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! :)
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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?
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