In which Amanda finds her Russian happy place :D

Thursday, 11:40 pm. Long day, but I’m in my happy place. :D

Classes were nothing out of the ordinary; there’s got to be a way to teach phonetics other than drilling us until we all go mad, including the professor, but I’m not sure what it is. After class, though, was when the fun began! We hopped a bus (all forty-five of us) to SS Peter and Paul Fortress, Pietropavlovskiy Krepost, the museum of where St. Petersburg began. As I understand it, this was Peter the Great’s fortress to defend against Sweden, built before Sweden was actually defeated but sporting some impressive victory monuments (that were there from the beginning) anyway. It’s also the burial place of all of the Russian tsars from Peter through the Romanovs. The gardens are supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful, but at the moment, they’re mostly breathtakingly cold. Stepping inside the cathedral and burial chapel was definitely a relief.

I really need to figure out how to post pictures on here, because describing the tombs of the tsars without photographs is a sort of futile exercise. Even with a horde of American students tramping through with bookbags and wet boots, there’s a real majesty to the church. Various colors of marble, gold decorations on every tomb, gold nameplates in almost illegibly ornate Church Slavonic script, the sheer blaze of brightness that is the main altar…it’s a feast for the eyes. The tour guide was almost impossible to hear (Russian tour guides really need to learn to speak up!) but certainly worth the extra effort, with a story about almost every tomb we passed.

I realize that when most Americans think of Russian royalty, one of the first (and, frequently, only) occurrences to come to mind is the murder of the family of Nicholas II. Nobody during the revolution was particularly inclined to give the tsar and his family a decent burial, so their remains were dumped somewhere in a ditch in the countryside, and they were only found sometime in the last twenty years (I forget when, exactly). I used to (oh, who am I kidding? I still do) love the Royal Diaries series of books, written from the point of view of famous princesses at the age of fourteen or so, and Anastasia Romanov’s was one of my particular favorites, so I felt sort of an extra twinge when I looked into this room. In the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, there’s a separate room for the tombs of the Romanov family. Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna are buried together in the center of the back wall; the grand duchesses (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia) surround them on either side; and the tsarevitch Alexei’s grave is against the left wall. Interestingly, most of the plaques have dates on the bottom as to when they were interred at Peter and Paul, but the graves of Alexei and Maria are blank at that point. Their remains were never found.

After that sobering little excursion, the tour continued; however, I had other plans for the evening that did not involve tramping around frozen gardens for another hour. With the full permission of Katya, I excused myself and headed for the metro to make my way to the main campus of the university, eventually winding up where I did yesterday more through trial and error than through actual solid planning. I arrived a little early for the chamber orchestra auditions, exchanged a few words with the quiet cellist Mariam, and sat down to await the conductor, who I was told knew I was coming. Within five minutes, several other girls showed up toting food, and we ended up setting up a birthday party for one of the violinists. And thus was my introduction to the St. Petersburg State University Chamber Orchestra: making buterbrode. :D

Before too long, thirteen string players and the conductor, Konstantin Fyodorovich, assembled in one rather large room with a peeling linoleum floor. I was given a violin that was sitting in a storage closet (they think they have a viola, too, but they’re not sure if it’s in use right now or just ‘elsewhere’) and shown to a seat in the first violin section: trial by fire! As it turns out, this wasn’t an ‘audition’ so much as a ‘hey, we have new members? Awesome!’ kind of occasion. Yulia, the lone violist tonight, took charge of translating for me, making introductions and explaining the rehearsal schedule. Thankfully, the music itself needs no translation. The conductor shouts ‘ras, dva’ instead of ‘one, two,’ and I don’t understand his jokes, but apart from that, it closely resembled any chamber orchestra I’ve ever played with—and the music was delightful! It felt wonderful to have a violin in my hands again, even if it’s an instrument borrowed from a closet and not my own; just the joy of playing with a group of highly competent and friendly musicians put me back in my happy place. I’ve missed orchestras. :)

We took a break partway through for Dasha’s birthday party, which involved snacks, tea, and gossip served on an old piano. Except for Konstantin Fyodorovich, the orchestra is (or at least was tonight) entirely female. Even if I don’t understand the majority of what’s being said, I can at least pick up on the conversational tones, because large groups of college-age women are pretty much the same everywhere, I figure. :) When we finished, six of us walked to the bus stop together, and I bid farewell to Natasha, Sasha, Lera, Yulia, and Masha. Only a few of them speak English, and my Russian is still elementary, but they’re a very welcoming group, and they invited me back next week, which is wonderful! :D

I made it home around eleven (thank you, trolleybuses!) and was greeted with a plate of blini by Lyudmila Afanasyevna. We sat and ate and chatted about music for another half-hour, and only then realized that we both need to get up in eight hours. Thank heavens for classes tomorrow not starting until 11:30! I don’t think I’m going to the choral auditions tomorrow; I think I’m going to wait and see how the chamber orchestra works out first before dramatically over-committing myself. There’s still the English teaching thing to come, and we’ll be meeting English-Russian conversation partners (called sobesedniki) on Monday! I’m thrilled to finally be getting back into the busy swing that is my life’s tempo. Who knows what discoveries await tomorrow?