for longer than usual in front of the icons, buying more candles than on your average Saturday. Perhaps five women in here have their heads uncovered, and they, like me, are staring more or less blankly at their surroundings. I’ve adopted camouflage, though, in the form of my platka, the shawl I bought in Moscow. If the watchful saints know I don’t fit in here, at least I can conceal that fact from some of the babushkas.
I’m not sure what we’re waiting for, really. A large crowd has gathered around a table, laden with food (both table and crowd) and candles (mostly the table). Two priests came by earlier to bless the food – I think; they mostly walked around the table singing. This whole event is being televised, presumably live, for the national religious channel, which appears to broadcast nothing but services all day long. I’ve made sure to snag one of the few chairs, far back enough that the cameras won’t catch me scribbling down my impressions on some spare prayer slips, writing on the back of my powder compact.
The lights at the bottom of the columns keep flickering, but if this is a signal, nobody pays attention. Candlelight dances over cartons of home-dyed Easter eggs, which are treated here somehow so that they shimmer. A group of identically black-clad young women in white head scarves—nuns? Does the Russian Orthodox Church have nuns?—walk past carrying some sort of gold-embroidered red drapery. I saw one of the priests for a moment earlier, wearing a large embroidered white apron and talking on his cell phone. Some things never change.
Slowly, the nuns begin to cover the icons…or are they uncovering them? As white covers are exchanged for red, it’s a little difficult to tell. A gentleman comes up to me to lecture me about something. I give up my seat to one of the roaming babushki, who didn’t seem particularly interested in sitting, and the gentleman is satisfied, at least enough to go away. Small groups form and break up again, old ladies talk to themselves and strike up conversations with strangers, blissfully unaware that the conversation is one-sided because the stranger doesn’t understand. But it’s very quiet for a church this big and this important. Cathedrals don’t encourage conversations, really. There’s the kind of places to be alone with your thoughts, to teach your children the up-down-right-left ritual, to retie your platka into a shape more flattering for a twenty-year-old and wonder how the three singing priests can maintain that harmony so well. To wonder why there is a portrait of the last Romanovs as saints on the back wall. To wonder once again what you’re doing here, and why there aren’t more confused American students on the fringes of this ritual.
Now I see they’re shaking holy water over the food and the surrounding worshippers, and there is a further bustle of confused movement. Time to move out of the way of the people trying to put food where I’m sitting and figure out what happens now.
Nothing much seems to happen, except that the line to have your moment with the icon of the Virgin Mary gets longer, and then the priest starts speaking. I can’t make out the words, or even what language they’re in; all I know is that his monotone is a slightly flat C. I trip over the electrical cables with my cracked right heel and take it as God’s sign to sit the heck down and observe quietly.
Христос воскрес.
Christ is risen.
Воистину воскрес.
Truly, He is risen.
I swear the priest is reading the entirety of Genesis in Church Slavonic. Gentlemen in suits have appeared near the altar in front of the iconostasis and are directing that part of the traffic, and now cutting it off altogether. Senior priestly people move stands of flowers while red-cassocked young men place rugs strategically. I become more conscious of the crowd as I move forward into Mary’s rapidly degenerating line, and the priest is replaced by a colleague who continues the reading, but not in a monotone this time.
The variety of head coverings among the women of the crowd cannot escape notice. Some are classic white, some tasteful dark colors like mine, some merely hoods or berets. Some make you pause, like the sequined pink scarf paired with the bright blue coat and rather fascinating purple boots, or the billowy chapel veil pinned over the shellacked hair of the older woman three forward in line.
Nobody seems to be paying the young priest more than offhand attention. I reach the iconostasis, perform my contribution to the night’s ritual, and whisper thanks to the gilded, bejeweled and pearl-decked icon of the Mother and Child. Thanks for taking a foreigner who doesn’t understand the sermon under her wing for the night, and thanks for helping me to understand Russian just that little bit better.
I guess ‘Gospode’ is the Biblical word for God, as opposed to the vernacular ‘Bozhe.’ I have yet to hear a single reference to Jesus, but I have distinctly heard the words ‘apple’ and ‘thousand years,’ which made me think of Genesis. My knowledge of scripture isn’t that much better than my knowledge of Russian, though, so I have no real idea. For all I know, yet another priest who looks barely twenty-five is revealing why Jesus lost his temper with the fig tree, once and for all.
The rule against photography in the cathedral seems to have been suspended for this evening, but I’m still hesitant. At least three burly men have walked past carrying large rolled-up carpets, and I have no idea why. Something drops to the floor with a clang, side conversations continue, and the priest seems to have suddenly leaped to the Last Supper. I congratulate myself quietly on understanding enough Russian to figure that out.
I’m beginning to think the priest is meant to be a distraction from everything else that’s going on. Candle stands move, icons shift and appear and disappear beneath shrouds. A priest to the right of the altar is giving a line of women some sort of spiritual treatment involving draping a white cloth over their heads. I’m not sure if this is confession, absolution, or a new beauty treatment. And where the hell is everyone going with those carpets?
Apparently the platka bestows upon me an air of knowing more than others do. I move before I betray my ignorance too badly with another ‘ya ne znaiu’.
Finally, I see the purpose of the carpets, as a large number of white-and-red-robed men come striding down the center of the church, one bearing a tall, lit red candle, the rest congregating anxiously at the end of the carpet path. The St. Isaac’s Cathedral gift bag one of them carries only slightly spoils the magic of the moment. Men in suits urge the surrounding crowd back to either side and we wait. 10:55 pm.
Several senior patriarchal people come out robed in black or, for the head guy, white. The Metropolitan (I think that’s the title of the guy in white) carries a large golden cross on a white cloth-covered platter. One gentleman starts swinging his censer and chanting, cueing a chorus none of us had noticed previously to burst into song above us. A host of Important People walk to the altar, and we all press in behind them as the carpets are rolled up. I can’t see a thing except the rotating TV camera arm, but it’s a lucky individual who can. We can hear the Important People chant, just barely, over the chorus. We all start to cross ourselves as the camera passes overhead. I don’t know why, but it’s like The Wave, inescapable.
And then silence between songs, or as close as this many people ever get to being silent.
I truly have no idea what’s going on now. An alarm bell rings twice. A child starts talking animatedly. I finger the ten-ruble candles in my pocket and, suddenly, everyone seems to be fingering theirs just as the priests start to read again in seamlessly transitioning monotones.
People start to filter out of the crowd somewhere in between the priest-chorus interludes. At first I thought it was for a better view, but they’re mostly sweaty-looking older people, so I have to wonder if they’re overheating. Not hard to do in this packed crowd. I merely unfasten my sweater, shift from foot to foot, and begin to wish I hadn’t worn heels this evening. Two of the junior priests appear to be pacing around the altar with candles on sticks. Very disorienting when all you can see are the tops of the candles.
The iconostasis doors were opened for just a moment! Exciting! And now a LOT of talking about light, and a lot of people continuing to genuflect around me. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be a strict sense of timing about anything here – good, because I keep catching the crossing at the tail end.
Looks like a Procession of Icons on Poles is beginning, and the electric lights are slowly going out. Not sure what the processors are waiting for, or who started singing, but most of the church is mumbling along with what I gather is a very well-known hymn.
We’ve all pushed our way to the doors after the Procession of Important People With Icons, but the doors are shut. As we wait, we begin to pass the flame, reminiscent of the Easter I know and love…except that very few people seem to be lighting their candles from their neighbors. Now I’m confused. I’d light my own, but I have a lousy track record with matches, and I’d rather not set my platka or my hair on fire.
I meet an English-speaking Portuguese family who explain a little of what’s going on to me and their young daughter. Apparently, the normal procedure at this point would be a procession around the church with our lit candles. However, there are some very important people at this service (hence the multitude of guys in suits), and apparently their security is somewhat fouling up the order. Someone’s still singing, though, so at least it’s not over.
Finally, all the important folk have processed back in, the chorus is back to singing, and with what seems to be a complete disregard for the chorus, the rest of us are shouting the only part of the ritual I know by heart.
Христос воскрес.
Christ is risen.
Воистину воскрес.
Truly, He is risen.
I send Happy Easter text messages (with this Paschal greeting) to Dima and Ilya, and correct the spelling of my notes based on their identical response.
By twelve-thirty, the service has become an endurance test. Pack a few thousand people into a poorly ventilated room, give most of them lit candles, sing at them for a couple of hours broken by the occasional call-and-response, and understandably, people will begin to get a little irritable. I mean no disrespect, but Christ rose forty-five minutes ago. Can we go home now?
Finally, there’s some actual sermonizing, which I’m hoping is the end of the service. It sounds like instructions for the hours of the day today, but I apologize to the Metropolitan, for I intend to be sleeping at 8 am. Plus, all these candles so close to my hair and my fringe are really starting to freak me out.
…nope, not the end; more singing.
…don’t tell me the real service is just getting started; it’s 1 am!
Okay, I’m sorry, I’d love to stay for the whole thing, but I am rapidly running out of steam. I’m considering going home if he talks past 1:30.
…and just as I wrote that, he finished talking and appears to be removing his ceremonial garb. Dare I hope?
Once again, we have cleared the path for Someone Important, and I think I hear the censers, even if I don’t smell the incense yet. The whole church smells of beeswax smoke and sweat.
Hm. The Important People processed to the door, then turned around and processed right back in. What is going on here?
At this point, I stopped writing. An enthusiastic worshipper who spoke a little English explained to me that there was at least an hour and a half to go in the service, most of it taken up with speeches and processing back and forth. By now, I could barely continue to stand up straight, so I whispered an apology to the bishops and left, catching a late bus home and stumbling in at about 2 am. Lyudmila Afanasyevna, who’d gone to her local church, was already asleep, and I only paused long enough to change out of dress clothes and crawl under the covers.
When I woke up today, it was nearly noon, and my host mom had gone to her dacha for the day and left several pots on the stove. A handful of colored Easter eggs in the fruit bowl decorated the table. Misha explained to me that one does not eat the Easter eggs; one either gives them as gifts, with good wishes, or cracks one against a friend’s egg in a test of strength. I left the eggs alone, breakfasted on Easter bread (mmm), and settled in for a quiet day. As it turns out, I spent it baking chocolate meringues; I’ll have to wait until they’re dry tomorrow to tell you if they’re any good. :)
And now, the dishes are done, the email is checked, a few text messages are exchanged with friends just returning to Petersburg, and spring break is over. Time to crawl into bed with War and Peace and prepare to re-register my presence in Russia tomorrow at the university. Happy Easter, everyone!
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a service at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan last night. I took notes throughout the whole thing – on spare prayer cards, because I’d forgotten to bring any sort of notebook, and I wanted to remember the experience in detail. Following is a verbatim transcription of my notes on the Easter service in one of the largest cathedrals in Russia.
Up, down, right, left. Bow your head. Get down on your knees and touch your forehead to the ground, if you so desire. Kiss the icon. Light a candle, murmur another prayer in your language of choice.
It’s about nine o’clock, and except for closing the church for half an hour ‘for technical reasons,’ nothing has really gotten started yet in Kazansky Sobor. So far it’s mostly a milling crowd, stopping for longer than usual in front of the icons, buying more candles than on your average Saturday. Perhaps five women in here have their heads uncovered, and they, like me, are staring more or less blankly at their surroundings. I’ve adopted camouflage, though, in the form of my platka, the shawl I bought in Moscow. If the watchful saints know I don’t fit in here, at least I can conceal that fact from some of the babushkas.
I’m not sure what we’re waiting for, really. A large crowd has gathered around a table, laden with food (both table and crowd) and candles (mostly the table). Two priests came by earlier to bless the food – I think; they mostly walked around the table singing. This whole event is being televised, presumably live, for the national religious channel, which appears to broadcast nothing but services all day long. I’ve made sure to snag one of the few chairs, far back enough that the cameras won’t catch me scribbling down my impressions on some spare prayer slips, writing on the back of my powder compact.
The lights at the bottom of the columns keep flickering, but if this is a signal, nobody pays attention. Candlelight dances over cartons of home-dyed Easter eggs, which are treated here somehow so that they shimmer. A group of identically black-clad young women in white head scarves—nuns? Does the Russian Orthodox Church have nuns?—walk past carrying some sort of gold-embroidered red drapery. I saw one of the priests for a moment earlier, wearing a large embroidered white apron and talking on his cell phone. Some things never change.
Slowly, the nuns begin to cover the icons…or are they uncovering them? As white covers are exchanged for red, it’s a little difficult to tell. A gentleman comes up to me to lecture me about something. I give up my seat to one of the roaming babushki, who didn’t seem particularly interested in sitting, and the gentleman is satisfied, at least enough to go away. Small groups form and break up again, old ladies talk to themselves and strike up conversations with strangers, blissfully unaware that the conversation is one-sided because the stranger doesn’t understand. But it’s very quiet for a church this big and this important. Cathedrals don’t encourage conversations, really. There’s the kind of places to be alone with your thoughts, to teach your children the up-down-right-left ritual, to retie your platka into a shape more flattering for a twenty-year-old and wonder how the three singing priests can maintain that harmony so well. To wonder why there is a portrait of the last Romanovs as saints on the back wall. To wonder once again what you’re doing here, and why there aren’t more confused American students on the fringes of this ritual.
Now I see they’re shaking holy water over the food and the surrounding worshippers, and there is a further bustle of confused movement. Time to move out of the way of the people trying to put food where I’m sitting and figure out what happens now.
Nothing much seems to happen, except that the line to have your moment with the icon of the Virgin Mary gets longer, and then the priest starts speaking. I can’t make out the words, or even what language they’re in; all I know is that his monotone is a slightly flat C. I trip over the electrical cables with my cracked right heel and take it as God’s sign to sit the heck down and observe quietly.
Христос воскрес.
Christ is risen.
Воистину воскрес.
Truly, He is risen.
I swear the priest is reading the entirety of Genesis in Church Slavonic. Gentlemen in suits have appeared near the altar in front of the iconostasis and are directing that part of the traffic, and now cutting it off altogether. Senior priestly people move stands of flowers while red-cassocked young men place rugs strategically. I become more conscious of the crowd as I move forward into Mary’s rapidly degenerating line, and the priest is replaced by a colleague who continues the reading, but not in a monotone this time.
The variety of head coverings among the women of the crowd cannot escape notice. Some are classic white, some tasteful dark colors like mine, some merely hoods or berets. Some make you pause, like the sequined pink scarf paired with the bright blue coat and rather fascinating purple boots, or the billowy chapel veil pinned over the shellacked hair of the older woman three forward in line.
Nobody seems to be paying the young priest more than offhand attention. I reach the iconostasis, perform my contribution to the night’s ritual, and whisper thanks to the gilded, bejeweled and pearl-decked icon of the Mother and Child. Thanks for taking a foreigner who doesn’t understand the sermon under her wing for the night, and thanks for helping me to understand Russian just that little bit better.
I guess ‘Gospode’ is the Biblical word for God, as opposed to the vernacular ‘Bozhe.’ I have yet to hear a single reference to Jesus, but I have distinctly heard the words ‘apple’ and ‘thousand years,’ which made me think of Genesis. My knowledge of scripture isn’t that much better than my knowledge of Russian, though, so I have no real idea. For all I know, yet another priest who looks barely twenty-five is revealing why Jesus lost his temper with the fig tree, once and for all.
The rule against photography in the cathedral seems to have been suspended for this evening, but I’m still hesitant. At least three burly men have walked past carrying large rolled-up carpets, and I have no idea why. Something drops to the floor with a clang, side conversations continue, and the priest seems to have suddenly leaped to the Last Supper. I congratulate myself quietly on understanding enough Russian to figure that out.
I’m beginning to think the priest is meant to be a distraction from everything else that’s going on. Candle stands move, icons shift and appear and disappear beneath shrouds. A priest to the right of the altar is giving a line of women some sort of spiritual treatment involving draping a white cloth over their heads. I’m not sure if this is confession, absolution, or a new beauty treatment. And where the hell is everyone going with those carpets?
Apparently the platka bestows upon me an air of knowing more than others do. I move before I betray my ignorance too badly with another ‘ya ne znaiu’.
Finally, I see the purpose of the carpets, as a large number of white-and-red-robed men come striding down the center of the church, one bearing a tall, lit red candle, the rest congregating anxiously at the end of the carpet path. The St. Isaac’s Cathedral gift bag one of them carries only slightly spoils the magic of the moment. Men in suits urge the surrounding crowd back to either side and we wait. 10:55 pm.
Several senior patriarchal people come out robed in black or, for the head guy, white. The Metropolitan (I think that’s the title of the guy in white) carries a large golden cross on a white cloth-covered platter. One gentleman starts swinging his censer and chanting, cueing a chorus none of us had noticed previously to burst into song above us. A host of Important People walk to the altar, and we all press in behind them as the carpets are rolled up. I can’t see a thing except the rotating TV camera arm, but it’s a lucky individual who can. We can hear the Important People chant, just barely, over the chorus. We all start to cross ourselves as the camera passes overhead. I don’t know why, but it’s like The Wave, inescapable.
And then silence between songs, or as close as this many people ever get to being silent.
I truly have no idea what’s going on now. An alarm bell rings twice. A child starts talking animatedly. I finger the ten-ruble candles in my pocket and, suddenly, everyone seems to be fingering theirs just as the priests start to read again in seamlessly transitioning monotones.
People start to filter out of the crowd somewhere in between the priest-chorus interludes. At first I thought it was for a better view, but they’re mostly sweaty-looking older people, so I have to wonder if they’re overheating. Not hard to do in this packed crowd. I merely unfasten my sweater, shift from foot to foot, and begin to wish I hadn’t worn heels this evening. Two of the junior priests appear to be pacing around the altar with candles on sticks. Very disorienting when all you can see are the tops of the candles.
The iconostasis doors were opened for just a moment! Exciting! And now a LOT of talking about light, and a lot of people continuing to genuflect around me. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be a strict sense of timing about anything here – good, because I keep catching the crossing at the tail end.
Looks like a Procession of Icons on Poles is beginning, and the electric lights are slowly going out. Not sure what the processors are waiting for, or who started singing, but most of the church is mumbling along with what I gather is a very well-known hymn.
We’ve all pushed our way to the doors after the Procession of Important People With Icons, but the doors are shut. As we wait, we begin to pass the flame, reminiscent of the Easter I know and love…except that very few people seem to be lighting their candles from their neighbors. Now I’m confused. I’d light my own, but I have a lousy track record with matches, and I’d rather not set my platka or my hair on fire.
I meet an English-speaking Portuguese family who explain a little of what’s going on to me and their young daughter. Apparently, the normal procedure at this point would be a procession around the church with our lit candles. However, there are some very important people at this service (hence the multitude of guys in suits), and apparently their security is somewhat fouling up the order. Someone’s still singing, though, so at least it’s not over.
Finally, all the important folk have processed back in, the chorus is back to singing, and with what seems to be a complete disregard for the chorus, the rest of us are shouting the only part of the ritual I know by heart.
Христос воскрес.
Christ is risen.
Воистину воскрес.
Truly, He is risen.
I send Happy Easter text messages (with this Paschal greeting) to Dima and Ilya, and correct the spelling of my notes based on their identical response.
By twelve-thirty, the service has become an endurance test. Pack a few thousand people into a poorly ventilated room, give most of them lit candles, sing at them for a couple of hours broken by the occasional call-and-response, and understandably, people will begin to get a little irritable. I mean no disrespect, but Christ rose forty-five minutes ago. Can we go home now?
Finally, there’s some actual sermonizing, which I’m hoping is the end of the service. It sounds like instructions for the hours of the day today, but I apologize to the Metropolitan, for I intend to be sleeping at 8 am. Plus, all these candles so close to my hair and my fringe are really starting to freak me out.
…nope, not the end; more singing.
…don’t tell me the real service is just getting started; it’s 1 am!
Okay, I’m sorry, I’d love to stay for the whole thing, but I am rapidly running out of steam. I’m considering going home if he talks past 1:30.
…and just as I wrote that, he finished talking and appears to be removing his ceremonial garb. Dare I hope?
Once again, we have cleared the path for Someone Important, and I think I hear the censers, even if I don’t smell the incense yet. The whole church smells of beeswax smoke and sweat.
Hm. The Important People processed to the door, then turned around and processed right back in. What is going on here?
At this point, I stopped writing. An enthusiastic worshipper who spoke a little English explained to me that there was at least an hour and a half to go in the service, most of it taken up with speeches and processing back and forth. By now, I could barely continue to stand up straight, so I whispered an apology to the bishops and left, catching a late bus home and stumbling in at about 2 am. Lyudmila Afanasyevna, who’d gone to her local church, was already asleep, and I only paused long enough to change out of dress clothes and crawl under the covers.
When I woke up today, it was nearly noon, and my host mom had gone to her dacha for the day and left several pots on the stove. A handful of colored Easter eggs in the fruit bowl decorated the table. Misha explained to me that one does not eat the Easter eggs; one either gives them as gifts, with good wishes, or cracks one against a friend’s egg in a test of strength. I left the eggs alone, breakfasted on Easter bread (mmm), and settled in for a quiet day. As it turns out, I spent it baking chocolate meringues; I’ll have to wait until they’re dry tomorrow to tell you if they’re any good. :)
And now, the dishes are done, the email is checked, a few text messages are exchanged with friends just returning to Petersburg, and spring break is over. Time to crawl into bed with War and Peace and prepare to re-register my presence in Russia tomorrow at the university. Happy Easter, everyone!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Rather a Tallinn order
Okay, apologies for the bad pun. I'll replace it with a better one if something comes to mind.
Saturday, 12:36 pm. I seem to be settling into a routine of writing one long blog post at the end of a multi-day adventure. We left Russian border control about fifteen minutes ago and are now about three hours away from St. Petersburg, if all goes as planned. It took me most of a day in Tallinn to realize that Moscow time and Tallinn time are an hour apart…and I wasn’t actually sure which one the bus ticket was printed in. As a result, I’ve been up for seven and a half hours and got to the bus station about an hour and a half early. A long shower and a quick nap should be very refreshing when I make it back to Petersburg, and then Easter service tonight!
So, Tallinn. I arrived at about two-thirty pm, changed some rubles at the bus station, followed the directions on my hostel booking form to the letter, and still managed to get massively lost in Old Town before finding my hostel. I was greeted by a handwritten sign on the door informing guests that the hostel was closed, so please go to the nearest information office. Not knowing where the hell that would be, I approached a couple of friendly English speakers in the major hotel across the street, found the information office, and was told that the hostel was closed for ‘electrical problems, or water, or something. They haven’t told us anything.’ Fortunately, the young woman in the Bureau for Massively Confused Tourists Who Speak No Estonian was able to show me a selection of other hostels on the map, and I actually ended up right in the heart of the Old Town, in a charming (and clean!) location. :D Did a little exploring that first afternoon, but I was really rather tired and kind of frustrated with the hassles, so I pulled into the hostel about six. The young Englishman in the bed across from me struck up a conversation, and Will and I had a fun evening in a very strange little hole-in-the-wall bar. :)
A word about this sort of an evening plan. Tallinn is a charming touristy city, but there’s very little to do at night, except for some interestingly located ‘nightclubs’ in the center of cobblestone streets. It’s also very expensive city, at least for someone who’s used to St. Petersburg. This bar we went to was actually my English friend’s find; the only way anyone would have noticed it would be the ATM outside. No sign or anything. But, we were able to try the local beer and the local liqueur, and meet some fascinating locals! Vana Tallinn is, basically, the best alcoholic beverage in existence: it’s a sort of spicy brown liqueur that goes down warm and works fast. I may or may not have brought a bottle back with me. >.> I managed to spend most of the evening holding conversations in Russian…including with Will, apparently, disregarding the fact that he only understands English.
Thursday: full touristy day! I explored a bunch of churches in the Old Town – the churches are the only way you know where you are in that cobblestoned maze of yellow buildings – and then took the tram out to what I believe was the western edge of the city. There’s a palace called Kadriorg over there, and an extensive garden, built by none other than Peter the Great. I swear, I can’t get away from this guy! Even half-covered in snow, the gardens are beautiful, and I spent several lovely hours just wandering through the gardens, the art museum, and down to the beach. Pirita tee is the name of the street that runs along the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and the opportunity to stroll down the beach in solitude in the springtime was spellbinding. It would have been slightly more so if the beach wasn’t three-quarters covered in ice, but the view was still fantastic. And yes, you’re all going to have to sit through two dozen pictures of the Black Sea when I get back. :)
I’m not sure whether the massive hordes of swans wandering the beach contributed to the spell or not. I will be the first to admit, I am VERY afraid of swans. Especially swans in large groups. They may be pretty when they’re floating, but they’re big, and they’re vicious, and when four of them start stalking up to you when you’re heading toward the stairs, nobody in their right mind will stand and pick a fight. There were a couple of mothers with very small children who were feeding the swans, and letting their kids play right by them, and I couldn’t help but think that one of those kids was going to lose a hand. ‘Get myself killed by large birds’ was not on my list of things to do during spring break.
Further down Pirita Tee are several museums, one of which was closed for electrical problems; actually, the babushka running the place informed me in Russian, ‘well, it’s not closed, you just won’t be able to see anything.’ A quick peek inside confirmed this to be true, and rather than wander around in the pitch black historic castle, I elected to continue wandering around in the sunlight. I found the Soviet war memorial called ‘The Impotent’s Dream’ by the locals (so the Lonely Planet guidebook tells me), and climbed up and sat on its crumbling steps for a while. Tallinn really is full of places that are conducive to sitting, thinking, and staring at the view. Not a bad plan for spring break by myself. :)
Estonians speak a mixture of Russian (the older generation), English (the younger generation), occasionally some German, and their own incomprehensible language. I was able to pick up a few words based on the cognates, but actually trying to speak more Estonian than ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ is ludicrously difficult. I actually managed to pass as a Russian student for most of Thursday, though, which made me quite happy. My practical Russian is pretty decent, it seems, even if I still can’t get certain cases right to save my life. The hostel staff actually spoke to me in Russian for two days, until they tried to have me check out Friday morning and I kindly informed them that I’d paid for another night, so they swapped me into another room. Again. They’re very nice people, anyway, if not terribly organized.
And thus we come to Friday. I was trying to attend a Good Friday mass in Estonian, but I couldn’t find the little church I’d stumbled across on Wednesday that gave me the idea. I went to a good four churches before finding one that was actually supposed to have a service later in the day, so I set off intending to do some souvenir shopping. This turned into my failing at several ATMs, growing suspicious, and returning to the hostel and my internet connection to discover that some bastard had cleaned out my bank account in the past two days. I don’t know what someone was doing making almost $1300 worth of purchases on the Eurolines website (especially seeing as my own Eurolines tickets—paid in CASH—cost me about $60), but I got on the Skype-phone to the bank and my email to my parents immediately. We think we’ve resolved the problem, or at least enabled me to withdraw money to get around Petersburg, but this is massively annoying. I ended up doing my shopping after changing the 30 euros I had as a backup in my wallet. :P
But, eventually, I returned from shopping with a few good purchases, made dinner in the hostel kitchen (pasta in the coffee pot) with Will and Sebastian, a Spaniard working in Finland, and went to mass. I did end up finding a Good Friday mass in what I think was a mixture of Estonian and Latin, in a church that I’m pretty sure was devoted to St. Nicholas. And before you comment on my not actually knowing the name, everything was written in Church Slavonic, which is an incomprehensible Russian alphabet. I didn’t understand a word, and I followed everyone else’s motions; luckily, there wasn’t any sitting and standing to worry about, because you stand for the entire service. Russian Orthodox churches have no benches, so you stand in a large group behind the priest in the middle of the floor and try not to sway when your legs get tired. But it was fascinating. Somber, mysterious, and completely foreign to me. I spent a good part of the sermon studying the mosaics on the walls, which are amazing. For a historic church in such a small city, St. Nicholas’s is right up there with at least Spassnaya Krava for the grandness of its décor.
I returned to the hostel room to meet two Spanish guys, a Czech student, and a Quebecois, most of whom were planning for a party in a friend’s room in the hostel. We sat and talked for quite some time in an interesting mixture of languages, but I politely declined their offer to join them in their reveling; if I need to be up at five o’clock in the morning, I am NOT willing to risk being hung over as well as exhausted. Even though Nathan from Montreal snores like a chainsaw, I did manage to get some decent sleep and make it out of the hostel at five a.m. with no trouble. Finding the bus station was a little more trouble, as there are three bus stations marked on the map, and I ended up at both of the wrong ones before hopping a tram to the right one. I still got to the station an hour and a half before my bus, but this is never a problem for me when I’ve brought two novels along. :) The only remaining hassle in the trip was Russian customs, but the drug-sniffing dog was a little hyperactive, so the border guards were more concerned with keeping it from leaping up on people than going through our baggage. (It was a cute little spotted dog, named Jan, I think. I would have stopped to pet him, but I don’t think that would have gone over very well.)
Upcoming: return to Baltisky Voksal, head six stops up the Red Line, walk back to the apartment, and try to shower before collapsing. I’ve actually managed to get some good sleep on the bus ride, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Enough with this vacation business; can we get back to classes now?
Saturday, 12:36 pm. I seem to be settling into a routine of writing one long blog post at the end of a multi-day adventure. We left Russian border control about fifteen minutes ago and are now about three hours away from St. Petersburg, if all goes as planned. It took me most of a day in Tallinn to realize that Moscow time and Tallinn time are an hour apart…and I wasn’t actually sure which one the bus ticket was printed in. As a result, I’ve been up for seven and a half hours and got to the bus station about an hour and a half early. A long shower and a quick nap should be very refreshing when I make it back to Petersburg, and then Easter service tonight!
So, Tallinn. I arrived at about two-thirty pm, changed some rubles at the bus station, followed the directions on my hostel booking form to the letter, and still managed to get massively lost in Old Town before finding my hostel. I was greeted by a handwritten sign on the door informing guests that the hostel was closed, so please go to the nearest information office. Not knowing where the hell that would be, I approached a couple of friendly English speakers in the major hotel across the street, found the information office, and was told that the hostel was closed for ‘electrical problems, or water, or something. They haven’t told us anything.’ Fortunately, the young woman in the Bureau for Massively Confused Tourists Who Speak No Estonian was able to show me a selection of other hostels on the map, and I actually ended up right in the heart of the Old Town, in a charming (and clean!) location. :D Did a little exploring that first afternoon, but I was really rather tired and kind of frustrated with the hassles, so I pulled into the hostel about six. The young Englishman in the bed across from me struck up a conversation, and Will and I had a fun evening in a very strange little hole-in-the-wall bar. :)
A word about this sort of an evening plan. Tallinn is a charming touristy city, but there’s very little to do at night, except for some interestingly located ‘nightclubs’ in the center of cobblestone streets. It’s also very expensive city, at least for someone who’s used to St. Petersburg. This bar we went to was actually my English friend’s find; the only way anyone would have noticed it would be the ATM outside. No sign or anything. But, we were able to try the local beer and the local liqueur, and meet some fascinating locals! Vana Tallinn is, basically, the best alcoholic beverage in existence: it’s a sort of spicy brown liqueur that goes down warm and works fast. I may or may not have brought a bottle back with me. >.> I managed to spend most of the evening holding conversations in Russian…including with Will, apparently, disregarding the fact that he only understands English.
Thursday: full touristy day! I explored a bunch of churches in the Old Town – the churches are the only way you know where you are in that cobblestoned maze of yellow buildings – and then took the tram out to what I believe was the western edge of the city. There’s a palace called Kadriorg over there, and an extensive garden, built by none other than Peter the Great. I swear, I can’t get away from this guy! Even half-covered in snow, the gardens are beautiful, and I spent several lovely hours just wandering through the gardens, the art museum, and down to the beach. Pirita tee is the name of the street that runs along the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and the opportunity to stroll down the beach in solitude in the springtime was spellbinding. It would have been slightly more so if the beach wasn’t three-quarters covered in ice, but the view was still fantastic. And yes, you’re all going to have to sit through two dozen pictures of the Black Sea when I get back. :)
I’m not sure whether the massive hordes of swans wandering the beach contributed to the spell or not. I will be the first to admit, I am VERY afraid of swans. Especially swans in large groups. They may be pretty when they’re floating, but they’re big, and they’re vicious, and when four of them start stalking up to you when you’re heading toward the stairs, nobody in their right mind will stand and pick a fight. There were a couple of mothers with very small children who were feeding the swans, and letting their kids play right by them, and I couldn’t help but think that one of those kids was going to lose a hand. ‘Get myself killed by large birds’ was not on my list of things to do during spring break.
Further down Pirita Tee are several museums, one of which was closed for electrical problems; actually, the babushka running the place informed me in Russian, ‘well, it’s not closed, you just won’t be able to see anything.’ A quick peek inside confirmed this to be true, and rather than wander around in the pitch black historic castle, I elected to continue wandering around in the sunlight. I found the Soviet war memorial called ‘The Impotent’s Dream’ by the locals (so the Lonely Planet guidebook tells me), and climbed up and sat on its crumbling steps for a while. Tallinn really is full of places that are conducive to sitting, thinking, and staring at the view. Not a bad plan for spring break by myself. :)
Estonians speak a mixture of Russian (the older generation), English (the younger generation), occasionally some German, and their own incomprehensible language. I was able to pick up a few words based on the cognates, but actually trying to speak more Estonian than ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ is ludicrously difficult. I actually managed to pass as a Russian student for most of Thursday, though, which made me quite happy. My practical Russian is pretty decent, it seems, even if I still can’t get certain cases right to save my life. The hostel staff actually spoke to me in Russian for two days, until they tried to have me check out Friday morning and I kindly informed them that I’d paid for another night, so they swapped me into another room. Again. They’re very nice people, anyway, if not terribly organized.
And thus we come to Friday. I was trying to attend a Good Friday mass in Estonian, but I couldn’t find the little church I’d stumbled across on Wednesday that gave me the idea. I went to a good four churches before finding one that was actually supposed to have a service later in the day, so I set off intending to do some souvenir shopping. This turned into my failing at several ATMs, growing suspicious, and returning to the hostel and my internet connection to discover that some bastard had cleaned out my bank account in the past two days. I don’t know what someone was doing making almost $1300 worth of purchases on the Eurolines website (especially seeing as my own Eurolines tickets—paid in CASH—cost me about $60), but I got on the Skype-phone to the bank and my email to my parents immediately. We think we’ve resolved the problem, or at least enabled me to withdraw money to get around Petersburg, but this is massively annoying. I ended up doing my shopping after changing the 30 euros I had as a backup in my wallet. :P
But, eventually, I returned from shopping with a few good purchases, made dinner in the hostel kitchen (pasta in the coffee pot) with Will and Sebastian, a Spaniard working in Finland, and went to mass. I did end up finding a Good Friday mass in what I think was a mixture of Estonian and Latin, in a church that I’m pretty sure was devoted to St. Nicholas. And before you comment on my not actually knowing the name, everything was written in Church Slavonic, which is an incomprehensible Russian alphabet. I didn’t understand a word, and I followed everyone else’s motions; luckily, there wasn’t any sitting and standing to worry about, because you stand for the entire service. Russian Orthodox churches have no benches, so you stand in a large group behind the priest in the middle of the floor and try not to sway when your legs get tired. But it was fascinating. Somber, mysterious, and completely foreign to me. I spent a good part of the sermon studying the mosaics on the walls, which are amazing. For a historic church in such a small city, St. Nicholas’s is right up there with at least Spassnaya Krava for the grandness of its décor.
I returned to the hostel room to meet two Spanish guys, a Czech student, and a Quebecois, most of whom were planning for a party in a friend’s room in the hostel. We sat and talked for quite some time in an interesting mixture of languages, but I politely declined their offer to join them in their reveling; if I need to be up at five o’clock in the morning, I am NOT willing to risk being hung over as well as exhausted. Even though Nathan from Montreal snores like a chainsaw, I did manage to get some decent sleep and make it out of the hostel at five a.m. with no trouble. Finding the bus station was a little more trouble, as there are three bus stations marked on the map, and I ended up at both of the wrong ones before hopping a tram to the right one. I still got to the station an hour and a half before my bus, but this is never a problem for me when I’ve brought two novels along. :) The only remaining hassle in the trip was Russian customs, but the drug-sniffing dog was a little hyperactive, so the border guards were more concerned with keeping it from leaping up on people than going through our baggage. (It was a cute little spotted dog, named Jan, I think. I would have stopped to pet him, but I don’t think that would have gone over very well.)
Upcoming: return to Baltisky Voksal, head six stops up the Red Line, walk back to the apartment, and try to shower before collapsing. I’ve actually managed to get some good sleep on the bus ride, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Enough with this vacation business; can we get back to classes now?
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Reporting live from Estonia (and a little late from Moscow)
Wednesday, 8:07 am, somewhere in the Russian countryside (such as it is). Things I remembered to do before leaving for Tallinn: pack my hair dryer, charge my computer, withdraw rubles to change once I get there. Things I did not remember to do before leaving for Tallinn: change said rubles into kroon (if that’s possible in St. Petersburg), print my hostel reservation (to paper; I have the PDF), do any research outside of the Lonely Planet guidebook, pack a towel. Oh, well. The bus is packed, and the recorded announcement said the ride will take about an hour and a half longer than the ticket said, but in any case, I’m not terribly worried. Three days in a quiet little Eastern European city, coming up. :D
And quiet is exactly what I need right now. Moscow was…fine, but we missed the Metro bombings by eleven hours. I understand that there was no real chance that any of us would be in danger, but still. That’s just too close to call. Six hours away from major public transportation systems sounds perfect. :P I got home from Moscow, woke up to Jarlath’s phone call, checked the news, and was shocked out of the mood to do much of anything on Monday…so I slept. For about sixteen wonderful hours. Considering that the Moscow trip wasn’t that long, I’m surprised how much I needed that sleep.
So, we pulled into Moscow in the small hours of Friday morning, ate breakfast at the hotel, and then commenced a three-hour bus tour because we couldn’t actually check into the hotel yet. We were split up by language once again, and I have to say, the Area Studies program had a wonderful guide for our couple of city tours. Eduard gave us the local history without boring us at all, and he interjected many wonderful little anecdotes and quips that made me wish I had a tape recorder. I’ve recorded a few of his stories for posterity in my photo captions. :) After discovering once again how difficult it is to take photos out the window of a bus, I went a little photo-happy in Red Square and a nearby park, which Eduard claimed was the real Swan Lake as preserved for posterity in Tschaikovsky’s ballet! There were no swans around (apparently it’s more like ‘Duck Lake’, but that’s not really ballet-like, now is it?), and the lake was frozen solid…so what did we do? We slipped and slid our way out onto the lake and took pictures, of course. :) Apart from that lake, though, the rest of the weather in Moscow was as beautiful as we could have hoped for. I actually got out of the bus for photo breaks without wearing a coat. How cool is that? :D
But, I digress (no kidding). We returned to the hotel, checked in at last, and basically fell into bed for part of the afternoon. I’m not sure how some of the group managed to get a full night’s sleep on the train, but I might have gotten two hours, if I was lucky. We split up after that little refresher and set out to explore the city on our own. In the case of the group with which I wandered, this involved finding a little café somewhere near Arbatskaya, then splitting up further to (literally) get lost and see where we wound up. Moscow’s kind of a sad place to get lost in, actually. Parts of the city are beautiful, parts of it are bustling, parts of it are vastly important in that way that only blocks full of government buildings can be. But parts of it are just sad. A shuttered souvenir market, a near-empty park just before dark, some cheesy stalls and little markets that just made you feel kind of sorry for the city.
I’ve got nothing against Moscow; I just failed to fall in love with it the way some of my friends did. It may be the biggest city in Russia, it may be the biggest city within tens of thousands of kilometers, but it’s just not a very nice place. Actually, scratch that. Historical Moscow is breathtaking. Modern Moscow looks like an architectural version of my Great-Aunt Rose’s leftover soup. The city grew on itself much the way my high school has, except that Sherwood makes Moscow look organized. It’s too big, it’s too confusing, and it’s not very friendly. St. Petersburg doesn’t exactly welcome you with open arms, but it doesn’t mind your presence, and as long as you respect the city, it respects you. Moscow wants you to come, but only because it wants to sell you stuff. If you’re not interested in buying, Moscow is not interested in having you.
I continue to digress. Once we made it back to the hotel Friday night, we were planning to go see what Moscow has to offer as far as night life; however, various members of the group who’d left before us informed us that the club scene is ridiculously crowded, tightly face-controlled, and REALLY expensive. (Face control is the policy by which Moscow bouncers control entrance to clubs, based on the potential entrant’s appearance. St. Petersburg is said to have this policy as well, but only at the really upscale clubs; in Moscow, it’s EVERYWHERE.) We ended up having a quiet night in with some bad Soviet sitcoms, and preparing for Saturday’s tour of the Kremlin. (I was the first one down to breakfast Saturday morning…how does it happen that I can sleep in at home, but in hotels, I wake up at ludicrously early hours?)
Saturday was more like what I hoped to see in Moscow: a carefully guided tour of the Kremlin, including an assortment of government buildings, churches, and monuments (and the biggest bell and biggest cannon in the world, both bronze, majestic, and completely nonfunctional). We saw the Communist Party Congress, now housing its own ballet hall; we stood on the very spot where all the tsars through Nicholas II were crowned, and saw the little mark on the floor so the nearsighted Nicholas would know where to stand. We saw the tombs of the early tsars, and learned why we couldn’t see Ivan the Terrible (he’s buried inside the altar, the better to purify him for all his sins). We even toured the armory, seeing the Russian crown jewels (the coronation crown has fur on it!), Peter the Great’s boots, and a selection of Faberge eggs (and a Faberge dandelion). Saturday morning-early afternoon was the highlight of my tour of Moscow, and I’m thrilled to have been able to see all that I saw.
The rest of the trip was comparatively slow, though that is by no means a bad thing. I went after the Kremlin tour to a giant souvenir market on the northeastern side of the city, practicing my haggling skills (which still aren’t very good) and buying an assortment of small souvenirs. These included a traditional Russian shawl, called a platka, which I’m wearing now. :) Saturday night was spent in, having a hair-braiding party with a few girlfriends, and Sunday was left to tour the rest of the museums, including Lenin’s mausoleum! Taking pictures inside was ABSOLUTELY forbidden, to the point where we had to check our cameras AND our phones; the experience was very much worth it, though. We moved through the maze of the memorial garden, noting the names of a hundred good Communists on plaques on the walls and granite memorials, then ducked into the darkness of the mausoleum. After the brightness of the day, the tomb is disorientingly silent and dark. The guards herd you along – no stopping to commune with Volodya here – through the ramped room where Lenin reposes atop a black marble podium, lying in state in a red-fringed palanquin, lit with flattering fuschia lights. He looks like nothing so much as a wax figure of the former triumphant dictator. For all we know, he could be wax. Who’d be able to tell, really? And who really cares?
After less than a minute with Lenin, we stumbled out into the sunlight, collected our belongings, and continued our tourism. St. Basil’s, the Cathedral of the Intercession, is a marvel, even if the steps are painfully steep for those with short legs. Ten different chapels merge seamlessly to create a maze of a church, perfect to wander through contemplatively while at the same time playing hide-and-seek in the tiny side passages. Our group split up after this, and three of us explored the Museum of Modern History, labeled as the Museum of the Revolution on the map. It was fine, really, little different from every other history museum we’ve ever visited, and it would probably have meant more to me if there was a single word of English in the museum. By this point, I was rather tired of brightly lit rooms, so I went by myself in search of Jarlath’s recommendation, the Museum of the Gulag, located somewhere near the Lubyanka, former home of the KGB (now the FSB). I never did find it; the square is full of large, imposing, unmarked buildings, and populated by militsia officers who look like they’d like nothing better than to give a young tourist speaking poor Russian a private tour of the former KGB headquarters. (I don’t think the formal name was the Museum of the Gulag, and how do you bring yourself to ask a Russian police officer with a gun for something by that name?) I ended up in a museum devoted to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, instead. I know nothing about this guy, other than that he was a revolutionary poet in the early Soviet Union, and that he died somewhere in the Thirties as a result of some political action (and that he has Metro stations named after him in both Moscow and St. Petersburg). Honestly, I don’t remember which side of the action he was on. This didn’t matter very much, as it turned out, because this might as well have been renamed the Museum of Bizarre Shit in Art and Architecture. I apologize for the language, but that’s my lasting impression. I don’t know what the point of the vast assortment of strange sculpture and artsy things was, but the overall impression was of my having consumed something akin to hallucinogenic mushrooms in my lunch…or maybe the artist was the one with the magic mushroom blini. I need to find a translation of Mayakovsky in English just to see what all the weirdness was about.
I was about museum-ed out by this point, so I went back to the hotel, read for a couple of hours, and accepted a large bag of souvenirs and other objects to take back to Petersburg for traveling friends. (This included Evan’s coat, which I almost borrowed and wore to Tallinn, but I figure mine’s probably more waterproof.) I made it to the train station by myself and traveled back with an Ian McKellen lookalike, who mistook me for a German student (not the first time that’s happened, actually), and a young mother with two small boys of (I think) three and five. It was a quiet trip, thankfully, even though I managed about an hour of sleep over the whole thing. And that brings us to Monday, and the rude awakening with the news of the disaster we’d just narrowly averted.
When I awoke refreshed on Tuesday, I basically managed to do some laundry and send assorted emails regarding class registration before I left for the concert hall. We were playing in the small Philharmonic Hall, but my goodness, I have never had the chance to play somewhere quite that amazing. The hall was absolutely full, which I did NOT expect for the university chamber orchestra. (We also had about fifteen ringers, percussion, winds, brass and the like, about whom I learned just yesterday. It sounded really different playing with them, but different in a very good way.) The concert program was Lehar, Dunaevsky, and Strauss, in that order. Andrei Vladimirovich Alekseev isn’t a patch on Professor Berard for putting a program together, or running a rehearsal, but he might be able to give AU’s maestro a run for his money for sheer conductorly weirdness. :D Encouraging the audience to clap along at several points, having the orchestra stomp and sing along with a couple of the polkas, even leaving the hall during our second encore and wandering back in near the end of the piece…it was strange, but it was quite wonderful. :) Lyudmila Afanasyevna came and thoroughly enjoyed it, which made my evening.
And, now I’m writing on a bus on the way to Tallinn. I’ll post this when I make it to the hostel, and then it’ll be time to see what Estonia has to offer (besides the quasi-rock music playing over the bus radio). Stay tuned! :)
11:47 am. Spring is even slower in coming to Estonia than to Russia, it seems. The occasional patches of dead-looking grass showing through the snow are kind of depressing. However, we’re barely into the country, so I’m reserving judgment as of yet. Took about an hour for the busful of people to get through customs control, during which time I received many a strange look for handing over the only blue passport in a sea of red. At least I didn’t need a visa (yes!!!). We’re about an hour and three-quarters away from Tallinn, if the tickets are correct. I’m rather looking forward to a shower (the hot water was out in the apartment both yesterday and this morning) and then, who knows? :)
And quiet is exactly what I need right now. Moscow was…fine, but we missed the Metro bombings by eleven hours. I understand that there was no real chance that any of us would be in danger, but still. That’s just too close to call. Six hours away from major public transportation systems sounds perfect. :P I got home from Moscow, woke up to Jarlath’s phone call, checked the news, and was shocked out of the mood to do much of anything on Monday…so I slept. For about sixteen wonderful hours. Considering that the Moscow trip wasn’t that long, I’m surprised how much I needed that sleep.
So, we pulled into Moscow in the small hours of Friday morning, ate breakfast at the hotel, and then commenced a three-hour bus tour because we couldn’t actually check into the hotel yet. We were split up by language once again, and I have to say, the Area Studies program had a wonderful guide for our couple of city tours. Eduard gave us the local history without boring us at all, and he interjected many wonderful little anecdotes and quips that made me wish I had a tape recorder. I’ve recorded a few of his stories for posterity in my photo captions. :) After discovering once again how difficult it is to take photos out the window of a bus, I went a little photo-happy in Red Square and a nearby park, which Eduard claimed was the real Swan Lake as preserved for posterity in Tschaikovsky’s ballet! There were no swans around (apparently it’s more like ‘Duck Lake’, but that’s not really ballet-like, now is it?), and the lake was frozen solid…so what did we do? We slipped and slid our way out onto the lake and took pictures, of course. :) Apart from that lake, though, the rest of the weather in Moscow was as beautiful as we could have hoped for. I actually got out of the bus for photo breaks without wearing a coat. How cool is that? :D
But, I digress (no kidding). We returned to the hotel, checked in at last, and basically fell into bed for part of the afternoon. I’m not sure how some of the group managed to get a full night’s sleep on the train, but I might have gotten two hours, if I was lucky. We split up after that little refresher and set out to explore the city on our own. In the case of the group with which I wandered, this involved finding a little café somewhere near Arbatskaya, then splitting up further to (literally) get lost and see where we wound up. Moscow’s kind of a sad place to get lost in, actually. Parts of the city are beautiful, parts of it are bustling, parts of it are vastly important in that way that only blocks full of government buildings can be. But parts of it are just sad. A shuttered souvenir market, a near-empty park just before dark, some cheesy stalls and little markets that just made you feel kind of sorry for the city.
I’ve got nothing against Moscow; I just failed to fall in love with it the way some of my friends did. It may be the biggest city in Russia, it may be the biggest city within tens of thousands of kilometers, but it’s just not a very nice place. Actually, scratch that. Historical Moscow is breathtaking. Modern Moscow looks like an architectural version of my Great-Aunt Rose’s leftover soup. The city grew on itself much the way my high school has, except that Sherwood makes Moscow look organized. It’s too big, it’s too confusing, and it’s not very friendly. St. Petersburg doesn’t exactly welcome you with open arms, but it doesn’t mind your presence, and as long as you respect the city, it respects you. Moscow wants you to come, but only because it wants to sell you stuff. If you’re not interested in buying, Moscow is not interested in having you.
I continue to digress. Once we made it back to the hotel Friday night, we were planning to go see what Moscow has to offer as far as night life; however, various members of the group who’d left before us informed us that the club scene is ridiculously crowded, tightly face-controlled, and REALLY expensive. (Face control is the policy by which Moscow bouncers control entrance to clubs, based on the potential entrant’s appearance. St. Petersburg is said to have this policy as well, but only at the really upscale clubs; in Moscow, it’s EVERYWHERE.) We ended up having a quiet night in with some bad Soviet sitcoms, and preparing for Saturday’s tour of the Kremlin. (I was the first one down to breakfast Saturday morning…how does it happen that I can sleep in at home, but in hotels, I wake up at ludicrously early hours?)
Saturday was more like what I hoped to see in Moscow: a carefully guided tour of the Kremlin, including an assortment of government buildings, churches, and monuments (and the biggest bell and biggest cannon in the world, both bronze, majestic, and completely nonfunctional). We saw the Communist Party Congress, now housing its own ballet hall; we stood on the very spot where all the tsars through Nicholas II were crowned, and saw the little mark on the floor so the nearsighted Nicholas would know where to stand. We saw the tombs of the early tsars, and learned why we couldn’t see Ivan the Terrible (he’s buried inside the altar, the better to purify him for all his sins). We even toured the armory, seeing the Russian crown jewels (the coronation crown has fur on it!), Peter the Great’s boots, and a selection of Faberge eggs (and a Faberge dandelion). Saturday morning-early afternoon was the highlight of my tour of Moscow, and I’m thrilled to have been able to see all that I saw.
The rest of the trip was comparatively slow, though that is by no means a bad thing. I went after the Kremlin tour to a giant souvenir market on the northeastern side of the city, practicing my haggling skills (which still aren’t very good) and buying an assortment of small souvenirs. These included a traditional Russian shawl, called a platka, which I’m wearing now. :) Saturday night was spent in, having a hair-braiding party with a few girlfriends, and Sunday was left to tour the rest of the museums, including Lenin’s mausoleum! Taking pictures inside was ABSOLUTELY forbidden, to the point where we had to check our cameras AND our phones; the experience was very much worth it, though. We moved through the maze of the memorial garden, noting the names of a hundred good Communists on plaques on the walls and granite memorials, then ducked into the darkness of the mausoleum. After the brightness of the day, the tomb is disorientingly silent and dark. The guards herd you along – no stopping to commune with Volodya here – through the ramped room where Lenin reposes atop a black marble podium, lying in state in a red-fringed palanquin, lit with flattering fuschia lights. He looks like nothing so much as a wax figure of the former triumphant dictator. For all we know, he could be wax. Who’d be able to tell, really? And who really cares?
After less than a minute with Lenin, we stumbled out into the sunlight, collected our belongings, and continued our tourism. St. Basil’s, the Cathedral of the Intercession, is a marvel, even if the steps are painfully steep for those with short legs. Ten different chapels merge seamlessly to create a maze of a church, perfect to wander through contemplatively while at the same time playing hide-and-seek in the tiny side passages. Our group split up after this, and three of us explored the Museum of Modern History, labeled as the Museum of the Revolution on the map. It was fine, really, little different from every other history museum we’ve ever visited, and it would probably have meant more to me if there was a single word of English in the museum. By this point, I was rather tired of brightly lit rooms, so I went by myself in search of Jarlath’s recommendation, the Museum of the Gulag, located somewhere near the Lubyanka, former home of the KGB (now the FSB). I never did find it; the square is full of large, imposing, unmarked buildings, and populated by militsia officers who look like they’d like nothing better than to give a young tourist speaking poor Russian a private tour of the former KGB headquarters. (I don’t think the formal name was the Museum of the Gulag, and how do you bring yourself to ask a Russian police officer with a gun for something by that name?) I ended up in a museum devoted to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, instead. I know nothing about this guy, other than that he was a revolutionary poet in the early Soviet Union, and that he died somewhere in the Thirties as a result of some political action (and that he has Metro stations named after him in both Moscow and St. Petersburg). Honestly, I don’t remember which side of the action he was on. This didn’t matter very much, as it turned out, because this might as well have been renamed the Museum of Bizarre Shit in Art and Architecture. I apologize for the language, but that’s my lasting impression. I don’t know what the point of the vast assortment of strange sculpture and artsy things was, but the overall impression was of my having consumed something akin to hallucinogenic mushrooms in my lunch…or maybe the artist was the one with the magic mushroom blini. I need to find a translation of Mayakovsky in English just to see what all the weirdness was about.
I was about museum-ed out by this point, so I went back to the hotel, read for a couple of hours, and accepted a large bag of souvenirs and other objects to take back to Petersburg for traveling friends. (This included Evan’s coat, which I almost borrowed and wore to Tallinn, but I figure mine’s probably more waterproof.) I made it to the train station by myself and traveled back with an Ian McKellen lookalike, who mistook me for a German student (not the first time that’s happened, actually), and a young mother with two small boys of (I think) three and five. It was a quiet trip, thankfully, even though I managed about an hour of sleep over the whole thing. And that brings us to Monday, and the rude awakening with the news of the disaster we’d just narrowly averted.
When I awoke refreshed on Tuesday, I basically managed to do some laundry and send assorted emails regarding class registration before I left for the concert hall. We were playing in the small Philharmonic Hall, but my goodness, I have never had the chance to play somewhere quite that amazing. The hall was absolutely full, which I did NOT expect for the university chamber orchestra. (We also had about fifteen ringers, percussion, winds, brass and the like, about whom I learned just yesterday. It sounded really different playing with them, but different in a very good way.) The concert program was Lehar, Dunaevsky, and Strauss, in that order. Andrei Vladimirovich Alekseev isn’t a patch on Professor Berard for putting a program together, or running a rehearsal, but he might be able to give AU’s maestro a run for his money for sheer conductorly weirdness. :D Encouraging the audience to clap along at several points, having the orchestra stomp and sing along with a couple of the polkas, even leaving the hall during our second encore and wandering back in near the end of the piece…it was strange, but it was quite wonderful. :) Lyudmila Afanasyevna came and thoroughly enjoyed it, which made my evening.
And, now I’m writing on a bus on the way to Tallinn. I’ll post this when I make it to the hostel, and then it’ll be time to see what Estonia has to offer (besides the quasi-rock music playing over the bus radio). Stay tuned! :)
11:47 am. Spring is even slower in coming to Estonia than to Russia, it seems. The occasional patches of dead-looking grass showing through the snow are kind of depressing. However, we’re barely into the country, so I’m reserving judgment as of yet. Took about an hour for the busful of people to get through customs control, during which time I received many a strange look for handing over the only blue passport in a sea of red. At least I didn’t need a visa (yes!!!). We’re about an hour and three-quarters away from Tallinn, if the tickets are correct. I’m rather looking forward to a shower (the hot water was out in the apartment both yesterday and this morning) and then, who knows? :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)