Austin in Russia

И я не знаю, как мне прожить следующий день

2006-08-27T04:43:00.000+04:00

Heeeyy... So, yeah, I haven't written anything here in about three months, but I haven't really felt too bad about it. The blog was really a Russia-specific thing, and I never intended to keep it going after I got back. I guess there are about two weeks at the end of my trip that I never wrote about here, but I am definitely not going to try and recount them in any lengthy-matter. In a nutshell, I did this: Went to Murmansk, came back to St. Petersburg in time for Emily's art show, then spent about 5 more days in the city staying at a hostel and going around visiting and re-visiting a few last places (Hermitage, Russian Museum, etc.). It was a nice end to the whole trip. I got back on May 27th, and since then I've just been hanging around Corvallis, working for OSU in a laboratory aiding in Swiss Needle Cast research (it's noting exciting, you wouldn't want me to explain it or anything). But, anyways, the main reason I wanted to make one lats post here (for now, anyways) was to post this essay I wrote for an essay contest through the International Programs department at U of O. It was actually a photo and essay contest, and I think all 5 of the photos I submitted are on my flickr account. The essay is about my trip to Murmansk, and because the essay guidelines limited the length to 1000 words, it forced me to be succinct (something you all know I was never good at) but I was really pleased with the final result. I turned in the essay in early July but have yet to hear of the contest results. So, who knows if it won or not. So, here is my final entry in the "Austin in Russia" blog (for the time being, anyways). I may very well resurrect this blog the next time I find myself in Russia or in any other part of the world which, hopefully, will be the case in the not too distant future. So, thanks for reading, and enjoy my essay, "Alone at the Top of the World":

“What the hell was I thinking?” I asked myself this question repeatedly as the train lurched slowly passed the abandoned train yards and withering industrial relics that litter the outskirts of the city. However ironically appropriate, the somber violin music weeping from the cabin’s speakers only exacerbated the already dismal scene outside. The forty or so Russian soldiers – with whom I had just shared an open-air train car for the past 28 hours – were getting restless as our final destination drew nearer, and as this uncomfortable restlessness permeated throughout the cabin I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why did I chose to come here?” I had just finished my term abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia and found myself with two extra weeks on my hands. Originally, my plan for after the program was to travel throughout Russia and Eastern Europe with my friend and fellow program participant Ruth. Unfortunately, that plan was shattered along with Ruth’s tibia when she was hit by a car two weeks before our trip was to begin. This, compounded with an unexpected heap of good old-fashioned Russian bureaucracy regarding my visa, meant that my remaining time had to be cut back drastically. Still anxious to travel, I ended up more-or-less on a whim buying a ticket by myself to Murmansk, a city about 840 miles north of Petersburg and well within the Arctic Circle. Why Murmansk? To me it seemed so isolated and illusive way up there, a place that few would ever get the chance to see. I guess it was the same reason why I had chosen Murmansk for my city-project in my Russian class back at the U of O the year before. Here was my opportunity to actually visit this distant and compelling place, quite possibly the only one I might ever have, and at the last minute I decided to take it. As I pulled into the Murmansk train station alone all those hours later, I was really beginning to question my judgment.
That same dreary music poured from the speakers at the station as I stepped into the city in a bewildered daze. Murmansk is by no means an attractive city. Founded only ninety years ago, its architectural heritage certainly leaves something to be desired. To the east the skyline is dominated by large, blocky Soviet-era apartment complexes sprawled across rolling hills of tundra, and to the west by a large industrial port along the Kola Gulf, with its bulky cranes and smog-spewing factories. Lonely and intimidated by my surreal new surroundings, the only thing I really needed was a good night’s sleep, so I headed straight for the city’s central hotel. Despite the difficulties of trying to sleep during 24-hour daylight, and the disheartening experience of having a hotel employee enter my room demanding to know why I had come to Murmansk, I hit the town the next morning with renewed optimism and enthusiasm. It quickly shriveled, however, after wandering alone down desolate back alleys and past crumbling buildings and dead dogs in the freezing May weather. Now, I’m into urban decay and gritty realism as much as the next guy, but being there, all alone at the top of the world in a seemingly neglected and forgotten city, it really started to wear on me. Fortunately, an opportunity to see another side of Murmansk had already been provided.
It turns out that a friend of mine in Petersburg had a cousin named Marina who lives in Murmansk, and when she heard about my trip she gave me Marina’s phone number and encouraged me to call. At first I wasn’t sure if I should or not, but after a day of wandering the city alone I was desperate for some human interaction. I called her that afternoon and we arranged to meet in the hotel lobby later that evening. We went for a walk through the city, down the same streets I had walked down earlier. She spoke no English, but my Russian was decent enough to maintain an interesting conversation, so we walked and talked about the lives we each lived on different sides of the world. She had no family in Murmansk and had moved there by choice four years earlier, which I found to be rather interesting given my early impressions of the city. She said she loved Murmansk, and would never want to go back to big-city life in Petersburg. Like most Russians, she came across as a bit standoffish at first, but revealed herself to be truly kind and generous once I got to know her a little better, and I was so grateful that she had taken the time to make a complete stranger feel welcome in her city. We parted ways that evening, and I returned to my room refreshed and willing to give the city another try.
The next day I spent exploring the city on my own again, but this time it was different. The weather was warmer, the buildings seemed prettier, and I just felt more enthused about being there. After meeting Marina, Murmansk seemed much less lonely and inhospitable. Now with a human face, the city felt to me much more dynamic and real than it had before; a city like any other, inhabited by normal people who are happy to be living there. My experience in Murmansk proved to be a microcosm of my overall experience in Russia. It can seem intimidating and overwhelming at first, and it’s easy to give up early and write the place off entirely, but if you scratch the surface a bit and really try to get to know it, the experience can be very rewarding. Beneath Murmansk’s cold and grim exterior, I discovered a wonderfully unique place where the pretense of isolation and illusiveness is humbly demystified. I spent only three days in Murmansk, but it was probably the most rewarding experience of my time abroad, and proved a fitting conclusion to one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

-Austin

Закрой за мной дверь, я ухожу

2006-05-15T13:39:00.000+04:00

So, here's what the situation is, for those who don't already know. Ruth - the girl I was supposed to travel with for a month and a half after my program ended - got hit by a car a couple weeks ago and broke her leg. So, obviously, she won't be able to travel, and I was forced to suddenly change my plans for after the program. That, compiled with a bunch of issues involving my visa extension and flight itinerary, ended up meaning that I can only stay in Russia, and that I can only stay until May 28th. So my travel plans were cut way back and after a lot of thought as to what I want to to and where I want to go with my extra two weeks in Russia, I finally settled on Murmansk, the largest city in the world inside the arctic circle. I leave today at 6:00 and it's a 28 hour train ride. I did a project on the city last year in Russian class, so I'm excited to finally get to see it. I'll be ariving back in Petersburg on Saturday, May 20th and hanging around here for another week before flying home the next Saturday, the 27th. I'm a little dissapointed that I won't get to see all of (or any of, at that) Eastern Europe like Ruth and I had planned, but I'm sure I'll have the opportunity again. Ruth is fine and everything, by the way. She flew home on Saturday. Our last day of classes was last Friday. It's good to be done with everything, but I'm definitely already missing all my friends from the program. I know I'll see some of them again. And thank god for Facebook, by the way. So, just thought I'd let everyone know what's up, for those who are interested. I'll try to make another quick post like this when I get back from Murmansk too, and hopefully put some pictures up on Flickr. Wish me luck at the top of the world!

Я ничего не знаю...

2006-05-03T15:55:00.000+04:00

So, the end of my time in St. Petersburg is in a mere ten days. And as it were, there are a lot of end-of-the-term things that need to be wrapped up and taken care of. So, unfortunately, I may not be able to find the time to sit down and write up another big long post. If I do have a free night I certainly will, but there's no guarantee. My post-program travel plans have recently been thrown into complete dissary, and at the moment I have no clear idea where I will be going or when I will be getting back. So, I'm basically writing this brief post to let everybody know that I don't know what will happen from here on out. Once I know more, I will write something here, but for now, I'll just have to leave it at this. Take care

Я не могу успееть в шесть

2006-04-25T16:37:00.000+04:00

So It looks like another week has gone by again, and it’s time to recap its events. I think I’m going to try to be somewhat concise this time, because I really don’t want to be writing for four hours like I did last week. So, let’s start with last Tuesday. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m fairly certain I went straight home after school to rest up before the Red Lion like every Tuesday. The Red Lion was good as usual, all the same faces and what not. 05 New York City was there again, so Katie roped Peter David into playing her fake boyfriend for the evening to keep him away. I think it worked pretty well. Anikan was there again, and I always like talking with her. Emily showed up a later on with her mother and boyfriend who had just gotten into town. I know him from UO, and he’s been studying in England for the year. He took a train from London to St. Petersburg, including a trip through Belarus and a four-hour stop in Minsk. Lucky bastard. Although, it may not have been worth the $200 for a transit visa. Apparently he was supposed to come earlier, but his train was canceled because a house fell on the tracks or something. What a continent. All in all, a pretty standard night at the Red Lion, so I don’t think I really need to elaborate much more.
On Wednesday I had been hoping to get some exploring in before going to teach English, or maybe even finally going to the Hermitage, but I ended up being introduced to Vickie’s parents who are here visiting and they invited me to lunch with them, Tom, and Katie, so I had to oblige them. How could I pass up a free lunch? I had always heard there was no such thing, but apparently there is, So, we walked to the bus stop and were planning on riding it to Nevskiy to go to some lame restaurant called Propganda, but the number 5 trolley-bus ended up making an unexpected turn and took us by the Chernishevskaya metro station, where I suggested we jump off and go to the Uzbek place nearby instead. We walked to the restaurant and found it completely packed with nowhere to sit. One of the tables was occupied by none other than our friends and fellow program members Peter David, Kenny, Sasha, and James. It was hopeless getting a spot, so we decided to try some other place nearby. We ended up going to this cheesy wild-west themed restaurant called Montana that had pretty sub-par and altogether very Russian food, despite their best attempts at serving real western cooking. Vickies parents were really great and extremely Greek. Well, her dad is at least. I understand her mom moved from Greece to America when she was very young, so she was pretty Americanized, but her dad was basically born and raised in Greece and it really shows. It really is just like out of the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Every other word we said, Mr. Tsombanos whould point out, “that’s a Greek word.” Apparently he gets very emotional and cries a lot too. I really enjoyed hanging out and eating with them. And of course, I didn’t have to pay for any of the food. After lunch I had to take off to get to my English class on time. I walked to the university from the nearest metro station (Gostiny Dvor) and on my way past Palace Square I had to stop and check out what was going on. The square was filled with various factions of the Russian armed forces standing in various formations marching to various music or just standing there in formation. They had soldiers standing all around the square not letting any civilians in. I asked one of the sailors who was standing guard what was going on and he said they were all practicing for the big Victory Day parade. Victory Day is May 9th, so they really are getting a big head start on that. I also saw a big group of soldiers marching down the street in between traffic. I passed a souvenir stand that was selling little framed portraits of famous Russian celebrities with a pen that had the same picture on it. I found one of Viktor Tsoi and of course had to get it. It was the best 25 rubles I’ve ever spent. Anyways, in the English class, they were working on a chapter about advertising, and so we did a lot of exercises with a text about a famous Levi’s ad from England in the 80’s. There is this one women in class named Yulia who is apparently 27 (I would have guessed at least 30) and is an economics professor, and she is kind of like the really out-spoken know-it-all of the class, and I think all the other students resent and just generally dislike her. In response to the question, “If you were to make a jeans ad, what would it be like?”, she gave a big long-winded answer describing her ad in great detail, which included two parts: the first part would show women wearing the jeans and working in a coalmine (“digging for brown coal,” as Yulia put it), and the second part would show a pregnant man (I assume he would be hearing the jeans too, but I don’t know how) standing in the kitchen with a pan and a baby carrier. Then, there would be words on the screen like, “One in the same,” or something like this. But then, Yulia insisted that, “I am not a feminist.” Pretty strange. Another student, Ludmila the German professor, happened to bring in an issue of an Austrian magazine that had a jeans ad in it just to show me because that was the topic we were discussing. The ad featured a bunch of topless women covering their chests with their arms and wearing the jeans in question. Ludmila seemed to think it was very funny that she was showing it to me and seemed quite interested in knowing what I thought of the ad. I taught them the saying, “Sex sells,” and the whole thing felt kind of awkward. At one point, things got a little tense between Yulia and the Biology professor Sveta. Sveta said that she usually writes about one scientific article a year in English without an editor or any native speaker looking over it. Yulia found that very interesting, because she hopes to be able to write articles in English but said that she would need someone to look over it, and when she found out that Sveta does them on her own, she asked her, “Then why do you make mistakes in class?” Sveta got pretty annoyed, which is quite understandable. Yulia shouldn’t have said that. Sveta defended herself by saying that it’s much different to write a scientific article than to speak conversational English, and in general just got really defensive. She is a bit shy in class and tends to make some mistakes here and there, but it’s nothing too big. Yulia does speak very well and at great length, but it’s just because she is much more confident and confidence is really a big part of speaking a foreign language, I’ve come to find. Anyway, the class was a bit strange but very interesting nonetheless. Marina was not in class so I didn’t have anybody to talk to on the bus ride home. After dinner I studied up for my grammar test the next day, took a shower and hit the hay.
On Thursday I took that grammar test (found out today that I didn’t do so great. Oh well, it happens), went to my other classes, etc. After class I decided that I really wanted to go check out this big book market that our conversation teacher had told us about. I got Kenny, Stacey and Matt to come with me, but Stacey and Matt dropped out before we could get on the bus because it was already getting kind of late. But, Kenny stuck by my side. We had to ride the metro to an obscure station that I had never been to before and then walk a few blocks to find this place. It was all indoors, much to my dismay, but it was still pretty cool inside. There were lots of booths set up selling all kinds of books for really cheap, as well as some CD and DVD stands and lots of jewelry places. Kenny left after a little bit because he was getting tired and wasn’t that interested in the books. I stuck around a little while longer and ended up buying a few things. I got a thick little book that had lyrics to hundreds of Russian folk songs by tons of different Russian bards (the folk-singers of the soviet era), and then I bought a couple of novels by some Russian authors that I like. Yes, they are in Russian, and no, I won’t be able to read them all the way through yet, but once I get better they will be really good learning tools. The two novels were “Camera Obscura” (yeah, like the band) by Nabokov and “Heart of the Dog” with two other shorter works by Bulgakov (Ok, not really a novel, but you get it). Most of the booths were starting to close up so I got back to the metro and rode to Sennaya ploshchad and then walked from there to St. Isaac’s cathedral where I was supposed to meet with Vickie, Tom and Katie to go out to dinner with Vickie’s parents again. I walked down some streets I hadn’t been before and sat outside in the nice-ish weather in front of the cathedral for a while before it was time to meet. We all found each other and Vickie’s parents met us there and we all walked to a Greek restaurant that they had already been to once. I was prepared to be there all night dancing and drinking Greek-style, but it turned out to be much more low-key. There was a band but they didn’t paly for very long, and a lot of it was classier French stuff and not fun danceable Greek music. I almost ordered a salad that included camel meat, but ended up getting the salad bar instead. The food was really good and I even got to drink a couple Pilsner Urquell’s, which I hadn’t had in a long time. II sat next to Vickie’s dad so I ended up talking to him a lot. He is a really great guy and had a lot of interesting things to say. It was Vickie’s mom’s birthday, so we had some birthday cake and everybody was having a good time. We ambled back to Nevskiy with them afterwards and caught a bus while they went back to their hotel. At home I probably did a little homework and then went to bed.
Friday was a pretty fun day. After class I went with a bunch of people out to lunch after school. I was kind of thinking of going to the Hermitage again, but again I got side tracked and ended up going with other people to do something else. I’m determined to go this Wednesday, though. I walked with Peter David and James behind everybody else. This was really weird: James told us about how he went out to the outskirts of the city the other day and got a prostitute. Peter David swears he was joking, but he seemed pretty serious about the whole thing to me. James is a pretty strange guy, to say the least. He’s going to Kazakhstan for the summer and had to go pick up his visa at the Kazakh consulate, but decided to come with us first. Everybody finally met up on Nevskiy and we went to the fast-food bliny place called Teremok. The bliny was good, as usual. We all sat in the restaurant for a while afterwards, and once we all left I convinced Peter David to come next door with me to Dom Knigi to check out the map room some more. I didn’t buy any maps, but I always enjoy looking at them. We walked around the rest of the store and I found a book that had lyrics with sheet music and tabs to some Kino songs, which I of course had to buy. Anything for Kino. We each went home afterwards and I did some nice relaxing in my room before going out to meet everybody again. The plan for the night was to go bowling at this big hotel way out near Primorskaya metro on the other side of the island. They had all gone the weekend before when I was in Helsinki and they all wanted to go again. It’s called the Hotel Pribaltiyskaya, and is definitely the Hotel Kosmos of St. Petersburg. They had a little 4-lane bowling alley downstairs and we took over two of them. There were tons of us there, and probably about 6 or 7 people bowling on each lane. We bowled only two games which, because of all the people, ended up taking quite a while. All the usuals from CIEE were there, plus a few of the Brits and Anikan. Everybody was having a good time, and after our time was up we all made it outside where everybody somehow broke up into small groups going off on various quests for food and/or shelter. It was quite cold out considering how warm it’s been lately, so we huddled together and wandered around Korablstroitelei street. I was in a group with Katie, PD, Ruth, Nick, and Kenny. We stopped by Nick’s apartment to get a hat for Ruth, and then walked down to the Primorskaya metro station to find a shaverma stand that was open. We found it and all stood on the street eating shaverma. Shaverma is this delicious food from the middle east that is really popular in Russia and can be bought from kiosks all over the country. They basically have this huge chunk of meat that is cooked on a big skewer, and then they shave pieces off of it throughout the day, put it in a pita or tortilla-type thing and add a special sauce, some cabbage, sometimes cucumbers and tomatoes and sometimes even French fries. It’s amazing. I’ve been having a lot of it lately. We finished our shavermas and then decided against staying out all night, and everybody either walked home or took a chasnik from there. I shared one with PD and Ruth. At home I probably listened to music for a while and fell asleep.
For Saturday, Nick, Kenny and I had decided to go to that market that I had already been to with all the CDs and DVDs. Peter David decided to come along in the morning too. The night before we had all agreed to meet the next day at Vasileostrovskaya at 2:00, just to give everybody enough time to sleep in, eat breakfast, and get out there. It turns out we were all up relatively early and could have easily met by 1:00 at the latest. When I got there to meet them I was informed that James was going to be meeting us out there too. He was supposed to go to Petrzavodsk for the weekend, but apparently he couldn’t get a ticket so he was still around. We took the long metro tide out to Avtovo and waited around for a while for James to get there. We all rode the marshutka out there, and once we got to the market we kind of all split up and found our own stuff. I had a good time exploring the flea market out front. I bought some really cool old soviet pins for 10 rubles each. I also found something that I am usually really into and figured I wouldn’t really be able to find any of in Russia: records! I ended up buying 4 total: an Okudzhava, a Vysotskiy, an Alica, and a Nautilus Pompilius. I’m going to have to ship stuff home anyways, so why not? I ended up going a little crazy and buying tons of MP3 CDs as well as quite a few movies. Why not when they’re so cheap? I got a bunch of Russian stuff that I’ve been curious about, as well as some MP3 CDs of Bowie and Roxy Music. I got some cool Russian movies as well. Must of the other guys didn’t really buy much, except for James who bought a ton and didn’t have anywhere to put everything besides a tiny paper-thin plastic bag that started falling apart. Luckily he had also bought a ridiculous banya hat that doubled as another bag. He ended up buying a CD by the old Dutch pop band Shocking Blue (Nirvana covered a song of theirs) because I had been looking at it. He asked me what it was I was looking at, and I said it was just some band I new almost nothing about but would like to learn more about, and he somehow must have taken it as a recommendation. I tried to tell him that he probably wouldn’t like it, but he kept saying, “If I don’t like it, it’s just a few bucks down the tube.” Yeah, he’s pretty well-off, as you might have guessed. Nick and PD left early, so Kenny, James and I were left to wander for a bit more. After some shaverma we caught a tramvai (that’s what they call a tram. It was my first time on one, actually) back to the metro and to home. I was pretty exhausted and ready to relax for a while that evening, but after I got home I got a text message from PD about meeting with people at Petra a little later to get a hookah. We hadn’t been there for ever or even had a hookah anywhere in a long time, so it sounded like a good time. After dinner I headed out to meet them by the metro. Katie, PD, Kenny, Matt, Stacey, Olympia, and Olympia’s friend Diana all came to hang out, and we had a couple beers and some cherry tobacco in the hookah. It was a nice relaxing time. We went to get some food afterwards, and instead of opting for McDonalds like everybody else I went to the stand outside and got another shaverma. Kenny got a beer and we hung out in McDonalds with everybody else while they ate. I did end up getting a little soft-serve ice cream cone from there, which only cost 6 rubles. After McDonalds we all had to decided what we wanted to do. You see, it was Orthodox Easter the next day, so at midnight all the churches in town have their traditional Easter ceremonies, and some of our friends were downtown to catch the event at Kazanskiy Sobor, but none of us really felt like getting down there to meet them. Well, I guess Kenny did, cause he took off to go meet up with everybody else. Olympia is Greek and Orthodox, so she was all set with her head-scarf and everything to go to the church just down the street from where we were, and she took Diana with her. I was really interested in checking out the Easter stuff to, but PD and Katie really weren’t, so they went to Kofe Khaus to hang out while I went to the church. There was a big crowd gathered out front, and for about ten minutes before midnight they kept ringing the church bell at few second intervals. Right at midnight, all the bells started going off like crazy, and the priests came out holding their big icons above their heads and started walking around the church. Everybody in the crowd followed them and made one lap around the church. I found Olympia and Diana as we were following the priests and stayed by them. Lots of people were holding candles, and the whole scene with all the people and lights and the bells ringing was pretty great. After our turn around the church we stepped inside for a second to see all the services, but it was so packed that we couldn’t stand to be in there for too long and got out. Everybody was chanting stuff, and the sound of everybody speaking at once sounded pretty cool. After we finished up there we met up with PD and Katie at Kofe Khaus and sat in there for a while gossiping. It was then time for us to all go home, so I shared a chasnik with the girls. We rode with a guy who was blasting Eminiem. All in all, Saturday was a pretty solid day.
On Sunday the weather was amazing, and I knew right when I woke up that it was a day to be spent wandering the city. Katie had mentioned the night before wanting to go exploring the next day, so I called her up and we made a plan to meet at Gostiny Dvor a little later. She invited Tom and Vickie to come, but they were both busy. PD said he would meet up with us later. Katie and I walked along Gostiny Dvor and then went into that big clothing market that I had gone to with Natalie so long ago. She really wanted to find those big bags made from straw that Russians pack all their stuff in when they travel, and we eventually found them. They are pretty cool and pretty functional bags, so I ended up buying one too. They were only about $1.30 each, so it was quite a deal. I also went into the domestic appliances / toiletries store because I needed a new electric razor. You see, I was stupid a few days before and used my razor without using a voltage converter and it fried my razor (even though I had used it without a converter before), and so my options were to be proactive and go out and buy a new razor or just forget about it and let my beard get all long and gross. I figured the former would be the better idea, so I bought the second cheapest razor (about $15), and thankfully had a new bag to carry it in. The razor turned out to be pretty terrible by the way, and only after about a half hour of running it across my face and agitating the skin pretty badly was I able to consider my face decently enough shaved. From there we tried to walk to Sennaya Ploshchad to get some food from one of the countless vendors, but somehow got set on a different course and ended up in an area where I’ve never walked around before, which was good because that’s what I had been wanting to do all along. We ended up near the Vladimirskaya metro station and then walked down the big street to the Pushkinskaya metro station, where we finally found a little café and got… you guessed it, more shaverma. We also each got a Berry Fanta, which I absolutely love. PD called us and since Katie had to leave soon to get home for some sort of special Easter dinner, he and I planned to meet at Ploshchad Vostanniya in about 45 minutes. After sitting and talking in the café for a while, Katie and I hopped on the metro and rode the two stops to Vostanniya. Katie waited with me for PD and then took of after he showed up. I convinced PD to come with me to some other obscure part of town, so we chose Ploshchad Lenina (by the way, “ploshchad” means “square,” so all these places I’ve been mentioning are different squares around the city), which is on the Vyborg side where nobody ever really goes. We got there and saw Finlandskiy Vokzal (Finland Train Station), which ironically does not serve Finland anymore. There is a big classic statue of Lenin in front, which I of course took a few pictures off. We started walking along the river , checking out the great view of the main part of the city across the way. We crossed a bridge over to the Petrograd side and saw the big battleship “Aurora” that is permanently on display there. We were standing around checking out a statue when out of nowhere, Stacey comes running up and grabs us. She and Matt had been sitting on a bench nearby. It’s so weird, because nobody ever really goes to this part of the city, let alone hangs out there, but then we somehow run into each other there out of the blue. So, we started hanging with them and sat on some benches by the river for a while. We talked about all our favorite SNL sketches and other American TV shows we miss. We kept walking and crossed the bridge back to the main part of town. There are tons of chunks of ice floating down the Neva right now that have all been breaking away from further up stream, and of course we had to see if we could spit onto them as they passed below the bridge. It isn’t that hard when the chunks are big enough. We walked around near the eternal flame and the Church on Spilt Blood for a while, and then most of us decided it was getting a little late and we started heading home one by one. PD went first, then Matt, Stacey and I stood on a little bridge over the Moika in the sun for a while before we parted ways. I walked along the Mokia (one of the canals that runs through the city) and ended up near the Hermitage. I found a big group of people in a big circling singing songs and playing guitars and I couldn’t figure out who they were, what they were doing exactly, or if they even all new each other, but it was still pretty cool. I tried taking some videos, but my batteries were too low for video and I only got a few one second clips. I walked through Palace Square along the Winter Palace and sat on a bench to wait for a bus. Back at home I started going through all the music I had bought the day before, and talked to my parents on the phone. I called my old house in Eugene after that and talked to Strand for a while. It was great to talk to him and hear about what’s been going on back home. I’m excited to get back and see everyone again, but it looks like I probably won’t be living with them again in the fall. It looks like I’ll probably be living with my friend and former Russian teacher Josh who is coming back from Taiwan after all. If that’s the case, I hope I don’t find it too hard to hang out with the old roommates and all that crew, cause I really do miss those guys. I had to take a shower and stuff, so I didn’t get to bed until around 2:00.
Today was Monday, and quite a wonderful Monday at that. I did something I hardly ever do and skipped one of my classes today, because it was too beautiful and warm of a day to be sitting in Phonetics class for an hour and a half. That room reeks of Beets too. I went with PD, Katie, and Kenny (noticing any patterns here?) and we decided to go to Sennaya Ploshchad to peruse their excellent assortment of food stands. Guess what we all ended up getting, though. So, we took our shavermas and say on a bench in the sun, and it was definitely a skipped-class well spent. Almost everybody else at school skips a lot of classes, so I feel justified in doing it this one time when the weather was so nice. After our shavermas we all got a gin and tonic in a can that Russians are so fond of and hung out on the bench for a while longer. When we were finished we went into McDonalds to use the bathrooms, and then we each ended up getting some ice cream (remember, 6 ruble ice cream cones). Kenny had to go to an internet café to research for a presentation, and PD and Katie were going to go to Soiree for a while, but I just couldn’t waste my day inside somewhere like that, so I went wandering around. I feel like I covered a lot of ground, and almost all in a part of town where I hadn’t been before. I finally saw Nikolskiy Cathedral and the Marinskiy Theater (where I will be seeing Don Giovanni on May 6th, by the way) and some cool buildings I never knew existed. I worked my way towards Nevskiy to go to the internet café with USB ports so I could upload some pictures, but when I got there I found that it was completely empty with no computers at any of the tables and big “for rent” signs in the window. I was just there like a month ago. Funny how fast things can come and go like that. I still had a little time to kill before it was time to teach English, so I got a bliny and a coke and walked around some more. I found a bench over near the Hermitage and sat around for a while people-watching. There were still quite a few soldiers and various such people practicing their parade moves in the square, and I saw the soldiers marching over the bridge again. There are lots and lots of people out all the time now enjoying the nice weather, so the city really does feel much more alive. I walked over to the university and ran into Anikan in the courtyard. She’s in St. Petersburg teaching English, but she also teaches Norwegian (her first language) to a class at the same place where I teach. We talked briefly and then went to our classes. Today was my last class with the teenagers because they have their final exams this week and next week. The real teacher was actually there for the whole class today, and she had me teach the students lots of different idioms I know. I taught them such great ones as “he has a hollow leg,” “blood is thicker than water,” and even, “going the way of the buffalo.” I don’t know if they understood them all entirely, but they seemed interesting. I brought some pictures of me when I was younger for them to see, and they were very interested in those too. It was very sad at the end of the class because I had to say goodbye to all the students. I gave them my email address and cell phone number (even though it would only do them any good for another few weeks), and they were very excited to get that. Some of them seem very attached to me now and rather upset to see me leave. The one 16 year-old girl named Sasha tried calling my cell phone with the number I gave them just to make sure I wasn’t trying to give them to wrong number. The teacher, Lera, had given me a goodbye present of a mini-matryoshka doll, a wooden spoon, and a magnet of Palace Square, which was all very nice. Before I left, she asked me to come meet with her other class that she teaches next Saturday to help with some exercises that they haven’t been able to do because they need a native speaker. It’s kind of early on Saturday, but it seems like it could be fun and it seemed like Lera really needed me to help her out. She said the class is all girls about my age, so that would be nice too. I’ll tell you how that goes later. I walked out to the bus stop and three of the students (Sasha, Ksenya, and Olya) wanted to walk me out and wait with me at the bus stop. They were still upset to see me go. A bus came and I said my final goodbye, but the bus was so packed that there was no room for me to get on, so I kept standing there and the girls laughed at the situation and came back one more time to say goodbye. They went back to class and the next bus came really quick. Now, here I am at home again. I’m not sure when my next post will be, because this Sunday we are taking a group trip to the old Russian town of Pskov, and won’t be coming back until Tuesday. I might not be able to write until after that. We’ll see how it goes. I hope everybody’s doing alright. Talk to you later.

Lock it up

2006-04-18T15:07:00.000+04:00

So I finally bought a new thumb drive and will now be able to upload this post along with the last one I wrote about a week ago (yeah, check below this one for another new post. In fact, you should probably go read that one first to maintain continuity). I guess it’s fair to say that a lot has happened since then, so I’ll get right to it. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember all the important details of the last week. Tuesday was a typical day of school, as far as I can remember, and I rode the bus home from Smolniy when classes were over. A few of the Brits were on that bus to, and I found out that Amanda and Olympia were planning on going to Helsinki for the weekend, and I thought it would probably be a good idea to tag along with them. But, you can read more about that later. At home I did some homework, relaxed a little bit, you know, the usual. Then of course, as usual, left a little before nine to go down to the Red Lion for free champagne night. That’s been four Tuesday nights in a row, I believe, and I’ll most likely be making it five tomorrow. The usual gang was there as usual, except this time Stacey had brought a new group of friends (well, one friend of hers, who intern brought a couple of her own) from the same program in Denmark that the last group of friends had come from. They seemed nice, but didn’t really seem interested in talking much with us. They started getting into a deep conversation among themselves about culture and stuff, so after a bit I moved over to another table to hang with Kenny, Peter David, and the like. One of the girls was from Portland, though, so that was pretty cool. The Norwegian girl named Anikan who was there the week before came again, and we talked with her for a while. I apologized for making a lame Star Wars joke the last time I saw her (Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. Katie had said about Anikan that, “She’s really good at pool,” and I responded with, “and pod-racing.” Get it?), and she said that everbody always does and it doesn’t really bother her. I mentioned that my middle name was Luc and then we started joking about how she was my father. It was pretty fun. Oh yeah, there was this weird guy from Ghana that was hanging around our table and hitting on all the girls. His name was, get this, “0-5 New York City” (that’s how he introduced himself to everybody, at least). He danced with Katie for a bit and by the end of the night was proclaiming that she was his girlfriend and that he was going to take her back to Africa with him. It was a pretty sketchy (or dodgy, as the Brits would say) situation, but I the guy was harmless. I had told Emily before about free champagne night and she made it out this week. She brought a friend along named Mave (yeah, a lot of weird names at the Red Lion), and they sat at a table near us. They talked with Tsveti and Abby for a while, and it’s good to see my different groups of friends merge together sometimes. Olympia showed up to, even after saying that she probably wouldn’t. I knew she would. I mainly stayed at the same table the whole night, having different conversations with different people. I talked with Emily and Mave for a while. Mave told me about cheap buses to Helsinki because she had just gone the other weekend (again, read more about Helsinki later). Peter David and I had a private conversation, too. I teased Olympia about all kinds of things like usual (you can’t really have normal conversations with Olympia), and talked to others like Bryce, Matt, Stacey, etc. It was a good night, as usual. Well, for the most part anyway. Bryce ended up getting his cell phone lost/stolen because he left it out on the table and some new people came and sat there. It was a bummer, but he got a new one so it’s fine now. I left with Katie and Olympia when 0-5 New York City started getting too creepy. We got a chasnik for 200 rubles, which was really good because last time none of the drivers would go below 250. We all got home safe and sound at around 2:00-ish (I think. I can’t remember for sure). I dragged myself out of bed on Wednesday morning to go to school. School was the same as always. Again, sorry I always skip over school. It’s just become so monotonous that nothing ever really stands out from one day to the next. Not that anything we talk about would really be of interest to anybody else. Maybe one of these days I will write a post more about school, about my professors, etc. But for now, I’ll keep skipping over it for the most part. After school I went straight home and worked on my homework for a while before I had to go teach English to the professors. I had an essay do the next day about my spring break and impressions of traveling in Russia. I worked on that for a while and a few other assignments before heading out and catching a marshrutka over to the university. In class we talked more about “genius” and inventions and things like that. I think those students are starting to really like, or at least respect me. It’s always hard to figure out what to do with them because I really have no instructions or structure to go off of other than the book, so I basically just pick up from where we last left off in the book. The best part, though, and what I try to incorporate into the lesson as much as I can, is impromptu discussion about the topics in the book and about what the students think about them themselves. I think it’s a really good way for them to use and learn the language and learn more about American / English culture, and it’s good for me because it’s much more interesting that going over grammar exercises. After class I talked with Marina on the bus again. She told me about some good clubs to go to in the city. At home I finished up my homework and tried to go to bed as early as possible, because I had basically decided at that point that I would be going to Helsinki the next day and figured it would be good to get as much sleep before a long overnight bus ride as possible. I went to classes the next day and tried not to linger around at school afterwards so I could get home and pack some stuff up before heading out for the weekend. We were going to leave Thursday night because the Brits don’t have school on Friday, and besides if we left on Friday night it would only give us about one day in Helsinki, and that wouldn’t be enough. I through some close, my camera, ipod, and a few various odds and ends into my little duffle bag and around 8:15 headed out to meet up with the others. We had been trying to get Tom to come along with us and at the last minute he decided to tag along, so the plan was for the four of us (Tom, Olympia, Amanda, and me) to meet in front of the Hotel Oktyabrskaya on Ploshchad Vostannia at 9:00. This is what I had learned from Mave the other night: There are a bunch of buses that wait around right there every evening around 9:00/9:30 that go to Helsinki, and you don’t need a ticket or any kind of reservation to ride them, you just show up and pay them 350 rubles (about $13 or $14, not bad for a 250 mile or so bus ride) and you’re on your way. Mave had said that they ask you if you can hide cigarettes in your bag for them to smuggle across the border, but we were never approached about anything like that. We say an older woman holding a sign for Helsinki and she took us to the right bus and that was that. The bus finally pulled out around 10:00 and we drove through the northern suburbs and out into the countryside. There was a TV on the bus and one of the bus drivers (I think there were two operating in shifts) put on a video of some weird variety/comedy/musical concert, but I was listening to my ipod so I only watched and didn’t listen. The bus stopped in the Russian town called Vyborg, which is supposed to be pretty cool, but all we did was stop at a gas station to use the bathroom and get some snacks. A bit passed Vyborg we came to the border, and had to go through about three different check points just to leave Russia, before we even go to Finnish customs. At the first stop, a guard just got on the bus and looked at everybody’s passports, and at the next we had to get out and go through official customs where they actually check all our paper work, stamp our passports and make us chose whether or not we have anything to declare. Then there was one more guard who looked at all our passports before we got back on the bus. It all went smoothly for all of us. I kept my migration card the whole time and never let them see it, because after the last time trying to get into the Ukraine I was really paranoid that if they got it they wouldn’t give it back. They never even asked to see it, so that was no problem. After a quick stop at the duty-free shop, we went a little ways down the road to Finnish customs. It was fine for all of us except Olympia, who is a Greek citizen and has a sketchy-looking Greek passport that apparently her dad made because he works at the Greek consulate in Trieste, Italy, and has the authority to make passports. Tom, Amanda and I made it through with no hassle what so ever, and then waited around outside for about 15 minutes while the customs officers called around and checked numbers and all kinds of things because apparently the number on the passport was hard to read and they couldn’t figure something out or something. I was never really clear on why. Some Finnish officers hauled away some scrawny German guy who was definitely on something. It was kind of weird, but still felt really safe because we were in real Europe. After everything got straightened out with Olympia’s passport we got back on the bus for the final stretch to Helsinki. It was around 2:00 in the morning or so by then, so I tried to sleep but really couldn’t because I was so cramped on the bus and it was so warm that I just couldn’t get comfortable at all. I got maybe a half hour of unsatisfying sleep at the most. About a half hour outside of Helsinki it started getting light and I could see the nice forested Finnish countryside. We got into the outskirts of the city and dropped some guy off at some place he wanted, and I was able to grab his seat and stretch out a bit. The bus kept going and dropped everybody off in a parking lot next to the bus station. So there we were, dropped off in the middle of Helsinki at about 6:00 AM, exhausted with nowhere to sleep and nothing to do, so we started walking around and seeing what we could find. We were all very tired, of course, so we decided that they first course of action should be to find a place to sleep. We walked in the direction of a hostel that Tom stayed at the last time he was in Helsinki and found it pretty quick, despite our worries. We went upstairs to the reception desk and asked for a room. We told the guy that we had no reservations, and he informed us that they were all booked up. He we should go down to the train station and talk to the “hotel experts” there to try and find a good place. Back on the street we were looking through my Finnish guidebook for other hostels and stuff (I had found a Lonely Planet guidebook of Finland among the books on the shelves in my room, obviously left by a previous student. I didn’t think I was going to get the chance to need it, but now I’m glad it was there), when a weird drunk man came up to us and started talking in Finnish. We told him in English that we don’t speak Finnish and were really surprised when he wouldn’t speak English back to us, because everybody in Finland speaks English. He kept trying to tell us things, and pointed to my big blue hat and said something like “pea-pod” and thought it was really funny. He kept making all kinds of weird gestures, and at one point said something that sounded like, “fuki fuki fuki,” to which Tom replied, “that’s a pretty weird thing to say to another person,” which kind of became one of many catch-phrases from our weekend in Helsinki. We walked away from the guy and went down to the Bus station, which we had already seen and knew how to get to. The bus station is pretty cool looking (check flickr) and has a big open square right next to it. Inside we saw that the “hotel expert” kiosk was closed and wouldn’t open for a few hours, so we picked up some maps and guidebooks, made some calls and tried to find a place to stay that wasn’t too expensive. There was broken glass on the floor and some vagrant-types that these burly-looking security guards kept kicking out. I tried to convince them that it would be a good idea to get on the internet and try to find someone on Couchsurfing.com or Globalfreeloaders.com that would let us stay with them, but they thought it was a bad idea. We finally decided to check out this place called Hotelli Finn that was really close and seemed reasonably affordable. It turned out to be a really great place. It was all on the top floor of a downtown building, and had nice little comfortable rooms for 65 euro a night (80 for a room with a shower, which Olympia and Amanda took), which is more than I would have like to pay, but it was in a pinch and it isn’t that bad when you consider the fact that I was splitting it with Tom. Finland, I found, is just a pretty expensive country in general. Oh well, what can you do? Nothing, that’s what. We got our rooms and pretty much all crashed out right way. We all went to sleep at around 8:30 and didn’t wake up until about2:30 in the afternoon. We like to joke that we got three nights’ sleep out of the two that we paid for at the hotel. Once we were all up we decided to go wander around and check out the town. Helsinki is relatively small. The population is only about 530,000, which I guess is pretty comparable to Portland proper. In fact, the city reminded me of Portland in a lot of ways. It was a huge difference to see a city like this coming from St. Petersburg. The streets are very clean and well-maintained, there are very few cars on the road (much less than in Petersburg, at least) which means it is very quiet and peaceful and just very pleasant feeling all around. The people are all friendly and speak English, which is always a huge bonus. The architecture in Helsinki (yeah, like that band everybody likes) is great, and there are all kinds of cool building fronts with the occasional big church or cathedral poking out here or there. There are lots of statues and monuments everywhere too, which is one thing that I really like about a lot of European cities that I have been to and which that it was more common in American cities. We walked down to the waterfront where there was a nice little bay area with islands here and there and walkways between many of them. The water in the little bay area was still largely frozen, and there were all kinds of seagulls and ducks flying around squawking and sitting on the ice. We stopped at a little coffee stand that had tables around it. Olympia was buying drinks for everyone so I let her buy me some hot chocolate and I sat and looked out on the water. The girl working at the counter was really nice, and we were marveling at how great all the Finnish people are and how great the quality of life is. There was a blanket draped over one of the chairs next to us and we thought somebody had left it. Then we realized that there were the same blankets on almost all the chairs that people were using, and we realized that they are just left there for people to use in case they get cold! How amazing is that! I’m sure that none of them have ever been stolen too, because that’s just not something that a Finn would do. I hadn’t worn my big jacket so I was rather cold and too advantage of the Finnish hospitality. So, needless to say, we were all pretty impressed with Finland by that point. We walked around on the little islands and took some pictures before heading back to the hotel for a little break. We stopped at a little grocery store along the way for some snacks and what not. Tom got some marinated garlic cloves in olive oil, and I got a deliciously warm and soft loaf of French bread. Tom and I each got a six-pack of beer. He chose the Danish brand Carslberg (which he already knew he really liked) and I trued the cheap Finnish brand called Koff. That was all I was going to get, until I saw probably the most exciting thing that I saw the whole time I was in Helsinki: Dr. Pepper! I hadn’t had a Dr. Pepper in about three months and was really starting to miss it. I only bought one bottle, though. It was a little bit different from the American kind, but it was still undoubtedly Dr. Pepper, and I was very happy to have found it. I only saw it in that one grocery store, so I don’t think it’s really all that common in Finland. Apparently it’s more popular in Estonia. Back at the hotel we hung out in Olympia and Amanda’s room because it was so big. We snacked on bread and garlic and had a little beer. We watched a little Finnish TV, which is great because everything is subtitled instead of dubbed, so we could watch all the American movies and TV shows that they played. There was this one movie called Shortcuts that Tom was getting into, but we pulled him away from it so we could go get some dinner. We found a “Mexican” place that seemed alright, if not a little expensive, Tom and I each ordered some Chicken burritos that turned out to be insanely huge and came with rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole and lettuce on the side. I somehow managed to finish it all, while Tom barely put a dent in his. It was also really nice to get free water and chips like a normal restaurant in America. There is no such thing as free water in Russia. We were all so stuffed after our meal that we just went back to the hotel room to relax. We watched Memento on TV and that terrible Sitcom with Reba Macintyre (why would something like that be popular on Finland?). I made a fort out of the sofa cushions and the others made fun of me. The girls got tired and kicked us out of their room, so we went back to ours and went to bed. We all had a good night’s sleep and woke up in the late morning. Once we were all ready we went for some breakfast at a local fast-food chain called Hesburger, which was actually not that bad. After we ate we all decided we would like to use the internet, so we found an internet café that only had two computers and which were both being occupied. The employee informed us that there was another one across the street in the shopping center, so we went there and found that if you buy something you can get 15 minutes of free internet. I got some ice cream and the others got their own things and we took turns using one of the two computers. I just checked my email, checked facebook and that was it. Once everybody was set for the internet we had to decided what we wanted to do next. All the others really wanted to go shopping and look around the Mall area, which of course I had no interest in doing. I told them that I was going to walk around and I would meet them in an hour and a half. I headed out and walked passed the train station and around some corners and then headed for the water. I walked along the embankment for a ways until I reached this big church on a small hill I walked around that and took some pictures of the church and of the view from the hill, and then headed to the waterfront on the other side of the small peninsula that the church was on. There was a touristy crafts market there,a dn I looked at all the souvenirs and everything but didn’t buy anything. The weather was beautiful and I took lots of pictures of buildings and statues and all that. I could see the top of another church a few blocks away, so I walked towards that and found that it was a huge church right next to a big open square with a statue of Alexander II right in the middle of it. I climbed the big stairs up to the church and had a look inside. It’s a Lutheran church, I guess, and wasn’t nearly as extravagant as some of the Orthodox churches or gothic cathedrals that I have seen, but it was still pretty cool to see. I wandered around the streets a little more before it was time to meet back up with the gang. Walking around by myself is always one of the most rewarding experiences when I travel, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to do it in Helsinki. I found Tom back on the computer when I got back, and Olympia showed up soon afterwards. We waited around for Amanda for a while just outside the café, but she never came. Tom and I got in a dispute as to whether or not the University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, and he got back on the computer to prove me wrong. We eventually went looking for Amanda but couldn’t find her and thought maybe she went back to the hotel. We got back and saw that she wasn’t there, so we waited around just a little while before she showed up. We hung out in Tom’s and My room for a little bit before we were all ready for some dinner. Choosing a place to eat was a big hassle. After discussing it for a long time we decided on trying to find some Italia food. We went to a place called Iguana but found the menu to be rather unappetizing (well, at least I did) and decided to move on. We wandered around trying to find something else we could all agree on, and finally walked into a mall that had a decent-looking Italian restaurant. Olympia spoke Italian with the waitress so we were on their good side. This place actually had free refills, which also doesn’t exist in Russia, but you have to go up to the soda machine and refill it yourself like in a fast-food place. No biggie. The food was quite decent and came with lots of free bread. We also each got a shot of some kind of liquor that was on-the-house. After dinner we all agreed that it was time to figure out hwo we were getting home the next day. We tried calling the number on the card we had been given by the bus company we had taken there, and after some cell phone troubles finally got through, only to have it cut out before we could get all the information we needed. We tried calling some places from a pay-phone but couldn’t figure it out. We went back to the hotel and tried to use the phone in the room, but that didn’t work either, I had been trying to get a hold of Emily all day so she could give me Mave’s number so I could call her and find out how she got back. She finally got a hold of me and gave me Mave’s number, but she doesn’t have a cell phone so I could only call her host-family’s house. I didn’t get any answer on that phone, so that was a bust. Tom finally got a hold of the bus company again and talked to the women named Nina. She told us something about calling again at 8:00 the next morning or something like that, so we left it at that and decided we would figure it all out then in the morning. We relaxed around the hotel for a while before heading out to check out the nightlife. There was a little bar right downstairs from the hotel, so we decided to check that out. We actually got carded at the door (well, “passported”) but of course were let in. It was all so much more expensive here than in Russia. It was about 5 euros for a beer (well, it was a nice beer [Newcastle]) and about the same for a rum and coke. I’m used to Russia where It costs a maximum of 80 rubles (less than $3) for a good cheap beer and around 100 rubles for a shot. I only had one beer and one rum and coke, though. We sat at a table and chatted for a while and drank our drinks. Tom and I talked about music as usual while the girls had to carry on their own conversation. The bar got pretty hopping a little later on. I was pretty tired and knew I wasn’t going to be able to do a long night. There was talk of staying up all night and getting on the bus at 8:00 the next morning, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage that. Olympia and I were a bit hungry, so we decided to grab a quick bite at the McDonalds around the corner. I ordered a cheeseburger and they told me, “we don’t sell cheeseburgers here. You can get a double cheeseburger though,” so I had to go with the double. I thought that was a pretty weird thing to say to another person. After we finished we walked back to the bar and saw Tom and Amanda coming out. Tom was all set to go out to a club, but I definitely wasn’t feeling it (when am I ever?). I did not want to stay out really late and then have to try and sleep on the bus the next day. In fact, I was ready to go back to the hotel right then. But Tom was all set to go and trying to get us to come. Amanda and Olympia kind of wanted to go and kind of didn’t and we stood on the street corner for a long time while Tom tried to convince us to come. We decided that we would go back to the hotel for a little while, they would take a nap, and then they would go out to the club (I definitely wasn’t going to go). It became apparent after a little while that once they went to bed they weren’t going to get up to go to the club at 3:00 in the morning, and the club idea quickly lost steam. Tom was a little disappointed, but he was set to go to bed by then too. So, we all went to sleep planning on getting up early the next morning and trying to get back to St. Petersburg. Tom set his alarm and woke up around 8:00 to call Nina again. The call didn’t work or something and we just ended up going back to bed for a little while. We woke up again around 8:30 and decided that we should probably just go back to the spot where we had been dropped off the other day and hope that the same kind of bus will be there again and will be going back to St. Petersburg soon. We checked out of our hotel rooms, hit the streets of Helsinki on a cold, foggy Easter morning and walked back to that parking lot where we had been dropped of. Luckily, there was a bus waiting to go to St. Petersburg just like we had hoped. We actually met that Nina women, paid our 10 euros each, and got on the bus. After sitting around for a little while, we learned that the bus didn’t actually leave until 1:00, meaning we had gotten up really early and checked out of our hotel rooms for nothing. We could have slept in and still made it to the bus in time. Oh well. Live and learn. We decided we might as well go walk around and try to find some food. It was about 9:00 on an Easter Sunday morning, so of course nothing was open. We had a hunch that the McDonalds down on the main drag would be open, so we walked down there and sure enough, there it was, a shining beacon to our hungry eyes. We got some breakfast sandwiches and the like and sat around for a little while eating our breakfast. There were a lot of young people in there who had obviously just come back from partying in the clubs all night and were having their early morning meal before heading home to bed. One girl got up to use the bathroom and threw up on the stairs on the way their. We sat around for a while after we were finished just because there was no place else to go really. After a while all the young party animals left and soon the middle-aged tourist crowd took their place, fresh off of their long night’s sleep. After a while we decided that we might as well head back to the bus and wait around for a while before it leaves. It was pretty boring back on the bus, but at least we could relax a bit in the somewhat comfortable chairs. When 1:00 finally rolled around we were out of there. Luckily the bus was pretty empty and I was able to get two seats to myself, which proved to be key to my comfort on the way back. For the movie, this time they showed some cheesy 70’s American action movie called Sloane that I had never heard of before. It was a pretty ridiculous movie. After that one they played Once Upon a Time in American, which I had heard of before but knew nothing about. It was pretty violent and messed up from what I could tell not listening to it. The bus stopped at a fish market outside of Helsinki that had all kinds of crazy fish and sea animals for sale. I saw a stack of whole eels, for example. Pretty weird stuff. I bought some soda and that was god enough for me. Once we got to the border we stopped at a grocery store where some of the people were dropped off while the bus went back up the road just a little bit to this sketchy store that sold all kinds of things in bulk. We didn’t get out at the grocery store, but stayed on the bus and got to see everything that they were doing there. There was one building that was like an empty little warehouse that had a sign that said “importing exporting” on it, so we knew right away it was pretty sketchy. Some men started loading big bags full of strange assortments of clothes into the baggage area at the bottom of the bus. Tom was convinced that there was secret stuff hidden in the clothes that they were smuggling across the border. Who knows, maybe the bus is just offering a cheap way for this company to get their goods into Russia. Either way, it didn’t seem like it could be entirely legal, but I didn’t ask questions. Once everything was loaded up headed back to that grocery store and picked everybody else up, and again loaded some boxes of assorted good into the bottom of the bus. From there it was a few dozen yards to the border. Finnish customs were a breeze. They just glanced over our passports, stamped them, and we were on our way. Once we got to the Russian side we had to fill out new migration cards, as is required for all non-Russian citizens when entering the country. We showed them our old migration cards too and the women told us that we need photocopies of them for their records the next time we enter Russia. Whatever, at least they gave them back to us. All in all, border crossing went really quick, and after another quick stop at the duty-free shop, we were on our way back home. I bought a bar of chocolate that apparently is for men only (I don’t get it). The sides of the road were filthy as soon as we entered Russia. For the rest of the ride I listened to music and maybe even dozed off a little bit, I can’t remember. Soon we were in the northern suburbs of St. Petersburg and traffic jans became a reality again. We stopped at the metro station called Chyornaya Reka (Black River) and some people got off there. I realized that it would probably be a lot quicker if I got off here and tool the metro than if I stayed on the bus and rode it all the way back to Ploschad Vostannia. So, I said goodbye to my travel companions and hoped on the metro and before too long I was back in my apartment, safe and sound. My host-mom whipped me up a quick plate of pelmeny with sour cream, and I called home and talked to my mom, dad, sister, and grandma for a while. I didn’t really have that much homework to do, so I took a shower, watched some Family Guy on my computer and went to bed. Today after classes were over I used the internet for a while and then tried to turn in my passport to be extended. See, I’m going to travel in Russia and then in Eastern Europe for a while after the program is over, and in order to do that I need to have my visa extended for a while so I can stay in Russia past May 15th. Natasha, the woman in charge of all that at Smolniy, told me that if I turned in today (Monday) I would get it back on May 5th, which would give me plenty of time before the end of the program and would also mean I would get it back just in time to maybe make a trip to Estonia and Latvia on the weekend of the 6th/7th (Tuesday the 9th is a holiday, so I thought I might skip that Monday and take a four-day trip to the Baltic nations). I went into Natasha’s office to turn it in, and she asks me, “Do you have your photos?” Apparently, you need three 3x4 cm matte photos of yourself to get your visa extended, which she had neglected to tell me when she was explaining to me what I needed to do to get my visa extended. So, now I have to turn it in tomorrow (Tuseday), and Natasha told me that I won’t be getting it back until about the 11th, which would still get it back to me just before the program ends and it’s time to start traveling, but leaves me no hope of taking a long weekend in the Baltic nations. I was pretty bummed out about that for a while after school, but at least it means I won’t be spending more money. I can use the money I would have spent on that for the rest of my travels later this summer. So, after that disappointing blow, I went with John and Peter David to the Uzbek restaurant for a big delicious lunch to cheer myself up. The park we usually walk through is currently closed for drying, so we had to walk around. The food was amazing, as usual, and I was completely stuffed afterwards. John went home, but Peter David tagged along with me while I ran some errands. First, we stopped in at the computer store so I could by a new thumb drive. This place called “Komputer Tsentr Kei” is a chain of computer stores around the city that still operates like an old-fashioned Russian store. This means, you have to talk to the employee and tell them what you want, then they write down the product number on a piece of paper, then you bring that piece of paper to the cashier where you pay and get a receipt, which you then bring back to the employee you talked to who then gives you what you bought. It’s so complicated and pointless, but that’s basically Russia in a nutshell. So I got a pretty good deal on a 256 MB thumb drive (it’s super tiny too!), and then it was on to errand number two. I had to get those photos taken for my visa extension and Natasha had told me that there was a place across from the Chernyshevskaya metro station that would do it, and we were right around there so we went to check it out. The place is a little photo store inside of a 505 store. I told the really grumpy and unhelpful photographer what I needed, and he told me that they wouldn’t be ready until Friday, but told me the address of a place nearby that could do it today. Peter David and I looked around 505 for a little bit before I went and found this other place. He bought a Pearl Jam CD and I bought a DVD of more Gaidai films. When we were done, he took of for home while I found this other photo place. I found it pretty quick, talked to the photographer and told him what I needed, and he had me sit down right away and snapped the picture. I only had to wait about 10 minutes for my pictures. This guy was a Photoshop wiz. There were a couple other people before me and he finished touching up their pictures and printing them out before he got to mine. I watched him as he worked with mine. My hair was kind of sticking out on one side, and he Photoshoped it out and made the whole thing look nice and professional. It only cost me 100 rubles for six photos too. So, very pleased with my experience at that photo place, it was time to get over to the university to teach some English. I rode the metro to Gostiny Dvor, where I jumped on a bus that I had never taken before (route 187) that apparently went to the right place. It did, and I got to the university with plenty of time to spare. I sat and did some homework in the courtyard before it was time to start class. The teacher was sick again, so it was just me and the kids like it has been the past few times. I like it this way, actually. We went over some exercises and they took turns reading an article about a guy hiking the Appalachian Trail, and then they asked me questions about places in the US and stuff like that. During the break I hung in the room with some of my favorite students, and I tried to draw a picture of Russia on the white board. Then we took turns quizzing each other on the location of Russian cities. I know more about Russian geography than they do. There are two kids in the class who usually have a hard time focusing and staying on track, and they sat together today so it was a bit tough keeping them from talking to each other the whole class and messing around on their cell phones, but they eventually settled down. We did some work with crossword puzzles before it was time for me to go. I caught the number 7 bus right as I stepped outside and this got home very fast. My host-mom wasn’t there when I got home but arrived soon afterwards and apologized that she wasn’t already there and hadn’t made dinner yet because she had been at the dentist and thought I was coming back later. She made me a really good pasta and meat dish, though the soup was sub par. I basically started writing this post when I finished dinner, and now here I am almost four hours later and still writing. Well, not for long. Wow, this post really ranks up there with some of the longest ones. Plus there’s that other new one that I will be uploading at the same time. Well, you’ve all got your work cut out for you if you want to read it all. Though I suppose if you are reading this you already have read it all. Good for you. See you around.

One of the great posts of our generation

2006-04-18T15:04:00.000+04:00

Hey! It’s that time again. You know. So, let’s see, Friday. Friday I went to school like normal. I brought my laptop because I was going to meet Emily at Soiree at 3:15, and I figured I might as well get some internet time in as long as I was there. I was still kind of sick like the day before, but definitely feeling well enough to be out and about. So, I was kind of just assuming I would go straight to Soiree after school, but then I found out that there was an excursion planned to go visit Pushkin’s apartment. I wasn’t really that interested, but in the end I figured I may as well go, seeing as how all those excursions have already been paid for. Plus, it would still give me plenty of time to get back to Soiree in time to meet Emily. We rode a van-bus over to a spot along the Moika and walked through a tiny doorway into a courtyard and into the apartment that has now been turned into a museum about Pushkin. I wish I had actually read some Pushkin or something before having gone, because it turned out to be pretty boring as I had expected. The furniture in the apartment wasn’t even his, just furniture “from his time.” I did see the actual couch he died on after being shot in a duel, though, and the vest he was wearing. So I guess it wasn’t a total bust. I would like to read some Pushkin anyways, though. After the tour, which only took about 25 minutes or so, we were free to go. Kenny and Rob had to head back up Nevskiy too, so I walked with them to the Gostiny Dvor metro station and we parted ways from there. We talked about Street Fighter on the way. I rode just one stop to Mayakovskaya and made the short walk to Soiree. Emily was caught in traffic, so she was a little late while I sat and tried using the internet for a while. It was going incredibly slow and I could barely get anything done. I listened to the two Americans sitting behind me. The one girl is apparently in Russia teaching English, and she seemed so ditsy. She kept talking about how she can’t wait to get back to America so she can get hair extensions. Emily showed up after not too long and we sat and chatted for a while. We had met so I could lend her something, but I’m not allowed to say what it is because it is in connection with something that is apparently bad luck to talk about. Sorry, Emily asked me not to talk about it, so I guess I’ll just have to leave it at that. Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad or weird. She tried using her computer too but it was having troubles and wouldn’t start up or something. I hope it’s OK now. After a couple hours of being there we headed out. I rode the bus home to relax for a bit before heading out again. There was a plan to meet outside of Gostiny Dvor at 9:30 and then go to this bar called Money Honey. Some people wanted to go to this place called Club Revolution instead, but other people said that it sucked, so we did end up going to Money Honey, thank goodness. There was some miscommunication with Vickie and e ended up meeting outside of the Vasileostrovskaya metro station instead of right outside our apartments. We met up with Katie, Bryce, Matt, and Tom and walked to Money Honey. We had to walk along the side of Gostiny Dvor, and the building is huge and takes forever to walk down. Maybe I haven’t explained what Gostiny Dvor is yet. It’s basically a huge department store / mall with lots of expensive stores. I haven’t actually been inside, but walking around the outside of it is good enough for me. At one point while we were walking I was looking over at Tom and Matt, I think, and didn’t see that somebody had opened the door from the building right into me, and I smashed my shoulder into the door. It was two older women who were coming out of the building, and they just gave me a weird look and walked away. Of course, had something like that happened in the US, the person who had opened the door into the other person would have been really apologetic, but not in Russia. Forget it. Anyway, Money Honey was really close, so we get in and pay the cover and get checked with a phony-metal detector (I swear it was) and were let in. This place is pretty crazy. There’s a big confederate flag out front, and the bottom floor is like a western-themed bar that plays rock ‘n roll and country music, while the second and third floors are more like a bar / club / whatever, but all really laid back and with lots of room to sit and relax. They also have some really weird things there, like a little shooting range where you can shoot these weird pellet-gun things at cans and stuff for 50 rubles. It seemed like a really bad idea to mix alcohol and guns, but I guess they had it all under control there, and the things that you shoot from the gun probably couldn’t really hurt anybody anyways. They’re like these little metal tip things that are maybe about the size of a BB, but weigh a lot less. There was a band playing when we got there, and another one was on after them. Neither were that great. We got a big table and sat around for a bit. Vickie somehow won a free Heiniken T-shirt. Ruth, Kenny, Nick, and Allisonn showed up a little later. They had been sitting in KFC drinking for a while before and were already pretty drunk. Especially a certain person in the group, but I shouldn’t really talk about it I guess. There’s a lot of “drama” surrounding some certain people in our group and I don’t want to talk about who it is or what it is, but that means that I can’t really explain a lot of our time spent at Money Honey cause it all kind of centered around that. Let’s just say some things were said and some people left and some people are mad at other people and blah blah blah. I try to stay out of all that stuff as much as possible. But anyways, some people left relatively early, but some of us decided to stay. The remaining group consisted of Nick, Ruth, Allisonn, Kenny, and Me. After hanging around for a while we decided to go to KFC (back to KFC for some of us) because we were hungry and KFC is open 24 hours. On the walk over Kenny and Ruth went the wrong way and walked for quite a while before they realized that they were walking the wrong way by themselves, and the rest of us tried to get a hold of them and waited around while they came back to meet us. Some weird guy started walking with us on the way there, and came in with us to the restaurant. He ordered a beer and sat with us while we ate our chicken. He said he was really into old American rock ‘n roll, like Carl Perkins, Eddy Cochran, Elvis, and all that, though his favorite band is the Stray Cats. He would keep breaking into song every now and then, singing songs like, “Hello, Mary Lou.” He wanted us to come with him to some music club, and some of us thought it would be fun to go with him at first, but he started getting creepier and weirder and we soon realized that we didn’t want to go with him. He kept telling Allisonn how beautiful she was, kissing her hand, and then pulled out a bad of paper and drew her portrait. He wrote “So beauty girl!” at the top of it. When it was time to leave they all kind of wanted me to tell him that we weren’t going to go with him to the club, so when we got out the door I told him that we were all tired and were just going to go home. He seemed fine with it, shook our hands and crossed the street and finally got away from us. He then kind of lingered for a while and we felt like he was trying to follow us or watch us or whatever, so we slipped down that side street that loops around and comes out on Palace Square in front of the Hermitage. We wanted to go to Kofe Khaus for Ice cream, but we had to go this round-about way to avoid this guy. Luckily we were able to loose him and made it to Kofe Khaus. It was about 4:45 in the morning at this point. We sat down, relaxed, and had some ice cream, but by the time we were done it was still only about 5:30 and all the public transportation of course doesn’t open until 6:00. So, we decided to take a cue from all the Russian teenagers that were still hanging around in there and sat on the sofa-type seats to take a nap for a half-hour. The manager didn’t seem to mind really, until it got close to 6:00 and he started waking everybody up so they could get out and ride the metro home. I was so read t get home and sleep for real at that point. Everybody else headed for the metro, but it’s better for me to ride the bus, of course, so I walked to the bus stop just in front of the Hermitage and waited for a little while until the number 7 came. I got home and went right to sleep in my bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. I slept that way all through the next morning (well, early afternoon I guess). I had my usual weekend bliny breakfast with that delicious carmely sauce. There was a gathering of sorts going on that day at Nathan and Mila’s (the program directors [they’re married]) apartment. They had someone there cutting hair, but a lot of other people were going over there just to hang out and watch movies. We were supposed to go at 2:00 but I was going to be late, so I just met up with them there. I rode the number 7 bus from outside my building down to the Gostiny Dvor area. For some reason I couldn’t figure out, the bus was completely packed. It was about 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Why were there so many people on this bus? It’s so unpredictable, whether or not a bus is going to have a lot of people on it or not. So I got really hot wearing my big jacket on the hot crowded bus, and by the time I got off my hair was all gross and sweaty. I walked down the street to where the apartment supposedly was. It was in an area I hadn’t been before, and it was incredibly nice right around there. It’s right next to the Fontanka and some other canal, so there are all these nice bridges everywhere and some palace was nearby and a great church and all this stuff was right outside of their apartment. I couldn’t figure out how to get in, so I called Bryce and he explained. I got in the building and made it up to the 5th floor where their apartment is and came in to find a pretty big group there already. Oh man, this apartment is absolutely amazing. Apparently Nathan and Mila bought it back around 1989 for super cheap and fixed it up and everything, and now Nathan says it’s definitely valued at over a million dollars. Mila did all the interior design, and it has been featured in Russian home and garden-type magazines. The place is just huge, way bigger than my house in Corvallis even. I’m not even sure how many rooms this thing has. I don’t think I even found them all. There are lots of rooms off of rooms that loop around other rooms and seem to go forever. There are at least 3 bathrooms, a huge open kitchen and dining room, various family-type rooms and guest rooms, and the best part, an entertainment room, that’s basically like a little movie theater. There’s a big pull-down screen with a projector and a big media center with DVD and VHS and a stereo and all that, with surround-sound speakers. Incredible! So, we all hung out there for the day not getting haircuts and watching “Indiana Jones: the Last Crusade” and “Wedding Crashers,” drinking soda and ordering pizza. It was pretty fun and relaxing, I have to say. After the last movie we all left, and I headed home with Vickie. I ended up staying in the whole rest of the night. It sounded like a lot of people were staying in, and I was pretty tired and still a little sick, so it seemed like the thing to do. I don’t even remember what I did the whole night. Just listening to music and messing around on the computer, I guess. Sunday morning I woke up to the most gorgeous sunny day I had seen in a long time. The temperature was up to around positive 10 Celsius (about 50 Fahrenheit), which felt so warm. I ate some quick bliny, and then went with Vickie to meet up with Katie and Tom down on Nevskiy to walk around and take advantage of the beautiful weather. It was my first day in St. Petersburg where I left the house without my big green jacket. I just wore a light jacket-thing and I didn’t feel cold at all the whole day! The three of them wanted to go walk around the Church on Spilled Blood because they hadn’t seen it up close yet. We walked around and took some picture and ended up in that little souvenir fair behind the church. There was a guy selling all kinds of old soviet pins and buttons that all looked pretty cool, and I’d like to go browse there some more and maybe buy some. He did talk me into buying one thing, though. There was a little pack of old police Identification cards, drivers licenses, and carious other official documents, all confiscated or stolen or something at some point in the 70’s or 80’s and they somehow found their way to this souvenir stand. They seemed kind of cool but neither Tom nor I were really that interested. The guy said 300 for the set at first, and we definitely didn’t want to pay that much for it. He kept working it down and I still wasn’t all that interested. I finally took him up on it when he gave me the price of 100 rubles, plus he threw in two pins of a red star with the hammer and sickle in the middle of them. It was a pretty good deal, I think. We browsed for a little while longer, but we didn’t really want to by anything more right now. We were all getting a little hungry and I convinced everyone to come with me to try this Russian chain-restaurant place called Yolki Palki right off Nevskiy. In front of the restaurant, gathered around a statue of Gogol, there was a pro-Chechnya demonstration going on. We picked up some literature from them and headed into the restaurant. It was a little bit corny inside, but the food was pretty good if not small. I got some pelmeny with sour cream that was really good. The others got some shish kebabs and French fries. After lunch I got the guys to follow me onto the metro and two stops away to go check out the Alexander Nevskiy Monastery at the far end of Nevskiy Prospekt where nobody ever goes. We got some ice cream before he went in the monestary, of course. There were all kinds of crazy limbless beggers inside the monastery walls that we had to skirt by, and then found out that you had to pay a fee to get into the real part of the monastery, so we walked around in the free part for a while but it wasn’t very interesting, so we headed up Nevskiy back to Ploshchad Vostanniya. I had never been on this part of Nevskiy before. It’s the part that nobody ever bothers checking out, but it was pretty nice, especially on a day like that. We walked by a music and movie store called Titanik and decided to check it out. They had a lot of good stuff, and I ended up buying an official copy of that big popular Russian movie Dnevnoi Dozor and a movie that I saw on the shelf staring my idol Viktor Tsoy from Kino. I had no idea what they movie was about or if it was any good, but come on, it’s a movie staring Viktor Tsoy. That’s all that needs to be said. It’s called “Igla” (Needle). I can’t wait to watch the whole thing. Vickie and Katy bought some things too and after a big long hassle of the cashier trying to make change for Katie’s 500 and trying to figure out how to use the credit card machine, we were off. Tom and Vickie went to study for a test, so Katie and I rode the metro home. I caught up on all my homework, watched Dnevnoi Dozor (though I had to find a way around the fact that it is an official DVD and my computer was giving me a hard time about trying to play DVDs that are formatted for a different region) and talked to the family on the phone for a while. It was cool to watch that movie because a pretty large portion of it was filmed at / takes place in and around the hotel I stayed at in Moscow. I don’t remember what time I got to bed at, but it was probably pretty late. Today they weather turned a complete 180 from yesterday, and on the way to school it was like a blizzard, with huge and heavy snowfall and howling, bone-chilling winds. At school I got my grammar test back (B+) and had a strange phonetics class with only a few of us in there. That teacher definitely likes me the most because I can usually pronounce all the different sounds and emulate her sounds pretty well, but I know everybody else really hates that class and can’t stand her. Luckily, after class the weather got a little better. The skies were pretty cloudy, but not completely overcast. We got a few brief sun breaks here and there. I was thinking about finally going to the Hermitage because it is on my way to the university where I teach English, but I talked to Kenny and he said he was going for a walk to find some cool stuff, so I decided to tag along with him. He wanted to find the building that used to house the Leningrad KGB offices and now houses some other police group or whatever. We walked down I street I hadn’t been down before and saw some pretty cool stuff. The weather was pretty cold, but not too bad at all. That one building was actually pretty boring to look at, but we kept going to find some other buildings that Kenny had wanted to see. We walked right by where Nathan and Mila’s apartment is, and then through a park-ish area and saw an eternal flame burning. We warmed up by it for a bit and took some pictures. We found a broom in the bushes, the kind a witch would ride on, so I took a picture of Kenny riding on it like a witch, He carried it around with us for a bit but then got sick of it and threw it in another bush. We went to this place called the Marble palace but didn’t go in. Apparently it’s a branch of the State Russian Museum. There was a really cool monument to Aleksandr III out front. We then tried to check out this place called the Summer Palace, but it was in this park that we discovered to be “closed for drying,” so we headed on down towards the Hermitage instead. Kenny took off to head home, but I still had to kill some time before my English class. I thought I might as well check out the Hermitage finally just for a bit before the class, but quickly discovered / realized that, like almost all museums in Russia, it is closed on Mondays. So, I stood around in Palace Square for a bit, looking at the pillar and imagining what the place must have looked like back on Bloody Sunday 101 years ago. I heard recently that the huge pillar in the middle of the square isn’t attached to its pedestal by anything, it’s just resting on it. It’s kind of a scary thought, actually. I had never really hung around in Palace Square before, or at least not since all the snow melted away. It really is an amazing square, considering all the things that surround it. It’s so big and open that when you walk around you can’t really hear your own footsteps, because there really is nowhere for the sound to echo. It’s just so quite and solitary walking around there, it’s eerie. I used a pay toilet and then sat on a bench for a little while watching some people feed birds. I was getting cold and decided to walk around some more. So I headed for the bridge to Vasilevsky Island and the university. As I was crossing the bridge, I was lucky enough to see some of the alst big chunks of ice on the river below slip free and drift away under the bridge and away to the gulf. I thought that all the big chunks right there were going to slip away, but they kind of wedged themselves together and stuck for a while. I got bored waiting for them to free themselves so I moved on. I bet they’ve broken free by now. There was a group of guys walking around and standing on some chunks or ice near the edge and taking pictures of each other. It looked dangerous. I walked around on the tip of the Streltsy (the “nose” of Vasilevsky Island) and took some pictures of the river, the ice, and the buildings in all directions. I then headed over to the university the back way and entered through the back too. Some bad-ass security guard tried to stop me from getting in, but I just flashed my student ID and he had to let me in. That ID wields a lot of power sometimes. I got lost on the university grounds down these were back lots and dilapidated buildings. I heard marching troops or something in the distance. It was really eerie. Some women stationed at some sort of booth asked me what I was doing and I said I didn’t know where I was. She kindly guided me back to the main university area, and after making a few more wrong terms I finally found the right building. I still had a little time to kill, so I sat on a bench outside for a while and listened to a little music. It turned out that the teacher of my class was subbing for another one again today, so I had to teach the class on my own for the first part again. They gave me a re-telling of a little text about Valentine’s day, and we did some grammar exercises from the book. They asked me some questions, I told them about my run-in with the militsia and showed them my passport. They were very interested in looking at it, and were baffled by the concept of a middle name (They have them in Russia, but they are much more important than in America and are always derived from the father’s first name). They wanted to play some games, so we did a round of hang-man, then the game where you name a word that starts with the letter that ended the word before it, then a round of the game where you say, “We are going on a picnic and we are bringing…” and you have to foods for each letter of the alphabet and keep going all the way through. That brought us up through the end of class. I think they really enjoyed playing games instead of having a real class period. Who wouldn’t? I left around 8:00, took the bus home, ate some dinner, did some homework and started writing this update. Next thing you know, it’s almost 12:30 and it’s time for me to go to bed. I’m not sure when or how I will get this post up. Soon and somehow, are the answer’s I’m shooting for. See you later.

A quick post made during my 10 minute break from class

2006-04-13T14:36:00.000+04:00

I wrote a post the other night, but since I lost my thumb drive I haven't been able to post it. I'll find a way soon. This weekend I am going to Helsinki, Finland, so look for another post about that somewhere down the line. Peace out.

Лети, последний рубль!

2006-04-07T16:54:00.000+04:00

Hey. It’s Thursday night and I’ve been home sick for most of the day. I’ve been feeling kind of sick for the last few days but it wasn’t bad enough to miss school until today. Well, I didn’t miss a whole day of school. I had a big grammar test in my first class that I couldn’t really miss, so I went to school for that and then went home before my second class. I spent the rest of the day listening to music and watching movies from my Gaidai DVD. I’m going to try and make it to school tomorrow though, because if I stay home my host-mom pretty much won’t let me leave the house for anything and I already have plans to meet with Emily in the afternoon and I’d like to do something tomorrow night too. But anyway, things have been pretty cool otherwise. On Tuesday after school I used the internet (oh yeah, I seem to have lost my thumb-drive, with which I am able to post pictures and blog entries at school. I think I left it in the computer lab, but the guy who works there says he didn’t see it. I’m sure it’s long gone by now. I may have to look into buying another one) and then tagged along with Matt and Bryce who were going to KFC. I hung out with them there for a while and then Matt and I caught a bus home. A lot of people were planning on going to the Red Lion that night (you know, Tuesday being champagne night and everything), and I was kind of on the fence as to whether or not I was going to go. I was already starting to feel a little sick at that point, so I thought maybe I shouldn’t go. At any rate, I went home first and did some homework, ate dinner, and relaxed a little bit. At one point I decided that I was definitely not going to go, and had resigned myself to staying in for the night. After messing around on my computer for a little bit, though, I suddenly had a second-wind of sorts, and decided that I would head out to the Red Lion after all. I rode a bus down and trudged through the slushy park and got to the bar around 9:00. I couldn’t find everybody at first, but finally found them in the back room where the dancing goes on later. EVERYBODY was there. I mean, must of the people from my program (most of the ones I usually hang out with, anyways), plus the British girls, plus Stacey’s friend Megan from the day before with some of the people from the group she was traveling with, although they had to leave about a half hour later to catch their train to Moscow. I received a very warm welcome when I arrived because most of the people had already been there for an hour or two and had all thought I probably wasn’t going to come at that point. So, that was really nice. I started immediately chatting with everybody and dancing in groups to the cover band (not Soulgarden this time) and having a really good time. I met a lot of new people and got to talk to a lot of my friends too. Some of the British girls were participating in this “G8 Youth Summit” thing this week and so we hadn’t seen them in school. Alice was there and had to write a speech that night to give the next day about Foreign Security in the EU or something like that. A lot of us started taking turns writing in her notebook and coming up with speeches for her. Tom wrote some big thing about the US and the EU being terrorist organizations or something, just being weird. I have to say, I think the speech I wrote for her was really funny. I tried to write it as if it were being written by a really dumb sixth grader or something who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Let’s see if I can try and recreate it:

Europe. Union. Foreign. Security. These are words that go together like “words,” “that,” “go,” and “together.” The European Union is a union in Europe made up of many European countries, but not all of them. It is important that the EU be secure for foreigners because if it weren’t then it would be really, really, really bad. We need to make sure it is safe and secure so that nobody dies. This can be achieved in many ways. Thank you, and good night.

I kept telling Alice that, “I took care of the speech for you, just read it. You don’t need to worry about it.” I probably thought it was a lot more funny than anybody else (except Tom maybe), but who cares? Peter David and I got in a text-message battle arguing about Bob Seger. I told Stacey that she was the most unpretentious person I have ever met (which I absolutely meant) and it seemed to make her really happy to hear. “More than I could possibly understand,” in fact, so that made me feel good to know I had given her a compliment that she really appreciated. So, everybody was having a great time and everything, but that there was an incident that kind of put a damper on the evening for everyone. And you know who was at the root of this incident? Yes, you guessed it, the Russian militsia. Let me explain. So, Matt had been drinking and every thing like all of us, and some times when people drink it makes them have to throw up, right? So, Matt feels like he has to throw up, so he heads for the bathroom, but since the place was crowded and the bathrooms are pretty far from where we were sitting, he wasn’t able to make it and ended up throwing up on the floor. I might have mentioned before that there are militsia guys who hang around in the front of the Red Lion all the time. Well, once they found out what had happened, apparently, they were all over Matt and asked to see his documents. He gave them his student ID and his Spravka because his passport is being re-registered right now. I wasn’t around when all this happened, but when Abby came back to the table and told me that the militsia was trying to kick Matt out, I ran to the scene. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. Matt was by the bar and Bryce and a few others were around him consoling him because he was really upset. Nobody was telling me what happened exactly. Ruth told me that the militsia had Matt’s documents and wasn’t giving them back and that I should try and talk to them and get and see what the problem was. I said to one of them, “excuse me, is there some sort of problem?” and he said, “Of course!” I asked him, “please, then, tell me,” and he took me around the corner and showed my Allisonn on the floor cleaning something up. I thought maybe at first it was just a beer that got knocked over, but then once Ruth explained some more she told me that Matt had thrown up and now the militsia was hold Matt’s documents ransom. She said I should stand with Matt and Bryce and look menacing, and while I was standing on of the militsia guys came up to us and said that it was going to cost a thousand rubles to get the documents back. That’s completely ridiculous, of course. We decided we should get Tsveti to come talk to them because she speaks Russian way better than the rest of us. We figured she could find out why they were charging us and maybe get the amount reduced. She talked to them and they told her that the fee was to compensate the bar for the money that was lost as a result of Matt throwing up, which makes no since. Allisonn cleaned it all up by herself, and nobody left the bar because of it either, as they claimed. Plus it’s so obvious that none of the money they were asking for was going to go back to the bar, and that the whole thing was just a lame excuse for a bribe. We stood around for a long time trying to think of a way to get it lowered or other ways to get the documents back or something. I wish I could have just told them, “You know, a few of your pals in the militsia happened to take 1000 rubles from me just the other day. Why don’t you go ask them for that money and then we’ll all be even?” After a while I think Bryce just got fed up with the whole thing and paid the guys their 1000 rubles just to be done with the whole thing, and Matt got his documents back. Most of were pretty pissed off at the militsia and at the whole situation, so most of us were ready to leave after that. By this time it was about 12:30, so everybody would have to take a chasnik. There were quite a few of us who needed to go back to the island, and I thought it would be taking one with Vickie, Nick, and Allisonn, but then Nick and Vickie really wanted to go to McDonalds, so we decided to walk to the one at Vasileostrovskaya which isn’t nearly as far as it might seem to most people. We had a nice walk over and I got to talk to Allisonn for a while, which was really good because I felt like we were on bad terms for a while, but I guess we never really were and at least now everything is cool. We got to McDonalds and most of us ordered a little food. We stood around eating it and were just about to hail a chasnik when this group of guys came up and started talking to us. I guess it was my doing partially. There was one guy who was looking at us and kind of chuckling to himself, and I looked at him and asked him, “what?” And so from there it was basically an open invitation for them to start talking to us. This was all really good though, and these guys weren’t nearly as drunk and sketchy as the guys I had met on Sunday night (which happened just a few feet away. I don’t know what it is about that area, but I have met all kinds of weird and crazy people right around that McDonalds). There were four guys and I think they were all about our age. One was pretty drunk and hyper and kept giving us swigs of his bottle of champagne. After talking to them for a little bit, of course, they asked us to come drink with them. Most of us were down with the idea for the most part, and those who weren’t were pretty much forced to tag along. We walked with them just down the walk-way a little bit and stood next to the fountain near Kofe Khaus. One of them bought us all some beers and we stood around talking for quite a while. One guy spoke English pretty well, and the others would try to interject some when they knew it, but for the most part we all spoke Russian. One guy (Ilya) was originally from the city Naryan-Mar, which is way up in the north near the Arctic Ocean. One of them was studying physics at the university (His name was Yevgeny, which the English equivalent of is Eugene, and I when he introduced himself as “Eugene” I told him that was the name of the town I was from and he got excited). They were all really cool and we talked about Russian movies, literature, music, and all kinds of stuff. I sang a few lines of the Antoshka song with one of the guys named Dmitri, and Yevgeny told me the name of some contemporary Russian author that he really wanted me to read (unfortunately, I have forgotten the name. I think it was two or three syllables long and started with an “s,” though). I also asked him about a lot of different Russian bands that I have gotten into / want to get into. He recommended a band called Mumiy Troll that I had heard about but have not yet heard. Apparently they are really good live. He didn’t really seem to think too highly of any other Russian bands, though. The fourth guy, Tomor (I think that was his name) but us all a second beer after a while. Some creepy woman with a broken noise came up and asked for a cigarette, but the guys shooed her away. Ilya took some pictures of all of us with his fancy camera phone. Everybody exchanged numbers except me, because I was talking to Evgeny while they were doing that and when I asked for his number he said that he had lost his phone. After 2:00 most of us were getting anxious to get home. Basically Nick, Vickie and I were ready to go, but Allisonn wanted to stay longer. She had, lets say, kind of gotten “involved” with the Dmitri kid, and they were kind of off on their own little thing. We started telling the guys that we really needed to go and they kept insisting that we go walking along the river with them, and Dmitri, in an embrace with Allisonn at this point, kept walking with her further and further down the street. Evgeny actually picked Vickie up at one point and I had to hold him back to keep them from walking to the river. It was really difficult to get everyone together, what with them working against us and Allisonn readily going along with them. But, after a bit of a struggle, we finally pulled her away from Dmitri’s arms andgot our entire group together and headed back to the main street to get a chasnik. We said by to the guys and told them thayt we would call them to hang out soon. After a while they started following us to our chasnik, and we had to put up another small little fight to all make it into the car. It was fun h anging out with them, but it definitely got kind of weird at the end. So, the chasnik took us home and everybody got home safe. Pretty wild and crazy for a Tuesday night, huh? Wednesday was much less crazy, though I did do some interesting things. There was a free lunch for all the CIEE students that had something to do with the delegation of US professors that was here to evaluate the program. I’m not really sure why, but I didn’t question the free food. I talked to one of the professors who teaches at Lewis and Clark in Portland. She said it was 17 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland right now (or, then I guess). Was that true? I didn’t really believe her. I stuck around for a little while and then headed home for a bit. Remember, I had been feeling a little bit sick this whole time. I got home and did some homework for a while and almost fell asleep at one point, but couldn’t really take a nap because I had to go teach English to my new class at 6:00. I didn’t really feel like going at that point, but I couldn’t just skip it. So, I rode a marshrutka over to the university and waited around for a while until I could find out where to go or what to do. The secretary finally found me and told me which room to go to. This class is made up of college professors who want to learn English for whatever reason. I think for most of them it is a real asset to their careers. Oh yeah, and of course I teach this class all by myself (they have a real teacher, but when I’m there it’s just me and them). There were five students in the class, all of them middle-aged women (except one, who was probably in her late 20’s). I asked them what their fields were, and they all were involved in completely different subjects. One was a radio-physicist. One was a biologist specializing in genetics. One was a sociologist. One was a German language specialist. The last was an economist. It was so weird to have this room full of incredible smart people, but to be teaching them something that to me is so simple and basic. I mean, it seems so weird to hear a radio-physicist (I don’t even know what that is!) to be stumbling over words and grammar constructions from a textbook. You know what I mean? And, you would think that having a room full of adults would be a lot less awkward than a room full of teenagers, but you’d be wrong. I think most of the people in this class were much more shy about speaking up than the students in my teenage class. It also felt strange teaching teachers, to be exerting the same authority over them as they usually do over students like me. It just seemed like such a huge role reversal. They were just finishing up a chapter on “attraction,” that talked about dating and stuff like that in British society. The book was published in England, so the cultural aspects integrated into the book (there is a lot of that) is very British-centric. For example, an exercise we did involved looking at the lyrics from a song by the group All Saints. Never heard of them? Most Americans probably haven’t, or at least don’t remember them anymore. Fortunately for the class, I did remember them, and remembered the actual song that was included in the book. They were a British girl group that had a minor hit in the US back around ’97 called “Never Ever,” which I remember was pretty catchy. They must be somewhat popular in England still, at least enough to be included in this book. There were also a lot of British spellings that I felt obligated to point out every time and give the American variation (for example: “realise,” and “programme”). We finished up that chapter and began the next one on the topic of “genius.” They read a short article about the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, and about Frida Kahlo. There were some exercises dealing with art and how to talk about it, and we talked for a while about the artists that they liked. The economics professor seemed to really like art, and went on about Matisse for a while. When there was a subject she liked to talk about she could go on and on in near fluency, it seemed to me, but when it came to answering questions in the exercises she was very reluctant to answer. We also talked about famous buildings and monuments in Russia and the US. The radio-physicist talked about seeing the famous statue of the Motherland in Volgograd. They asked me if I had ever seen the Statue of Liberty, and I told them about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and about Mount Rushmore. All in all, I think the class went pretty well, despite some moments of awkward silence. I think the students respect me well enough and I enjoyed teaching them. Sometimes it can be a little hard when they don’t know a word and I don’t know the Russian equivalent, or when they have questions about the terms of certain grammatical structures in English and I have no idea what they are called. I mean, of course, I know how to use all the grammatical structures correctly just from experience and having spoken it my whole life, but I’ve never actually studied English grammar and don’t know how to actually explain it. You know what I mean? But, everything works itself out and I think the students understand everything in the end. After the class was over (it’s three hours long, by the way) I waited for the bus stop outside, and one of my students was waiting too. It was the young one, who is also the one who studies sociology. She may not be an actual professor, I think she said something about being an assistant of some kind, but does actually teach herself as well. I believe her name is Marina (or perhaps just Maria). We talked for a bit while we waited for the bus. She told me that she was from Buryatia, which is a republic within the Russian Federation way out in Siberia next to Lake Baikal. She is from the capital, Ulan Ude. The Buryats are ethnically Asian, and so Marina doesn’t look Russian at all but completely Asian. She was very nice and was interested in hearing about the US and Oregon and all that. She has been living in St. Petersburg for six years. It turns out she works somewhere in the same building where I go to school (it’s a big building, though) and lives somewhere close to me because she rides my same bus, Bus 147 came and of course we both got on. Nobody really likes to talk on the bus, so our conversation kind of ended once we got on, but when she did speak to me a tiny bit she did it in Russian, because I think she didn’t want the people around her to hear her speaking English. I got off before her and said “see you next Wednesday.” She seemed really cool and I look forward to talking to her more in the future. At home I had to study for my big grammar test today, and by the end I was feeling totally exhausted and pretty sick. I got to bed around midnight, which is earlier than normal these days. This morning it was really rough getting up. I was having a dream that I was in Russia just like I am and in the same program and everything, but that I had signed up beforehand for a second program of some kind for some reason that started about halfway through the other one, so I had to leave my program in the middle of classes and everything and go join this other program with a bunch of new students who were just arriving. I was at their orientation and all that and I was just thinking, “why am I here? Why did I sign up for this new program? I already went through all this stuff, I belong back in the other group.” It was very strange. SO I roused myself out of bed and made it to school just to take that stupid grammar test. I think I did alright on the whole. There was one part that I didn’t understand very well and took a long time to complete. I probably got it all wrong too. But the rest of it I feel pretty confident about. I hung around in the hall with everyone after classes for a while but then slipped out before the second class and caught the bus straight home. I’ve just been taking it easy all day. Like I said, I’m going to try to make it to class tomorrow. I think I’ll be fine. I’m supposed to meet Emily at Soiree tomorrow, so at least I’ll be able to post this entry without my thumb drive for now, but it might get harder to manage later on. We’ll see how it goes. I might be going to Moscow next Friday to go to a Motorhead concert. I’ll keep you posted. Later.

С кем ты?

2006-04-04T13:19:00.000+04:00

So I kept putting off writing a blog post and now it’s been a week since my last one and I have a lot of catching up to do. That’s the way it goes. I’ll try to be a little more succinct than I usually am, but I always say that. After school on Monday I had to go to the US consulate to report the whole being robbed by the militsia thing. I had told my program director about it earlier that day and he said it would be a good idea to let the consulate know about it. Before the consulate, though I went with some friends to an Uzbek restaurant. The place was really close to the consulate anyways, and I had wanted to try this place before, so I thought it would be a good idea. The food was excellent and really cheap. I had a delicious soup and some meat dumplings with spicy sauce. They also had the cheapest beer I’ve seen at any restaurant or bar in St. Petersburg yet – only 35 rubles for a half liter of Baltica! Usually it’s around 50 or 60, and can go as high as 85 (coughcoughRedLioncough). I will definitely be going back there more often. So, after lunch I went to the consulate and John tagged along. The guards are Russian but speak English. They only let us in one at a time and we had to go through a few different levels of security, but everyone was really friendly and I wasn’t made uncomfortable or anything. I asked one of the guards if he remembered my friend Josh who used to work there, and he said he did. Once I got past security I made it to the counter and told the receptionist my story. She seemed very sympathetic to my story and gave me a form to fill out and said that she would have someone come talk to me about it. At this point John had gotten passed security and came and met me inside. Before I could fill out the form the fire alarm went off, and a guard told us that we had to evacuate the building. Everybody from the consulate filled out onto the street and went into a little courtyard down the street a little bit. In the courtyard I was telling John the story about the security guy and how he knew Josh. I said, “and I asked him, ‘do you remember a guy who used to work here named Josh Overcast?’”, and when I said that name a guy standing nearby looked over and asked, “did you say ‘Josh Overcast?’” His name was Misha and it turns out he was one of Josh’s really good friends from back when he worked there. He asked what Josh was up to and all that, and it turned out he also knows one of the Russian history professors from UO, Alan Kimball. So, that was really cool getting to meet him. We got permission to go back in, and after another quick security check I was back inside. John didn’t really need to stick around so he took off. I filled out the sheet explaining what had happened and then waited for some important higher-up to come talk to me. While I was waiting I met this guy named Tom who has been living in Russia for about a year and a half. He told me he was a writer, “doing the down-and-out in Russia thing.” Apparently he had lost all of his documents (Passport, visa, etc) in November one night at a bar (coughcoughRedLioncough), and so basically he’s been living under the radar of the Russian government while he lives here somewhat illegitimately. Now he’s facing deportation or something. So, he was at the consulate, as he is quite often I take it, trying to get things straightened out. Some young-ish guy in a fancy suite finally came and told me what my options were. One option was sending some sort of report somewhere that would require them to question me about the incident, for which translators would have to be arranged and everything and it sounded like a huge hassle. The other option was much simpler, and I decided to go that route. Basically they are just going to send the government a “diplomatic letter” informing them of the incident and that they aren’t happy. It isn’t going to change anything, I’m sure, but at least it won’t require a lot of my time and energy. I wasn’t even really going to report it until Nathan suggested I do anyways. So, I finished up there and so did that Tom guy, so we both walked to the metro and talked about our experiences in Russia. At the Ploshchad Vostanniya stop we parted ways, and I rode down to the Nevskiy Prospekt stop. I needed to kill some time before teaching English at 6:00. I knew some people were at Soiree, but I didn’t have enough time to get over there, plus I didn’t have my computer with me, so I decided to just walk around until it was time to go to the university. I walked down Nevskiy and down a side street I had never been down before. I found a new 505 store and went in. I ended up buying a couple MP3 CDs – one by a band called Kolibri that I already liked and had a little stuff by, and another by a band that I knew I had heard of somewhere and thought that maybe they would be pretty good based on their picture on the cover and the fact that I had heard of them before. They are called Sinyaya Ptitsa (Blue Bird). That CD turned out to be really cheesy 70’s loungy pop stuff, and I realized that the place I had heard of them was on the compilation of Soviet pop songs that I had bought a while ago. Oh well, it only cost my a few bucks. After the 505 store I ambled my way over to the university and sat around for a little bit outside because the weather was actually really nice. That was the first day here that I’ve been able to sit on a bench. I then went inside to wait for the class to start, but after about 20 minutes of sitting around outside the door I realized that nobody was coming, and so I left. I bumped into Aleksandr, the director of the English classes, and asked him where everybody was. He looked on a schedule sheet and told me that the class had apparently been canceled. Too bad nobody had told me. So, I went out front to wait for a bus home. Number 7 came by but the bus was so jam packed that there was literally no room for me to get on. After a long time of waiting I decided to hop on bus number 47, not knowing exactly where it went but hoping that maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that it was a similar number to route 147. There was a sign on it that said “no conductor” (the person who goes around the bus collecting the money), and so I wasn’t really sure how to pay. Nobody else really seemed to be paying, so I just sat tight. The bus followed the same route for a while, but then just after Vasileostrovskaya it made an unexpected turn and I jumped off and the next stop, never having paid. I walked back down to Vasileostrovskaya and caught the 44 marshrutka home. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure nothing interesting happened at home that night. So, Tuesday. Classes were the same as usual, I suppose. After class I started walking with the British girls towards to bus stop. Some of them were going for hot chocolate or something, but I decided just to go home, because we had also made plans with them to go to a bar with them later that night (coughcoughRedLioncough) and I figured it would be a good idea to get home and relax a bit before heading out again. I rode the bus home, did some homework, ate some dinner, and then headed back out to meet them. I thought that a lot of people had know about the Red Lion plan and that there would be a pretty big group, but I was surprised to get there and only find Bryce and Katie with some of the British girls (Alice, Olympia, Amanda, Dawn). Everybody likes to go to the Red Lion on Tuesday nights because it’s free champagne for women night. The waiters are constantly coming around and filling up the champagne glasses, so it isn’t hard for guys to drink their fair share of champagne too. We had a great time hanging around and dancing and what not. There was a band called Soulgarden doing covers of western songs and they weren’t half bad. They did a pretty mean “Billy Jean,” I gotta say. I danced around to them for a while and danced around to the DJ later on. There was a group of Swiss bankers at the table next to us that some of the girls were talking to for a while. Katie danced with this Russian guy a lot, but apparently he got pretty creepy towards to end and grabbing her inappropriately and kept trying to get her to go home with him. Of course, Katie knows better than that. Bryce, Katie and I left around 2:30 in a chasnik. It seems kind of weird to go out and stay out late on a Tuesday night, but I never seem to have any real trouble the next day. After Tuesday was Wednesday, believe it or not. On Wednesday there was a group excursion to the Russian Museum [Note: the rest was written on the following night. Read further on about Sunday night to hear why]. I was glad to go because I still haven’t been and it’s one of those things that you have to do in St. Petersburg. We only had about an hour for the tour so our tour guide went through things really quickly. She only showed us the fine art wing. You know, portraits of old Russian aristocrats and political leaders and all that, which is interesting, but I was really more interested in seeing the more modern stuff. We did get to see some really cool stuff though, including some stuff by the same artist who I had seen the work of in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. I’m terrible with artists’ names so I can’t remember who he was, but maybe my grandma knows. Grandma, if you are reading this (which I know you are), you know that picture I put on flickr of the big painting of the apocalypse? Do you know who did that? After our tour had finished we had a little time to explore the museum on our own, so a few others and I made it up to the floor with the modern art and a lot of avant-garde stuff. I really enjoyed looking at all of those paintings, and I really want to go back and spend more time there. There was one artist in particular that I really liked. I think his name was Filinov, but I could be off a bit. After a little while Nathan found us and told us that we all needed to go and get our coats from the coatroom and leave for some reason, so we got our stuff and headed out. Peter David and I hadn’t had lunch yet so we decided to find some food on Nevskiy. We decided to go to this Russian fast-food type place called Chainaya Lozhka (tea spoon) that I hadn’t been to yet. It’s Russian cuisine with a fast-food edge. Basically you can get bliny and some side dishes, so I ended up getting a couple bliny with meat, one with cheese and a side of cheese salad, which was pretty interesting. It was all really good but really big, so I was pretty stuffed afterwards. After lunch PD and I headed to an internet café for a while, and then back to that 505 store I had found the other day. I wanted to buy an MP3 CD by this band called Grazhdanskaya Oborona that my friend Matt had to told me about. He said that they were his favorite local band and that they were playing a show soon and I should check them out. I had seen their CDs at the store the other day and tried to buy one, but the one I had picked turned out to be too expensive and I declined to purchase it. So, I went back to find a cheaper one, which I did find. I also bought a DVD with four “New Year’s Comedies” on it. Apparently it’s its own genre in Russia. The only reason I bought it was for the movie “Ironia Sudby” (The Irony of Fate) which is a hugely popular Soviet movie from the 70’s. I had seem part of it in my first year Russian class back at UO, and we had been using it for some of our phonetics lessons as well, so I figured it would be a really good movie to own my own copy of. I’m really glad I bought it, by the way. It’s fantastic. I believe PD bought a Stevie Wonder CD. Afterwards we both headed home. I had qualms about getting on a bus because it was in the middle of Chaspeek (rush hour), but the bus turned out to be not that crowded. You never know how the buses are going to be. Nothing of note happened at home that night either. Thursday at school was kind of weird because a bunch of people decided to all skip classes together and hang out of the day, and not only was I not invited to skip with them, but it was left to feel real awkward in all my classes because there were so few people in them. It was no big deal, really. After school I was trying to get some people to come with me to this big market in the south part of town I had heard about that apparently had lots of cheap CDs and DVDs for sale, but nobody was interested. I ended up following Nick, Tom, and a few of the British girls back to Alice’s apartment, where we hung out in her kitchen for a long time listening to Grand Funk Railroad on Tom’s ipod and eating toasted cheese and red pepper sandwiches. Tom and I started naming as many bands as we could from various countries / cities while nobody else could keep up (Nick later informed me that he thought it was really rude that Tom and I had our own little conversation going while we were hanging out with our British friends). I got to meet Alice’s roommate Richard and a new British girl named Lucy. People kind of left one by one and I was one of the last people to finally leave. I caught the 147 bus right outside of her apartment and rode it all the way home. And then, of course, another relaxing, unremarkable evening at home. Sorry I keep skipping over the evenings, but I really can’t think of anything that I did that would even be worth mentioning. I usually just do homework, listen to music or watch something on my computer. I don’t usually have to much interaction with my host family, everybody just kind of hides in their own rooms. I wish I was more sociable with them but they really seem to have no interest in chatting or hanging out any more than they already do. Oh well. So, Friday rolls around, and it’s finally almost the weekend. Oh, I guess one thing worth mentioning is that form must of this week Vickie and I were driven to school by some guy driving a black Volga (a Russian car company), which seems so sketchy. It’s just us two in the back of this car and we don’t talk to the guy or anything, he’s just like our personal chauffeur. I’m not sure how it works, but somebody must be paying him to drive us to school. We never know what to expect every morning when we get to the bus stop. So, anyways, school was good and everything, and then I went to Soiree to use the internet, and Vickie and Tom each showed up a little later. We stayed there for a while eating lunch and messing around on our laptops. At one point the power went out for a few minutes, which of course included the router so we were left without internet for a while, but it soon came back on and all was fine. When we were done we headed back to Nevskiy so Vickie and I could catch a bus home. So, you see, Cumbawumba was playing in town last night, and a bunch of us had decided to go. A bunch of the Brits were into the idea (of course) and a handful of people from our program as well. But, after I left Soiree I talked to Alice on the phone and it seemed that a lot of people decided that it was going to be too expensive and were thinking about going somewhere else instead (It was 600 to 800 rubles, or about $20 to $25, which isn’t all that bad in America but seems pretty steep for Russia). IT was kind of like, “we’ll still go if you want to go, but we would all prefer to do something else,” so, of course I wasn’t going to force them into doing something they didn’t want to do, so I said it was fine and we could find somewhere else to go. I was pretty excited to see Chumbawumba, though. Maybe someday. The Brits decided that we should go to this “Club” called Griboedov, which is a place that I have been wanting to go to for a while. So, we all met up at Ploshchad Vostanniya around 9:00 (Matt, Stacey, PD, Bryce, Alice, Jo, Amanda, Olympia, Richard, Lucy, and Myself) and proceeded to the place. It was a little out of the way, but not too far. It turns out that the club is basically across the street from Tom’s apartment, and Tom actually showed up a little later. The only reason this place can be considered a club is because there is a cover charge (200 rubles), but inside it’s just a cool bar with a stage/dance floor and comfortable places to sit. When we first got there there was some sort of punk show going on, and I saw quite a few Mohawks. A lot of the people in our group were pretty disappointed with the place at first, but I thought it was just my speed. We hung around at the bar until a big table opened up and we could all sit around. At one point, Bryce set his beer down and told PD to watch it while he went to the bathroom. Of course, everyone just tells people to watch their beer or whatever out of habit, and never expects that anything bad would really happen to it. Well, out of nowhere this weird Russian guy comes up and points to the beer as if he wants it. PD and I both say “no,” but he grabs it anyway and starts chugging. We’re just like, “what the hell?” He keeps chugging away at it and finally we have to pull it away from him. I asked him, “what are you doing?” and told him, “that’s not your beer,” but he just kind of smiled and mumbled something and wandered away. We were all laughing pretty hard about it and had to break the news to Bryce when he got back. He was not as amused as we were. Once the show finished the place got really empty, but after an hour or so it picked up again and a DJ started playing and people started dancing. I danced a lot and felt way more relaxed and comfortable dancing there that I usually do at bars or whatever. I guess I just felt like people were less judgmental there than at other places, and I felt like I could be myself and dance however strangely I wanted to. There was a House DJ, and the only way I know that it was House music was because he played this song that kept repeating things like, “For the love of house. For the love of beats. For the love of dance. Strictly for the love. For the love of house music,” and I kept repeating that over and over again for the rest of the night. In between dancing I would sit back down and talk with everyone. I had a few beers and a couple shots of Jagermeister, so I was feeling alright. We kind of moved around tables a little bit and finally ended up at one table near the bar where we all sat for a while. I was messing around with the candle on the table and at one point made it fall over, startling this girl Emma (another British [well, Scottish] girl who had showed up later) and making her spill her beer all over herself. I felt really bad and bought her another one. I talked to Olympia for a long time about why she hates Macedonians and Turks (typical Greek) and kept teasing her about stuff the whole night, but it was all in good fun. Tom had a dry erase pen and told me about something called “the Pen15 club,” and I didn’t get it until he wrote “PEN15” on my hand and then I realized what it spells when you write it out. Apparently it’s something a lot of people knew about back in elementary school, but I had never heard of it. At the time I thought it was hilarious and started laughing uncontrollably. Tom has that effect on me sometimes. So we got everyone to join the club and soon everybody had it written on their hand. Luckily, it was dry-erase pen and did come of very easily. Everybody was getting really tired at abut 4:00 so we all decided to leave. Bryce, Olympia, Amanda and I got a chasnik together. Bryce and Olympia live next-door to each other out around Primorskaya (which my apartment is on the way to), but Amanda lives way on the other side of town on Moskovskiy Prospekt. So we got a chasnik that would take us both places, As usual, I sat in the front, and I got to talk a lot to our driver. His name was Bugar and he was an Azerbaijani. He was super friendly and really interested in talking to us and talking about America. He told me about his two kids and assured us that the money we were paying him was going to support them. At one point he pulled into a gas station to fill up and ran into the mini-mart for a second too. He came back with Coca-cola and peanuts, which he then offered to us. We declined on the Coca-cola, but agreed to a few peanuts. He really wanted my phone number, which I was happy to give him, and he gave me his. I seem to end up with lots of strange peoples’ phone numbers, and I don’t know why it seems to happen to me all that time and never happen to anyone else. So, he drops me off at my house, but he doesn’t just drop me on the street, he insists on driving me into the courtyard and dropping me off directly in front of my door! I was a little creeped out that he now knew my phone number and the building I lived in, but I really think he’s harmless. So, I crawled into bed and called it a night. I slept until about 12:30 the next day and awoke to a delicious breakfast of bliny. I really wanted to check out that huge market on Saturday, because that’s apparently the best day to go. I called up a few people but nobody was interested in going, so I ended up just going by myself. You have to ride the blue line to the third to last stop in the south (Metro station Avtovo) and then ride a marshrutka out into the middle of the housing projects to this big outdoor market. It was totally out of the way, but totally worth the trip. This market seems to specialize in illegally copied CDs and DVDs that are sold for ridiculously cheap. The average price for a DVD is 50 rubles (under $2) and for a CD was 35 rubles (just over a dollar). And of course they have tons and tons of MP3 CDs, so I could get about 15 albums by a band for a little over a buck. Amazing! I’ve really been on the look out for good Russian music, and this was a great place to get some stuff by some bands I hadn’t heard yet. I got an MP3 CD by this rock band from the late 80’s called AlisA, and another one by this old Soviet metal band called Ariya (which, by the way, is really amazing. I don’t usually like metal or anything, but this band is really good. All their songs are really catchy, but just happen to have cheesy guitar solos and wailing vocals, all sang in Russian of course. I’m so glad I bought that CD. It was totally worth the 35 rubles to have 15 albums by them). I also go a CD of some old Soviet Bards (fold singers) and a few movies as well. The whole market was huge. I was there for quite a while and didn’t even get to see the whole thing. I had to be back at the apartment by 7:00 because my host-brother had to reheat some dinner for me, I found a marshrutka that would take me all the way back to Ploshchad Vostanniya, but it ended up taking about an hour. I got on the metro and got home just before 7:00. I was feeling pretty exhausted that evening for some reason and ended up just staying home the whole night. I talked to some people on the phone and it sounded like a lot of people were staying in to, so I didn’t have to feel so bad about not doing anything. Besides, I was pretty occupied with all the stuff I had bought that day at the market. I think I might be going back next weekend because a lot of other people want to go now. But, I finally got to bed around 2:00 on Saturday night. Sunday I woke up around noon again and had another bliny feast. Usually I like to stay in on Sundays, but because I had stayed in all Saturday night I felt like I should do something. I had been trying to get a hold of Emily the past couple days with little to no luck, so I figured I’d give her a call and see if she wanted to hang out. She was studying for midterms but said that she would be down for meeting up for a bit and doing something. She knew about some little art showing at this place near Petrogradskaya metro, which of course is over on the Petrograd side of the city, and I had never really been there before. I had been meaning to make it over there and check it out sometime, so this was the perfect opportunity to do that. We decided to meet at the Gorkovskaya metro station at 2:00. On the way there I had to transfer at Nevskiy Prospekt / Gostiny Dvor and I got to see the veterans singing and playing guitar in the tunnel again. I’m telling you, it sounds so amazing and I wish I had a recording of these guys. It would be way to awkward to try to take a picture of a video of them, because there is absolutely no way to be discreet about it. I’d like to start a band like that: 4 or 5 guys singing along to the accompaniment of two guitars playing really simple chord progressions, but the lyrics have to all by kind of shouted. It’s really powerful stuff. I got to Gorkovskaya and waited around for Emily a while because she was late, but she finally showed up and we started walking. We caught up on stuff cause we hadn’t seen each other in a while. We walked down one of the main streets on the Petrograd side until we reached the area of the metro station, and went into this movie theater that also has art on display. The art that was up was all apparently done by a friend of one of Emily’s art professors here in Petersburg. She takes all kinds of cool art classes, it’s pretty awesome. The art all looked like it was done by a younger child, but it was actually an adult. I really like it. It was pretty crowded from all the people waiting to see movies, so we decided to go find some food. Emily had heard about a good Georgian restaurant somewhere nearby, so we decided to try and find it. We kind of got lost for a while wandering down side streets, but we eventually found the place. We looked at the menu and decided it was too expensive and that it would be better to try something else. I suggested we take the metro over to Chernishevskaya and go to the Uzbek place that I went to earlier that week, and she was down for the idea. We walked back to Gorkovskaya and rode over to Chernishevskaya, walked over to the restaurant only to find that they were having some sort of exclusive dinner thing and that they could not serve us. It was a bummer, but Emily knew of another Georgian place nearby, so we walked over to there and had ourselves a meal. I’m convinced that Georgians eat nothing but cheese, cause that’s basically all that there is to every Georgian meal I’ve ever eaten. There’s the Georgian fried cheese that I sometimes get at Soiree, then at this place we ordered a “khachapura,” which is basically a little cheese pizza with cheese baked on the inside, and then I ordered what I thought were dumplings with MEAT and cheese, but when they turned out to be filled with cheese only. Don’t get me wrong, I love cheese, bought I felt that they food could benefit form a little diversity. It was a good time none the less. Emily and I talked about politics and other fun things. We each had to get back home after that, so I headed back knowing that I would be eating a whole other meal at home. I ate a big plate of rice, meat, and mushrooms (which I have to choke down every know and then whenever my host-mom feeds it to me), but was so stuffed that I couldn’t finish the whole place. That rarely ever happens. I was all set to stay at home that night and work on this blog post, do my homework, and call my parents. I started writing the post when I got a call from Ruth about meeting her, PD, Allisonn, and Stacey at Kofe Khaus near Kazanskiy Sobor to study for the phonetics test we had today. I had forgotten about the test and thought it might be a good idea to study with them, but I had to decline because of everything I had to do that night. Then they started sending me tons of text messages trying to get me to come, but I wanted to finish everything I had to do. I called my mom like I do every Sunday night and told about the text messages I kept getting and how I kind of wanted to go but felt obligated to work on stuff at home. She told me not to worry about it and that if I wanted to go I should just go. I realized that she was right, and that it was better to be out doing stuff than to be sitting at home writing about the stuff I already did. So, without telling them, I decided to show up at Kofe Khaus. I rode a marshrutka downtown and got to the place in time to catch PD in mid-text as he was writing his next crazy message to me. So, they were happy to see me, and I sat with them for a while not really studying at all but having a good time anyways. I knew all along that if I went I wouldn’t really get any studying done with them, but it seemed worth it anyways. I wasn’t there for very long before we all had to catch the metro before it closed. Allisonn and I headed out towards our island and I got off at Vasileostrovskaya. Before I caught a marshrutka home, I figured I would stop at one of the kiosks and get a soda because I was really thirsty. I was waiting behind this guy in line when he turned around and started saying, “Oh look at this huge guy! He’s more than big, he’s huge!” and all that kind of stuff. He looked just like this guy I know names Jeff Beck (yeah, like the musician). I talked to him and this other guy standing nearby for a while and they soon realized I wasn’t Russian. They asked where I was from and I told them to guess. They kept guessing lots of European countries and never bothered guessing the US. I finally told them that I was American and they got so excited. The one guy (Marat was his name) started hugging me and getting really affectionate (he was quite drunk) and started calling me his friend and this and that. He decided that he needed to buy me some Russian chocolate, and I told him that it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted. He ended up buying me three really good chocolate bars from the kiosk and handing them to me in a bag. He and the other guy (I think his name was Vasiliy) started insisting that I have a drink with them. I told them that that I couldn’t and that I had to get home and everything, but they wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. I asked them where they suggested drinking and they said something like, “It doesn’t matter. right here even!” So I decided if they just want to drink a beer right here in the street that would be fine, I could manage that. So Marat bought me a beer and we walked across the street to stand in front of the McDonalds and drink our beers. Two other teenage kids come up and start drinking with us too (by the way, Marat was probably about 25 and Vasiliy said he was 16). One of the teenagers was from the Republic of Komi, in the north of Russia. The other said he was from Buryatia, “in principle (another republic of the Russian Federation, but out in Siberia). I finished my beer and told them I had to go, but they insisted that I stick around and have another. They asked where I lived and when I told them they explained that they lived nearby too, and that if we all had a other beer then we would all catch a chasnik together afterwards. So, I figured I had to stick around for a little while, so not to disappoint my new friends. Marat kept trying to speak to me in English (which he didn’t speak very well at all) and even tried speaking to everyone else in English. Everybody kept telling him to just speak Russian to them, but he didn’t seem to be listening. He kept hugging me and shaking my hand every couple minutes too. At one point the two teenagers left and two other people showed up out of nowhere. These guys were older, probably both in their mid to late 20’s as well. One was named Gamlet (Russian for “Hamlet”) and the other was this crazy metal-head dude with long hair and a bandana who was from Yeketarinburg (a big city in the Ural mountains). I never learned his name. They were both really drunk too and the metal head was kind of belligerent. He was kind of menacing looking and I thought he might try to punch me in the face at any moment. There was some girl hanging around them too who didn’t seem to want to talk to us or even let her friends talk to us. Marat went with the metal-head down an alley for a while to talk about something, and when he returned we all decided to get a chasnik together. I got in the front while Marat, Vasiliy, Gamlet, the metal-head, and some other teenage kid I never learned the name of all crammed in the back. When Marat told the driver I was American, eh went, “Bush! Bush! Bush!” with his thumb up. Marat and I said something like, “no, he’s bad!” and the driver went, “Islam! Islam! Islam!” with his thumb down. So, that was pretty weird. I was worried that I would be dropped off last and be left to pay the chasnik fare alone, but they took me home first and I didn’t have to pay for any of it! The driver sat in the car and waited for about ten minutes while Marat, Gamlet and the metal-head got out of the car with me and tried to talk with me some more. Marat kept saying that he wanted to make sure I got home alright, but I assured him that we were right in front of my building and there was no problem. Marat really wanted my phone number (I swear, all the time!), so we each wrote down our numbers for each other. I usually like to get the other person’s number too, just so I can have it entered in my phone and see who it is when and if they ever call. So, they finally pulled away, and I literally ran to my door to get in and shut it behind me incase they decided to follow me instead. It was a pretty crazy experience, and I’m glad I had it in the end. I would have never met those guys had I not decided to go out to the Kofe Khaus. So, thanks mom. I got into the apartment, tried studying for a little bit, took a shower and finally got to bed at around 2:00. So, here we are finally to today. Today was a normal day at school. There is actually a delegation of professors who represent CIEE here to evaluate the program, and so we had a big group meeting with them today where lots of people complained about different things in the program. I really don't have any big complaints to make, so I just kept quite and listened to everybody else go off. After class Kenny and I decided to go to the Uzbek place again. James wanted to tag along again and we got Matt and Bryce to come as well. Stacey had to go meet her friend who is in town and then they both came to meet us at the restaurant. They food was excellent again. Kenny and James were going to a bannya, but I couldn't go because I had to teach english later. I do want to go to one sometime, though. I stayed back and hung around with Matt, Bryce, Stacey and her friend Megan. Megan seemed really cool, and it's a shame that she has to leave tomorrow. Once they finished eating they were heading to Soiree to meet other people, but I really didn't want to go to Soiree, plus i had to teach in an hour, so I headed off on my own to get to the university. I took the metro and then a bus from Nevskiy and got there with about 15 minutes to spare. The teacher didn't show up for the class, so I ended up teaching it on my own for the first half. It was a little scary and pretty disorganized, but I think I did alright. The teacher finally showed up and said she was subbing in a different class, but told me what the class was doing and what the students needed to do. They had to do re-tellings of this little article about how five different cities are combating traffic and pollution problems. I had a great time as always teaching this class. The other day the English class coordinator Aleksandr asked me if I wanted to teach my own class as well, and I said that I would me willing to try. Basically I will be leading my own discussion section for three hours on Wednesdays to a group of adult students. They are all Russian professors in the university who want to learn English for themselves. I got the text material and Aleksandr show me what material I would be covering with the class on Wednesday. It looks like it could be a lot of fun. It isn't actually MY own class. They have a real teacher, I would just be leading the discussion on my own without the teacher there. I'm looking forward to it, actually. So class finished up and I caught a bus home. Some kid brought a bike onto the crowded bus and the conductor was giving him a hard time for it. My favorite was when she asked him if he had any parents. I got home and had some dinner and finished up writing this blog entry just now! Finally! Now that I'm all caught up I can relax a little bit. I'll try not to go this long in between posts if I can help it. I'd rather write smaller, more frequent posts than longer, less frequent ones. So, that's it for now. Bye.

Мама анархия, папа стакан портвейна

2006-03-31T14:22:00.000+04:00

I'm at Soiree right now, but unfortunately I have no blog post to upload. I guess I haven't really felt like sitting down and writing about everything lately, but I will get around to it soon. I figured I'd at least make a quick post right now to say hey and what not. I'm going to see Chumbawumba tonight. More later.

И это ночь и ее электрический голос манит меня к себе

2006-03-28T14:39:00.000+04:00

So I guess everything is more or less back to normal around here. I’ve gotten back into the swing of things just fine and now spring break feels like a long time ago. Thursday night there was this big thing for students that was pretty fun. Students from a few different departments at various schools around the city (I’m not sure what they all had in common exactly) were all invited to this little party in some fancy building on the Fantanka (a canal that runs through the city center) for some sort of anniversary of some specific university department or something. I never really learned what it was all for exactly. But there were all kinds of students there, both foreign and Russian. There was free beer, champagne and pizza. Of course, the pizza wasn’t great (I’ve never had really good pizza in Russia). There was some that had Canadian bacon and shrimp on it. There were all these weird games that we were supposed to be playing, but I wasn’t really interested in participating. They gave everyone a sheet of paper with various things on it that everyone had to go around to everybody else and ask them if they have done those things. For example, “somebody who was born in Moscow,” or “someone that has read more than five books by Dostoevsky.” A few people put me down as someone who “has never been to the Hermitage” (I know it’s terrible that I still haven’t been, and that I still haven’t been to the Russian Museum. I’m planning on going to both really soon though). There was also an animal written on the back of everyone’s sheets and they wanted us all to find everybody else with the same animal without showing them the name or saying it. Some people got into the whole thing, but I was too overwhelmed by all the people and how cramped it was in the small room we were all in. So I just walked around mingling, eating pizza and drinking beer. A few of us from school met this group of British girls that also study at Smolniy but that we’ve somehow never met before. They were all really nice and cool, and when the party started to get dull some of us decided to head out with them to a bar. We all went to this place called Dacha, which is the same place that I walked home from a while back, that time I got the big blisters on my feet. It was pretty crowded, so we decided to look for something else. Luckily, there happened to be a nice little pub-type bar right next door that nobody had ever seemed to notice, and there was plenty of space. We took over a couple tables in there and had a great time for a few hours chatting with the Brits. There was also a Russian girl named Alice (I guess her real name was Alisa or something more Russian, but she kept saying Alice and it made it confusing because one of the British girls was named Alice too) who had tagged along from the party and I talked to her for a while too. I think we all had a great time, comparing British and American slang and making fun of the other’s all night. Alice said that she was having a little party at her apartment the next night and invited us all to come, so we traded some fun numbers before everyone left. After last call I went with Bryce and Katie to KFC (because it was one of the only things open and we were hungry) and then shared a chasnik back to the island. My host-brother Alyosha was still up when I got back, hanging out in the kitchen and either getting ready for or having just come back from some sort of hockey game. I took a shower and went to bed. Friday was for the most part a normal day at school, except we had a make-up class in Gazeta for the day we missed way back on February 23 (Defenders of the Fatherland day). Some of the people in the class were trying to get everyone to skip, but in the end most of us went. We really lucked out, because instead of having class our teacher decided instead to just show us a movie. It was called “Ivan Vasilevich Changes his Profession” (Your supposed to know that “Ivan Vasilevish” was Ivan the Terrible). I really like the movie. It was about this scientist who makes a time machine in his apartment and opens a portal Ivan the Terrible’s chambers back in the 15th century or whenever he was around, and everything gets mixed up and Ivan the Terrible gets stuck in the present while the scientist’s Landlord and a thief who happened to be in the apartment get stuck in Ivan’s time. Yes, of course, hilarity ensues. There was a lot of cool music in it too. We didn’t get to see the whole thing, though. After classes were all over, I decided to go with Peter David to 505 to do a little music and movie shopping. We went to the one by Chernishevskaya, and Kenny and Stacey walked with us there on their way to the metro. We browsed for a while, and I ended up finding a copy of the movie we had watched for class, all on one disc along with three other movies by the same director (Leonid Gaidai). I’ve written before about all the crazy bootleg stuff you can buy in Russia, well it’s the same ting with movies. You can buy these DVDs that just have tons of movies on them somehow, sometimes as many as 10. They use both sides of the disc, but still it’s pretty impressive that they can fit them all on there. I need to buy some more collections of Russian movies before I leave. I also ended up buying an MP3 DVD of legendary Russian folk singer Vladimir Vysotsky (I’ve mention at least once or twice before here). This thing is insane: One disc (two sides), 119 albums (There are a lot of live performances and things like that), all for 120 rubles (about $4)! I know I’ll never really be able to listen to it all, but I was going to buy an MP3 CD of his that had just a handful of albums and would have cost about 150 rubles, so I figure why not spend less and just virtually everything he ever put out at my immediate disposal? I was a little worried it would be like the last Vysotsky DVD that I bought that only let you play it on a DVD player and not load any of it onto your computer, but I knew this was the real deal because it distinctly said “MP3 DVD.” Maybe it was a risk, but it definitely paid off. So, it was pretty cool that for about $8 I bought 4 movies and 119 albums. Peter David was headed to the book store, but I figured I should head home for a while so I could relax at home a little bit before going to the British party later. I rode the metro home and had enough time at the apartment to hang out for a bit and eat dinner. We were all supposed to meet some of the British girls at 8:00 on Vostannya Square, so I rode the metro back down there where a small group of us congregated when Jo and Amanda from England (well, Amanda is from Scotland) showed up and took us to Alice’s apartment. She had a really nice place with one other roommate, but he was apparently out of town so we all had the place to ourselves. The girls we had net the night before were all there, plus some more and a couple of guys too. Everyone was totally cool and I think everyone got along really well. A few more of our friends showed up at various points and at the maximum there were probably 8 Americans and about 10 Brits. We talked more about slang and different words in America and England. The tought us a ridiculous drinking game called “Gecko Master,” in which you have to “gecko” to a flat surface (basically just press ourselves against a wall or the ceiling or whatever). It was pretty weird. There was one girl named Precious. There was also a Greek-British girl named Olympia. We drank champagne and vodka and ate French fries (sorry, I mean chips). This one guy Oliver was basically telling us the history of Soccer (sorry, football) and told us about a big match coming up in St. Petersburg that we should really see. I really want to start hanging out with the Brits more often. I really like all of them pretty much. Their plan had been to go to this club called Ostrov later in the night, but me and most of the rest of the Americans didn’t really want to go (you know how I feel about “clubs”). Plus, I had made plans to hang out with Emily later that night, so when everyone left for the club (I think Bryce, Vickie, and Katie were the only Americans who went) I headed for that place called Swiss Bar where Emily was hanging out and waiting for me to come. Kenny decided to tag along with me. It was a decent walk down Nevskiy to get there, and it was pretty hopping when we arrived. I found Emily right away, and she was there with a few friends from her school. They had been there for a while it seemed and were having fun dancing and what not. Swiss Bar is kind of a weird place. A lot of lesbians hang out there and the bartenders are really butch lesbians, but it isn’t really a lesbian bar because there are always all kinds of people there. There isn’t really a dance floor, just kind of an open space in the middle of the room where people can dance around some, but it’s difficult because it’s on the way to the bathroom and the front door and there are always people trying to push their way through the dance floor. There were quite a few people there that I knew somehow, which seems pretty crazy to me. I guess I’ve been here long enough to start seeing the same people around town. Two of the returning students from CIEE were there, this guy who is my friend Christine’s boyfriend’s friend who I had had dinner with that one night at the Mexican restaurant was there, and later on this Australian guy named Tim who rides my bus in the morning showed up. I had fun talking to each of them for a little bit. I danced around to cheesy western music for a while and then cooled off at a table near the window for a while. I sat with Kenny, Emily, and Emily’s friend Jeff for a while, and Emily and Jeff were messing with Kenny for a while and telling him that they were in St. Petersburg to study taxidermy. I think Kenny thought it was really funny. Kenny got tired so he took a chasnik home, but I figured I should stick around and hang out with Emily more cause I hadn’t really seen her in a while. At one point this girl and guy asked me if they could sit down at the table while I was the only one there, and I said of course (this is all in Russian, of course). I asked her if she was too cold and if she wanted me to close the window, and she said yes. I kind of got the impression that they were foreigners, so I asked where they were from, and she said that she was Russian but the guy she was with was from the Netherlands. When I told her I was from America, she got really surprised and said she thought I was Russian all along! She said she couldn’t detect an accent in the brief interactions we had had. It was a pretty good feeling to be able to blend in that well, I don’t think that I had really ever been mistaken for Russian before then. She was really nice and I talked to her for a little while before some of Emily’s friends came back and wanted to sit back at the table, and the girl and the Dutch guy got up. These friends, I found out, were two Russian girls that go to school with Emily but that Emily had just really met for the first time earlier that day. They both spoke really good English, though. I was sitting at the table with just them for a while and it was really awkward because nobody was saying anything, so I tried to make small talk with one of them. Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: So, it’s Misha?
Masha: MASHA!
Me: Oh! Izvinitsia (“excuse me”).
Masha: What?
Me: I just said “Izvinitsia.”
Masha. Whatever. Are you having fun (said very unenthusiastically)?
Me: Yeah, I’m pretty tired though I guess.
Masha: Oh.
So, needless to say it didn’t take me long to realize that she was not worth trying to talk to, so I got up and talked to that guy Tim for a while. Aparently the dorm he lives in won’t let him in between the hours of midnight and 7:00 AM, so he either has to come back early or stay out all night. Guess which one he usually does. I danced around with Emily and Jeff some more when Matt Derrick showed up. I guess Emily had sent him a text message and told him to come. I haven’t seen him in over a month, so I was excited to see him and talk to him. We went down to the end of the bar and sat with some beers and talked for a long time. Whenever I go out to bars with Matt he always buys me beer after beer, sometimes without even asking if I want one. We talked about Russian music (mainly Kino, of course) and caught up and everything. I love talking with Matt. Emily was hanging around in between dancing too. Eventually her friends left and she stuck around with us. At this point it was about 5:00, 5:30, so I figured I’d just wait around a little longer and I’d be able to catch a bus back home instead of having to get a chasnik. We left about ten to 6:00 and walked down to Nevskiy. There were a few militsia members (poice officers, basically) on the street, and Matt said, “keep it down” before we walked by so hopefully they wouldn’t catch on that we were foreigners and try to hassle us. We got by them fine and Matt walked Emily home while I stopped at the bus stop to wait for a bus, obviously. Now, this next part is probably my best / worst story from Russia thus far. So, I’m standing on the street when those police officers I had mentioned (I assume it was the same ones) come up to me and ask to see my documents. I was a little bit drunk from the bar but not too bad. I could definitely maintain myself and keep my composure. We had all been told that police officers wanting to check peoples’ documents is fairly common in Russia, and I was actually surprised that I hadn’t been asked for them before. So, I wasn’t too nervous, because I knew everything should be more or less in order. My passport is currently being re-registered, as I had mentioned before, but I had my spravka (temporary identification) with me, so I gave that to them. While one officer was checking out the spravka, a third started padding me down checking my pockets. He opened my coat and went through all my pockets while the other guy kept me busy with his questions. What are you doing here? Where are you studying? Do you have any drugs or guns? Etc. The third guy just stood back and kind of watched. I could feel the second guy taking things out of my pocket and putting them back, but I was too focused on the guy asking me questions that I couldn’t really pay attention to what they other guy was doing. Plus, I didn’t want to interfere with whatever they’re doing because there are three of them and one of me, and I’m the foreigner who doesn’t really know what’s going on. At that point my biggest concern was that they were going to find my lighter/knife thing that I had bought in Moscow and have been keeping in my pocket. Luckily, they never found it. So, the guy finishes searching and the other one hands back my spravka and they say everything is alright walk away. Once they were gone, I go through all the things in my pocket to make sure everything is still there. I take out my wallet and look inside, and guess what. 1000 rubles were gone. That’s about $30. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Being pick-pocketed by a police officer? We had all heard stories of police officers asking for bribes or what not, but we were never warned of anything like this. Who terrible and horrifying is it to think that the very people who are supposed to protect you from this sort of thing are actually doing it themselves. I’m beginning to think that they might not have been real police officers, but their uniforms looked legit. I should have asked to see their badges or something, but again I was completely powerless in that situation. Seriously, what could I have possibly done I that situation? There is nothing you can do. So, needless to say I was pretty pissed of and immediately called Matt who was only a few blocks away at this point to tell him what had happened. He was sympathetic, but said similar stuff happens all the time and that, again, there’s nothing you can do about it. I like the way he put it though, now I have a great story to tell and it only cost me 30 bucks. So, tired and angry, I caught the number 7 bus, which, thankfully, came by pretty quick, and got home to the safety of my bed by about 6:30. I slept until about 12:30 the next morning. It’s hard for me to sleep much passed noon, so usually no matter what if I come back really late/early I won’t get much sleep. As long as I wake up naturally though I usually feel pretty refreshed. I told my host-mom about what had happened, and she thought it was pretty terrible, but as per her usual attitude didn’t really show much empathy towards me. I ate some blini with this delicious sweet caramel-y sauce, and then didn’t really plan on doing much for the rest of the day until Ruth’s birthday party that night. About 1:45, though, I got a text message from Peter David about going to Soiree, and I figured I could use some internet time so I decided to meet him there at 3:00. I took the metro down, and on my way out of the Ploshchad Vostanniy metro stop there was a police-officer guy standing around , and I got really paranoid. He stopped the person right in front of me and I slipped past really freaked-out. I think I’m going to be really paranoid of the militsia from now on. That, and try to carry less cash. So, I get passed that and get to Soiree before PD. The internet was working really well this time, and I was able to upload the rest of the pictures from spring break onto Flickr that I wasn’t able to get to earlier from the computer at school. PD showed up and we had some food and some drinks while I used the computer. I let him upload his pictures to Facebook too. Stacey showed up for a little while cause she heard we were there and managed to hijack my computer for a while. Stacey left and PD and I hung around for a while longer, then he left and then me about 15 minutes after him. We all had to get ready for the party I guess. On the metro back home there were these two girls standing right next to me making out like crazy while everybody tried hard not to stare, but it was hard because they were purposefully trying to make a big spectacle out of it, laughing and stumbling around and just so obviously trying to get everybody attention. I hung around at home for a little while, at some fish and potatoes for dinner, and then met with Vickie to head to the party. So, Nick and Sasha had this big party planned for Ruth that was limited to a small group of Ruth’s closer friends, and some of us were kind of put off by all the fuss that was made over it. They had all kinds of stuff planned and we all had to meet at a very specific time to be taken to Sasha’s boyfriend’s apartment where the party was, and a lot of was were worried that it was going to be kind of weird. Oh, and they called everyone and told them to bring cups because they couldn’t find any, and so of course everybody did and we ended up with about 200 cups for about 15 people. All the planning turned out to be much more fun and relaxed than I thought it was going to be. Basically, Nick and Sasha just kind of played MCs for the beginning of the party and had all these songs and little sketch things planned out, followed by Ruth-based trivia questions with prizes and a contest to see which group could make the best Ruth out of newspaper and tape. It was all actually really well planned out and fun, and I was very relieved that it wasn’t as confining as I thought it might be. Stacey had also written alternative lyrics to the Rolling Stones’ song “Satisfaction” and sang it to Ruth, and the lyrics and the delivery were brilliantly hilarious. So, after all the planned stuff it was basically like a normal party. I, actually, didn’t really have as great of a time as everybody else seemed to be having. I don’t really want to get into it, but I’ll just say that lately I’ve been feeling a bit alienated by some of the people from that group and so I wasn’t really being all that social. I was pretty drunk, and usually when I’m drunk I’m really jolly and sociable, but this time I got really bitter and anti-social and kind of tried to hide from everybody, which is hard because it was a really open apartment (It was an amazing apartment, though. The bathroom especially. It had a shower / tub that was basically a mini-swimming pool, and also a sauna). I sat in the hallway for a long time looking at the wall-map that Ruth had got for her birthday, and I think everybody thought I was being really weird. I was, but I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, I just didn’t really feel like mingling with them. Plus I was really afraid to leave the apartment on my own after what had happened earlier that morning, so I just kind of hung around being weird. Vickie convinced me to get up and leave with her and Tsveti, and after a while I agreed. I think everybody was pretty concerned about me and I was probably being a bit of a jerk, but I was just in a weird place. I leaned against the wall in the hallway and got covered in white chalky stuff because I forgot that walls in Russia are painted with really lousy paint that comes off on everything that touches it. I got a chasnik with Vickie and Tsveti that only cost 150 rubles, even though it had to go one direction to take Tsveti home and then all the to the other side of the city for us. I’ve paid more for that just to go to my place before. Oh well. So I got home and went to bed. This morning I had much less of a hang over than I thought I would. I didn’t leave the house all day today. I did some homework and watched some Pete and Pete and listened to some music. It was nice just to relax by myself today. I showed my host-mom my chalky jacket and she washed it for me. Hopefully it will be all dry by tomorrow. She had a couple of her girl-friends over this afternoon, and it was kind of funny to see them sitting around the kitchen table smoking and talking. That’s pretty much all that happened today. Tomorrow it’s back to school. I’m pretty anxious to tell Nathan about my run-in with the police and see what he makes of it. I also teach English tomorrow, which I am especially looking forward to because I haven’t been in about three weeks. So, that’s all for now. Catch you later.

Я люблю этот город, но зима здесь слишком длина

2006-03-23T14:59:00.000+03:00

Alright. There’s a lot that needs to be said about the last two weeks, but I’m not going to be able to say it all here. I’m going to have to give a relatively succinct run-through of my spring break, otherwise this post would go on for pages and pages. So, we started on March 7th by taking a train to Moscow. It was fun. We rode “kupe,” which is the 2nd class train type and consists of a series of small, 4-bed compartments with walls and closing doors. I hung out in one compartment for a while and we watched Blue Velvet on Tom’s computer. Most of the people I watched it with didn’t like it. It was burning hot on the train so I slept very poorly, mostly trying to keep my head close to the window to get as much cool air as I could. We arrived in Moscow early the next morning and were whisked away to our hotel. It’s a big fancy new hotel outside of the center called the Hotel Cosmos, and it obviously caters to a lot of westerners. Actually, while we were in Moscow there was a big international track-meet in town and all the athletes were staying at this hotel too, so in the lobby (which was huge) and in the halls we would see athletes from all over the world, all usually wearing running jackets that say the name of their country on the back. So, we had a very international time at the hotel. After getting set up at the hotel we all got on the bus again and headed for our excursion to the Kremlin. There were guards at the gate and we all had to go through metal detectors. They almost didn’t let Tom in because he was wearing ripped-up jeans and that’s apparently too disrespectful. They finally let him in but told him something like, “you are a dirty and unpleasant person.” We went to the Kremlin museum, which had lots of relics from the Tsarist days like clothes and carriages and lots and lots of gold trinkets and stuff. Everyone was still pretty tired at this point and weren’t really interested in seeing all that stuff. Back outside we saw the cluster of famous churches inside the Kremlin, and it was pretty neat to see all of the together like that in the square. We went inside a few of them and I snuck some pictures. Back outside we saw the huge bell that had never been rung and the huge cannon that had never been fired. Soon thereafter the bus took us back to the hotel and I think most of us hung out there for the rest of the day. Oh, a few of us went to Sbarros down the street and walked through the weird market place area across the street. We had a lot of people over to our room (Mine and Matt’s) that night to drink and have fun, etc. Actually, our room pretty much became party central every night in Moscow. So, everyone had a fun time hanging out in the hotel. The next day we all got up early for our city tour. First stop was Lenin’s Tomb on Red Square. We had to go there first because people are only allowed in at certain hours and you have to go and wait in line for a while. So, we stood out in the cold for about a half an hour before they let us into the square where we had to walk straight to the mausoleum. There are no cameras allowed inside the mausoleum, so sadly I got no pictures of Lenin, but I definitely saw him. There are guards stationed about every ten feet inside, making sure you don’t talk or put your hands in your pockets. You can’t stop and look at Lenin either, you can only walk by at a steady pace or the guards will yell at you. But, it was worth it to see Lenin in the flesh (well, sort of). Outside of the mausoleum, against the wall of the Kremlin is where a lot of the great Soviet leaders and heroes are buried, so we got to see the graves of people like Stalin, Brezhnev, and Gagarin. We didn’t have tome then to linger in Red Square, so we got back on the bus for the rest of our city-tour. Moscow is an insanely huge, sprawling mess of a city, so I was completely disoriented the whole time we drove through it. I saw a lot of the Seven Sisters (these big buildings that are spread out throughout the city that all look kind of similar) including Moscow State University. We stopped at a cool vantage point and looked over the city. There were lots of souvenir tables there, and I ended up buying a flask and this really cool thing that is both a switchblade and a lighter in one. You’d have to see it to understand. We drove around the city some more and were finally dropped of near Red Square. We walked up to it to take lots of pictures of the square, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, the GUM department store and all the other famous things on Red Square. I followed some people to McDonalds for lunch and walked over to the Bolshoi Theater to see about tickets. I got back to Red Square soon afterwards to meet up with my Spring Break travel group so we could go but train tickets to Sochi. We ran into some Mormon missionaries and then slipped away to find a train station. We rode the metro and got out at a stop that had three train stations next to it. We chose Kazanskyi train station at random from the three because it doesn’t matter where you buy your tickets. After searching around the station for a while we finally found the ticket booth. We asked about the cost of various classes of trains and found that kupe would be about $100, while 3rd class (“platskart”) would only be about $30. So, it was a no-brainer. We all headed back to the hotel where a lot of the others were already waiting. That night was much like the night before it, hanging out in our room with some beer and vodka and having a good time. The next day a lot of us decided to go to one of the best art museums in Moscow, the Tretyakov Gallery. I had a great time checking out the art of lots of famous Russian and non-Russian artists. Sasha from Finland was there and it turns out she knows a ton about art, so she was giving me the background stories about all the different paintings and their artists. The Tretyakov has the world’s largest collection of Russian Icons, so that was pretty cool to see too. After the Gallery I broke off from my group to meet up with my friend Christine and her boy friend Blake. You remember them from my last entry, when they were in St. Petersburg and I met up with them for Mexican food. Well, this time we were in Moscow, so of course we had to meet up for Indian food instead. She told me to meet them next to the statue of Mayakovskiy, which I managed to find al right. I stood around watching a news team filming a segment nearby and kids skateboarding around the statue when Christine and Blake showed up. The restaurant was right across the street. I hadn’t had Indian food in months, so it was pretty great to eat there. We talked about our experiences in Russia and about people that Christine and I knew from back home, etc. It was a nice, relaxing time. I had plans to meet back up with the Tretyakov group later to see an opera at the Bolshoi, but I had a few hours to kill before then, so Christine and Blake suggested they take me over to the Arbat. The Arbat is a street and an entire district really that is known for its Bohemian lifestyle and cool artsy-ness. The folk singer Bulat Okudzhava wrote a song about it. We took the metro there and then walked up and down the street for a bit. It’s an old cobblestone street that is pedestrian-only and filled with booths and vendors. My favorite part was a wall down a side-alley that is basically a shrine to my favorite Russian band Kino and the late lead-singer Viktor Tsoi. There is tons of graffiti and lots of posters all over the wall, and a spot where people come to lay broken cigarettes in honor of Viktor (apparently they have a song about a brken cigarette, but I don’t know which one it is). I, of course, didn’t have any cigarettes, but Blake was nice enough to lend me one of his so I could break it and leave it on the pile while he smoked one. From Arbat we walked over to the Bolshoi, which was kind of a long walk but I enjoyed seeing more of Moscow. Once there, Christine and Blake took off while I waited for the others. They showed up and we went to buy the specially-priced student tickets. Guess how much a student ticket to the Bolshoi was. Nope, less. A student ticket was only 20 rubles, which comes to about 66 cents. Amazing! Granted, they were the worst seats in the house (4th balcony, along the side), but hey, how can you argue with 20 rubles? The play was La Bohem (how do you spell that?) and it wasn’t translated into Russian as I hear so many operas are. It was fun I guess. I’m not really into the opera that much. Luckily, we all desided after much hesitation to leave during intermission. Well, a couple people stayed. We got back to the hotel and did the usually partying in our room, except everyone cleared out early for my sake because I had to get up really early to catch my 8:00 AM train the next morning. So, after a decent night’s sleep I was off to my real spring break. There were 6 of us: Ingrid, Kara, Abby, John, Reed, and Me. We made our way through the Metro and got to the train station with plenty of time to spare. The platskart cars are basically open-compartments, meaning no privacy whatsoever. But it was fine, really. I had heard a lot of bad things about it but now I think I would choose platskart over kupe any day because you save so much. It’s arranged kind of like the kupe, with rows of bunks on the right running perpendicular to the train, and another row of bunks running parallel to the train on the other side. My ticket was for a top bunk on the perpendicular side, and I determined that I was far too large to be asble to fit in the top bunk comfortably. But when we left Moscow nobody was in the bunk below me, so I was beginning to think I might be able to take that spot instead. The same was true for the bunks across from mine, so it looked like we might have a whole little section to ourselves. We figured we might be able to negotiate with people to maybe switch spots and all get into spots that we liked, should more people come. Our first stop was in Ryazan, and wouldn’t you know it the owners of both those lower bunks got on there. The one who had the bunk below me was an unfriendly middle-aged woman who reeked of BO, and the lower bunk across from me was taken by a sketchy guy who kept reading a high-school biology book. I sat with them for a while, but when the stinky lady decided to start laying out her bed I managed to switch into Abby’s spot on the lower bunk across the aisle and back a row. It was probably one of the worst spots in the train, though, because it was right next to the door that leads to the bathroom and everyone was coming and going all the time. The train ride itself wasn’t that bad. I enjoyed looking out the window a lot, listening to music, playing cards a bit, and listening in on conversations. The sketchy guy got into a conversation with the rest of my group about how Americans have no culture, but I was too far away to really have any place in the conversation. There was a really nice younger women in the bunk above me and a couple of older women with a young girl across from me. The young girl had a bandage over her left eye. It was pretty hot on that train too, but not as bad as the one to Moscow. I was wearing shorts the whole time, though. Sleeping was a bit awkward and cramped, but I managed decently. In the middle of the night I awoke to find one of the two older women across from me putting a blanket over me, and I was a little freaked out at first but then realized how nice it was of her. There was a couple from Abkhazia (the break away region of Georgia that claims it is an independent nation but isn’t recognized by anyone. It’s just over the border from the Sochi area) who gave us their contact info and invited us to come visit them in Abkhazia. It would have been cool, but alas we were never able to do it. I woke up at about 6:30 just in time to see the train pull into the Krasnodar train station. This is the city where my Russian teacher Josh first came to when he was learning Russian, and I wish I could of seen more of it. Someday, I suppose. We still had about six hours to Sochi, but the snow was already gone by this point. It was a nice ride through the country-side, with lots of hills and forests everywhere, We stopped in the costal town of Tuapse and we got off the train for a second to find that this air was nice and warm (well, compared to St. Petersburg or Moscow) and we began to grow very excited for Sochi. It was a beautiful ride down the Black Sea coast to Sochi, and we got in right around noon. I had to use the bathroom really bad and the restrooms on the trains are always locked for about an hour before arrival. So I ran to the bathroom when we pulled into the station. Off course I had to pay, like at virtually all public bathrooms in Russia. When I got in I found that all the stalls are squat-toilets only. Apparently this is the case at all train stations throughout Russia. So, I had my first experience with a squat-toilet. Let’s just say it wasn’t fun. After that it was time for all of us to find a place to stay. WE decided we would try and rent an apartment, and lots of people came up to us who wanted to rent them to us. We decided to split into two groups and check out two different options before deciding on one. I went with Abby and Reed. This one guy took us on a marshrutka up into the hills of the town to this little condo place that was really clean and seemed really nice, but the location was pretty terrible. We told him we needed to go back and discuss it with the others, so we got back and decided that the apartment the others looked at would be better. They took us there, and it was an ugly communist era apartment complex, but the apartment itself was pretty nice, with our own kitchen, bathroom, and plenty of places to sleep. Best of all, it only cost us about $10 a night each. What a deal! After settling in we went to explore the town. We walked to the port where there were lots of fishermen on the docks. We waded in the Black Sea water and watched to sunset from a concrete jetty-thing. It felt so good to be there in the warm(ish) weather in a place that I had heard about for a long time and now finally got to see. When it was dark we headed back to the apartment and had a home-cooked meal of spaghetti. The next day we did more exploring. We walked along the Sochi river, through markets and a long the water some more. John and I went off for a while, and by the docks we saw a guy with a money in an army suit and a pistol in a halter. We posed for pictures with it and then realized that we had to pay the guy 100 rubles for it. It was worth it, though. WE walked further down along the water and found a great spot with more concrete jetties and wooden platforms. We tried to get back and walked down a small alley that ended up going for a long ways in a direction we didn’t want to go. We finally found our way back and hung out in the apartment for the most part that night. Oh, that day we had arranged to take an excursion into the mountains the next day, so the following morning we headed over to the train station to meet our tour guide Alexander. It was just us and a couple from Krasnodar in the van. We drove down to the town called Adler, which was so close to Georgia I could smell it. From there we took a turn up into the mountains to wards a little town called Krasnaya Polyana. This is right around where the Caucus Mountains begin, and they were very beautiful. I took a lot of pictures. In the town Krasnaya Polyana, Alexander took us to a place with honey and wine tasting. All of it was delicious, and we bought a jar of honey for our picnic lunch. The end of the line was at a ski resort that had a decent number of people skiing. Everyone in my group really really wanted to hike. I wasn’t all that desperate, but I figured I should follow them. There weren’t really any hiking trails because it’s just a ski resort, so we ended up hiking up the ski slope and then onto this muddy road up to the top of one of the runs. It wasn’t a very fun hike or anything, but there was a nice view from the top. There was a chair-lift that would have been fun to take to the top, but it was really expensive. Once we were at the top, John, Reed and I decided to see if we could ride it back down for cheap or free. The guy manning the lift was a younger guy who spoke a little English and was pretty friendly. When we asked him if we could ride, he asked if you had a ticket, and we said no, so he just flat out asked for a bribe (“give me money, please”). I think he wanted 100 rubles a person, which seemed a little too steep for us, so we decided we’d just walk back down. We had a nice picnic lunch of bread, meat, cheese, and of course honey, before we had to meet up with Alexander and the couple from Krasnodar. On the way back we stopped at a spot to check out a waterfall, which was pretty cool, as waterfalls usually are. We also stopped at a place that has mineral water coming out of a spigot, and the Russian men got their hair wet in it and took a drink. I tried drinking it, but it was pretty gross. The rest of the way back Alexander blasted pop music instead of speaking to us through his head-set microphone. There are a few Russian pop songs that I am getting to know well from hearing them all over here, and one of them is the theme song to this popular Russian show called “Not Born Beautiful.” Alexander played that one, of course. Back in Sochi we went to buy Bus tickets for the next day, and then went back to the apartment to relax a little while before heading out that night. When we were all ready we went out to try and find some sort of bar or club (I hate using the word “club” like this, but it’s what a lot of the places are I guess). At first we each got some beers and went down to the beach to drink and sit in the dark and look out at the water. The only kind of bar/club/whatever we could find was this place called Club Era that said “Strip Show” on the sign. There never was any strip show, but there was a pole in the middle of the dance floor. This place was pretty sleazy. There were a few women who were obviously prostitutes and a few older businessmen type here and there. Once people started figuring out that there was group of Americans in their midst we starting getting a lot of attention. I had a couple of Devyatkas (the 9% alcohol beers that Baltika makes) and a few shots so I was pretty drunk for most of the time we were there and I don’t really remember things linearly, but we met a lot of people and spoke a lot of Russian. There was one kid about 18 named Mark who told us his father was American, so he seemed to think very highly of us. He wanted John’s and My email addresses because he is going to come to America in three years (he has his mandatory military service starting in two months, which will take two years, so I’m not sure what he’s planning on doing for that extra year). Hopefully he won’t lose the cigarette box with our email addresses on it sometime before then. There were some sleazy older men that kept trying to dance with the girls. One of them told Kara she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. One guy apparently kept asking if he could kiss them, and when they told him “no” he asked me to ask them if he could kiss them. The bathroom at this place was outside and down the stairs and cost 5 rubles to use. It was disgusting in there, and of course it was another squat-toilet. At around 3:30 in the morning we decided to leave, but the girls had met this group of boys that wanted to take them to a tea house or something, so they went off with them and John and Reed while I went back to the apartment. I had discovered that I had lost one of the two keys to our apartment, so I got the other one form them, which meant I had to wake up when they arrived later to let them in. I was really hungry and tried to go to the McDonalds on the way back, but the walk-up window had been closed for about an hour. There were a few guys there banging on the window trying to get some service, but it was no use. Just down the street from the apartment I saw a couple walking, and the guy asked me, “Are you American?” and I said, “How could you tell?” Then I realized that they had been at the bar too and head seen me and the group. Their names were Maksim and Irina and they were very friendly. I talked to them for a while, I can’t really member what about, but I know that at some point Maksim started joking around with me that I was a spy and he was going to take me to the KGB. We parted ways and I got back to the apartment. Reed showed up soon there after. I was lying on my fold-out bed in the kitchen (that’s where I slept while we were there) I heard a knock at the door and assumed it was the others wanting to be let in. I got up and peeked through the peephole, not to find them, but some crazy white-haired man standing on the other side. I asked, “who’s there?” He said something but I couldn’t hear or understand him. I said “I don’t know you,” and in reply he said something about “girls,” and I had no idea what he wanted. I got a little freaked out and woke up Reed to ask him what to do, and of course all we really could do was not open the door, so I stood there looking at him through the peephole until he went away. Weird. A little later there was another knock and thankfully it was the others, so I could then sleep easy. The next day was a lazy kind of day because we were leaving on a bus at 5:00 in the evening, and we just chilled out for the afternoon. I went to the train station, got some food and used the internet. Back at the apartment, I remembered something about the night before that started to get me a little worried. At one point, when everybody else was up dancing, this older guy came up to me and started talking. Almost right away he showed me his militia ID (like the police), not in any kind of authoritative, official kind of way, but more as a conversation piece or something. We talked for a little bit and then he asked for my phone number. I really didn’t want to give it to him, so I told him I forget my number. Instead, he gives me his, and even transliterated his last name into Latin text (with my help). He told me that he really wanted me to call him tomorrow, and that he wanted to talk to me about something just for an hour or so. I said, “sure” or whatever, knowing all along that I was never going to call him. He left me alone and I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the night. What had me worried the next morning was that I remembered that I had told him that we were leaving the next day, and I had even told him the time and place and everything, just as a matter of conversation. Then I remembered that he was apparently a member of the militia, and I began to worry that I might make him really mad if I don’t call him, or that he might have wanted to talk to me about some sort of official business regarding our being in Sochi. Whatever his reason was, I still didn’t want to call him, and I just hoped that he wouldn’t be there at the bus station later that day with his fellow officers waiting for us. I didn’t tell anyone else about it. No need to make the others worry when they don’t have to, I figured. We got to the station with little time to spare, because we had to first help Reed figure out how he was getting back home (He doesn’t have a multiple-entry visa, so he couldn’t come with us to the Ukraine). We got there about ten minutes before the bus left, and there was no sign of the militia anywhere. Once we got out of the city I knew it was safe, and I was finally able to tell someone the story (Ingrid, who was sitting next to me). So, we left Sochi on a bus, headed for Port Kavkaz (Port Caucus), which is 13 hours away at the other end of Russia’s Black Sea coast. The road was through the mountains and really windy. There were a lot of clos encounters with other cars on some of the switch backs. It was pretty scary. The ride was quite uncomfortable for me, but I made it through alright. There were two drivers that took turns at the wheel, and Kara claims that she them with bottles of vodka and that they were drunk for most of the drive, but I didn’t notice. We went through the town of Novorosiysk, which is fairly large. We got into Port Kavkaz at about 5:30 in the morning. There is no town there, it’s literally just a Port. We were dropped off basically in the middle of nowhere with lots of industrial port-type stuff around, and we weren’t really sure what to do. Abby started laughing uncontrollable when she saw where we were. The only place to go was the ticket office for the Ferries. The door was open and there was a place for us to sit, but the windows didn’t open for a few hours. We were all freezing and tired, and with all my warm clothes on I laid on the bench inside and managed to sleep for a little bit. The window finally opened and we bought our ferry tickets, We waited around a little longer before it was time to board and then proceeded through customs. Everything was going smoothly until we got to the passport check booth. Everything was in order with our passports, but they would not give us back our migration cards with our registration on it. This is a very important piece of paper, and Nathan had told everybody to try and get it back from border patrol officers if they didn’t give them back to us automatically. In Russia you need to be registered in a place if you are there for more than 72 hours, and this piece of paper said that we were registered in St. Petersburg through the end of the program. If we didn’t get them back we would have to get them registered all over again, which apparently can take about a month, during which time we couldn’t leave St. Petersburg. So, they wouldn’t give us back our cards and we fought as hard as we could for them, but they wouldn’t budge. They wrote down our individual registration numbers for each of us and told us we could just get new copies once we got to St. Petersburg (Side note: Apparently that number is meaningless now without the actual migration card. I had to submit my passport and visa to be re-registered, but apparently it is only going to take a week, so it isn’t so bad after all). So, very frustrated, we were ready to get on a ferry and head to the Ukraine and get off of Russian soil for a while, They guy who works on the ferry was really excited to meet some Americans because he’s been studying English for the past few years in Novorosiysk. He even took us up to the control room to meet the captain. The captain had all gold teeth. It was a nice way to relax after the migration card fiasco (Another side note: it is about 1:00 in the morning as I write this, and I really want to finish but I feel like my writing is going to get sloppier and lazier as it gets later and as I get more tired. So, bare with me). It was a quick ferry ride, and on the other side everybody rushed to be first in line at the migration booth. We didn’t run, so we were last. When we finally got up to the booth, the officer was concerned that on the migration cards that we had to fill out we only listed “Yalta” as our destination. He claimed that we needed to have an actual address of a place we were staying. So, he kept all our passports while we waited for the everybody else to get through. He ended up being a really nice guy, and basically told us that we just need to pick some place that we will say we are staying at for the sake of the migration card, and he even helped us go through our guide book to choose a hotel. We picked one and filled it out on the cards, gave them back to him, and he stamped everything and gave it all back to us and we were on our way. It was the first of many pleasant experiences we were to have with Ukrainians. So, we went through customs after that really quick and were free to roam about the Ukraine. After exchanging our rubles for Ukrainian Grivna, we caught a taxi into the town just down the road form the port called Kerch. We at some food at a café near the bus station and tried to figure out how to get to Yalta. We decided a taxi might be the best way, because it would be much faster and more direct than taking a bus. We found a taxi driver and haggled him down to 500 Grivna for the 4 hour drive to Yalta (about $100, so only $20 each. Not bad at all for such a long taxi ride when you think about it). Our driver was named Misha, and he too was very nice. I sat in the front, of course, and everybody in the back got immersed in a big intellectual conversation that I was glad to not be a part of. The drive was nice. Eastern Crimea reminds me of Eastern Oregon a lot. We went through the capital of the Crimea, Simferopol, and then up into the mountains and down into Yalta. Misha learned that we wanted to rent an apartment, so he took it upon himself to help us do so. He found someone and started talking to them and making connections, and before long we pulled into a back street and checking out an apartment. The apartment was amazing, by the way. Again, we paid only $10 each per night. Here’s the crazy thing that happened: We had known that Peter David, Alex and Colleen were also staying somewhere in Yalta, but we had no idea where and no way to get a hold of them. As we were standing around on the alley / street thing in front of our apartment negotiating with the hostess and with Misha, who should come walking out of the building across the way but Peter David, Alex and Colleen! They were staying in an apartment just across the street! How crazy is that! So, we got to hang out with them for the rest of the time they were there (only about a day and a half). So, we got our apartment, settled in, and then hit the town with Peter David. We just walked along the waterfront area, which is really nice. We ate some “burritos” and “pizza” and some restaurant, bought a bunch of wine and hung out back at the apartment for a while. I got my own room in the apartment with one of the most comfortable couches I’ve ever slept on. The next morning I waked around town alone for a bit, checking out the markets and trying to find some food. I bought a few groceries from a market and the really friendly women who worked there helped me pick out everything. That day we all decided to take a trip up to Europe’s tallest waterfall, which was a short drive and a short walk from downtown Yalta. We had to take two cabs, and our cab driver asked us if we were Polish. Actually, several people in the Ukraine asked us that. I guess they get a lot of Polish tourists there. The waterfall was pretty cool. I mean, I’ve seen taller, coming from the west and all, but it was still pretty cool. There was this staircase you could climb to get higher up and right next to it, and there were tons of steps missing. Whole sections, in fact. So, You basically had to climb up the side of the steep hill pulling yourself up with the hand rail with the occasional step to help you along. From up there the waterfall was amazing and there was a spectacular view of Yalta down below in the distance. The rest of my group decided to go off hiking in the mountains some more, but I headed back to town with Peter David and Alex (Colleen had gone off hiking by herself for the day). Back in town we broke down and went to McDonalds. There is a statue of Lenin that looks directly at the McDonalds, which is pretty hilarious. We walked around town some more, checked out the “thing market,” walked along the waterfront some more, and then headed back to their apartment for a while because I didn’t have a key to mine. We watched Ukrainian TV, and after a while the others got home and I went back to my apartment. PD, Alex and Colleen had to leave the next day, so we decided to have a big dinner at our apartment that night. They brought over a pasta dish and some pelmeny. Abby made cheesy potatoes, John made some fried trout, and I threw in some pelmeny of my own. It was a huge feast! We drank shots of vodka with our food like real Russians. We stayed up for a while drinking, talking and watching Ukrainian music videos. The next day PD, A, and C went back home, but we had some more time to spend. We decided to go check out the palace where the big conference between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt took place in 1945. It wasn’t that exciting of a palace, but it was interesting for its historical significance. From there we decided to take the 5 kilometer walk down the coastline to this little castle called the “Swallows Nest” that the tsar had made for his mistress or something. We went down the wrong path at first and had to turn around, but once we got on the right path it was a nice walk through the forest with lots of great views of the oceans. The others sang along to what seemed like every song they could all possibly know while I hung back and just listened. We finally made it to the castle, which seemed like a castle out of a cartoon or something and was really tiny. The location is awesome though, right on the edge of a cliff over-looking the ocean. All there is inside now is an Italian restaurant. We were all pretty hungry and decided to give it a go. The food wasn’t bad. We had asked them right off the bat if they accepted credit cards, and they did, but when it came time to pay there were problems. Nobody’s card would work and we didn’t have enough cash to cover the meal, let alone for the cab ride back to town. They said it was a problem with their machine. We sat around for a long time while they tried to get the credit card to go through, and after a while it looked like it wasn’t going to work. So, for a small fee, they had a driver drive us back into Yalta to find an ATM, get the cash and give it too him. It was great! They got their money and we got a cheap ride back into town. Everybody wins. That night, the rest of the gang really wanted to go out to some place called the Catcus Club, but I was so exhausted and not in the mood for a “club.” I agreed to come out with them for a little while, and we went to some weird restaurant to have a beer before we found the other place, but I decided to head back after that. We only had one key, so I had to make sure I would wake up when I heard them ringing the doorbell whenever they got back. It sounded like they had a fun time, but I really wasn’t up for it. At the apartment I watched a little TV and basically just went to bed. The next morning we all had to go buy train tickets. Ingrid and John had decided that they were going to continue on to Odessa, and I almost decided to go with them, but ultimately decided it was a bad idea and that I was ready to get back to Petersburg. I’m sure I’ll have the chance in the future. It turned out that they had to take a later that afternoon, so they ran back to the apartment and go tall their stuff together before heading out. That left just Abby, Kara, and me. We ate at a Turkish café and then bought our own tickets to Moscow and then form there to St. Petersburg (plastkart, of course, except the Moscow-Petersburg one, which was a special, fast (5 hours) seating car. Most of the rest of the day we spent in the apartment, occasionally going out for food or to try and use the internet at the internet center around the corner, only to be told there was no room because there were too many kids playing computer games. We were going to see a Russian movie called “Boomer” that night, but we got side-tracked with finally being able to get on the internet, and having to find a way to call our landlady and tell her we were leaving earlier than we had initially said. So, instead of the movie we each got some things to cook for dinner, went back to the apartment and watched more Ukrainian TV until it was time to go to bed. The landlady came earlier than expected the next morning, so we got everything together fast as she inspected the apartment. Everything looked good, so we were on our way. We walked up to the bus station and found a taxi right away that would take us the Simferopol (where the train station is). It’s a 1 and a half hour drive, and we got there with plenty of time to spare. We sat around for a while, got some food, and did some reading before it was time to get on the train. I had a spot on the train just like the kind I had had before, which was fine. There were friendly Ukrainians across from me and nobody in the bunk above me, so I was happy. At some point during the ride, some people got on who didn’t have assigned spots on the train. I finally figured out that they were going short distances and had to just find somewhere to sit for a while. There was one guy who sat with me in my spot for an hour or so, but it was still during the day so I wasn’t real anxious to lie down or anything. He got out in a town called Zaporozhe, and in that town more people like him got on. One guy asked if he could sit there and I said sure, thinking he’d probably only be an hour or so too. I figured he’d probably be getting off in Dnipropetrovsk, the next major city, which wasn’t too far away. This guy was pretty sketchy. He had prison tattoos all over his hands and his nose was ridiculously crooked. I figured he’d probably had it broken at least a few times. After a while I began to suspect that we weren’t going to be going through Dnipropetrovsk after all, because by then we should have been there. I checked the mad and saw that we had gone off on a different route completely that doesn’t even go through any big towns. So, I began to wonder, where’s this guy going to get off? It was dark by then and I was starting to want to make up my bed and lay down. He ended up staying on for about five hours. He got off at the Ukrainian border, for what I don’t know. Right when he got off I put the table down and made up my bed right away so that nobody else could come and keep me from laying down. The Ukrainian border patrol came in and looked at our passports, and of course everything was in order. They even had a drug-sniffing dog come in and check for drugs. The women across the way told another passenger that one time she had been on a train when they actually found drugs. We pulled out of the border check and about and hour and a half later pulled into the Russian border check at the city of Belgorod. They were much more scrutinous with our passports and visas there, but there were no problems in the end and we got them back just fine. I know have a nice set of stamps from Russian and the Ukraine all in a row in my passport. I bought some chicken from a vendor on the platform and the providnist (the guy who kind of runs the train car. Usually it’s a women, but this time it was a man) even heated it up for me. Ukrainians, I’m telling you. They’re so nice. Soon their after I went to sleep, and it wasn’t too long after I woke up in the morning that we were in Moscow. We had to go on the metro one stop to get to our new train station, and once there had about 4 hours to kill before our next train left. I walked around the crazy marketplace area outside with lots of bootleg DVD stands. Moscow is much sleazier than St. Petersburg. The DVD kiosks in Moscow are filled with crazy porn, but you hardly ever see it in St. Petersburg. I had another bad experience with a squat-toilet at the train station too. After a long wait we finally boarded our train and began the final leg of our trip. The train was really fast, and what is usually an 8 hour trip only took 5 on this train. I just sat and listened to music most of the time. It was pretty comfortable, as far as train seating goes. We got into St. Petersburg at about 9:30, and then began my trek through the city with my huge backpack. I waited in line forever to get a metro token, and then had to wait around inside a marshrutka with my bag for a while too. But, I got home just fine and I was quite relieved to finally be home. Well, it isn’t really home, but for now it is. And so ended my crazy 2-week spring break. There are so many little details I had to leave out, but all the good ones will surface eventually. Oh, by the way, I seem to have lost about 2 or 3 t-shirts on the trip. I don’t know what could have happened to them. Oh well. Today was back to school like normal. Everybody was telling stories of their vacations. My favorite is Vickie and Katie’s. They, not thinking, took a train directly from Odessa to St. Petersburg, not realizing that it goes right through Belarus, and when they got to the border they were kicked off the train and had a big ordeal getting back to Kiev and then to Moscow and on to St. Petersburg. They have Byelorussian stamps I their passports though, and now I’m really jealous. I went to Soiree after school with Tom, Katie and Vickie, even though I didn’t have my laptop. Emily happened to be there and I was so glad to see her because I hadn’t in so long. We made plans to hang out this weekend. I left soiree early to get home and work on all the homework I have, including my big essay for Civilization class on what my impressions of Russian society are. And, that brings us up to speed. It is now 2:19 and time for me to sleep. There are some fun things coming up in the next few days I think, so keep an eye out for blog posts about those in the near future. It’s good to be back. Take care everyone.

Where in the world is Austin?

2006-03-15T12:17:00.000+03:00

I am in Sochi right now, using the computer at the train station's service center. Gmail won't load on this computer, so consider this a message to everyone that I am here and doing fine. We were in Moscow then we rode a train for 28 hours and have been hanging out in Sochi since. The weather is really warm. There are palm trees everywhere. It reminds me of California in many ways. I'll go into more detail later. Later today we are catching a bus to Port Kavkaz, then hopefully catching a ferry to the Crimean Penninsula (Ukraine) and making our way down to Yalta for a few days before heading back to Petersburg. We'll see how it all goes. So, that's all I have time for right now. I'm having a great time. Take it easy, everyone, and I'll see you soon.

"Do you have mayonaise in America?"

2006-03-07T13:18:00.000+03:00

Busy busy busy! At least that’s how it feels right now. I have just almost exactly 24 hours before I leave for Moscow and I feel like I’m scrambling to get everything together and get everything taken care of before I leave. But of course, one of the most important things I needed to do before I left was to write a blog entry as per my promise. I guess I’ll pick up with Friday. We usually have two classes on Fridays but because of that holiday the other week we have some make-up classes scheduled, and one of them was Friday. So, after a long day of classes it was finally the weekend. After school, Vickie and I tagged along with Nick and Tom, who were going to Moskovsky Vokzal (the big train station) to buy a ticket back to St. Petersburg for after Moscow. They are going to Copenhagen for their spring break, for some reason, and they need to get back to St. Petersburg to take a bus to Helsinki where they will catch their (apparently cheap) flight to Copenhagen, This is the train station that we have to meet at tomorrow to take to Moscow, so it was good to see it before hand and know where to go. I enjoyed looking at the big time-tables in the station to. It was really exciting to see the names of all these cities that I know of in Russia, and to imagine that from here with all this information you could actually go to them all! So, while they were buying their tickets I just stared up at all those names and tried to make sense of how the schedules are explained. After the station we were going to go to that little café I know with the cheap beer and blini, but after getting side-tracked at a 505 store (I didn’t buy anything) and realizing how late it was getting, Nick and I decided to head back to the Island. We decided to take the metro instead of the bus because it would be a lot quicker, though not cheaper for me since I had to get a marshrutka afterwards. I hung out at home for a while before heading out again. The plan was for a bunch of us to go somewhere with Allisonn, because she hasn’t been out with us to any bars or anything yet and she’s been wanting to. She didn’t want to drink and didn’t want to go anywhere to crazy or anything, so we thought it would be fun just to relax at Kofe Khaus. I got to the metro station and waited around for the others to show up. Ruth and then Stacey showed up first and we stood around together waiting for the others. We saw this guy walking around whose face was completely and utterly beaten. I mean bruised, cut, bloody, and swollen, and virtually over every inch of his face. It was pretty scary to see. What’s even scarier is that he stood close to us for a little while and seemed like he was looking at us. He kept moving closer and closer over the course of a few minutes, and right as I said, “Maybe we should stand somewhere else,” he came up and started asking us for something. He was smoking a cigarette and had about half of the cigarette’s worth of ash hanging off the end of it. We kind of ignored him at first, but then I just looked up to him and said, “excuse me [us]” and we walked away and stood in another spot. He sort of disappeared after that, cause after we moved and looked back I couldn’t see him anywhere. It was really weird. Everyone else eventually showed up and we got to Kofe Khaus, where we got a table in the back room like always and had a fun, relaxing time like always. None of the usual waitresses were there, though. I had a beer and some blini with ice cream. I think Allisonn had a fun time, and we all hope that she will start coming out with us more often. Everyone had their cameras and we were all taking pictures of each other. There was a couple at the table behind us who were making out the whole time, so we took pictures of that too. As 12:00 approached almost everyone decided to catch the metro home. I still wanted to stay out and the only other person who did was Sasha, so we decided to head across the street to Choomadon for a while. I hadn’t ever really hung out with Sasha outside of school yet, so I was glad to get a chance. At the bar we talked a lot about small town life versus big city life, and differences between America and Europe (Sasha is from Finland). Unfortunately, our time spent at Choomadan was not entirely pleasant, because they screwed up our order almost entirely, and everything we ordered was either the wrong thing or never came at all. Sasha ordered some French fries and what she thought was a pirozhki (like a pierogie), as well as a glass of “fresh-squeezed” orange juice and two shots of cranberry vodka (one was for me, actually, because she didn’t want to drink a shot by herself). I ordered a beer and some grenki (the dark bread with garlic and cheese). So the waitress took down our whole order, and a little while later she came back and told us that they were out of fries and grenki. We got the menu back to try and order something else but decided to skip it in the end. The “pirozhki” was actually a piece of pie that was basically just made out of marshmallow. The shots were most definitely not cranberry vodka, and Sasha’s orange juice was most definitely not “fresh squeezed.” And my beer never came. We decided to leave and go to this little café that Sasha knew nearby that was 24-hours, so we asked for the check. Of course the beer was still on the check, so when the waitress came to collect the money I made sure to remind her that I never got the beer, so she shouldn’t charge me for it, and she nodded and seemed to understand. She brought my change back, and lo and behold she had charged me for the beer. I called her back when she came by again and informed her that she still owed me for the beer I never got. She said fine, left, and came back with 60 rubles. The beer was 70. I counted it, and informed her that she still owed me 10 rubles. Of course she was pretty pissed by now, but she went and got it and finally we were able to leave. She totally knew what she was doing the whole time, she was just trying to screw me over, but I wasn’t going to let it happen this time. This is the third strike for Choomadon, I’m not going back their anymore. So, Sasha and I walked down the street to find this 24-hour café, and when we found it we were quite disappointed to find that it was actually closed, despite the fact that it clearly said “24 hours” on the sign. By then, we both decided it was just time to go home. I walked Sasha another block to bridge, and she said she could walk the rest of the way fine. We made a deal though, that if she doesn’t call me after 45 minutes then I should call her to make sure she got home alright, and if I don’t hear from her or can’t get a hold of her I would call the program director and let him know something had happened. Of course, I got a call from her about half an hour later, so it was no problem. I caught a chasnik on Bolshoi for 80 rubles and got home for a good night’s rest. Most of Friday was spent at home, something I hadn’t done yet. I called around for a while to try and get a hold of someone to see if they wanted to do something, but everyone was busy or didn’t want to do anything or whatever, so I just stayed in all day. That night, however, there were big plans. It was Tom’s 21st the next day, so Katie and Vickie had planned for everyone to meet him a the metro station near his house, and then we would all go to this club nearby called Griboedova that’s supposed to be really cool. Once we got there, Katie and Vickie informed us that they had scoped it out and found out there was a 300 ruble cover, and nobody really wanted to pay that, so we decided to head to our new fall-back place, the Red Lion. We took the metro and then a bus and once we got there we found plenty or space in the back room. We all had a grand old time drinkin’ and dancin’ and eatin’ and talkin’ and all that. I got some delicious grenki to make up for the grenki I never got the night before. Tom ordered a “cyr-burger” (“cyr” is the Russian word for cheese) and the waiter thought it was hilarious. More people showed up later and at one point we pretty much twook up two whole booths, which are each pretty darn big. I think everyone had a really fun time. We met some Russian people sitting at the booth near us and talked to them for a while. At one point, a Russian guy from another booth across from us invited me over to their booth and I ended up sitting and talking with them for about an hour. All in Russian! Actually, they did use a few English words that they knew when they could, but those were really just the words “good” and “beautiful,” which they seemed to try to use whenever they possibly could. They were older than me, I think they were probably around 30. They were really friendly though, and were really patient with me when I didn’t know a word in Russian and they would take the time to try and explain it to me. They told me I spoke Russian very well, and they said they give me a “5” (The Russian equivalent of an A). We had some pictures taken together, but I’m not sure whose camera they were taken on. We exchanged numbers too, and they kept telling me that they would call me and we would relax together. They also said they were going to come to America on vacation sometime and they would call me. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the number I gave them was, of course, only my number in Russia, and they certainly would not be able to reach me with it in America. While I was talking to them, most of my friends left, and by the time my new friends took off (their names were Constantine and Denis [Kostya and Den] by the way) there were only a few from our group left, so I took off soon there after. I walked down the street and over the bridge to get back to Vasilevskiy Island where I could catch a marshrutka for a lot cheaper than it would be from right outside the bar. I caught one in the same spot I had the night before and for the same price. By the time I got home it was about 5:00, so I hit the sack and slept until about noon the next morning. Sunday was actually quite busy and exciting. I had planned to go to this island-park in the north of the city for the big last-day-of-maslenitsa party that was apparently going on there. When I awoke their was a text message from Ruth awaiting me that said they were meeting at the metro station near the park at 1:00, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it by then, so I texted her back and we decided that I would just call them whenever I got their and we would meet up. I got up and had my usual weekend morning breakfast of blini and jam, and then headed out to meet them. I meant to go to Vasileostrovskaya metro, but I took a different marshrutka than usual and it didn’t stop their automatically like the other ones, but it continued on to Gostiny Dvor so I just waited until then and got off, Outside the metro station there was a small demonstration of about 10 or 15 old ladies holding Soviet Union flags waving pictures of Stalin and holding a big banner that I didn’t read all of and probably couldn’t have understood anyways (I did catch the word “reforms”), but it was pretty obvious to see what they were suggesting by their protest, There were lots of people gawking some police hanging around too. I managed to snap a couple of pictures. Down in the tunnel between Gostiny Dvor and Nevskiy Prospekt metro stations I saw another awesome sight. There were about 6 army veterans all dressed in camo, a few of them with missing limbs, and they were all singing folk-type songs to the accompaniment of two of them on guitar. It was really awesome. I wanted to stop and take pictures and/or video with my camera, but there were lots of people constantly walking by and I thought it might be disrespectful or something. It sounded really good though, and I wish I had a recording of whatever it was they were singing. Anyway, I rode the metro around, made some transfers, and ended up at the Krestovsky Ostrov metro station in the north part of the city, where I hadn’t been before. I called up Ruth and she gave me directions to where they were in the park, and I followed the crowds to the park entrance. I had forgotten my student ID so I had to pay the adult price (50 rubels versus 30, bummer) and crossed the big bridge to the park that makes up an entire island. There were tons of people and tons of activity, and I wonder how much is actually going on there when it isn’t maslenitsa. Anyway, Ruth had told me to take a right when I got in the park and to look for big amusement park rides. I took a right and walked for a long time and never saw any rides. I kept calling them again and again and trying to find the right place but just ended up further and further away. It’s a pretty big park, so it was kind of easy to get lost. There was lots of fanfare, and lots of kids were carrying around little effigies of old-lady winter on the ends of sticks made out of straw, presumably to be burned later. After wandering around forever and seeing the world’s most northerly Buddhist temple across the river, I finally stumbled upon the right spot and was finally able to meet up with them (Ruth, Matt, and Stacey). I joined them on their quest for food, but we kept getting frustrated with the long lines at all the vendors and kept moving along. They found a little indoor place that was selling food and got in line to by some blini, while I found a little place that was selling shish kabob outside with a short line, so I got me a little of that. The others were still in line, so I ate my thing and looked around for a bit, and when I got back they were just getting out of the line, having decided it wasn’t worth the long wait. We walked some more and they finally decided to suck it up and get into another line for some blini. I went with Ruth to another tent to get something to drink. I was originally planning on just getting a soda, but Ruth talked me into getting one of the huge 1.5 liter bottles of honey-beer that everyone seemed to be drinking because she was going to get one too. It’s amazing what you can get people to do as long as you do it with them. It hit me later just how much beer it was. It’s like three normal beers from a bar. It was crazy, but, with a little help from Matt and Stacey, I was able to finish it before we got back to the metro station later. But anyway, they got their blini and we sat around outside while they ate it, and then we all got really cold and decided it was time to leave. Well, first they wanted to ride the bumper cars with the tickets they had earned for getting stuck on a ride earlier ( wasn’t there for that so I’m not really sure what happened). After waiting in line for a while they decided it wasn’t worth it, plus Ruth had to go meet Tsveti for a play or something, so we all left. This is when the really crazy thing happened. As we were walking towards the exit there was this big group of people about our age laughing and having a good time, and I just assumed they were Russian. As we walked by one of them overheard us speaking English and asked us who we were and all that. We found out that they were from the ACTR Moscow group (a different study abroad program that I could have gone on too, actually) and they were on their St. Petersburg trip. One of them we found out is friends with Ingrid from our group and another is friends with Kara. We found out that they were going back to Moscow the same night we are going, so we all exchanged some numbers and made plans to meet up down there. Then, it hit me that they are from the same program that my friend Christine from UO is on. I asked them if they knew her and they of course said “yes,” and I was able to get her phone number from them! I had emailed her about a month ago telling her when I would be in Moscow but I never heard back and I didn’t know how else to get a hold of her. And then, out of nowhere, I run into her friends by chance and get her phone number! It IS a small world, after all. I tried calling her right away, but didn’t get an answer. We parted ways with our new acquaintances and headed back to the metro I went through all the crazy transfers and everything again, got to Vasileostrovskaya and then rode a marshrutka home. At home I tried giving Christine another call, and this time she picked up. She must have been pretty surprised to her from me out of the blue like that, and I explained to her what had happened. She said that her the friends she was with were going to go out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in a little bit and invited me to come eat with them. How could I turn down the opportunity to see my friend who I hadn’t seen in months AND have my first Mexican food in about two months all at the same time? Even though I was tired and had just gotten home, I decided to head back out and meet them. This meant another marshrutka ride and another ride on the metro requiring transfers. She had given me directions to the place, which is in a part of town that I don’t really know at all, but I managed to find it just fine and they were waiting for me inside. She was with a guy from her program named Blake who she is apparently dating, and they were with Blake’s friend John who is studying in St. Petersburg on some other program. It was great catching up and hearing of her time spent in Moscow and around Russia. She’s already seen a lot. She took a big trip around Eastern Europe, a trip to Volgograd and Kazan, and had already been to St. Petersburg once before this time. The food wasn’t quite as good as it is in America, but it still tasted amazing because I was pretty hungry and have been craving Mexican food for a while. We ate for a while and sat and talked and all that while this huge group of young ladies who looked like they were having a bachelorette party or something sat at a big table next to us. When we were about to leave, the restaurant started blasting Latin music at an obscene volume and a bunch of the girls got up and started dancing in the open area in the middle of the restaurant. It was so loud that we could barely hear each other. Emily called while the music was playing, because I had tried to get a hold of her earlier to see if she wanted to join us for dinner. I had to call her back from outside because it was so loud in there. We paid up and headed back to the metro. I was invited to go a bar with them, but I really had to get back and do some homework, so I declined. I parted ways with Christine and Blake and made plans to meet up with them in Moscow, then John and I headed down into the metro. We rode the same line for a while and even made the same transfer, but then at Gostiny Dvor he went one way and I went the other. I didn’t get his number or anything, but who knows, I might see him around. A rode back to Vasileostrovskaya, rode another marshrutka, and was finally home for the evening where I had to start writing my 30 to 40 sentence essay for grammar class. That took me until about 2:00, so I got to bed pretty late last night. Today I went straight home from school to try to get some work done before heading to the other university to teach English. I managed to reread that one text for gazeta and look up all the words I didn’t know, but it really did take me about two hours. I caught a marshrutka over to the university and ran into Bruce, Stacey and Matt who were also their to teach to there classes. We talked for a bit before heading to our own classes. There were only four students in the class today, but I had to listen to each of them re-tell the little story about the journalist going diving with sharks that we had read last time. One student, Olya, mispronounced the name of the movie “Jaws” in her re-telling, and it sounded like she said “Jews.” So it was like she said, “thanks to the movie ‘Jews,’ sharks have a reputation of being cold-blooded killers,” and I had to keep from laughing. The teacher told me that I should tell them some about US Presidents, and that basically lead to a whole discussion of the structure of the US government and the election process, as well as small lessons in US history. I’m not sure if they understood everything I said or not, but they seemed interested enough. I tried to tell them about Mount Rushmore and even drew a cheesy picture or it on the board with just smiley faces, and then Olya pointed out to me that there was a picture of it on the front of her little notebook, so I could use a real visual aid. I taught them such great terms as “electoral college,” and “speaker of the house,” and told them about different political parties in America. It was all very fun, as usual. I felt bad telling them that I won’t be able to come to class for the next two weeks, but the teacher told me “we will be waiting for you” afterwards, so that was nice. I rode the bus back home and had some dinner when I got there. I talked to my host-brother Alyosha at the dinner table for a little bit about Moscow and Russian music. I think it’s the most I’ve talked to him so far. You know that show on MTV hosted my Nick Cannon where all the rappers do improv rapping and acting and all that? Well, that show was on, dubbed into Russian, and it was completely ridiculous because none of that kind of stuff would translate well at all into any other language. Alyosha told me it didn’t make any sense to him. Anyway, that brings us up to speed. I have to start packing and getting my stuff together for tomorrow. Again, you won’t be hearing much from me here for the next couple of weeks, but I’ll let you know all about it when I get back. Take it easy, everybody!

A candy colored clown they called the Sandman

2006-03-03T13:31:00.000+03:00

Time to write. Some pretty fun things have happened in the past few days. Let me tell you about them. Tuesday, of course, I had been invited over to Nick’s apartment by his host-mother to eat blini for Maslenttsa, the big blini-eating holiday that is going on this week. We rode 147 all the way out to his part of the island with some of the other students that live near him. I was expecting just a few blinis, just something small, but his host-mom pretty much had a whole meal waiting for us. It started out with a bowl of borshch, then two blinis with meat and rice for each of us, then a little “salad” of pickled carrots and cabbage with garlic, and then a huge stack of more blinis for Nick and I to share and eat with jam. We couldn’t finish the stack, that’s how much it was. We also had water, apple juice, and tea to drink with it. It was all very delicious. After our feast we sat in the living room with his host-mom and chatted for a while. I’ve said it before, but I really like Nick’s host-family situation. His apartment is very nice and his host-parents are really friendly and eager to talk and help Nick with his Russian (his host-mom anyway) Just the little bit of talking I did with her there made me feel like I was really learning to converse better in Russian. It makes me wish that my host-mom was more eager to have conversations and more willing to help me with my Russian. Tonight at dinner I tried asking her more questions than usual but she would usually just give a short response and then get sucked back into the TV. TV really does dominate her life and the lives of my host-brothers (when they are here, anyway) and she really doesn’t seem to know much about culture beyond the things she sees on TV. It’s kind of sad, actually. But anyway, Nick’s place was a lot of fun but I had to get going so I could stop in at home for a little while before going out again. Tuesday was Ingrid’s birthday, so there was a big “surprise” party planned for her at the Red Lion pub at 9:30. I also wanted to get a hold of Matt and/or Emily, because I knew it was Matt’s “free” night. At home I had to tell my host-mom that I didn’t want a big meal because I already ate a lot at Nick’s place. She seemed a little annoyed but I don’t think it was a big deal. She just didn’t give me any soup with my dinner. Afterwards I tried getting a hold of Matt and Emily but had no luck, so before it got too late I caught a marshrutka down to Nevskiy. I even managed to catch the same one Bryce and Katie were already in. After a bumpy ride we got off on Admiraltaya Naberezhnaya and walked down to the Red Lion. We were the first ones there so we grabbed a couple big tables in the back. More and more people kept showing up and eventually Ingrid and her little crew arrived and the real party got going. Tuesdays girls get free champagne all night long, so the bartenders kept coming around and refilling all the champagne glasses. Quite a few of us were there, including some people who have yet to go out to the bars here and it was a lot of fun to get a chance to hang out with them outside of school. Kelly and Michelle showed up and I think neither of them have drank in a while, and while Michelle kind of took it easy and didn’t really get too drunk, Kelly went all out. She must just have a really low tolerance to alcohol after not drinking for such a long time, because after a few free champagne’s she was completely wasted and saying the most hilarious things ever. She’s usually very quiet and shy in school, but she just went crazy and was talking with everybody and being really loud and a lot of fun. She kept telling everybody that they were “too sexy” like that Saturday Night Live sketch where Christ Katan would play Antonio Banderas. She also kept going off about how the orange zest (peel scrapings) is the most expensive part of an orange. She was just hilarious. Michelle seemed to be loosening up and having a good time too, so I’m glad they were finally able to come out to the bars with everyone and I hope they get the chance to do so more in the future. But, all in all, I think everybody had a really great time at the bar. I got a call from Matt at one point and he said he was meeting with someone and that he might swing by and meet me at the bar later, but he never did. A lot of people (yes, including me) got pretty darn drunk from all the free champagne floating around. I certainly drank my share. There were a fe champagne glasses on our table and I would have one of the girls get it refilled for me and just drink that all night. I had two beers but mostly it was just champagne, even though I don’t think that guys were even supposed to be drinking it. One of the waiters caught James drinking some and got mad at him, but luckily nobody saw me. There was a dance floor and we all went dancing for a while. Wednesday was Peter David’s birthday, so at midnight we all yelled “happy birthday” for him and the party kind of became for him too. I had a really fun conversation about sports with him, which was really fun because I don’t know anything about sports and all I was really doing was trying to convince him that all the sports teams from the state of Michigan (where he’s from) suck. Of course I didn’t mean it and he took it all in great fun and played back at me. I remember him saying, “at least admit that the Detroit Pistons are the greatest basketball team of all time. At leat admit that!” and I thought it was hilarious. It was one of the craziest Tuesday nights I’ve probably ever had, and I really did have a good time. I didn’t bring my camera for some reason but I really wish I had, because a lot of other people took a lot of good pictures and I wish I had some of my own. At about 3:00 those of us who still remained decided to finally go home, so after getting everyone together and figuring out everybody’s rides I finally got into a chasnik with some other people from the island, and by the time I got home it was close to 4:00 and I was still pretty drunk. But, I was still determined to get up and go to school like normal the next morning, and I’m happy to say I managed just fine. A bit hung-over, but I got up and could function just fine off of the 3 and a half hours of sleep I got. It was pretty hard to get through classes on Wednesday, though. We all gout our passports back on Wednesday too, which means we are now free to travel anywhere we please. We got our multiple-entry visas, which allow us to come and go across the Russian border as many times as we want until it expires. Unfortunately the new visas are not pasted into our passports like our first visas, but these inconvenient separate forms that we have to keep with our passports. It’s kind of annoying, actually. At least I have the one already in there, and hopefully by the time I get back to the U.S. my passport will have all kinds of crazy stamps and such in it. After classes we had a scheduled group excursion to the Yusupov Palace. I wasn’t all that excited about it, but I have to admit it turned out to be pretty cool. The Yusupovs were one of the rich noble families in Tsarist Russia, and this was their main residence in St. Petersburg. You can imagine the opulence. Crazy chandeliers, statues, furniture, artwork, decorations, etc. It was all pretty darned impressive if you ask me. The most interesting part, however, was the fact that this is the palace where Rasputin was killed. We got a little background from the tour guide, and apparently the Prince Felix Yusupov and some co-conspirators thought that Rasputin was getting too powerful and had a plot to murder him. I remember hearing about this in 7th grade. They poisoned him and shot him but he wouldn’t go down, so they finally drowned him in the Moika canal across the street. It was pretty neat to see the place where that all went down. Of course you had to pay to take pictures here, but I felt like it was too risky to play my little game this time, because I group was pretty small and the babushkas were well proliferated throughout the palace. I did manage to get one picture of the wax figures of Felix and Rasputin in the cellar. Peter David got a little more adventures and played a round of the game himself, but lost the game at the last minute when a babushka approached him and asked if he had paid, and he played dumb and said he didn’t know you had to. The babushka was mad but couldn’t really do anything about it, so I guess P Diddy came out the winner in the end still. A lot of us wanted to head back to Smoliny after the excursion because we heard there was supposed to be a Maslenitsa party. The bus took forever to get there and by the time we got back all the blini was gone, but we did get there just in time to see them burning the effigy of Old-Lady Winter. Actually, by the time we got there most of the effigy had already been burnt away and it just looked like a flaming cross, which is funny because it was right in front of a cathedral. I took some good pictures. I had promised to Peter David that if the blini was gone when we got there that I would go with him to KFC, so of course that’s what we did. We stopped in at a 505 store afterwards where I was determined to buy a bootleg copy of Blue Velvet after having passed up the opportunity before. Not only did I find a copy of that, but they also had a bunch of copies of “Industrial Symphony No. 1” the weird performance-art piece that David Lynch had directed and produced that I think was only ever performed once but was filmed and released on video. It’s only available on VHS and really hard to come by in the USA, but there they were, about 5 bootleg copies on DVD right there in the 505 store. How could I turn that down? So, I bought those, parted ways with P Diddy and Matt (oh yeah, Matt [not from Oregon] was there too) and rode the bus back home. I was so tired at this point that I was falling asleep on the bus. Luckily it wasn’t too crowded and I could find a seat alright. At home I watched Blue Velvet and did a little homework before taking a shower and going to bed. Today was Thursday, which means it was the worst day of classes. In gazeta class our teacher got mad at us because none of us had read the text that we had had for homework while consulting a dictionary for the new words. If I were to look up every word I didn’t know it would take me about two hours to read that text. Does she think we don’t have anything better to do? We were all pretty annoyed by that, but she was pretty pissed. I kind of got a dirty look from her in the hallway later. In civilization class we watched a documentary about the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova that was pretty cool. It talked some about the Siege of Leningrad in WWII and made me want to read more about it. After classes I went with some people to Soiree so we could discuss our spring break plan. After not knowing where or with whom I would be traveling, I decided it would probably be best to stick with a group at least for the beginning of the trip, so I went with the Sochi group. This is the basic plan as it stands right now: when we get to Moscow we will all buy train tickets to Sochi. Once we get to Sochi we will decided where we each want to go from there. The group consists of John, Reed, Ingrid, Abby, Kara, and Myself. One member of the group (Reed) had some visa issues and as a result was not able to get a multiple-entry visa, so he can’t leave Russia and get back in, therefore he has to stay in the country. I had the idea of going down to Georgia for a little bit and I think some of the others would be interested too, but then most of us want to head over to either Odessa or the Crimea after Sochi, so we have to leave time for that too. Ideal I would like to go to Tbilisi, Sochi, and Odessa, but in order to do all of those you would have to start either in Odessa or Tbilisi because Sochi is in the middle, but we have to start there because not everyone can go to Georgia or the Ukraine. So, I’ll be happy if I get to see at least some of both Georgia and Ukraine, though it looks like I probably won’t be able to make it all the way to either Tbilisi or Odessa. But you never know, Some of the people in the group are pretty adventurous and are really into the idea of playing it by ear, so we may even end up going somewhere completely different. The only thing we know for sure is that we are starting in Sochi. You’ll have to wait for a few weeks or so to find out where we really end up. Pretty exciting, huh? So, after Soiree most of us went to Gostiny Dvor to meet up with some other people to eat some blini. I guess there had been an invitation to our group from these two Russian girls who had helped out at our orientation to go out for blini today, so there were about 8 of us total who met with them and they took us to the blini place. I thought it was going to be some cool little place that only locals know about, but instead they took us to this place called Chainaya Lozhka (it means “tea spoon”) that’s basically a Russian fast-food place. It was really packed, so instead they took us to this other Russian fast-food place called Teremok (I don’t think it means anything). This is actually the same company that runs a lot of the blini stands around the city that I sometimes eat at. We all got some blini and sat and chatted with the Russian girls for a while. The one who was sitting at the same table as me (Olga) said that Sochi is a really good spot for spring break. She spoke English really well so it was easy to communicate. After a while we all headed out, and Bryce and I caught the number 7 bus right outside of the restaurant. Right now I’m just chilling in my room and I really want to watch Blue Velvet again but it’s getting kind of late, so I might just go through and watch the scenes with Dennis Hopper in them because he is so brilliantly horrible in that movie, and I’ve been thinking about some of his lines all day. There’s some fun stuff planned for this weekend, and I promise I will get at least one more post up before I take off for Moscow next Tuesday night. Between the Moscow trip and travel week I will be gone for about two weeks and therefore will not be able to make any big posts like these for that time. I’m sure I’ll be able to stop in to an internet café somewhere along the way, but I certainly won’t be able to right any of my normal long-winded entries. I’ll try to make some short updates if I can to let everybody know where I am at least. I can’t believe how soon that whole trip is. Anyways, take care for now. Catch on the flip side.

Последний день фебраля

2006-02-28T15:13:00.000+03:00

Hi, it’s me again. Things have been kind of slow lately, so hopefully this post will be somewhat shorter than usual. I think I mentioned last time that I was feeling pretty sick on Thursday night. Well, I did end up staying home on Friday, which was nice and relaxing but also extremely boring because there really isn’t much to do here in the apartment, I messed around on the computer a lot, listening to music, watching Pete and Pete and the handful of episodes of Family Guy that I have on my computer. I really wish that I had brought more DVDs with me. I could have just put some in a little CD wallet and I would have had a lot more to occupy myself with in times like that where I have nothing to do but hang around my room. The only DVDs I brought were my Pete and Pete bootlegs. I have bought a few DVDs here, and I watched some old soviet cartoons for a while too, so that was fun. My host mom basically told me that I couldn’t go out on Friday night even though I kind of wanted to, but I probably would have felt pretty terrible if I had gone out so it was probably for the best. I got bummed out later hearing about the crazy nights other people had on Friday, staying up until all hours of the morning hanging out in bars and what not. I guess there’s always next weekend. So, Friday was spent pretty much entirely hanging out alone in my room, and most of Saturday was the same. I decided that no matter what I wanted to go out on Saturday night and do anything at all really. I was just dying of boredom in the apartment. I made a few phone calls and arranged to meet with Peter David and Matt over at Koffe Khaus. Both Kenny and Stacey showed up separately after a while, and we had a nice relaxing time just sitting with some beers and talking. I was just glad to be out of the house. We also had my favorite waitress, so that was good too. At around 11:30 we left so people could catch the metro, but first of course we had to stop at McDonalds for our late-night snack that’s kind of become the tradition for when we go out around Vasileostrovskaya. Everybody got their food in time to catch the metro and Peter David (We’ve been calling him P Diddy lately, so I think I might just start referring to him as that), Matt and Stacey headed home. Kenny wanted to stay out a little longer so I decided to hang with him. Also, seemingly out of nowhere, Brandon and Tom (not TOM Tom, of tominrussia.blogspot.com fame, but the Tom from the returning students who I don’t ever really hang out with) show up while we are at McDonalds, and so the four of us headed over to Choomadon for a while. We had some more beer as well as some grenki (the garlic-bread snack like I had had at Tsynik before). These guys are really more “guys’ guys” than the people I usually hang out with, which was kind of weird but also a nice change of pace. It was Brandon’s birthday the other night and apparently these guys and a few other guys went to a strip club, so they were talking about that a lot, and there was a lot of that general type of conversation, you know? At a table next to us there was a group of Russians – three guys and two girls – and one of the girls kept staring at Brandon the whole time and whispering and laughing to her friend and being really obvious and annoying about it. One of the guys she was with seemed like he was getting pretty mad about it, and kept raising his voice and grabbing her away. They even went outside to talk about it for a while, but she kept ogling him. At one point she held out her cell phone to him so he could just put in his number. She hadn’t even talked to him at all? Brandon (and all of us, really) was kind of freaked out by the whole thing, so we paid up and got out of there. Brandon decided to head home and I was feeling like calling it a night too. Kenny and Old Tom decided to stay out some more, but there is really nothing else open around there at that time of night, so I wasn’t really down for wandering around with them. I was going to have to take a Chasnik, and I decided that I could probably catch one for cheaper if I walked a couple blocks down to Bolshoi Prospekt instead of hoping into one of the cars that is always waiting outside of Vasileostrovskaya on Sredniy Prospekt. I got to Bolshoi and there weren’t really a lot of cars out, so I figured I’d walk down a block and then check to see if some more cars were coming and if I could flag one down. There were big piles of snow along the sidewalks that kind of blocked me from getting to the street mid-way through a block, so I woud have to wait for the intersections to try and flag a car down. I would get to one intersection and look down the street and not really see any cars coming, so I’d walk another block and try again and so on and so forth. After a while I had gone for enough blocks that it just made more sense to walk all the way home and save some money on chasnik fair. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to do while still being a little bit sick, but I was feeling up for it and I’ve been meaning to take a walk down Bolshoi for a while. There are no less than two statues of Lenin on that street, and another really cool statue of firefighters in front of the fire station that I had always been curious about while riding by on the bus but had never gotten up close to it. I didn’t have my camera with me but I wish I had, because there were quite a lot of cool things to see. I walked by this creepy Children’s Hospital that was set back behind some trees and looked totally abandoned and haunted. Just imagine the ghosts of thousands of dead children haunting this old brick building, and imagine walking by it alone in the middle of the night and thinking about such crazy notions! It was kind of a creepy walk in general, but nowhere near as creepy as it is walking down Sredniy Prospekt where the road gets blocked off and all the Nazi graffiti starts to appear. I did see a pack of stray dogs and I was worried that they were going to attack, but luckily they left me alone. At the end of my street there is this really awesome-looking old building with weird domes on it (but not like domes on an orthodox church, it’s hard to explain) and behind it a ways are these huge red and white smokestacks that are always belching out pollution. All this is behind a brick wall, and the old building with the smokestacks together was such a cool shot against the night sky. I really need to go back with my camera sometime, considering that it’s about three blocks away. By the time I got back it was about 3:00 I think. So I just went to bed. On Saturday I was feeling pretty eager to get on the internet, so I called around to find somebody to go with me to Soiree. P Diddy was down, so we made plans to meet there at 2:00. I got there a little late because of the long bus ride, but I got there alright and P Diddy had already snagged us a table. It was in the back and I couldn’t get a wireless signal at all, so after a while we decided to move up to the main room where, after a while, I was finally able to do some surfing. There were quite a few people there, many of them with laptops, and that really slows down the router. I was surprised by how many people there were for a Sunday afternoon. I had a couple beers and some Geogrian fried cheese. My favorite waitress there was also working that day, so I’ve been on a roll as far as waitresses go. P Diddy loaded some of his pictures from his camera onto my computer to be added to his Facebook account later. He had some pretty good ones of me. He left after a while and I hung back just for a bit before I got tired of the slow connection and decided to get home. I bought a new international calling card and then hopped on a number 7 bus. I got a good seat and thought that on a Sunday afternoon the buses wouldn’t get too crowded, but boy was I wrong. It got just as jam-packed as it does any week-day, but at least I had a seat. I felt like maybe I should offer my seat to some babushkas, but then I figured that it made more sense for me to sit in the seat when it gets this crowded, because, being a big guy, I would just take up a lot more room if I were standing, making the situation in the aisles all the more crowded, where as if I am seated I am taking up considerably less room, or at least just as much room as anybody else would use where they seated. So, I figured let the babushkas stand and create a little more room for everyone. Hell, they’ve been communists most of their lives, they should understand the concept of sacrificing some of their personal rights for the good of everyone. At home I just took it easy, did some homework, and in the evening called home and even called my friends back at the Diamond, which I hadn’t done yet. I was using up my last minutes on my phone card, so I could only talk for about 14 minutes but it was still nice. Today it was back to school after what was essentially a 4-day weekend. We had a test in grammar class that I had felt like I prepared well enough for, but it seemed considerably harder once I took it. I think I did alright, though. I had to play catch up a little bit in Phonetics because I missed it in Friday, but that wasn’t too hard. Kara returned my Thumb-drive and my Kino CD and because she felt bad for having borrowed them for a long time she also brought me a bar of chocolate! How sweet of her. I did some interneting after classes and found myself with nothing to do afterwards, so I ambled my way over to the Chernyshevskaya area just for the heck of it. I decided to go looking for the American Consulate because I knew it was right around there. I figured it would at least be a good idea to know where it is, plus my old Russian teacher Josh used to work there and I thought it would be cool to see because of that. I found it and it wasn’t all that excited to see, so I headed back towards the metro. Oh yeah, on my way to the Consulate I was walking between some parked cars and my bag scrapped against this car’s hood ornament and knocked it out of place. Unfortunately for me, there was a guy sitting inside the car, and when he looked up and saw what I had done he stepped out of the car and yelled at me. I said I was sorry and tried putting it back into place, but he shooed me away and took care of it himself. I felt bad, but it was kind of funny nonetheless. I also tried to find the store that apparently sells the really cool tetradi (little notebooks that all the students use in Russia) that Sasha and John have. I found a bookstore that I thought might be the place, but I couldn’t find them inside. I wanted to get some for my sister because I know she would really like them. I guess I’ll have to keep looking. After a bit I decided to get on the metro and head over to Nevskiy for a while to kill sometime before I had to go teach English at the University. I got to Vostannia and decided to hit up CafeMax for an hour to use the internet some more and look up stuff for spring break. I’m getting really frustrated about that because it’s just over a week away and I still don’t know exactly where I’m going. Like usual, I’m trying to get in as much as I can, but I think I’m going to have to skip out on a few places I might want to go just for the sake of practicality, and it kills me that I have to do so. I want to see everything! I don’t want to talk about spring break here until I have a set plan, so look for that sometime soon. I did the internet thing for an hour and then caught a bus over to the university. I got there a little early so I looked at my Russian Road Atlas and thought more about spring break. English class was great again. I really enjoying teaching (or helping to teach, anyway) in that class, because I feel like the kids are really interested in what I have to say and all I really have to so speak with them and answer there questions. I do give them new words sometimes, and the teacher has me explain different topics about life and culture in America. Today, for example, she wanted me to explain the school system in America, so I broke it all down for them on the dry-erase board and gave them some good vocab words like “freshman,“ “sophomore,” “junior,” “senior,” “bachelor’s degree,” etc. The one girl who’s really into hip-hop had written down the lyrics to some song she liked and wanted me to explain the slang in it. It was some terrible rap song and must of the slang involved putting an “-a” at the end of words instead of an “-er” and things like that. It had some swear words in it too of course, which they all already know. The teacher always thanks me a lot at the end of class and I always leave feeling really good about it. I’m already looking forward to next week. A quick bus ride and I was back at home, and now here I am. I need to write emails to a few people and I feel like maybe I should do that now, but I’m getting really tired, so I might just have to wait until tomorrow. Oh yeah, I was invited back to Nick’s apartment by his host mom for blini tomorrow. I guess I made a good impression on her the last time I was there, because apparently she keeps asking about me all the time. The big week-long end-of-winter / beginning-of-summer holiday called maclenitsa starts this week, and basically all people do is eat blini all week long. The blini apparently represents the sun and the coming thereof. The name it self, “maclenitsa,” comes from the word for butter (“maclo”) which is a main ingredient in blini. I’m excited for it. I’ll let you all know how it goes. Over and out.

Made it up Sunday after all

2006-02-26T16:16:00.000+03:00

So, I decided that I want to start being more concise in my blog updates, because it always takes way too long to write the way I have been writing and it usually keeps me up late. I figure I don’t really need to narrate my whole day every time, I’ll just need to mention the highlights and other important things. Today is Thursday night and I haven’t written anything since Sunday, so this will be a good time to test out how this new system will work. The main even on Monday was that I went to teach English to teenagers like I had mentioned I would be doing before. They put me with a class that only had 5 students. Most of them are around 16 or 17, but there is one 10-year-old girl in there who speaks English quite well, and she says that she’s been learning for 8 years! The teacher of the class put me at the front of the room while she sat in the back, and basically she just wanted me to get more acquainted with the students and then teach them some words and phrases that are pertinent to their current topic. They are learning about crime right now, and what they wanted to know from me were names of different crimes and offenses, as well as crime slang and drug slang even. I explained the difference between murder and manslaughter, and told them a bunch of different words for various drugs. I think of all the things I wrote on the dry-erase board, the funniest to me had to have been “possession with intent to sell.” The teacher kept saying, “this is really good, this is what they want to know.” The oldest girl in the class (17) told me that she really likes hip-hop (she’s “keen on 50 Cent,” she tells me) and “movies about addicts,” like “Blow,” “Requiem for a Dream” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” so this really is the kind of stuff they want to know about. The main teacher teaches them all the grammar and syntax and vocabulary and everything, so basically all they want me for is just to talk with them about their subjects and to give them practical things they can use in conversation. I think they really liked me, and after about 10 minutes one of them asked, “are you coming every week?” I am going to start going every week, actually. Every Monday at 6:00. I’m really looking forward to this, it really is a lot of fun. Oh, but earlier that day I found a really cool place that I want to go back to. I had heard about a bar that is supposed to be pretty cool called Fish Fabrique, and after class on Monday I went with Bryce and Peter David to try and find it. It turns out that it is actually inside this place called the “Free Arts Foundation,” which is this whole complex of art galleries and weird alternative culture. There was a bookstore, a Museum of Banned Art (or something like that) and even a door that had a plaque on it that read, “The John Lennon Monument of Peace, Love, and Music.” So, it seems like there is a lot of cool stuff going on their, and I think they have live music a lot their as well, so I really need to come back there and see what the real deal is. The bar itself wasn’t open, so instead we went to this little café around the corner that had the cheapest beer that we’ve seen yet in St. Petersburg: half liters for 45 rubles! Usually, 60 is cheap. So, that little neighborhood that we found seems to have a lot going for it. Tuesday in Gazeta class we had the most ridiculous test ever. Get this. The previous Thursday the teacher told us how the test was going to go down. The test is actually in our text books, and the answers are in the back. She wasn’t going to be there on Tuesday, so we were supposed to come in and take the test (which of course we already had and could have done at home) in the empty classroom, then look at the answers in the back of the book, correct ourselves and give ourselves a score, and then show her the scores we got next class. How ridiculous is that? So, I just did it the night before. Tuesday after school I went with Katie and Tom to the big book store called Dom Knigi (by they way, this name doesn’t make sense to me. It means “House of Book,” which I don’t think is what they want to say. It should be “House of Books,” plural, but tin Russian that would be “Dom Knig,” and that is not what the place is called. Whatever). I wanted to find a guidebook for the Ukraine because I’m fairly certain that’s where I’m going for spring break (I’ll let you know what my final plans are once I know them). I couldn’t find any guidebooks for the longest time, but I did find the English books section. They had lots of Russian literature in English, but they charge insane amounts for English-language books really for no other reason other than because they can and tourists will buy it. For example, am English copy of the book “Moscow to the End of the Line,” which I read for class last year, was selling there for about 1100 rubles, where it would probably cost 150 at the very most in Russian. What gives? I need to get good enough in Russian to be able to read Russian literature in the original Russian and pay a lot less to buy the books. Someday. I did find the literature section in Russian and had fun browsing. I was about to give up on looking for guidebooks when I discovered the little side-room on my way out that is filled with maps, atlases, and travel books. Oh boy was I in heaven there! All the guidebooks were in Russian only and there were none of the whole Ukraine, so I didn’t buy a guidebook, but I did end up staying for a long time looking at all kinds of atlases and books about geography. I ended up buying a road atlas of Russia (it’s so awesome, you don’t even understand) and a wall map that has Russia on one side and the world (all names written in Cyrillic, of course) on the other. I tried paying with a 1000 ruble bill, but they held it under a black light and apparently there was something wrong with it, because they wouldn’t accept it. A lot of places do this with 1000 ruble bills, kind of like in America how they’ll mark $20 bills with a special pen to see if it’s authentic. They showed me that there were lots of green marks all over the bill under the light, but I didn’t know what that meant. I had to pay with my credit card for the first time in Russia (I mean, I’ve used it at the ATMs here, but this was the first direct purchase I’ve made with it here yet), but it was worth it. I managed to pass the bill off on the cafeteria cashier at school the next day. The bus ride home from Dom Knigi was insanely packed and uncomfortable, and I made a vow never to ride the bus or metro between the hours of 5:00 and 6:00 (a vow which I broke the next day). On Wednesday the computer lab at the school was down, so I went with a small group to Café Max to do some interneting. The main reason I needed to go was for more research for Ukraine and Spring Break, but I didn’t find out much. After the café some of us went to find the English-only bookstore that I had heard about. I, of course, was still looking for a guidebook. They had lots of Lonely Planet guidebooks, which is my favorite, but no Ukraine. They had the Eastern Europe guidebook, but it was an older version that is not very up-to-date a didn’t even include the Ukraine. I am currently borrowing Nathan’s copy of the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Eastern Europe guide which does include the Ukraine, but I need to buy my own copy of it because his is falling apart, plus it does not belong to me and I can’t really take it with me. That book will come in very handy this summer also. There was actually another English bookstore in the same building as the other one and it too had lots of guidebooks, including a Ukraine one, but it was too expensive and was a brand that I don’t really like anyways. Bryce and Stacey left to go teach more English, so Matt and I decided to walk around for a bit to kill some time. We walked through the underground passage way that is also a 505 Store and decided to look around a little bit. They have a bunch of bootleg copies of American movies that all have these generic covers, and as I was looking through those I stumbled upon copies of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart! Two of my favorite David Lynch movies! I almost bought both, but then decided to get only Wild at Heart because I thought that they were only in Russian and I might as well not spend too much on movies that I won’t really be able to watch like a normal movie or with other people. The cashier confirmed that it was only in Russian. After parting ways with Matt and riding another crammed bus during rush hour, I got home and put the DVD into the player to find that you can in fact watch it in English, as well as Russian, French, and German, and with lots of different subtitle options too. So, that was pretty exciting. I might have to go back and get Blue Velvet sometime after all. After hanging around at home for a while, I got in touch with some people and found out that they were hanging out at Kofe Khaus and they wanted me to come, so I went down there and met up with Tom, Katie, Vickie and Nick. We had a fun time hanging out and most of them were already pretty drunk. Tom told me this amazing story about the time he talked to Woody Allen for about 20 minutes. Apparently Tom used to work at J-Crew (is that how it’s spelled? I have no idea) in New York and lots of celebrities have come in there, but one time he was helping out Woody Allen with a jacket purchase and they got in a big conversation about topics as varied as the Vietnam War, the Bush administration, women and Mott the Hoople. The best part is that Tom didn’t know who he was until he realized it the next day! Incredible! I want to have a conversation with Woody Allen really bad now. After Kofe Khaus some of the others wanted McDonalds, so while they sat inside and ate I stood outside with a very drunk Katie. These two little boys came up to us and started asking for money, and even knew how to ask in English, and we of course said no. They started mocking us rubbing against Katie like they were trying to grab her purse. They kept giving us the finger and doing that other thing where you put one arm behind your other arm’s elbow and raising your other fist. You know what I mean. They even did both at the same time. They called us names in Russian that we didn’t understand and kept laughing like they thought we were getting really offended and pissed of by them. I kept shaking my head and telling them that I wasn’t offended, that they could say whatever they want or do whatever they want and it didn’t bother me. Eventually these two young girls came up and kind of yelled at them to go away and then started talking to us in English. They were both pretty drunk to, but were very friendly and eager to try out their English skills. The rest of our gang came out of McDonalds and we all stood in a group talking with the Russian girls. It turns out that one was 16 and the other 15, but we thought they looked a lot older. After a little while we left the girls behind and headed over to Petra for a little while. It was nice to be there in a relatively small group, because usually it’s about ten of us there and I think we really annoy the people who work there when we all go in like that. We just had a couple beers and chilled out until about 11:15 when we all went home. Today, of course, was a holiday, and so we didn’t have any school! My host mom made blini for breakfast as if it was a normal weekend, and I was so happy. Our big plan for today was to go back to that little town called Pavlovsk and go sledding in the park for the day. Vickie and I met Nick and Katie on the metro, and we rode south to the Moscovskaya metro station where we met up with Natalie. We caught a marshrutka to Pavlovsk, which is about a 15 or 20-minute ride. You have to pay a fee to get into the park, but luckily our Russian student IDs are as good as a Russian passport when it comes to admission price, and we paid as much as normal Russian adults do. We walked over to the sledding area and rented a couple of sleds for the five of us. They charged 120 rubles an hour, which isn’t too bad. They also make you leave a deposit of some sort, so Nick left his cell phone with them. We walked all over the sledding area trying out different slopes and had a total blast. Katie and Vickie left on their own pretty early on, which I thought was pretty lame, but what are you going to do? So Nick, Natalie and I stayed for our full two hours and had a wonderful time. All our close of course got soaked from rolling around in the snow and everything, and by the end of the day with all my warm clothes on I felt like I do after a day of skiing or snowboarding. There were lots and lots of other people there sledding and skiing and snowboarding and having a great time, and it really is a great atmosphere. We all agreed that it was the best way we could have spent our holiday, short of taking a bigger trip out of town or something, which we couldn’t have down without our passports. We rode another marshrutka back and had lunch at a little café near the metro station. My lunch was pretty small, so I also got a meat and rice pierogie for only 9 rubles! It was truly delicious. They aren’t anything like they kind my dad used to make, but still very good in their own right. We rode the metro back into town and I basically went straight home. I actually had started to feel pretty sick after the day of sledding, and I was really looking forward to getting home, getting warm and dry and watching Wild at Heart on my computer. Right now I’m still feeling pretty sick and I may or may not go to school tomorrow. If I don’t I bet all my teachers will think that I just ditched to have a 4-day weekend. Too bad. I probably won’t be able to post this until at least Monday, or Tuesday even. Kara asked to borrow my thumb-drive for the night on Tuesday, but now I probably won’t get it back until Monday because of the way everything worked out what with holidays and sickness and closed computer labs. I think this was a much more manageable post than usual, and I just trimmed out the minor, unimportant details of my days. I think I’ll start doing it like this more often. See you later.

The World of an Object

2006-02-20T14:03:00.000+03:00

Today is Sunday, February 19, which means that I have been in Russia for exactly one month. Pretty crazy, huh? Well, let’s see, the last time I wrote anything was last Thursday night, and I guess a lot has happened since then. Plus, I wasn’t able to upload the post that I wrote Thursday, because on Friday at the computer lab at school blogger wouldn’t load for some reason. But, if you are reading this it means that I have uploaded that other one too, so look for that as well, if you want. Oh, I actually have something interesting that happened at school to write about. On Friday in Phonetics class we all got books from the teacher to use for an exercise we were doing. She said there was some mix-up with the school and that we were able to receive these books for free. These were only small phonetic exercise books, but all the exercises are based on scenes from three different Russian movies, one of which is a very popular new-years movie that I actually saw part of in first year Russian class called “The Irony of Fate” (how Russian). We watched a scene from this movie of a guy singing a song, then we read along with the lyrics from the book and did some exercises to go along with it. I didn’t realize until later when somebody else from the class pointed out to me that our phonetics teacher had actually written the book we were using! She hadn’t mentioned it when she gave them to us. It was kind of funny to find that out. So, I guess blog-worthy things do happen at school after all [side note: there was just a heated argument of some kind between a group of people on the street below my window, but I couldn’t tell what it was about. It didn’t even sound like Russian to me because everybody was shouting and talking really fast]. So, Friday after school a few of us got a plan together and went out for a little excursion in the afternoon. The first part was catching bus 147 down to the Hermitage to check out the Ice Palace thing that they built in the square in front of the Hermitage that everybody in St. Petersburg seems to be so obsessed with. I still haven’t even been to the Hermitage itself, which seems crazy, but I’ve still got plenty of time. The Ice Palace is this little building surrounded by sculptures, and it’s all made of ice. I see it everyday from the bus as I ride by, but I had net yet been up close to it (well, I did while it was still in progress, but I hadn’t seen it finished yet). There was a huge line of people waiting to actually go inside of it, but we figured it wasn’t worth the wait/cost to get in whatever either of them might have been. WE just walked around the perimeter of it, which was blocked off with a temporary fence and guarded by policemen. There was an ice slide shaped like two elephants that all the kids loved to slide down. All in all, it wasn’t all that exciting, at least not nearly enough as the huge crowds always gathered around it would make it seem. But, I figured that if I didn’t get a good look at it now then I’ll regret not having seen it once it’s gone, because it seemed like such a big important thing for the city right now and to me seems like a good way to commemorate the time that I am spending here once it’s over. Do you know what I mean? So, we finished up at the Ice Palace, and then headed over the bridge to Vassilevsky Island to see what we were really devoting our afternoon too. You see, stopping at the Ice Palace was really just an after thought I had had because it was so close to our final destination and I figured we could knock off the Ice Palace at the same time. Our real destination was to visit the St. Petersburg “Kuntskamera,” or as I kept referring to it as, “the Freak Museum.” “Kuntskamera” is apparently a German word meaning “oddity display” or something like that, and basically what it is is Peter the Great’s collection of human oddities that he had used to educate the public. The Kuntskamera is actually combined with the Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology, which is just a cheesy display of various world cultures, kind of like at the Museum of Modern History in New York or something, only a lot cornier. They have dummies dressed up like people from China or India or the Middle East, etc., and with lots of artifacts from each region too. The most interesting of all of this was the Native American displays, because it seemed so weird to be in Russia and to see their interpretation of Native American culture. But, None of us were all that interested in seeing this kind of stuff, and we moved fairly quickly through all these displays to get to the Kuntskamera. It’s only one room, but man, what a room it was. There are tons of display cases filled with preserved deformed infants in jars, all of which are about 300 years old. Peter the Great had purchased most of his collection of deformed infants from some Dutch physiologist back in the early 1700’s, and many of them are on display here. I can’t even really describe in words what it’s like in there. There are all kinds of siamese twins connected at various spots, babies with underdeveloped heads, deformed appendages, and all kinds of other deformities you can’t even imagine. And they all had pretty haunting expressions on their faces, which is probably the most disturbing part of it all. The fact that they are all three hundred years old really creeped me out too, thinking that they have been stuck in these positions for that long, preserved to look basically just like they did way back then (albeit without any coloration of the skin) was like a terrifying window into the past. As disturbing as it all was, it was still so intriguing that I couldn’t help but keep staring at them for a really long time, and I tried to get as many pictures as I could. Like most places in Russia, I’ve come to find, they try to get you to pay to take pictures at this museum, and, also like most places in Russia, they have old ladies who sit in every room of the museum and make sure all the rules are enforced, including, I presume, making sure that nobody takes pictures who hasn’t paid to do so. There were two old ladies in the Kuntskamera room, and I sign that specifically said no picture taking, but I figure, why not? What’s it to them whether or not I take pictures? They aren’t losing money if I do, there’s absolutely no harm done. So, at the Kuntskamera I played a round of a little game I came up with called “Taking pictures when you aren’t supposed to without getting caught.” I won this round. The two old ladies were sitting in the corner talking, but still looking around. This meant I could only really take pictures of certain things, i.e., only those which were outside of the old ladies’ lines of sight. It also meant not being able to use a flash, which wouldn’t have been good anyways because everything was behind glass and the pictures would have all had a big glare on them. All in all, I think that I, and the pictures, fared pretty well, and I encourage you to check out my flickr page to see the results (but be warned, you might get pretty freaked out by the baby mutants! Look if you dare). So, thoroughly freaked out, we all finished up the rest of the museum (including “The World of an Object”) and then we all went back home before heading out again for the evening. I chilled out at home for a while, at some Pelmeny (Russian ravioli kind of) and then met up with Vickie to head over the Vassileostrovskaya to meet with other people. We met up with Bryce and Katie and decided to go to Koffee Khaus for a little while. Vickie and Katie had some coffee while Bryce and I started in on the beer. Our waitress’s name was Aigool, and we couldn’t figure out what kind of name it was (it’s definitely not Russian). I was going to ask her but I chickened out and never did. More people showed up and we eventually had about 8 or 9 total before heading over to Petra for the usual beers and hookah. I’m actually starting to get sick of going to places in huge groups like this, because I think it’s kind of embarrassing to be in the big group of Americans who come in and just take over a place basically. Plus they all know us at Petra now, and I feel like we might be starting to get on their nerves. But, we all had a good time anyways, just like always. More people came while we were there and the group probably totaled 11 at its peak. As midnight was approaching, everyone had to make a decision as to whether or not they wanted to leave early and catch the metro / a marshrutka, or if they wanted to stay out later and ride a chasnik home. A group of us who all lived on the island (Vickie, Tsveti, Ingrid, Kara, and myself) decided that we would stay out longer and all share a chasnik when we wanted to go home. Everybody else left early. Petra closes at midnight, and starting at about 11:30 we could tell they were already starting to close up. So we paid the bill and got all our stuff together as quickly as we could and decided to head down the street to Choomadan to hang out there for a little while. All the employees of Petra came in a few minutes after we did, and it was kind of funny and we all said hi to each other. Our waitress was no friendly at all, and really messed up our order. I think only two of us ordered a beer there but she ended up bringing us four, and when we told her that we didn’t order that many she said that we had to take them because they were already opened and she couldn’t take them back. Tsveti had ordered a bottle of water and specifically asked for non-carbonated water, and of course the waitress brought carbonated. Tsveti didn’t know until after she opened it and drank it, so if course she couldn’t return that either. Kara ordered some French fries and about twenty minutes later the waitress came back and said she couldn’t bring us only a side dish without us ordering a full meal, which is totally bogus because we’ve ordered fries in there several times before. So, Kara had to go without her fires, but we had already decided to go to McDonalds afterwards anyways, so she decided she could wait. Once we got sick of Choomadan and of our waitress we decided to head out and go the McDonalds before we got our chasnik. The walk-up window is open until really late. I don’t like going to McDonalds but late at night after we’ve been drinking and we’re hungry and it’s the only thing that’s open for food it usually sounds pretty good. We all ordered and then stood around eating before we got our chasnik. There was a drunkard hanging around in front of McDonalds making everybody uncomfortable, and when he gestured for me to come talk to him I figured I probably should, just to keep him busy and away from the girls who were obviously made pretty uncomfortable by him hanging around. He kept trying to tell me something but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, and I kept telling him that I don’t speak Russian well and that he wasn’t making any sense to me. I started pointing inside my bag of food, so I figured he just wanted some food, so I was happy to spare a few French fries if it meant keeping him away from us. I handed him the fries and he seemed to accept them at first, but then he started dropping them on the ground in protest or something, I don’t know, so I figured I wasn’t willing to do anything more for him if he wasn’t going to accept my generous offering, so I walked away and joined the girls in their little circle. He kind of followed me over and started throwing the French fries he had left at my back, but I just ignored him. In the meantime Vickie was still waiting for her food, and once she got it we were ready to get a chasnik. Lots of chasniks line up on the street here because it’s right next to a metro station and a lot of people end up looking for rides here. There was one guy looking for somebody to give a ride to and Tsveti, being Bulgarian and speaking Russian pretty well, did the talking and arranged for him to take us all home for 150 rubles. The whole time we were talking with the driver the drunkard kept coming up and bothering us, and the driver kept getting mad and shoving him away. It was probably a bad sign. The plan was that Vickie and I would be dropped of last, because the girls all wanted to make sure that there was a guy with them in the chasnik at all times. This means that the driver would kind of have to go out of the way to take them first, but we explained the order to him and we thought he understood. All the other girls kind of live close to each other and he said the should take a separate one, but they remained insistent that they take the same one as me. We assured him that we could all five fit in his car, so the four girls crammed in the back and we were on our way for what we thought would be a 150 ruble ride. A few blocks away he started protesting and saying that he had to go in a big circle and that he was going to charge us 200 instead, and we didn’t put up much of a fight and agreed, 200. He dropped Ingrid, Kara and Tsveti off at their respective apartments all around the street Korablestroitelei, and then headed back to Gavanskaya to drop of Vickie and me. He started complaining about how he had to go in a big circle, and I explained how the girls all wanted me to be the last one dropped of, and he said he understood that but was still mad that he had to go out of his way. I didn’t understand everything he way saying, but I kept hearing him say the word for 1,000, and I thought he was saying that’s how much he was going to charge us for the ride. I of course go outraged and said something like, “Are you kidding? You said 200 for the ride!” He said, “No, you misunderstand me, the ride is 200. Forget it, you don’t understand what I’m trying to say.” I don’t know what the whole thing about “1,000” was, because I thought I heard him say distinctly “1,000 rubles,” but I guess I was wrong. At least I had confirmed that he was charging 200, and I thought we would be OK. We got to our stop and it was time to pay. Here is where I made my fatal mistake. I didn’t have any small bills for my share of the fare, but everybody else had given theirs to me so I figured that I would give him my 500 ruble bill and he would give me 300 in change. I had given large bills and gotten change back before in other chasniks without any problems, so I figured it would be fine, but when he saw that I was paying him with a 500 ruble bill he decided that he was only going to give me 200 in change back. I said, “You told us 200!” and he said “That was before I knew I had to go in a big circle” or something like that, which is totally bogus cause he had confirmed the 200 ruble price on the last leg of the trip. I kept insisting he give me 100 more rubles, nut he kept giving me a firm and uncompromising, “Nyet.” Vickie was getting on him at this point to, but we realized there was nothing we could really do. He had the upper hand and wasn’t going to give us any more change, so short of violence there was nothing I could have really done. We got out huffing and puffing and I slammed his door as I could and he drove off. If I had 200 in correct change I would have just given it to him and if he had asked for more we could have just gotten out (although, it was a two-door, and if that he been the case he could have theoretically driven off with Vickie in the back seat once I had gotten out, so maybe that wouldn’t have been the ideal scenario), but since I gave him 500 he had the option of giving me however much back he wanted. I learned my lesson, from now on I will try to have correction change when riding a chasnik. Vickie and I went to our apartments really pissed of, and I stayed up listening to music for a little while before going to bed. The next day promised to be better. We had a group excursion to a little town outside of St. Petersburg called Pavlovsk where there is an old Tsarist Palace and a big park. That morning I ate blini for breakfast, of course, and then Vickie and I rode bus 7 over to the meeting place at the hotel. The bus was going on a different route than it normally does for some reason, and at some point I realized that it was taking us away from the hotel, so we jumped out at some unknown stop before it got any further away from the hotel, and the hotel wasn’t to far from where we were at that point anyways. The bus driver tried to close the doors behind me before Vickie could get off, and as I heard them closing I instantly turned around and wedged my arm horizontally between the doors to keep it from closing. Vickie and I were of course still upset about the chasnik experience the night before, so we weren’t about to take any more crap from anybody like this. We walked over to the hotel and got worried for a while because we were the only ones there and it was pretty close to the meeting time, but everyone showed up eventually as did the bus, so we were soon on our way. We stopped at Kazan Cathedral on the way out to pick up our tour guides for the palace and to make sure the other group got on their bus. It was only about a 20 minute drive to Pavlovsk, and we met up with the other group and walked towards the palace. It was covered in scaffolding, as are most cool buildings I ever seem to visit. We went inside and everybody had to but slippers over their shoes to walk around the palace. Of course none of the slippers fit my feet, so I had to get the little plastic baggies. We checked out the gift shop briefly, where I considered getting a balalaika but realized that they weren’t very god quality here and probably too expensive. The palace was pretty cool, typical decadent architecture and furnishings for reach rulers, stuff that I’ve kind of seen before so I wasn’t too enthralled with everything. I did start taking a lot of pictures. At one point the tour guide asked me if I had paid to take pictures, and of course I said “no,” and she told me that I couldn’t without paying, but that if I was going to don’t let anybody see me doing it. The old ladies are in ever room, of course. So I played another round of everybody’s new favorite game and ended up with some pretty good, though “illegally” taken photographs. After the tour was over we had the option of riding the normal bus back for free, or we could stick around for a while if we wanted and ride a marshrutka back later for a small fee. We hung out in the square briefly while some of the other group members went on sleigh rides. Katie is apparently really afraid of horses, so we made fun of her as she was getting freaked out by the horses that were pulling the sleighs. I came up with a cool rhyme in Russian, it sounds like: “loshadi v ploshadi,” which means “horses in the square,” which seems so perfect I wondered why I had never heard it before. I really wanted to stay for a while and check out the huge park next to the palace, but the people I was with (Tom, Katie, Vickie and Nick) were kind of wishy-washy about whether or not they were going to leave right away. I somehow managed to get them to follow me into the park and they all ended up staying longer. We slid down an icy, snow-covered hill and their was no turning back. Natalie, fresh off of her sleigh ride, joined up with us and we walked around the park. There were small groups of people sledding here and there and we walked around a little building that had columns covered in graffiti (I found “Kino” written on a column, so I had to take some pictures). We walked on a frozen stream and then came over a hill to find tons and tons of people sledding down the other side. It looked like so much fun and I really wanted to rent an inner tube and do some sledding of my own. I think it was Nathan the program director who told us that at this park in Pavlovsk is the only place where you can find Russians being happy, and I’m starting to think that’s true. Everybody else started complaining that they were cold or hungry or whatever, and so we couldn’t stay and play. We decided, however, that on Thursday we are going to go back and spend the whole day there because it is a national holiday (Defenders of the Fatherland Day, of course) and we have the day off from school. I’m really looking forward to that. We headed back to the palace, considered eating at the cafeteria there but instead decided to eat back in St. Petersburg, and then caught a marshrutka back to town. It was 25 rubles apiece, not bad for a ride that far. It dropped us off at Moskovskaya metro station, way in the south part of the city, so we had to ride the metro back up to the city center. Everybody decided that they wanted to go to KFC for lunch, and I reluctantly joined them. I suggested trying the Russian version of fast food called “Blin-donald’s” (seriously) but nobody was interested. So, KFC it was. It was fine, just like any KFC in America only way more crowded. I had a chicken sandwich and French fries. I was still a little hungry after that, but luckily there is a Pizza Hut in the same restaurant, so I got a slice of cheese pizza to finish off lunch. It was basically the same as Pizza Hut in America too. There was talk about all of us going over to Tom’s apartment to hang out later and I had originally planned to go home for a while before going out again, but I figured I didn’t really need to and we all decided to stay out some more. Somebody had thrown out the idea of going to see a movie, and everybody seemed to be interested, so we found the nearest theater to see what was playing. Luckily there are movie theaters about every two blocks on Nevskiy, so the nearest one was about 50 feet away. Our options were limited at this theater and we had just missed the start of “Munich,” which I still haven’t seen but really want to, so we decided to settle on some Russian movie that none of us had ever heard of called “Bolshoi Lyubov” (literally “Big Love”). We bought our tickets which, of course, have assigned seating, and entered the theater. There’s a VIP section in the back where you can sit on couches, but we didn’t want to pay extra so we sat in the normal seats. There was one 30-second preview before the movie started. The movie was kind of silly but we all had a good time. It’s a romantic comedy about this military general who is a real ladies-man but for some reason is told my his commanding officer that he has to get married to somebody in two weeks, so he flies to Moscow and meets a flight attendant on the way that he ends up meeting again in Moscow and they fall in love. It looks like everything is going to work out for them, but then he finds out that his friend is also secretly in love with her and so he decides he can’t marry her and instead asks this mean, ugly bus konduktor to marry him on a whim just because he needs to marry some one (we were never sure why he had to get married). Of course the flight attendant finds out and she’s heartbroken and there’s an awkward scene on the plane where she is the flight attendant on the same flight that the general and his new “fiancée” are on, but in the end the general’s best friend finds out about everything and insists that the general go back to Moscow and marry the flight attendant. So he ditches the other girl on their wedding day and there’s a big dramatic closing scene where he meets the flight attendant on the runway after her plane has landed. Pretty cheesy and predictable over all, but it was good way to spend the afternoon and I was glad to have finally gone to the movie theater here. Afterwards we decided it was a good time to head over to Tom’s, so we call called our host moms to tell them that we wouldn’t be home for dinner and walked the 15 minutes or so it takes to get to Tom’s from Nevskiy. The second we entered the apartment we were met with a blast of piping hot air. His host-dad inside was in short-sleeves and shorts and we of course were all bundled up from being outside. It was, literally, like a sauna in there. I say that a lot as a joke but this time I’m totally serious. We went through the long and difficult process of all taking off our jackets and shoes in the tiny hallway and then made it to the back room where it was much, much cooler. It’s kind of like a living room where Tom’s host brother-sleeps because Tom sleeps in the host-brother’s regular room, which is kind of weird I guess. His host-dad kept brining us tea and pretzels and even dried and salted fish, which I didn’t have any off. He even gave us apples that he had just picked at his dacha. We had also brought some beer, so we sat around beers-drinkin’ and pretzels-eatin’ for a while. Tom’s host dad would periodically come in and show us stuff like pictures, the wood bowls that his father in-law makes, and the old bricks in the walls of the building. It was a good time for sure. I kept getting lots of calls and text messages while I was there and I felt very popular. My mom called from LA, so that was pretty cool. Most of the other calls and text messages were from various people letting us know that they were meeting to go to some bar later, and we told them that we would catch up with them even later. Eventually Nick and I did just that, so we said goodbye to everybody else who was going to hang out for a while longer and headed out. In the stairwell there was some women standing to the side to let us pass, and because it was really dark in the stairwell I didn’t see that she was holding back a huge dog. It suddenly snapped at me and I was so startled and freaked out for a second, but she held it back and I didn’t get bitten. I think it had a muzzle on anyways. Outside the metro station I bought a blini with cheese from a really unfriendly woman working at the blini stand (what else is new) and then we got on the metro to ride to Gostiny Dvor. Once we got there I got a hold of Bryce to find out where they were, and he gave me directions to a bar called the Red Lion where apparently a lot of people already were. We got outside and came to the realization that if we go this bar that we would have no hope of riding a bus or metro back home later, because it was about 10:30 and the bar was quite a walk away, which means we would have to make the same walk back and would have less than a half hour there if that was the case. So Nick thought he would call Tsveti and see what she and whoever she was with were doing and whether or not they were close by. Apparently they (her, Ingrid, Kara and Abby) were somewhere on Nevskiy, and we decided to meet up and then maybe head over to the Red Lion. We figured out which side of the street they were on and which direction they were walking, and planned to intercept them somewhere. We started walking and after a while started to wonder where they were, because by then we should have found them. Nick called Tsveti back and found out that they had gotten a chasnik and went straight to the Red Lion, which was kind of annoying because we had just walked several blocks in the opposite direction hoping to find them, but we decided to catch a bus back and meet them at the Red Lion. I suddenly remembered that route 22 should take us over to that area, so we hopped on the next one (about a one minute wait) and rode over there. The bus was packed, even at 11:00 at night. I had all my layers on and was getting pretty overheated on that bus. It dropped is off near St. Isaac’s square and it was a short walk over to the bar. The bar was basement level and really sprawling inside. It is an ex-patriot and is apparently always filled it Americans and Brits. They had a live band that was playing a medley of British and American pop and rock songs from the 60’s and 70’s and I had a good time dancing to that for a while, I joined the rest of the group at the table and found that drinks were really expense (80 rubles for a half pint of the cheapest beer. 60 rubles is the average we usually pay for that at other places), so I only ended up having one. The place was pretty raucous and loud, but we had a pretty good table to ourselves. The back room where the band was playing started playing dance music, and some people from our group went back and danced to that for a while but I wasn’t really too into it. I pretty much stayed at the table the whole time I was there, talking with various people from the group. I was pretty tired and I felt like I wasn’t really engaged in any of the conversations that were going on, so I decided to leave a little early. By this time it was about 1:30. I thought that the Red Lion was a pretty cool place and I would go there more often if the drinks weren’t so expensive. I walked alone along the river towards the bridge to Vassilevsky. After the chasnik fiasco the night before I had thought that maybe I should just try walking home again, but it started snowing pretty heavily and I knew that I probably would just get huge blisters again, so I decided that I should give chasniks another shot. I figured I would at least walk down to the bridge and cross over onto the island so the chasnik ride would be cheaper. It wasn’t all that much further, but the mental aspect of simply being on the same island seemed to make it feel a lot shorter back to the apartment. Plus, I figured there might be some chasnik drivers who prefer to stay just on the island and would probably charge less if I was already there going somewhere on the island myself. I got over the bridge and just as I stopped to hail a chasnik, one was dropping someone else off on the other side of the street and saw that I wanted one myself. I decided I was going to offer 100 up front, but would be willing to go as high as 150 if I had to. I told him I was going to Gavanskaya and he asked me “how much?” I told him 100 and it was good enough for him. I was happy too, because I knew I had a 100 ruble bill on me and could pay him exact change this time. The ride was silent like usual, and I got home without any problems for the price we had agreed upon. Maybe all chasnik drivers aren’t so bad after all. I stayed up for a while listening to music again and conked out around 2:30. Today, Sunday, was spent much like last Sunday: just hanging around the apartment. It’s nice to be able to sleep in on Sunday and just take it easy. Actually, I was getting kind of bored earlier, and tried getting a hold of some people to see what they were doing. Some people were out at some park or something, but I didn’t really want to go find them or anything, so I just stayed home all day. Oh well. Oh yeah, I got a call back about helping out in the English classes, which is good because I was starting to think that I was going to have to contact them. They set me up to help out in a class of teenagers tomorrow night at 6:00. I was kind of hoping I’d be teaching people more my own age, but I think teenagers could be a lot of fun too. They’ll probably be more interested in what I have to say and might even look up to me in some ways. So, I’ll let you know how that goes. Right now, though, I need to go take a shower and then go to sleep. So, take it easy. Later.

The thing that I had had had had a mind of it's own

2006-02-20T14:02:00.000+03:00

It’s been about three days since I last wrote an update, so I can only imagine how long this is going to be. Settle in. Tuesday was of course Valentine’s Day, and you’ll all be happy to know that this holiday has in fact found it’s way to Russia. It isn’t as big of a deal as in the U.S. (not that it’s really that big of a deal there either) but I did see lots of people walking around with flowers. With International Women’s Day less than a month away (March 8th), though, must Russians (Russian guys, anyway) save their energy and money until then, when they basically have to show their appreciation for ever woman they know by giving them flowers, chocolates, etc. But, more on that once it happens. Around Smolniy there was little Valentines fanfare, save for the Winnie the Pooh V-day cards that Ruth gave to everyone. The real reason to celebrate on Tuesday was because it was Allison’s birthday (and Oregon’s [and Arizona’s], but you already knew that), and because turning 21 is really no big deal in Russia, and because Allison is not the kind of person who would ever go crazy (or even drink at all, as it were) on her 21st birthday were she even in the U.S., our celebration amounted to eating cake in a café with a small-ish group of people after school (how’s that for a sentence?). We went to a café near the Chernyshevskaya metro station and everybody ordered their own little thing, and of course we covered Allison’s. Cake was eaten, photographs were taken, and the birthday song was sung. Passive voice was also being used by us. A lot. We all had a fun time, and then most people had to get going because there were various meetings that they had to get to. Some went to meet with Irina Borisovna to learn about teaching English to small children (we were under the impression that they were all orphans, but apparently they weren’t) and some went to meet somewhere else about doing work in a theater. I went to neither, seeing as how I already went to the meeting about helping teach English to college students (which, by the way, I really need to talk to someone about and figure out when and where I can do it, because I haven’t heard anything from the coordinator yet). Instead, I went with Peter David, Stacey, and Matt back to the 505 store to look around some more. I’ve kind of been spending too much on CDs and DVDs lately, but it’s hard to resist when they are so cheap and plentiful. This time around, I managed to score a CD called “Cdelano v SSSR” (Made in the USSR), which is a 2-disc compilation of soviet pop songs from the 70’s and 80’s. I had been looking for something like this in Russia, because I got some similar CDs in the Czech Republic that had a bunch of what can basically be called Czech oldies on them. The songs on this compilation are from a later period and it wasn’t quite what I hopped it would be, but it’s still pretty cool. I also bought another DVD of old cartoons, because I finally found the one with the specific cartoon that I wanted. It’s called Antoshka, and I saw it in my second year Russian class. It’s just a short little cartoon that goes along with a song, but the song is great and the cartoon is awesome, and just being able to own a copy of this cartoon was worth the DVD price alone. I was very happy to finally find it. After 505 Peter David took off and I decided to follow Stacey and Matt down to Nevskiy to go to an internet café they know. We walked down a part of Mayakoskogo street that I hadn’t been down before, so I got to see some new stuff. I saw a car dealership that sold this brand of cars called Shkoda, and that was pretty exciting. Shkoda is a Czech car company, and basically every other car in the Czech Republic is a Shkoda. My host family there had two of them. They also made the street cars that operate in downtown Portland. If I lived in Europe I would totally buy a Shkoda. So we got to this internet café and it was a pretty cool place. They had tons of computers and the cost is really cheap for students (48 rubles per hour, which is 12 less than at Smolniy). I got on the internet for an hour and checked email, etc. The one bad thing about this place is that all the CPUs for all the computers are inaccessible, stuck inside the little booths that all the computers are placed in, so there is no access to a USB port, which means I can’t upload blog posts or photos from there. It’s a good place to go if I just need to look stuff up on the internet and not post anything, though. I looked up info on some more Russian bands so I can have an idea of what to keep an eye out for at the record stores. I really want to find out about as much local music as I can while I’m here. When my time was up we all headed out. Stacey and Matt both live on the mainland, closer to Nevskiy, so they took off while I caught a bus back to the island. At home I did the usual evening routine of homework, listening to music and loading new music onto the computer. I also talked to Emily on the phone and made plans to hang out the next night. I’m trying to think if there is anything more that I did Tuesday night, but I don’t think there is. So, there you guy. Wednesday was a whole new day, however, and there is definitely more to say about it than about Tuesday night. Oh wait! I just thought of a good story from Tuesday morning that I can’t really work in anywhere else, so I’ll just write it here. Vickie and I got to our bus stop in the morning like usual, and on Tuesdays there are usually more students than on other days for some reason. There were probably about nine or ten. Our bus-van comes and we see that it is one of the smaller ones that is obviously not going to accommodate everyone. It can hold six comfortably, seven tops. So, six or seven people cram in and the rest of us are left wondering what we should do. The driver tells us that another one is coming, so we wait for that one while the first bus-van takes off. A few minutes later another bus-van pulls up, but this one is one of the really big ones that can hold about 20! So, the three or four of us get in and we’re on our way. Why doesn’t the big one just come in the first place and take everyone? Why do they even need two when this one has more than enough space? That’s just the way a lot of things work in Russia. Efficiency is not a big priority. There is probably some deal worked out between the school and the drivers to have so and so be there at such and such time and another at a different time and it doesn’t matter what kind of van they drive. There are lots of little things like that here. Anyways, back to Wednesday. We finished up classes like every other day, and then about half our group made its way to Soiree to use the wireless internet. I had never gone with a group this big and it was actually kind of annoying that there were so many of us there, and probably really annoying to the employees there. The wireless internet is very fickle at Soiree, and depending on where you sit and how many people are using it the internet will either work pretty well or really terribly. We sat in the back room, so I was barely even getting a signal. I ordered a Bochkaryov (an average Russian beer) and some blini with sour cream and tried in vain to get things done on the internet, but the signal kept coming in and out and eventually faded for good. I eventually went and sat by myself in the front to be closer to the router, and once I sat there the internet started working really well. So I stayed there for a while and a few other people came and joined me at different times and I got a lot of the things done that I had hoped to accomplish on the internet. Then the battery problems started. My laptop battery is kind of messed up. It pretty much stops working at 30 percent capacity, so when I don’t have it plugged in I’ll forget and all of a sudden the screen will go black while the computer goes into sleep-mode and I can’t get it to start up again. We finally found some outlets the last time we were at Soiree, so I plugged in my computer and thought I would be fine, but then the power started coming in spurts and not really powering the computer at all. I ejected my thumb-drive and the CD that I was ripping as fast as I could before it shut down again, and then turned it off and went back to the back room defeated and frustrated. I explained what had happened when Bryce informed me that I probably didn’t need to use the power converter with my laptop like I have been, because the plug itself for the laptop should convert the electricity. So I plugged it in again and what do you know, he was right! I tried getting back online but because I was in the back room again the signal was weak, and I didn’t really want to go sit in the front room alone again, so I figured my time on the internet was over. At least I know now I don’t have to use the big bulky converter when I plug in my laptop. Everyone finished using the internet and a bunch of them decided to head back to Vassilevskiy and go to Petra for a while. I was trying to decided whether or not I wanted to go, because I had to meet Emily in a few hours and I probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go all the way out there, but then I remembered that she goes to classes on Vassilevskiy and was going to call me when she got out, so I figured I could meet her somewhere pretty easily if I was already there, so I decided to tag along. We got to the metro station and a few of us had to get in line to get tokens. The line was really long and was barely even moving, and the whole metro station was just really packed in general. It was rush-hour, in fact, and I started to think that riding the metro at that hour was not a good idea, and that I only had about two hours before Emily got out of classes and she would probably want to come back to the mainland to meet anyways, so I backed out of the Petra idea and decided to bum around Nevskiy alone for a couple hours. I had quite a bit of homework to do, so I went to one of the lame hip cafes on Nevskiy to sit by myself and work on my assignments. These kinds of places are perfect for that, because they are all really big and never too crowded, so you can almost always find a good place to sit and be anonymous while you work on homework or something, and you don’t even have to order anything if you don’t want. I was kind of worried that the security guy would see that I wasn’t ordering anything and would either kick me out or make me buy something, but the place was busy enough that the security guy didn’t even notice. He also had his hands full trying to keep this one street waif out of the café. This mangy looking kid kept coming in and going around begging for money, and the security guy would chase him back out. This happened a few times, and I kind of felt bad for the kid. But hey, what are you going to do? I remembered that I had to call my host mom to tell her that I wasn’t going to come home for dinner, and I decided that it was too loud in the café to try and call her, so I packed up my stuff and went back outside. After I talk to her on the phone I didn’t want to go back into the same café, so I went to another lame hip café just down the street and continued my homework there. At about 6;30 I got a call from Emily, half an hour earlier than I was expecting. She said her class was canceled and that she was at home, which was only a few blocks away. Boy was I glad I didn’t go to Petra with everyone. I told her I would meet her on the corner where she lives in a few minutes, and packed up my stuff and headed out. Emily lives a block away from Soiree actually, so she is pretty close to everything. It’s a great location. Right on the corner is a pub called Liverpool, which apparently plays only Beatles music. So I waited outside of Liverpool for a while when Emily showed up. We decided that it would be a good idea just to hang out in her apartment and eat dinner there, because neither of us really felt like going out. We walked to the small grocery store down the street and Emily bought a few groceries for herself and for our dinner. We also went to a cool bakery across the street that I didn’t know about. I felt bad that I couldn’t help pay for anything because I only had a 500 ruble bill, but she kept insisting that it was fine. We went back to her apartment, which is the very last door on the top floor of her building. Her apartment is really cool. It’s an old communal apartment, like the kind that were really common in the Soviet Union, where each tenant has a room off of the main hall and they all share a kitchen and a bathroom. There were four separate rooms, one of which was occupied by a host-mom or sorts who kind of takes care of the place I suppose. I met Emily’s roommates and they both seemed very nice. Her room was really cool too. It was really big and had lots of old pictures on the wall. It even had a piano in it, which I tried playing and discovered it to be horribly out of tune. Emily made some red tea and heated up some leftover lentil soup, and we had a nice little dinner in the kitchen. Aside form the soup we had a loaf of chibatta bread from the bakery and this really good spread that was kind of like cream cheese but tasted kind of like feta cheese. We also had a big plastic bottle of “White Bear” beer that we drank out of small glasses. Big bottles of beer like this are pretty popular in Russia. We talked for a long time about school and people that we both knew back in Eugene, and generally caught up on everything. I hadn’t spent time just hanging out with Emily like this for about two years, so it was pretty nice to get to do it again. After dinner we hung out in her room for a long time, talking more and trading music from our computers. It was all very relaxing and enjoyable, and I don’t think we would have had nearly as good of a time had we gone out to a bar or something. Around 11:00 I decided I should get going because I didn’t want to miss the last bus again. We made tentative plans to hang out again sometime over the weekend, and I was on my way. I walked fast because I was starting to worry about the whole bus situation, and by the time I got to the bus stop it was about 11:15. Plenty of time, I figured. After all, the busses supposedly stop running at midnight and my bus usually comes at about 30 minute intervals maximum. Plus, there were two possible routes I could ride (147 and 7, of course), so I figured I would be fine. So I stood there waiting for a while. Number 22 came. Number 27 came. Number 22 came again. Number 156 came. Number 27 came again. Number 22 came again. I kept waiting until just before midnight, and neither 147 nor 7 ever came. 22 and 27 each went by about three or four times, as well as a few others here and there, but never 147 nor 7. I was really mad. I hardly ever get mad about anything, but this was really getting to me. It was cold and I was tired and I had a lot of homework to do still, and I was running out of options. There was a glass bottle lying on the ground and I kind of kicked it around for a while. Yeah, that’s how mad I was. But seriously, it was probably the maddest I’ve been in a really long time. At about 11:55 I came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no hope of taking a bus left, so I had to suck it up and hail a chasnik. At least with those you can usually get one within about 20 seconds of holding your hand out. A guy pulled up and I told him where I wanted to go. I offered him 200 rubles, and based on my last experience with a chasnik I was sure he would ask for more, but he said 200 was fine and I was on my way. Riding in a chasnik is always awkward because you sit in the front seat but you never really talk to the driver, so I was just sitting there stewing in my anger from the bus fiasco while the driver drove in silence. At least I got home alright. I tried to do some homework when I got home and got some done, but I was too tired to finish it all, so I just crashed out at about 12:45. Of course I was very tired the next morning, but I dragged myself out of bed like always and got to school like normal. Thursday is definitely the worst day of the week as far as classes go. I have Grammar, Gazeta (newspaper reading) and Civilization lecture. It’s pretty tough to make it through the day most Thursdays. But, I did it somehow. Oh, we watched a clip from the movie White Nights where Borishykov did a crazy dance to a Vladimir Vysotskiy song that was really cool. Does anybody know this movie? It’s an American movie from the 80’s that stars Borishnykov and some other cheesy American actor, and it has a lot to do with the Soviet Union or something. I had never heard about it before, but now I want to see the whole thing. I’ve been really anxious to play some guitar. It’s been about a month since I last played, and I didn’t think it was really going to bother me but there have been times where I really wanted to play and it’s weird not to be able to play when ever I want. There is a guitar in the office of the program coordinator at school, and today I asked him if I could borrow it for the night. He said sure, but that it had some problems and didn’t work right. He thought it might just need a screw tightened or something, and I said that I had a screw driver and told him I would take a look at it at home. When I went to pick it up after school, Tom was in there talking with Nathan (program director, you remember him from the Novgorod post) and some other student. When I picked up the guitar Tom told me that he had already looked at it and determined it to be beyond repair, and that it really didn’t work at all. I didn’t believe him at first, but once he showed my I saw that he was right, that there really is no hop of fixing it, and no point either because it’s a really cheap guitar. We told Nathan that there was no hope for it and asked if we could smash it sometime, and he said sure, as long as we pick up all the pieces. So, Tom and I are going to organize a guitar smashing party sometime soon. So I was pretty bummed that I wasn’t going to be able to play guitar, especially since I had just copied a bunch of Kino lyrics and chords off of the internet and was dying to play some. I had been planning to go straight home with the guitar because I didn’t want to lug it around the city with me otherwise, but without the burden of a guitar I was free to go wherever I wanted. But, every one else in the small group that had materialized was going straight home, so I figured I might as well too. We walked to the bus stop and got on 147 (even though I was still mad at it from the night before). Tom and I sat in the way back, and when he got off before us I stayed in my spot. More people got on of course and the bus got really crowded, and my little spot in the spot got really cramped and my knees were jammed up against the plexi-glass guard for a long time. I listened to some Kino on my iPod (it’s basically all I ever listen to anymore) and enjoyed the ride as best as I could. I had a hell of a time trying to squirm past everyone as we approached my stop, but somehow made it to the door in time to get out. I reconvened with Vickie who had been sitting in the front of the bus, and we went to the cell phone store down the street from our buildings so Vickie could buy more cell phone minutes. We stopped in at Diksi (the little grocery store across the street form us) and I bought some water and snacks for my room, and then we went to our respective homes for the evening. I finished my homework pretty early and have been messing around on the computer and writing this post ever since. I’m going to write an email to my friend and former Russian teacher Josh before going to bed, so the night isn’t over yet, but soon. My real family back home is in LA right now. I actually called my mom on her cell phone right before they boarded their plane, and that was phone to talk to her and to my sister. They are going to go to Disneyland, but I suppose most people reading this already know all this. This weekend our group is taking a day-trip to a small town outside of Petersburg called Pavlovsk, where apparently there is a big Tsarist palace or something (just like every other little city around Petersburg), so, that should be fun. You can read all about it a few days from now I would suspect. Have a good weekend, everybody.

Бочкарёв и блинны со сметаной

2006-02-15T14:27:00.000+03:00

It’s been only one day since I wrote my last update, so I figure this one should be a lot shorter than the last few. Classes were alright today. I have Grammar and Phonetics on Mondays and neither of those classes are too terrible. We have a test in Grammar on Wednesday and I think I’ll be able to do fine on it. After classes I ate lunch at Smolniy, used the computer lab and then headed out. Pretty much everyone else had left by then so I started walking alone. I like getting out on my own every once in a while anyways. I called Katie to see what she and whoever she was with were up to, and they said they were heading over to Tom’s with him because he forgot his Spravka and he figured he should get it before he does anything else, and that they would call me when they had a plan for afterwards. I started walking to the Chernyshevskaya metro station without any real plan in mind, but knowing I could take the metro somewhere from there if I decided to do that. I really like walking through the park on the way to Chernyshevskaya. There are some streams and a pretty big pond that are of course all frozen over right now and there’s usually some kind of activity going on on top of it. Today there was a group of guys playing soccer out on the ice and some kids sledding down the embankments of the streams. It all looked like a lot of fun, and I took some pictures of people enjoying the snow. There was also a spot on a little hill where all the ice on the bottom was exposed and people were taking turns sliding down it on there feet, and that really looked like fun. I kept walking through and made it to the area around Chernyshevskaya. There is another 505 store right across from it, and I figured I’d check that one out because I didn’t have anything else to do. While I was looking around, Peter David and Will came out of nowhere and said hi. Apparently they had just gotten back from lunch at Pizza Hut. Will bought some bootleg Die Hard DVDs and took off, but Peter David hung back with me and waited until I was done browsing. I ended up buying a couple things there. I got an MP3 CD of another old Soviet rock band that I had heard about named Akvarium (Aquarium), and an MP3 CD of the Cocteau Twins, which is one of my favorite bands and I was pretty surprised to find it there. It had a couple live shows and some rarities collections that I probably already had most of, butut was cheap and I figured it was worth it for the live shows. I also bought a DVD of some old Soviet children’s cartoons that are pretty bizarre but also pretty cool. Peter David and I paid for our stuff and headed outside. I hadn’t heard back from Katie yet, so I called her to see what they were up to but she didn’t answer. So we figured we’d hop on the metro right there and ride to Vostanniya Ploshchad and try to get a hold of them again there or figure something else out. It was only one stop to Vostanniya and once we got out I tried called Katie, Vickie, and Tom, but I couldn’t get a hold of any of them, so Peter David decided to just head home because he was already pretty close. Left alone again, I decided to start wandering down Nevskiy in search of something. I walked past all the usual sights and then made it to a part of Nevskiy that I don’t usually walk down, and decided to check out that store with the cool maps in the window that I always see from the bus. It was a little bookstore that had some maps and posters and stuff. One of the coolest maps they had was a huge one of St. Petersburg from a slight angle, kind of like how you can look at things on Google Earth, and it had all the streets and buildings labeled. I could even identify the building I lived in drawn on the map. It costs 1000 rubles though and it’s really big, so I probably won’t be buying it any time while I’m here. There is a smaller, much less expensive and really awesome map of Russia that I’ve seen around and that I intend to get some time before I leave. I kept walking down Nevskiy until I came to the giant bookstore that I always see from the bus called “Dom Knigi” (House of Books). I went in hesitantly, hoping that the CDs and DVD in my bag wouldn’t set off the metal detector thing, because I didn’t have the receipt. I got in fine and wandered around for a while. I didn’t see the actual literature section, like you know novels and poetry and that stuff, it was just all kinds of other general interest books. The literature section had to have been there somewhere. There were a lot of cool books on art. While wandering around the art room I hit the jackpot: There was a table that had all these different sets of old Soviet propoganda posters for sale, like the one I had bought before only a little smaller and there were a ton of them. They each came in packs of about 20 and each one had a different theme. There was one with posters about labor, one about kicking bad habits for the good of communism (including the “nyet” one I had bought earlier), one of old advertisements, and so on and so fourth. I had a really hard time deciding which one to get because they were all so cool, but I finally settled on the general “propaganda posters” set because it had a good mix of everything. I think I’ll probably go back again sometime and get some more, because they are pretty cheap (400 rubles per pack, which would come to about 20 rubles each, which is a great deal) and I imagine a lot of people back home would probably love to have some of these, and I would love to give them all out. There was another guy looking at the packs and standing in my way for the longest time comparing the contents of each one before deciding which to buy, and I can’t blame cause I had to do the same thing, but it was really getting to me cause he snuck up beside me after I had gone up to them and stood there in my way while I was obviously making my way over to look at the rest of them. Oh well, no big deal. I paid for the posters and left, glad again that I had not set off the metal detectors, and kept walking. I figured I had done enough and that I was getting a little tired, so I figured I’d just head home from there. I made it to my usual bus-waiting place next to Gostiny Dvor and waited for either the 147 or the 7. The streets seemed really crowded and I was getting a little overwhelmed by all the people. The 7 bus came first and pulled a fast one on me again by stopping further down, but I started running just in time to catch it. The bus ride home was insane. I have never seen so many people packed onto one bus before. It was standing room only and it seemed like at every stop more and more people were trying to cram in when there was no room left. There were even times when the doors would barely close because there were people in the way. It was particularly hard for me because of my height. My head pretty much scrapes the ceiling of the bus and I was jammed up against the hand railing with nowhere to put my head, so I had to keep shuffling around to find a place to just be able to stand properly. The conductor (the person who goes around collecting money and passing out tickets on all the city busses) or course had to work her way up and down the bus to collect the money from all the new people cramming in, and we’d all have to find some way to part to let her threw each time. One time she kind of pushed me aside and I had to hold my entire weight up by the railing just to prevent myself from falling onto the man sitting near where I was standing. It was getting to the point that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get out of the bus when it came to my stop, because I was blocked by so many people in either direction. As my stop was approaching I tried to push my way to the door as best as I could, but all shoving came to a stand still. Luckily, a pretty big group of people all got off at my stop, way more than I ever would have thought, and I was able to slip out once all the people had gotten off. It was quite a mess. I tell you, I really am not meant for big city life. If I ever come back to Russia to live or study or whatever (which I is very likely) I think I want to try going to a smaller city, because all the people and cars and pollution are kind of starting to get to me. It’s not the fact that it’s another country or another culture, that I can usually deal with just fine, it’s just the fact that I’m in a big city that causes me the most stress. So I was very happy to make it home alright, and I was met at the door by my host brother Sasha. My host mom was not there, it was just Sasha and a friend of his hanging out in his room. He asked me if I would drink beer, and I was a little confused by the question because of the way he worded it, and then I figured out that I was asking if I would come and have some beer with him and his friend. I was excited because I have had little to no interaction with my host brothers until now, so I put my stuff in my room and headed to the room next door to join them. This was the first time I had even seen inside of their room, and it was pretty nice. They had a really big TV with what looked like some nice stereo equipment, and there were a couple of weird couch/beds in the corner and a coffee table. It was a good set up for watching TV, which I know they do a lot of in there. They also have a computer in there that maybe is hooked up to the internet? I’m not sure, but I would kind of be afraid to ask. So I sat down with them and Sasha poured my a little glass of beer from the big 3-liter bottle that they had. He and his friend here watching the Olympics, and I was excited to see some because I hadn’t watched any yet. We watched a little skiing, some speed racing, and even some curling. We saw a Russian skier accepting a gold medal, and some others being interviewed. It was fun seeing it from the perspective of another country, because of course they are going to focus on their athletes more than on any others. Oh! Did anybody know that the town of Sochi, Russia is in the runnings to host the 2014 Winter Olympics? I didn’t know. That’s pretty cool. I might be going there over spring break, and that would be pretty cool if in fact it did host the Olympics and I could say I had been there eight years earlier before anybody else had ever really heard of it. I’m sure it won’t be chosen though, what with Chechnya and all those other hostile regions only a few hundred miles away. To me that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. But oh well. Sash must have been pretty drunk because he was asking me lots of questions about sports in the US and stuff like that, and wanted to know what were the names of some Hokey times from around where I live (of course he had never heard of the Portland Winterhawks). He also asked me what kind of cigarettes and cell phones are popular in the US. I don’t know much about either, so I did my best to try to come up with some I knew. He said that Camel cigarettes are really bad in Russia, and that Motorola and Samsung phones are no good either. Sasha, just for the record, likes Kent cigarettes and Nokia cell phones. He was showing my what I thought was his cell phone, which was really fancy and had a big color screen and a camera with 2 megapixels, but then his friend got up to leave and took the phone with him, so apparently it was his and Sasha only wished he had such a cool phone. I never talked to the friend at all, he didn’t even introduce himself. When his friend left I figured I should probably head out too, because it might be a little awkward just hanging out with Sasha. I was really glad to have gotten the chance to talk to him some more, and I am glad I finally got to see the room of mystery that is right next to mine. When I got back to my room I saw that I had missed a call on my phone. It was Katie, so I called her back and she told me that they had never left Tom’s apartment, that they had just hung out there and that his host mom had made them all food. Sounded like fun. They were going over to Vostanniya to find something to do and invited me to come meet them, but I really didn’t want to head back out during the early evening rush, so I’ve just been hanging out here ever since, doing home work and messing around on the computer. I enjoy having this sort of quiet time in the evenings. There now, that wasn’t so bad, only about half of the size of my usual updates. If I can only manage to right an update about every day so each one is a bit more manageable. That probably won’t happen, though. I might have to start skipping over some things or leaving some things out all together just to save time. We’ll see how it goes. Later.

Алюминиевные огурцы

2006-02-14T18:11:00.000+03:00

I'm at a pretty cool hip internet cafe right now with tons and tons of computers, but none of them have accessable USB ports, so I won't be loading last night's update now. I have plans to go to Soiree tomorrow, so I should be able to do it then. Just thought I'd say something as long I was at a computer. More tomorrow.

-Austin

Для разговора время есть

2006-02-13T13:33:00.000+03:00

It’s about 10:15 Sunday night, and the way I see it, it’s a perfect time to sit down and write a blog post. So, I guess I’ll pick up with what I did on Friday. After class I decided to take it easy for the afternoon and just go straight home. As I was leaving Smolniy I was stopped by a babushka (you know, an old lady). I love the things people call each other when they are trying to get your attention here. The old lady literally said to me, “excuse me, young person.” It was great. It was just within the Smolniy Cathedral area that she stopped me, and she wanted to know what the place was called. I told that I think it was simply called “Smolniy,” that the church was called the Smolniy Cathedral and that everything around it was simply Smolniy, and she seemed a bit confused. I told her that on the other side of the building was the “Center for Russian Language and Culture,” (the place where I study) and she shrugged it off like, “of course I know that.” I think she misunderstood me and thought that I was trying to tell her that Smolniy was a place of culture, that there simply is culture there. Duh. She told me she was from Irkutsk and that she didn’t know the city very well. If I had been thinking straight at the time I would have told her that I am from Irkutsk’s siser city (Eugene – well, I guess I’m not really from there, but I live there most of the time now). So, it was a nice little interaction and I was actually pretty proud of myself for having conducted and understood the whole thing in Russian. That pride quickly turned to regret the moment I reached the bus stop just in time to see the 147 bus pulling away, leaving me with about a half hour wait for the next one. Had I not stopped to help the babushka I would have arrived just in time to catch the bus. Shoot. So, about an hour or more later I finally made it home and had a nice little relaxed evening in my room before going out. There were big plans for the evening, and I was basically the central figure of the whole thing. See, I wanted to take everybody to the cool bar that Matt had taken me to earlier in the week (It’s called Cynic, but, in Russian, of course. The word is a cognate actually, so if I tried to transliterate it it would just look like I misspelled the word “cynic.” But, I digress), and sort of as an excuse to get everybody to come with me I started telling everybody earlier in the week that Friday was my half birthday (which was true, actually) and that they all needed to come celebrate with me at the cool bar. A half birthday isn’t something I would usually make any sort of deal about, but because it was on a Friday this year and because I had something I wanted to do with everyone I pretended like it was really something worth celebrating. Everybody else seemed to take it semi-seriously, and apparently a lot of them told their host families that they were going out to celebrate their friend’s half birthday (which was of course met with many confused reactions). The bar is kind of hard to find, of course, so I told everyone to meet me at the statue in St. Isaac’s Square at 8:00. Vickie and I got there first and waited around for all the various groups of people to show up. A lot of people didn’t actually know how to get to St. Isaac’s Square, so there were a lot of phone calls made and a lot of directions given and re-given, but eventually everyone who wanted to come made it to the statue and I took them over to the place. I was really hoping that it wouldn’t be too crowded at the bar and that there would be room for us (a pretty naïve notion, really, considering there were about 15 of us). And, of course, when we got there the place was packed. All the tables were full pretty much (And these are big tables). We milled about trying to see if there was any place that anybody could squeeze in, and most people decided to leave and try finding another place. There was hope for a few people, however, and so a group of about 5 or 6 including myself hung around and tried to sit down. See, there was a pretty big table in the back room where only three people were sitting, but they were sitting in the middle of the table. Ingrid was the first to sit down and asked one of the guys if we could squeeze in there, and he said sure, but the rest of us could tell that it probably wasn’t a good idea to sit here. The three guys were all really drunk and there was a security guy talking to them about something and the situation seemed like it was starting to get kind of tense. We all stood and watched, trying to figure out what was going on. One guy had his own bottle of Vodka that I guess he wasn’t supposed to have, and somebody tried to grab it away from him and then the three of them along with the security guard and a couple others started to get physical. One of the guys I think tried to swing at another and then the security guy held him back and somebody else held the other guy back or something. I was pretty confused by the whole thing and didn’t know who was on whose side or what was trying to be accomplished really. All I know is that there were about 4 or 5 people in a scuffle and one of them grabbed the edge of the table we were trying to sit at and lifted up the end, making all the glasses and bottle and ashtrays fall to the floor and spill beer everywhere. We all tried to get out of the way and watched from a short distance. The scuffle ended pretty quick and the people were removed, leaving the table up for grabs. We swooped in but if course the table and benches were covered with beer and there was broken glass on the floor. Luckily, the incident made some other people feel uncomfortable, and the few people sitting at the next table over got up to leave, and we moved in quick. So, we had a table with enough room for all of us, and we were happy. At this bar you have to go up to the counter and order your drinks, so some people went up and got some beers and shots for everybody. Because of the half birthday thing, everybody kept insisting that they buy me drinks! What a great scam, huh? So we all got a beer and a shot of vodka and began our night. It was Tsveti, Abby, Ingrid, John, Kara, Natalie and myself, but Kenny, Peter David (long story, but not really), and Reed showed up pretty soon too. Everybody liked the place, and I was glad to have shown it to them. We kept getting calls from the rest of the group, and they said that they had found a good place right down the street that was practically empty and that had a dance floor and that we should come over, but we felt like sticking around for a little while. Actually, I had to stick around for a while, because I had arranged to finally meet with my friend Emily that night, and she was going to meet me at Cynic. When the others started getting antsy to go next door and dance, I got them to at least wait with me until Emily showed up. So we stayed at Cynic for a while and had some more drinks and talking about this and that. Bryce showed up at one point already really drunk from next door, and kept trying to get us to come over. He was really excited that Cynic had Jagermeister shots though, and so I had one or two with him. Some people left at one point, so it was down to a core few and I kept having to reassure them that Emily was coming any minute and that we could go next door after that. Eventually, she did show up and I was so excited to see her. I hadn’t seen her since June. She had brought a friend with her named Amanda, who was very she and didn’t look like she really wanted to hang around. So I introduced Emily to some people and then we all got up to head next door. Amanda talked to Emily for a second outside the new bar and told her she felt like going home. I don’t think she was very comfortable around me or my friends, which was fine, so she took off and Emily came inside with us. Everyone was really excited to see me and they kept telling me happy half-birthday. They had gotten a little dance party going in the back room, and it looked like a lot of fun. I felt like I was spread pretty thin because I really wanted to talk to Emily but I also had to make my rounds to see everybody else who wanted to talk to the “half-birthday boy.” I had to get up and tell people directions over the phone every few minuets too, so I was kind of all over the place. Emily had called Matt and he eventually came and met us at the bar. A lot of the other people had gotten really drunk before we came to the bar, and some were in the bathroom throwing up. I had a couple beers there and even bought Abby the drink I owed her way back from the first night of orientation. Some of my friends got to talk with Emily and Matt and I think everybody hit it off pretty well. By this time it was probably about 12:30 or 1:00, and a lot of people started heading out for the evening, and after a while it was just Emily, Matt and me left. We sat around in that bar for a little while and then decided to head back to Cynic for a while. By this time it was a lot less crowded, and we managed to get a whole big table to ourselves. Matt kept buying me drinks, and Emily to even. I really have to start paying them back. I even got Matt to order us a plate of grenki, which I later found out nobody else wanted any off and I had it all to myself. Grenki is this amazing snack that I had for the first time here. It’s strips of black bread fried in a garlic and oil and topped with parmesan cheese. Cynic is apparently famous for their grenki. It was amazing. So Matt, Emily and I sat around for a while talking more about Music, Geography, and all kinds of interesting things. I found out more about how Emily’s time in Russia has been so far. Matt got in a side conversation with some Russian guy who had sat down next to us. At one point Emily got up and brought back three vodka shots. Matt said he didn’t want his, and I insisted that he drink it. Somehow the idea came up that I should arm-wrestle him for it, meaning that if I win he has to drink it and if he wins I have to drink both his and my own, which kind of seems a little backwards. I thought I had it in the bag, but I didn’t know what I was in for. Apparently Matt is like a champion arm-wrestler, and everybody who comes in to work at the paper where he works has to arm-wrestle him. He hasn’t lost a mach in St. Petersburg yet. So we start arm-wrestling and we both realize right away what we were in for. He said right away, “Oh no, this guy’s strong.” It was probably one of the longest arm-wrestling matches I have ever been in, lasting probably two or three minutes. I felt like I had an edge on him at one point, but he somehow found bursts of strength and fought back, to where eventually he had my arm about four inches above the table, and I knew he had me. I let him have it there knowing it would be better to end it there rather than hold out longer and really hurt my arm only to loose in the end anyways. My arm was still really sore afterwards and I had trouble flexing it for a while. But, I put up a good fight, and Matt told me that I was the best competition he’s had yet in Petersburg. So, I had to drink both shots, which wasn’t too bad really. After a while we decided to head to another bar that they like to go to. It had been snowing that night and when we came out there was a fresh layer on the ground. There was a spot that was untouched and I had the urge to jump into the middle of it and leave foot prints, so I jumped and of course slipped right onto my back when I landed. It didn’t really hurt, and at least I left a good mark in the fresh snow. We trudged through the snow to this place called Swiss Bar that Matt had actually showed me the other night. This place is kind of weird. It’s kind of a lesbian bar but not exclusively. The bartenders are all butch-looking lesbians and there are some who go there, but there are all kinds of other people there too. Emily is pretty bi-sexual and I guess likes butch girls, so she likes to go here. It was still pretty packed by the time we got there at around 4:00 am. They were blasting all kinds of bad American music (mainly rap), and I just stood around at the bar with Matt most of the time while Emily danced with some girl. Matt and I talked about geography some more. He told me some of his family history and how his family ended up in Oregon and I told him the same thing about myself (Everything goes back to geography! It’s great!). At some point he went to the bathroom, and Emily came back for a while and then went to the bathroom too. Maybe there was a long line or they got held up somewhere else, but neither of them came back for a while, and in the meantime I meat a guy from Northern Ireland named Brian. He was probably about 50 and had a friend with him who was much younger and just kind of stood there listening without ever really saying anything. Apparently Brian has been in St. Petersburg for about six years (I’m not sure if he meant on and off or if he’s lived there that whole time), but still doesn’t speak Russian well at all (“I’m lazy,” he told me). I’m not sure what he does, but we ended up talking about Russian music. He told me about how great this band Leningrad is, who I’ve heard of but haven’t really heard yet. I told me that I really like Kino, and he said that they’re good and all but that they’re too old and that Leningrad is better. He started trying to explain to me about some place over on the Petrograd side of the city where Viktor Tsoi (lead singer of Kino who died in a car crash in 1990) used to work shoveling coal but is now turned into some cool club or monument to him, and he even tried to draw a map of it but I don’t know that part of the city at all so I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand what it is, exactly. We talked about America and how the drinking age / driving age / voting age / age of consent are all in weird orders and how they don’t really make sense to us. Eventually Matt and Emily came back and Brian and his silent friend took off. Soon after that I decided I was pretty tired and by then the morning busses had started to run, so I said goodbye and headed out. I tried calling home to tell my dad happy birthday, but the best I could do was leave a message. I waited for a bus on my usual spot on Nevskiy near Gostiny Dvor. It took a while for a bus to show up and I started thinking about taking the Metro, but the 7 bus showed up just in the nick of time. I was so relieved. I took my seat and couldn’t really stay awake for most of the ride. I kept falling asleep and waking back up, worrying that I had missed my stop. Luckily I never missed it and I got home just fine, albeit at 7:00 in the morning. I went straight to bed. The next morning (well, later that morning) at around noon I was laying around bed kind of half-asleep, half-awake when I was fully awaken by my phone ringing. It was Natalie. She wanted to know if I would come with her to wander around some market that she had heard about. It sounded like fun and I wasn’t feeling too bad, so I decided to go. I told her to give me some time to get up and have breakfast, but that I would call her when I was headed out. I got up and wasn’t too hung-over aside for a headache (nothing a little Aleve couldn’t fix). I was correct in my assumption that my host-mom would be making me blini for breakfast. I can never get enough blini, they are just so delicious, even by themselves. After happily filling up on blini, I got my stuff together and headed out. The marked was in a part of town I hadn’t really been before, and the only way I knew how to get there was by metro, so I rode the marshrutka to Vassileostrovskaya. The trip required a transfer at Gostiny Dvor / Nevskiy Prospekt, but from there it was only one stop away. I came out of the Metro station at Cennaya Square and waited around for Natalie. I had never been here before, and I felt pretty disoriented as to where the rest of the city was. Natalie showed up and we asked around a little bit as to where the market actually was. The only thing I was really interested in buying at a market right now was some bootleg CDs, and as we walked through a little indoor plaza / mall, I found a spot where they were selling some. Boy did I find what I was looking for. The Kino MP3 CDs that were for some reason lacking at 505 where available here, and for 180 rubles (it was on two discs) I bought every Kino album all at once. I am so happy about getting that, I’m listening to them right now in fact. I’m telling you, this band is amazing. I can’t really explain what’s so great about them, but I’m so hooked right now. Luckily I can feed my addiction for a while, what with their entire catalog now loaded onto my computer. I also bought a DVD of famous Russian folk singer / actor Vladimir Vysotsky, that, according to the box, and 36 of his albums on it. I figured that meant that it was like an DVD-ROM, that I could take all those albums off of the disc and put them onto my computer. I found out when I got home that it actually is a real DVD, and it does have all those albums but you have to go through it like a DVD menu and you can’t copy any of. So I have 36 Vladimir Vysotsky albums now, but I can’t do anything with them but listen to them off of the DVD menu on TV or my computer (actually, it probably won’t even work on American DVD players). Oh well, at least it was only 90 rubles. So, I bought those, and then we headed back outside and found the big market. It really was pretty massive. There were rows and rows of booths, almost exclusively clothes and accessories, and lots of salespeople trying to draw you into buying their stuff. I wasn’t interested in buying anything, of course, and I don’t think Natalie was for the most part either, but it was fun walking around and looking at things. After a while I started getting pretty tired and I had to use the bathroom, so reluctantly I left Natalie in the market and headed home. She said it was fine but I felt kind of bad leaving her there by herself. I got back to the metro station, got back to Gostiny Dvor and transferred to the Green line to get home. I of course intended to get off at Vassileostrovskaya, but once the train stopped I was unable to get out of the train. At some of the metro stations, including Vassileostrovskaya, the trains pull right up to a set of doors, so when you get on you never actually see the train, the door opens up in front of you and the train door opens too and you walk right on. There are no open tracks like in a normal metro station. So, I was standing on the train as it approached Vassileostrovskaya anticipating getting out through the door I was standing near, but when we stopped the outside door didn’t open. I thought maybe it was some malfunction and that they would open it soon, and that surely they couldn’t leave before the door opens, so I stood there for a second. I then realized that there was a little sign on the door saying use the next one over, and I looked down the row and saw that the one at the other end of the car was open, but by this time there was not enough time to get there and there were a lot of people standing in my way, and then all the doors closed. So, I was forced to ride the train to the next stop at Primorskaya, get out and ride back one stop. It was kind of annoying, but no big deal. I got back and went outside, caught another marshrutka and relaxed at home for a while. I talked to Vickie on the phone and she said some people were meeting at Choomadan at around 8:30, so we decided to meet outside at 8:00. I had a delicious dinner of peppers stuffed with meat and rice (the same thing I ate the night before, actually) and when 8:00 rolled around I met Vickie and we caught a marshrutka over to the Vassileostrovskaya area. Vickie talked to Katie on the phone and they said that they were going to be late, so we decided to hang out in Kofe Khaus for a while to kill time. We got the really nice, really cute waitress again and sat in the back like we usually do there. I had a Banana split coffee something or other that was pretty good. It was served cold, which is the way I like it. We weren’t there for to long before the rest of the people made it to Choomadan, so we paid up and made our way over. We made sure to leave a nice tip for the waitress so she will keep being nice to us whenever we go in there. We don’t go there that often, but I think the waitress remembers us now and seemed particularly happy when we had entered the café. So, I want to make sure she stays that way whenever we go there. Tipping isn’t really customary in Russia, apparently, but we usually have a hard time not doing it so we usually try to leave at least a little bit for a tip. So we met everybody at Choomadan but there wasn’t really anywhere for us all to sit, so a few of us decided to scope out the seen at Petra just down the street. We got a smaller table there and called the others and told them to come on over. Where we were sitting was kind of like a little booth with another table attached, but there were three girls sitting at that other table. We waited for them to leave so we could all sit together, and after a while they did and we invited the rest of the group who had to find a table in the back to come join us. I had a couple beers and we ordered a hookah for everyone and had a nice relaxed night, which was just what I wanted after the night before. Everyone left at about 11:30 to make sure we could all get home before everything shut down. The marshrutkas were pretty sparse, and Vickie and I ended up waiting almost until midnight for our trusty 44 to arrive. We sat in the back for a while before it took off, and these two other guys got in while we were waiting. Something about the way we looked tipped them off instantly and right as they got in one of the them said, “Americans!” and they began to talk/mess with us a little bit. One spoke very little English and was trying to use it with me, and must if what he was trying to say in English I could barely understand. The other didn’t speak any English. They were surprised by every little word of Russian that I said, and kind of laughed and repeated it to themselves after I said them. They were kind of annoying but harmless. They jumped out before the marshrutka pulled away. Apparently they just wanted to get warm for a second. Vickie was pretty annoyed with them and tried to stay quite the whole time. I don’t blame her. We got home and I listened to music in my room for a little while before going to bed. Today I really didn’t do anything worth writing about. I woke up at noon, ate some blini and basically hung around my room all day. I did some homework, uploaded the rest of my Kino MP3s onto my computer, and that was basically it. It was pretty nice, actually. Oh, I did go through the books on the book shelf in my room and found all kinds of cool books that I would like to read but won’t be able due to time / language constraints. I found some stuff that had belonged to previous host students, like envelopes of letters sent from home and some notes and other things like that. I also went through a cupboard in my room that is filled with old notebooks from what I assume were either old students or my host brothers, or maybe both, but I’m not sure. I at some dinner (fish and potatoes) and called home for a little bit and started writing a blog post about two hours ago. Yeah, I guess that’s about how long it usually takes me. At least, for ones as long as this, which seem to be becoming the norm now, huh? IF you don’t mind I don’t mind. That’s it for now. Take it easy, everyone.

More more more

2006-02-10T13:02:00.000+03:00

I have a lot to say again. I guess I’ll get right to it. Starting with Tuesday: Went to school like normal. Wait, I guess I never explained how I’ve been getting to school the last week or so. Vickie and I used to catch a city bus outside our apartment that would take us to the hotel where a bunch of other students would meet and we would all take another bus to the school. There was this big thing about Vickie’s mom wanting us to catch this other bus so we could leave a little later and she wouldn’t have to get up as early to make Vickie breakfast. There is actually another bus that comes to a spot about four or five blocks away that picks up some other kids and takes them all to Smolniy also, so that’s what we’ve been doing, and it works fine. On Tuesday morning we caught that bus like normal but there were a lot more students than usual, and I was worried we weren’t all going to fit. Luckily, a bus (more like a big van) that was bigger than usual came and everybody got a seat. This one guy kept looking at me and looking at the paper that I was reading for school. It was kind of creeping me out. But anyways, this is all pointless and not even worth writing about. That day in our Literature Lecture we had a substitute who didn’t really talk about anything in particular. Usually the lecture is about a specific author, but this guy just went on and on about Russian Literature in the broadest sense, mentioning all different kinds of movements and authors and topics like that and it had no focus what so ever. Nobody even really paid any attention to what he was saying most of the time. It was pretty tough to get through. After we got out of class, that’s when the interesting stuff happened (see why I never bother to write about school stuff? Believe me, you don’t really want to hear about what we do at school. It’s interesting and everything, but all it is is me learning more Russian, which is good but it doesn’t make for interesting blog posts). Nick and I had decided to finally make it out to the Gulf of Finland (he had already been a couple times but was willing to go again with me). We walked to the Chernyshevskaya Metro station, which I head never been to before, even though it’s the closest one to school. We rode to the end of the blue line at the Primorskaya station, which is near where Nick and many other students leave (it’s also one stop past the metro station I usually use and often mention here, Vassileostrovskaya). We walked in the freezing wind to Nick’s apartment to drop our bags off before making the short walk to the Gulf. He lives out in the projects. Well, what we would think of as the projects. The buildings out around Primorskaya are all the classic ugly Soviet mass-housing units that have become so famous. I instantly became jelous of Nick’s living situation once we stepped inside his apartment. It was big and clean with an actual living room (my apartment doesn’t really have one. I think one of the rooms is kind of supposed to be, but it is basically my host-mom’s room), and a really friendly dog who wanted me to bit him a lot. His host-mom was also very friendly and eager to talk with us. Not that I dislike my own living situation, My host family is just fine, but I liked the idea of the living-room, the dog, and the host-mom who is really eager to talk and even likes to help Nick with his Russian while he is speaking, something my host-mom doesn’t really do. And here’s the deal breaker: She had fresh made pirozhki waiting for us and insisted that we sit and eat. Pirozhki are a lot like pierogies, but these had a softer, flakier, more hot-pocket like crust and were filled with cabbage and garlic. The were so delicious. After our snack we headed down to the gulf. We were supposed to meet Kenny there because he wanted to come along, but our pirozhki made us late and we kept trying to call him but his phone was acting weird so we couldn’t get a hold of him. He was gone by the time we arrived, so we continued on without him. We actually accessed the gulf from right next to the hotel where all the students catch the bus in the morning (the one I used to ride). Seeing the gulf all frozen was amazing. It’s covered in snow so it just looks like a huge barren wasteland. There are lots of footprints and car tracks too (yes, people actually drive [and race, which we saw off in the distance] cars out on the ice. It seems so crazy to me! But apparently it’s really strong and nobody every has any problems) and the surface is kind of contoured from the wind. It looks like what I imagine it looking like out in the middle of Siberia, except right on the edge of St. Petersburg. You can’t see anything on the horizon, but turn around and the city is right there. Wow. So we walked along on the ice and took pictures and wrote things in the snow and all that. We caught the very end of the sunset so there were a lot of great colors in the sky. It was extraordinarily cold out on the ice because of the wind blowing across the gulf. Here’s another strange thing that happens in the extreme cold: Electronics are visibly affected. I was scrolling through screens on my cell phone and each one would very slowly change from one to the next. Like, on would fade into the next one as I scrolled through phone numbers. It had never done that before, so I knew it had to be due to the cold. Crazy stuff. It was getting late so we headed back to solid land. The ice closer to the land is a little scarier to walk on, because it kind of creaks under your feet and there appear to be some air pockets under certain parts of the ice, because sometimes your foot will break through a thin layer and for a split second you freak out and think that you’re about to fall through the ice. We walked back to Nick’s apartment where I got my bag and then caught bus number 147 back home (yeah, it goes there too!). At home I at some dinner and did some homework, but I was only there for about an hour because I had something else very exciting to do. Earlier, while I had been walking towards the gulf, I had received a call from my friend Matt from back home. Matt was one of the Russian GTFs for my first and second year of Russian at the U of O, and this year he is living in St. Petersburg to study, work, and teach all at the same time. I had been emailing him for a couple weeks and we were trying to find a time to meet up, and then he called and asked me if I was busy later that night, and of course I was not and was more than eager to meet up with him. We decided to meet around eight next to the statue of the guy on the horse in St. Isaac’s Square, because apparently it is right next to his office. I got on the 147 bus and rode it down to Nevskiy. I got off next to the Hermitage and walked down towards the statue. I called him to tell him I was on my way, but I still had a little ways to walk. A few minutes later I got a call from Matt, asking me where I was. I told him I was approaching the statue and that I could see it, but neither of is could see each other. We soon realized that we were both thinking of different statues (there’s one on either side of St. Isaac’s Cathedral of somebody on a horse), and so I realized my mistake and made my way to the real statue, which was only a few minutes away. Matt was there waiting of course, and I felt bad for making him wait in the freezing cold. He asked me, “So, how do you like this cold?” and not wanting to sound like a wimp with little experience in Russia I replied, “Oh, well, you know, it’s pretty interesting,” to which he replied, “don’t mince words. It fucking sucks” (Sorry to offend anyone, but it just doesn’t sound good if you don’t say it the way he said it). We walked back to his office because he had to finish up some work. Matt works for a monthly St. Petersburg newspaper/magazine called Pulse. Every issue is published in both Russian and English, and Matt is actually the English-version editor. He also appears on the cover of the February issue because they needed a last-minute model for the shot. We hung around in his office and caught up on stuff, and he told me about some of the crazy stuff he’s been doing regarding the newspaper. When Phil Collins came to town back in October, Pulse got the exclusive interview, which Matt personally conducted over the phone with Mr. Collins himself. He also told me a story about this big expensive ball that their staff got free tickets to, which was being put on by this guy named Kenneth Pushkin who is an American but also a descendant of the hugely famous author Alexander Pushkin. He’s gained a small celebrity just because of his names and his eccentricities, and apparently Matt and the editor-in-chief of the paper were asked to write a proposal for a screenplay for a documentary about this guy’s life for a Russian TV station. Matt had all kinds of crazy stories like these to tell. Once he was finished up at the office we headed out to a bar that he knew. We walked down some anonymous street, down an alleyway, into an unmarked door, down a flight of steps, and opened the door to a really awesome little bar that you would never even know existed! This is just the kind of thing I was hoping a guy like Matt could show me; cool little secrets that you can only really know about from experience and having an inside edge. No tourists would ever come to a place like this. The place had so much more character than any of the other bars we’ve been going to. Matt ordered us some beers and we got a table and sat and talked for a long time. We talked a lot about music and geography, and a lot about how the two are related. Matt is really inspiring to me. He’s already done so much in his lifetime. He’s 33, but He’s already lived in Slovakia, Estonia, and in the Russian cities of Moscow, Rostov-na-Donu, Kazan, and now St. Petersburg. He also lived in Minneapolis during college, but he’s from Myrtle Creek, Oregon. He didn’t know a word of Russian until about five years ago when he went to a Russian-speaking area of Estonia for the Peace Corps, and now he’s fluent. In fact, the reason he is here now is because he’s on a special fellowship for Graduate students that sends ten people to Russia to learn the language to “professional fluency,” because Russian is one of the four languages (the others being Chinese, Arabic, and Korean) that the US government has identified as vital to national security. The program is obviously very competitive, and only the best of the best would really be awarded with the fellowship. The participants are apparently supposed to “seek employment” in the government afterwards, but Matt made it seem like it wasn’t really necessary. Matt is also inspiring in an academic sense because he is a grad student in geography, and after talking with him I think I may have been convinced to go with a geography major instead of a history major after all. He’s way into human geography like me, and after I explained to him the way I feel about history and geography, and how I’m really interested in how the two meet and interact and the spatial aspects of everything, he told me, “you’re a geographer at heart,” so it must be a good sign. Apparently he’s going to try and teach the Geography of Russia class next year at the U of O, which he says is usually only offered once every four years or so, and if he does I will definitely be taking it. He’s way into a lot of the same music too, so we went on and on about that for a while, and all in all I had a really great time. He also bought me three beers throughout the course of the night, which was also great. We left before it got to late so we could each catch a ride home. He had to take the metro and I had to catch a bus. It was really close to midnight, and I was worried that there wouldn’t be another bus, so he told me to call him once I got on a bus so he knew I got home alright. I waited and waited in the cold at the bus stop until about 12:05 and came to the very disheartening conclusion that a bus wasn’t coming. Matt called me first and asked if I had gotten on a bus yet. The only option (short of walking, which I was definitely not doing again. In fact, I was at the same place I had started walking from the time before) was to take a chasnik, which is basically a guy driving his own car who will drive you where you want to go if you pay him money. Matt told me the procedure for taking one, which is all very straightforward, and said I shouldn’t pay more than 200 rubles. I flagged one down and asked how much to get to Gavanskaya. Here was the conversation, translated into English:
“Is it possible to go to Gavanskaya?”
“Where?”
“Gavanskaya. On Vassilevsky, near the harbor.”
“OK.”
“How much?”
“300.”
“How about 200?”
“Mmm, 300.”
“Well, no thanks then. Unless… 200?”
“Mmm, 250.”
“250? Well, Ok.”
I was pretty tired and wanted to get home, so I was willing to pay the extra 50. I guess I didn’t really need to write all that out, it really wasn’t very exciting. I called Matt when I got home to let him know I got home alright. I was really glad to get to hang out with him and I am looking forward to the next time when we can meet up. The next morning my upper leg muscles were really sore for some reason, and they bothered me all day. School was school, as usual. Afterwards, I used the computer lab and then headed down to Nevskiy with Bryce and Matt (a different Matt, he’s on the program with me). I wanted to go to this CD and DVD shop called 505, because Matt (grad student Matt) had told me that it was a good place to find the cheap bootleg music I have been hearing so much about. There are a bunch of 505s all over town. I really wanted to get some stuff by the awesome Russian band called Kino that I had learned about from my old Russian teacher Josh. Matt told me that you can buy MP3 CDs of theirs with all of their albums on it. I couldn’t find any like that, but I did find their normal CDs, and I bought one album called “45” that I actually already own on tape (got it from Josh), but that was back in Oregon and this version had more songs on it. I also bought a double CD or old children’s songs from the soviet era, because there were a lot of great songs from back then. Together, everything I bought there came to about $11, so not bad at all. That’s actually a lot compared to a lot of the music you can by here, because none of what I bought was bootlegged. From 505 it was only a couple blocks to Soiree, where some people were already hanging out using their computers. I hadn’t brought mine that day, but I decided to go hang out anyways. I needed to kill some time because I wasn’t going home until later. Oh yeah, I wasn’t going home until later because I was going to the opera later that night and figured I would just stay out until then. On Tuesday one of the returning students was trying to get rid of his opera ticket because he couldn’t go. I had wanted to see an opera sometime while I was here, and figured this would be a good opportunity. So, I was going to the opera later and need to kill time by hanging out at Soiree. I ordered a Pepsi and some blini with honey and sat with Bryce and Matt for a while. Matt (remember, CIEE Matt, from Massachusetts) is really into movies and a lot of the same TV shows I am, so we like to talk about that a lot when we’re hanging out. The other people just sat and worked on their computers. Eventually Stacey and Ruth showed up, and they hung around for a while before we decided to go some place else for dinner, because they were going to the opera later too. We rode the metro to Gostiny Dvor and walked to Arts Square where the theater is and found this restaurant that we had all heard was really good. It’s called Misha and Bear and serves good traditional Russian food. I ordered pelmeni, which is basically like Russian tortellini. It was quite good and pretty cheap. The restaurant was very quaint and cozy and had a Goldilocks and the Three Bears quality to it. We finished up and headed back to the theater. We met Colleen in the lobby (Nick and Will later showed up) and took our seats. Mine was actually up in the balcony, and in fact it was more expensive than the seats the others had. The seat was pretty small and crammed up against the edge of the balcony, so I was pretty uncomfortable. By the time the opera rolled around I wasn’t all that excited about it, because I was really tired and needed to do my homework, but I couldn’t get rid of my ticket and figured I should stay at least through intermission. The opera was Russian and was called Prince Igor. I couldn’t really follow the story, but I guess that’s the point of the opera. I did enjoy hearing the singing and watching the dancing though. My favorite part was the set, though. There were big pictures of Jesus in the Russian Orthodox style, which makes him look pretty angry and scary. The main woman hit a really high note that was the classic opera moment in my mind. All in all it was pretty fun and a good experience, but by intermission I was really uncomfortable, tired, and anxious to get home, so I said goodbye and headed for the bus. At the bus stop the147 bus didn’t stop at its usual place but at a cluster of benches a little further down the street to far for me to get to in time. I was pretty pissed, but then the bus 7 came and I knew that it too took me where I needed to go. It stopped further down too, but I anticipated it and ran to it in time to get on. Once home I did my homework and got to bed around midnight again. I feel like my writing right now is getting really lazy because I’m pretty tired, but I want to write about today so I’ll keep going. Sorry if the writing doesn’t seem so great. Today school was typical, of course. After classes I decided to try and get a hold of my friend Emily from back home who has also been here since August. Grad student Matt is also friends with her, and he said that she has been in a funk lately and that seeing me might cheer her up some, so I figured I’d try to meet up with her finally. I called her a couple times but got no answer, so I decided to head back down to Nevskiy where I heard some people were hanging out. I met up with Vickie, Tom, Bryce, Katie, and Natasha at some him touristy café. Bryce and Katie had played hooky all day, but don’t tell anyone. They went to a movie and then ate at KFC. They also went to a bookstore and bought some prints of some awesome old soviet propaganda posters, and after looking at them I knew I had to get some. I had a coke and a piece of pie at the café, and then we all got up to leave. Bryce went back home and the girls went off somewhere, so Tom and I went to one of the bookstores where you can buy posters. It’s a chain of bookstores all over the city called Bookvoed, and Tom knew of one near his apartment. We both bought copies of this great poster that I had seen before in my friend’s apartment back in Eugene. It’s of a young man being offered a shot of vodka with his meal, and he is holding his hand up to block it with the single word “nyet” (“no”). It’s really great. I also bought about six postcard-sized prints of other old soviet posters, all of which are really cool. All the things I bought were great, but the real story from the book store is about Tom and this woman who works there named Yulia. Tom has been in there a few times and has started a friendship with this older woman who works there and speaks some English. She was very excited to see him and kept showing him things around the store. She seems to be giving him all these mixed messages. She gives him lots of attention when he’s in there, but then she told us a story about her husband, but even this was strange. She was actually the one who got us those posters I was talking about, and she told us this story about how her husband is a taxi driver or something and there are all these women out on the street smiling at him, but much like the man on the poster he puts his hand out and says “nyet.” Tom says she doesn’t wear a ring though, so he thinks maybe she’s divorced or something. She also mentioned that she has a 14 year old daughter (Yulia has to be at least 35, but, unlike must Russian women her age, is still pretty attractive). She told us that her daughter speaks English pretty well and that Yulia asks her to teach it to her. Yulia told us, “My daughter wants to know why I want to learn English, and I tell her that at work there is an American boy who comes in and who likes beer and and I like to talk with him.” So, it was all pretty interesting, but then as she was ringing us up she asked Tom if he’s busy tomorrow night. Of course he said “no,” and she told him to meet her at the store at 8:00 when she gets off of work. She told him, “I want to drink beer with you.” So, Tom’s got a date. It’s all pretty funny, and I’m sure Tom’s pretty excited about it. I can’t wait to hear how it goes. So, after the book store we headed back to Nevskiy to meet up with the girls again, but we passed another 505 and I suggested we go inside. This one was even better than the last. I found all the crazy bootleg MP3 CDs that I had heard about, and it really was crazy. For a mere 100 rubles (a little over $3) you can buy a CD that has virtually every album that a band ever released, and not just Russian bands, but bands that are popular in America and elsewhere. Alas, they didn’t have any like this of Kino. I asked the clerk and he said they don’t sell Kino MP3 CDs anymore for some reason. I did buy another regular Kino album, however. I am slowly becoming obsessed with this band. I really hope I can find an MP3 CD of theirs somewhere before I spend too much and buy them all separately. I also bought MP3 CDs of New Order and Leonard Cohen. So, for 335 rubles (approximately $11) total, I got one Kino album, almost every New Order album and almost every Leonard Cohen album. Not bad, huh? This could be dangerous. Tom went crazy too and bought some Thin Lizzy albums that you apparently can’t find in America. We left 505 and met up with everyone again at another touristy café and told them all the story of Tom and Yulia. After a while Vickie and I headed back home, and here I am. I think that this post was really poorly written and I wish I could revise it all but I really can’t, because it’s so long and I’ve already stayed up too late again. We’ll just have to put up with it. Peace Out.

Read if you dare

2006-02-07T14:58:00.000+03:00

Alright, so, it’s been a while since I last made a proper post, so I’m going to have to skim over some stuff pretty quick. The last time I updated was from Soiree on Wednesday. Thursday I don’t think anything really exciting happened. I took some pictures of my apartment and my host-cat, if that’s what you want to call it. Her name is Kesha. I wanted to take some pictures of my host mom but she wouldn’t let me just then because she thought her hair looked bad. So, one of these days I’ll get some pictures of her and show them to everyone. Friday is worth talking about in further detail. School finished up at 1:00 and the plan was to go with Kenny and John to go walk around on the frozen Gulf of Finland. As Kenny and I left school with a few others, we heard someone calling my voice from far away. We looked around and I spotted Ingrid a couple of other unidentifiable people atop one of the towers of Smolniy Cathedral. After yelling back and forth with Ingrid, she told me just to call her, so I gave her a ring and she told us to come on up. We had to by a 20 ruble ticket to go up, but it was worth it. There was an extra charge to take photos, and if only my camera had already been in my jacket it would have been fine, because we had to put our bags in a locker where a security guard was waiting and I wasn’t able to sneak the camera out of my bag and into my pocket, because nobody was there at the top to check for cameras or anything like that. So we started climbing up and after looking up the stairwell it didn’t seem so bad. We got to the top of that one to find a second set of stairs, this time a spiral staircase. Now, mind you, I still had all my warm clothes on, so by this time I was getting pretty overheated from the climb. I thought we’d be home free once we reached the top of those stairs, but no, there was a third set of stairs, this time a metal staircase that wrapped around the outside. We final reached the top, where I kept huffing and puffing and taking of layers to cool down while everyone else thought I was crazy because it was still freezing cold outside. The view was great though. It was pretty clear and you could see to the north, west, and south from where we were. It really showed me how much industry there is around the city, though. Smokestacks everywhere. We could see lots of famous landmarks poking up on the horizon. I really, really wish I had had my camera. From there, the group (at this point Kenny, Ingrid, John, Reed, and myself) decided to head towards the Gulf, but first they wanted to make a stop at the Church on Spilled Blood. Of course, I had already been there a couple times, but I was happy to wait for them before heading to the Gulf. So we got back down and headed for the bus stop. Here’s one of the weird things about the cold: sweat doesn’t evaporate very well. So, in cases like this where I build up a sweat and then go outside, the sweat in my hair doesn’t go away all that quick. Instead, it just freezes in my hair. That’s a pretty weird experience. So I kept taking my hat off and putting it back out as the sweat continuously froze and thawed. It was kind of annoying. So, we caught a marshrutka, actually to Gostiny Dvor where it was only a quick walk to the Church. While they went inside I hung around out front, used a pay toilet, and then discovered the little park right next to the church. I walked through the pathways and took pictures of the trees and of the Russian museum. Here’s another weird thing about the cold: batteries don’t tend to work very well in the cold. I had about 4 different sets of batters that I thought each had enough juice to last a little while, but I had to keep switching batteries over and over because each pair would only last a few shots. That was also kind of annoying. I almost decided to try walking around on the frozen Moika (one of the channels that runs through the city), but only say animal prints out on the ice and figured that might be a bad sign (apparently a lot of people walk around on the canals, but this time didn’t feel right). I finally got a call from Ingrid after about a half hour. She told me they were in a café down the street, so I met up with them there. They had all ordered some food but I had just eaten at school so I wasn’t hungry. We sat around for a while and chatted about this and that and I came to terms with the fact that we wouldn’t be making it out to the Gulf today after all (I have plans to go tomorrow, thought). Before it got too late we all headed back towards Gostiny Dvor to take our respective modes of transportation back to our respective homes. Standing around waiting for the bus got ridiculously cold, so much so that for the first time I asked myself, “why the hell did I choose to come to Russia?” But, the bus soon came and I felt better. I relaxed at home for a little while, had a little dinner, and then met up with Vickie to head back out and meet with some people. A bunch of us had decided to go back to the hookah bar Petra, because it was so great the other day. Bryce, Matt, Tsveti and Katie were already there, and Ingrid, John, Reed, and Abby all showed up later. We had a great time just hanging out, drinking Baltika (Russian beer) and smoking the hookah. I know it sounds like I do that a lot but really, I don’t do it all that often. It’s been more often than usual lately. I had a long conversation about music with Katie and we discovered that we both liked some of the obscure bands I used to be really into in middle school and early high school. Everyone took lots of pictures, which will all probably find their way to the internet via facebook or flickr or whatever. Vickie and I cut out before it was too late to catch a marshrutka home. We got back a little before midnight and I through some things together for the next morning’s trip to Novgorod and hit the hay. My alarm clock went off bright and early the next morning. My host-mom forced herself to get up and make me breakfast (the same old egg-patty with bread and cheese) as per her agreement with CIEE, and even packed me a little sandwich and the biggest juice box I had ever seen. I met Vickie outside at about 7:15 where we waited for the 147 or 7 bus to come and take us to the hotel where we would get on the other bus to Novgorod. For a long time the bus didn’t come, but a marshrutka did and the women who was also waiting on the corner jumped in. We asked her if that marshrutka was going to Kapitanskaya (the street that the hotel is on), and she said yes, so, a but reluctantly, we hopped in. Luckily it took us right where we needed to go. After buying some water and 7UP and the little corner market, we met up with the group, got on the bus and were on our way. We picked up the other half of the group next to the Kazan Cathedral and then headed out of the city. It was fun driving through the outskirts of the city, because I haven’t really gotten a chance to get outside of the city center much. Once we got out of the outskirts I got my first glimpse of rural Russia. It was really nice, actually. Lots of birch forests and open snowy fields with the occasional cluster of rustic old houses in what apparently constitute “towns.” I listened to the Field Mice on my iPod and thought that it fit really well with the scenery, because that music always felt very cold to me (in a good way).We made a pit stop at a gas station where I got out and took some pictures a breathed the fresh air, something that is pretty lacking back in Petersburg. We drove into the Novgorod Oblast and I got really excited about visiting my second region of Russia (two down, only 87 administrative units to go). After about three hours in the bus we made it to Novgorod. For those who don’t know, Novgorod is the oldest city in Russia. It was founded over a thousand years ago as a trading post on the route between Scandinavia and Byzantium. The city has a population of about 230,000, which would be pretty bustling for an American city, but in Russia that isn’t really that big. It certainly felt a lot smaller than that. We got to our hotel and all had to choose roommates. Tom asked if I wanted to be his roommate and that was fine by me (yes, Tom of tominrussia.blogspot.com). Tom’s a good guy, I had no problems with being his roommate. We brought our things to our rooms and then we all met back up for lunch in the restaurant. The whole place was pretty fancy, and the lunch wasn’t bad. We had steak and potatoes with a nice piece of cake for dessert. After lunch it was time to start our tour of the city. We all got back in the bus and were met with our tour guide, an older Russian woman who gave the tour both in Russian and in English. We drove to the other side of the river to a spot where there were two really cool old churches (there are a ton of old churches in Novgorod, so forgive me for not knowing the names of each of them). We got out and walked around one of them as she and a second, Russian-only tour guide explained things to us. The bilingual tour guide kept over-using the term, “it’s quite understandable,” but not in the right context. Usually you would say that when you are trying to express sympathy for someone else, as in, “oh you missed the bus and couldn’t make it on time, that’s quite understandable,” and even then that still kind of sounds weird. But this women kept using it after explaining something, as if she meant, “it’s easy to understand,” which you don’t ever really need to say anyways. So, I kept using, “it’s quite understandable” for the rest of the day after that. We went inside a particularly old church, which had these amazing old frescos painted on the inside that had miraculously survived the Nazi invasion and subsequent take-over of the church itself. There was of course a charge to take pictures here to, but I got a few in before they told us and I don’t think they saw me taking any. Here’s where the tour guide completely lost the group: While talking about the fresco that depicted a scene from hell, she literally told us, “this is what awaits most of you.” I think she meant it in a joking way, but it definitely wasn’t the right thing to say, and she pissed a lot of people off after that. We were herded back onto the bus and taken a short distance to another cluster of churches. We looked at them and took some more pictures while the tour guides talked about them. I forgot to mention that it was even colder in Novgorod than in Petersburg. Nathan, the tour director, estimated that the temperature was probably around –10 Fahrenheit, which is close to –25 Celsius. Then, it got even colder. Well, not really, but it felt colder. You see, we had to walk across this footbridge to get to the city kremlin and eventually back to the hotel, and this footbridge was over the frozen Volkhov River. The wind was blowing down the river channel and on the bridge the wind-chill factor got down to probably about –35 or –40 Celsius. I was the coldest I have ever been standing on that bridge. We finally made it to the other side, entered the kremlin walls (note: “kremlin” in Russian just means “fortress,” so many cities in Russia have their own kremlins, not just Moscow. Just thought I’d clear that up) and made it to the warm sanctuary that is St. Sophia’s Cathedral, one of the oldest buildings in Russia. Inside was unlike any other church I have ever been in. Usually they are all open and wide inside, but this one was all segmented off and much more claustrophobic-feeling. There were quite a few people there performing religious rituals. It was very interesting to watch. I bought a cool little idol at the gift shop for 60 rubles that has a bunch of saints gathered around the cathedral. Kelly bought a copy of the bible in Old Church Slavonic, which is pretty cool, and I contemplated buying one myself but decided not too for several reasons. We headed back outside, checked out a really awesome statue, and headed back to the hotel. We all had some free time before dinner, so Tom and I hung out un our room and watched cool old Soviet cartoons. Those things are really great. I watched some in Russian class back at the U of O before, and they all have really great songs and really cool animation. I need to find a DVD of those, or at least a CD of old soviet children’s songs. Anyway, right around here is where my trip to Novgorod took a turn for the worse. While watching cartoons I started feeling a little queasy, but reluctantly headed down to dinner. Dinner didn’t help. There was a small “salad” of beet, carrot and cabbage shavings, with some cucumbers and tomatoes and some ranch sauce. The main course was even worse: a piece of fish with mushrooms and cheese on top. I could barely stomach it, and by the end of the meal I was feeling pretty lousy. The plan had been to buy some vodka nearby and hang out in the hotel all night with the rest of the group, but once we got back to my room I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. Tom and Rob went out to buy some while I stayed and rested. They came back a little later with a huge bottle of pepper vodka which at the time looked absolutely disgusting to me. About this time was when I first threw up. I made it to the toilet in time while Tom and Rob left the room. After I had finished, they arrived again with Nathan, the program director. I told him what was up and he told me to take it easy for a while and he would come back and check on me a little later. So, Tom and Rob took of for the fourth floor where apparently everybody had a great night partying it up in Katie and Vickie’s room while I stayed in the room trying to sleep but occasionally having to run to the bathroom. At one point Nathan came and brought me a huge jug of water and some charcoal pills that were supposed to absorb the bad contents of my stomach. About five minutes after taking the pills, I through them right back up. I was a little freaked out because this is a lot like what happened to me in the Czech Republic a few years ago, and that time I was really sick for about 4 days afterwards. So, over all my Saturday night was very unpleasant. Eventually Tom came back and he was totally wasted. He climbed into bed and got back up a few minutes later. He was gone for probably about a half hour and I thought maybe he had gone back upstairs or something. I got up to use the bathroom again and found him sleeping with his arms crossed over the toilet and his head resting on them. I kept telling him, “I have to use the toilet, you have to move,” and, “If I help you can you get up?,” and he kept saying “yeah” and then not really moving. It wasn’t until I felt the urge to vomit again that the urgency in my voice was finally enough to make him move, and he got up just in time for me to make it to the toilet. All I had left inside of me was all the water I had been drinking, which of course was tinted black by the charcoal left over in my stomach. Yeah, not pleasant. While I sat there vomiting. Tom just stood there repeating, “ah, shit dude.” So, we both went to sleep feeling pretty crummy, and the situation was the same in the morning. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach anymore, but I still felt really weak and achy. Tom apparently was really weak as well and said his heart was beating really fast. We both skipped out on breakfast and the day’s excursion and stayed in our room and slept. Nathan brought us some bread, cheese, lunch meat and hard-boiled eggs, and I managed to eat a little bit. I was bummed about missing the excursion, but I was in no condition to attend. I also missed out on the, apparently, amazing lunch that everyone was treated to as well. Tom was feeling better enough to meet them for lunch, but I was still too weak. Plus, a trek through the freezing cold did not sound appealing at all at that point. Tom had only had a really bad hangover, so he recovered pretty quickly. Once he got back from the restaurant he informed me that it was time to go, and that the bus would be picking us up shortly. I got all my stuff together and made it down to the lobby, and by this point I was definitely starting to feel better. Another member of the group, Colleen, had also been sick with the same thing the night before, and she was still feeling pretty bad. The bus ride home was rather uneventful. I listened to music and just looked out the window again. When I got home I tried explaining to my host-mom what had happened, and she understood but didn’t seem all that concerned. I managed to eat a little bit of dinner, did a little homework and went to bed. Man, this is so long, but I really should talk about today. Sorry to whomever may still be reading this. If you are then thank you. I feel honored that anyone would be interested enough to read this much. Anyway, today was pretty good. I got my test back in Grammar class and got a pretty good grade on it. Phonetics was pretty fun too. I went to the computer lab and posted a bunch of pictures to flickr. After school, I decided to do something that I hadn’t really even considered until earlier today. Let me explain: The students on our program had the option of participating in an “internship,” which basically meant an activity outside of classes that could potentially be done for credit, but not really. Basically, we all had the option of helping to teach English to Russian students through the University. I didn’t really give it much thought until earlier today, because today was the day for those who were interested in this to meet with the extracurricular activities director Irina Borisovna and go set it up. After hearing the other people talking about it, it seemed like it could be a really good thing to do. It’s a great way to meet Russians, and also a good way to improve on our language skills because the Russians we teach could in-turn help us out. So, those interested met with Irina today after school next to the McDonalds near Vassileostravskaya. We then walked to the main campus of St. Petersburg State University and were given a quick tour of the facilities. This is where Pavlov did his famous experiments with the dog. We saw this really long, book-lined hallway that has apparently appeared in many Russian films. We were then taken to a classroom where the director of the foreign language program met with us and told us what our options were. Basically, all we would be doing is helping out with conversation and communication in English classes that are already being taught be trained professionals. They like to bring in native speakers to give the students a chance to really try out their language skills. We can come in and help really as often and as much as we want, with the option of teaching different age and skill levels. We all wrote down our information preferences and they are going to contact us to let us know when and where we can help out. After we got the run-down, we were informed that we could even sit in on a class right then and there to see what it was like. They took me and a few others to a class for older students (20s to 30s) where we were each paired up with one or two members of the class to speak with. Their teacher told them to ask us questions, because later she was going to make them give a small report on each of us. I was paired with a 31 year-old computer programmer named Sergei who was learning English for his job. He was very nice and we had a good conversation about all kinds of topics. He told me he only likes to drink Czech beer and I told him about being in the Czech Republic and the Pilsner-Urquell brewery. Eventually a girl named Kate (probably Katya in Russian) joined us but remained very quiet the whole time. I had a great time talking with them. I offered to exchange phone numbers with Sergei just to be nice, but I don’t think either of us will ever call each other. Other people exchanged numbers too. After the class I got to meet some of the other students that had been talking with other people from my group. They were younger and more eager to talk with us and it sounds like they want to hang out with us sometime. There were these two girls named Larisa and Misha (I could be wrong about both of those though) who were very friendly and very impressed that we were learning Russian. They exchanged numbers with some of the girls from our group, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to see them again. I think Abby, Tsveti, and Matt each got asked back to that class specifically, while the rest of us will wait and see where else we might be able to be placed. I am really happy that I decided to do this. I think it will be very rewarding in the long run, and a lot of fun in the meantime as well. I’m looking forward to meeting more Russians and learning more about the language, culture, and city from them. So, I am pretty excited about all of that. The other great thing about this campus is that bus 147 (the miracle bus route) stops right at the front door of the building we were in, so we hopped on and got home lickity-split. I had some dinner, did some homework, and then started writing this post, and now here I am, all caught up. Man! I can’t believe how long this is. It should have been about three or four separate posts. That’s what happens when I don’t update every other day or so. I can’t help but elaborate on every little thing and the post just keeps getting longer and longer. Well, that’s it for now. Until next time (for both our sakes, hopefully not too long from now).

Hold on...

2006-02-06T13:45:00.000+03:00

A big post is forthcoming. Probably tomorrow. Stay tuned.

from the big Soiree

2006-02-01T16:52:00.000+03:00

I’m at Soiree right now, as I type this, so I’m going to attempt a quick update. Yesterday we were supposed to go to a Philharmonic concert for which we had received free tickets, but Vickie and I didn’t give ourselves enough time to get over to Nevskiy from our apartments. The concert was at 7:00 and after a long wait for a Marshrutka we finally got to the metro by about 6:40, only to find an insane line of people out the door. We decided it would be impossible to get there in time and it would be better not to even try. Just then I got a call from Bryce, and learned that he and Katie had encountered the same problem one metro stop down at Primorkaya, so we decided to screw the concert and all met up at Choomadan. Vickie and I got there first and had a beer, then Bryce and Katie came and we ate some French fries. We then decided to try out another hookah bar a couple doors down. This one was great. It was cheaper than Stars Only and had a better atmosphere and comfortable chairs. I want to make this a new hang-out spot. After that we all went home, where I did my homework and accidentally stayed up too late again. Today at school we had a meeting regarding this weekend’s trip to Novgorod, which I am very excited about. Expect a big long post about that early next week. I guess that’s everything for now. Maybe I’ll write more from home later, maybe not.

-Austin

Jan 30

2006-02-01T15:16:00.000+03:00

So, I’m pretty tired, but I want to write a blog update anyways. Sunday morning after I wrote my last update I met up with Katie and Brice and Vasileostroskaya metro station and we rode to Mayakovskaya to go to Soiree. Tom met up with us there about a half hour later. The blisters on my feet hurt so bad that I could barely walk. I was happy to sit and hang out in Soiree for a long time since I didn’t have to walk around at all. We were there for a while, enough time for me to have two sodas, three beers and an appetizer of Georgian fried cheese (it’s pretty much what you would expect it to be). The internet started working a lot better than it had the time before, but after a while it started puttering out on me and soon there after my computer battery ran out of juice, so I was left without a computer for the rest of the time. We sat around and took turns using Tom’s computer and showing each other pictures on Facebook. Oh, get this. Tom started a blog right before he came to Russia too. Guess what it’s called. Go on. That’s right, tominrussia.blogspot.com. How funny is that? At some point Stacy showed up out of nowhere and sat and talked with us, We were getting bored with Soiree and decided it would be fun to go to a hookah bar. Apparently there is one back near Vasileostrovskaya, and we were almost going to go there, but Tom and Stacy both live on the mainland side of town and didn’t want to ride all the way out there. Luckily, Tom knew of a different hookah bar right on Nevskiy Prospekt a few blocks away. I stuck it out through the pain of walking down Nevskiy and we finally made it. The place was called “Stars Only” and is a very hip cafe/bar/restaurant that has hookahs on the menu. They have a guy in a pirate suite standing outside the door to lure people inside. I hate to even have to mention it, but the guy in the pirate suit was in fact African-Russian, if that is what you might call it. It’s kind of weird seeing black people in Russia, and especially hearing them speaking Russian. I see them around every once in a while, but not too often. The Soviet Union was big into extending a hand to Third World Countries, teaching people the language and inviting them to come to Russia and I guess a lot of them made it to Russia that way and a small African community has thrived since then, which is great, but it still throws me a little bit. I know they must get a lot of crap from a lot of Russians, and I know there is a strong anti-foreigner sentiment among a lot of younger Russians, but many African-Russians endure it. More power to them. Anyway, back the “Stars Only.” We got a table and ordered a water hookah with orange tobacco. Some people ordered dinner too. I got a small order of French fries to tide me over until dinner. Nick showed up to meet us right as our hookah arrived and we all had a good time sitting, eating, and smoking the hookah. During the last school year our friend Tristan bought a hookah and has left it at our house ever since, so I’ve had some experience with the hookah before. It can’t be as bad for you as cigarettes, because they don’t add all those crazy chemicals like they do to cigarettes. I think it’s a fun and relaxing thing to do with your friends, and that’s just how it was at Stars Only. There was a TV screen near our table that was playing a continuous loop of footage from some crazy dance club called Club Infiniti that just had lots of naked people dancing all over the place. It was kind of weird that it was just on in the background, and we all couldn’t help but watch it. So, we sat and talked a while and everyone had a good laugh when I told them about my dream with the “bleach torch” (I’d have to explain it to you), and when we were all done Katie, Bryce, Nick and I caught the 147 bus back to the Island. This is the most amazing bus route ever. Bus 147 starts about 3 blocks from the Smolniy campus, goes down Suvarovskaya Street, all the way down Nevskiy, over the Vasilevskiy Island and eventually stops right in front of my apartment. It’s a dream come true. I think I’m going to start using that a lot more than the metro. It takes longer but it will ultimately be cheaper and less stressful. Anyway, I got home and stayed up until midnight working in homework. Today (Monday) it was back to school. Classes are pretty interesting, I’ll probably elaborate on them more sometime. In Phonetics I think the teacher kind of likes me because there is this one letter in the Cyrillic alphabet that is hard for a lot of people to pronounce but I can pronounce it well (There’s no equivalent of it in English, but it kind of sounds like an “ee” with an “ui” at the beginning of it, but not really. Written out it looks kind of like “bl” just so you know). After class I got on the internet for a while and decided it would be fun to explore. It was actually sunny today, so it was the perfect time to wander around the city. I talked Vickie and Natalie into coming along, but once we got on the bus (yeah, 147) they decided they were just going to keep riding it to their respective homes. When I got off Vickie kept riding, but Natalie got off when I did and told me that she had missed her stop back a ways, and not wanting to turn immediately back she decided to come exploring with me. We walked pass the Hermitage down a side street and over a nice canal and ended up back at the Church on Spilled Blood that I had mentioned earlier. It was cool seeing it up close in the daylight and sunshine this time. There was a souvenir market in front that had all the typical Russian stuff for sale: hats, matryoshka dolls, fake soviet metals, and even some balalaikas. I might have to go back later and get some cool stuff, although I might be able to get the same stuff a lot cheap at some of the big out door markets, and it will probably be better quality too. We’ll see. After a moment of debate we decided to go inside the church. If it’s that amazing on the outside it must be equally stunning on the inside, we figured. The price said 170 rubles for students, so we each asked for student tickets and they ended up charging us only 50 rubles each! I think the 170 was meant for foreign students, but since we have our Russian student Ids we got the local student price. It might have also been that we tricked them into thinking we were Russian. You see, in Russia there is a dual pricing system for most museums and things like that. There is a Russian price and a foreigner price. The student price is cheaper, but still more expensive than the normal Russian price. Natalie is a heritage speaker, meaning she speaks Russian at home but doesn’t really know how to read or write in Russian (She was born in Odessa and moved to New York with her family when she was five), so she could easily have tricked the ticket lady when she asked for a ticket, and all I said was, “Student, please” and showed them my ID, so maybe I passed for Russian to and avoided the much larger foreigner fee. Things got more interesting inside. When we gave our tickets to them women inside, she looked at mine and saw that I had a Russian ticket, and she literally asked, “are you one of us?” I somehow must not have looked Russian enough for her, or else why else would she have questioned it? I didn’t understand what she was trying to say at the time, so after a few confused looks Natalie jumped in and explained that we were studying at the university here, and that was good enough for her, so she gave us the little baggies to put on our feet and we waited for our small tour group to start. The church isn’t really big inside, maybe about the size of a gymnasium, but they still make you go on a guided tour. We would walk a few feet each time and the tour guide would explain something new about the specific spot where we would be standing. It all in Russian and of course not dumbed down like the Russian that my teachers speak, so I didn’t catch a lot of what she said. Plus I stood in the back as much as possible so as not to stand out and be identified as a foreigner, so I couldn’t really hear her that well. The inside was absolutely amazing. Every square inch of wall is covered with mosaics of bible scenes and various religious images. From far away it all looks like paintings, but it is in fact all made of pieces of dyed glass! Incredible. Of course, I had to take pictures, but here’s where things got even more interesting. There are signs posted all over that says it costs 50 rubles to take pictures and 100 rubles to take video, but everyone was doing it so I figured it would be fine. While I was taking pictures, the ubiquitous babushka that haunts virtually every museum and monument or point of interest in Russia came up to me and pointed to my camera and said something to me, which of course I didn’t understand. She pointed back towards the door so I think she was trying to explain that I had to pay the 50 rubles on the way out, and then she just walked away. The tour finished up and I didn’t se the babushka anywhere so I thought I was home free, but there she was right in front of the exit. Either she forgot about me or wasn’t even talking about me paying in the first place, because I slipped out without so much as a word from her, and I got away with 50 rubles still in my possession. So, all told, what might have cost me a total of about 220 rubles (foreigner ticket and picture fee) only cost me 50, thanks to a little sneakiness and some help from Natalie. We decided to head back to Nevskiy where we could each catch busses home. Oh yeah, and we came up with a great idea for a small trip in about a month, Apparently February 23rd is a national holiday in Russia, and we have school off. This is on a Thursday, and we thought that it would be totally worth it to skip classes the following Friday and have a 4-day weekend, during which we could take a trip to the Baltic Nations (Estonia, Latvia, and maybe Lithuania if there was enough time). I proposed the Idea and Natalie really liked it. She really loves Lithuania, apparently. I want to see who else might be interested in taking a trip like this, because that would be really great if we could get a group together. The only problem might be that we might not have our Passports back by then. They collected them all last week to be registered and for longer, multiple-entry visas to be put in them. But if we got them back in time it would be perfect. So, we’ll see how that turns out. Natalie left to catch her bus and I hopped on 147, of course, and rode all the way home with no problem. And here I am now. I did my homework earlier and now it’s getting late. I have to take a shower and go to bed. Peace out.

Jan 29

2006-01-29T15:15:00.000+03:00

Woo, what a day it was yesterday. Well, I guess I should start with the night before. I met up with some of the people from the group at our new favorite bar Choomadan, but the bar was full so we had to walk around until we found another place to go. A few blocks away we found a little café that serves beer, so we went in and pretty much took over the place. More of our friends kept coming at meeting us and by the café’s closing time at 10:00 we had pulled together nearly all their tables and were sitting in a huge group. I felt sorry for the workers who had to accommodate us. I had a couple beers and talked with people and it was a good time. When it was time to go the group sort of split up and I went with a group back to Choomadan in hopes of finding some room this time. Luckily we found a booth and were all able to cram in and around it. I had another beer and a couple shots of vodka (the shots they give in Russia are about one and a half to two times as big as a typical shot in America, so two shots would come to about 3 or four by our standards) and by then I was at a perfect level of inebriation and had a great time hanging out and talking with everyone. I found out that Matt, my roommate from the orientation, is a huge Kids in the Hall fan, so we talked about that for a while and it made me want to watch it so bad. At about 11:30 Vickie and I decided to head home because most public transportation stops at midnight (more on that later), so we headed back down to Sredniy Prospekt to see if we could catch a Marshrutka home. But first, we decided that a stop at McDonald’s sounded really really good. Only the walk-up window was open so we stood in line for about a half an hour to get our food but it was totally worth it. The marshrutkas all stop right in front of this McDonald’s, so we finished our food and waited around hoping that we weren’t too late to catch a ride home. We stood around for about 20 minutes with no luck and finally resigned ourselves to the fact that we were probably going to have to walk home. After we got about one block down I saw a marshrutka number 44 (the one we needed) heading back the other way, so we raced back to in front of the McDonalds to see if he would still give us a ride. There were a few other people talking to the driver, apparently negotiating whether or not they could get a ride and the driver asked us where we wanted to go. I said “to Gavanskaya,” and he gave it a few seconds of consideration and then waved us on. Since the marshrutkas are all privately owned, the drivers can decided if it’s worth staying out a little later than midnight if there are still people who are willing to pay. It was about 12:30 at this point, so I think we literally caught the last one of the night. We were very grateful, and made it home with no problems. I stayed up a little longer and listened to my iPod in bed (I’ve been way into the song “Back on the Chain Gang” by the Pretenders lately). That was Friday night. Saturday we had to get up early and meet the group at the usual hotel at 10:00 (the hotel where I catch the bus to school every morning). We were loaded into bus-vans and were then taken on a driving tour of the city. We had a Russian speaking tour guide in our bus-van and I kind of tuned her out a lot of the time, but I caught all the important things she said. We drove by a lot of things that I hadn’t seen yet, so I was grateful for the chance. The tour ended at the Peter and Paul Fortress on the Petrograd Site (The other main island of St. Petersburg besides Vasilesvskiy), where we were given a walking tour of the fortress. This is where the statue with the tiny head is, and I got my picture taken with it (check out flickr, there should be a lot of new pictures). The cathedral inside the fortress is the tallest building in the city (it’s pretty short for a tallest building though, and it’s all in the steeple) and the inside was amazing. This is where almost all of the Russian Tsars are buried. After the fortress it was time for all of us to get our HIV tests again, so they drove us to the health clinic where we all waited around for a long time while everybody had their blood drawn, and then as a way of apologizing for making us get or blood drawn twice needlessly, Nathan the program director took us to lunch courtesy of CIEE. We went to a little café where we all had a little piece of meat pie (delicious) and a small cup of soup. It was really good, but everyone was still hungry afterwards, so when we were all done I followed a group back to McDonalds again (I know, it’s lame, but it was easy and convenient. I’m not going to make a habit of it). After finishing I met up with Vickie who had gone to Sbarro’s with a different group, and we then headed home to rest up for a while before going out later (well, I’m not sure if Vickie went out later or night, but I was going to). I ate dinner, listened to some music, and waited to hear from Nick as to where he and some of the other people were meeting up. Apparently the plan was for everyone to meet at this dance club called Club Metro at 11:00, but some people were going to meet up at a bar somewhere first. I think I explained before about how reluctant I am about going to dance clubs. Well I was feeling even more down on the idea by the time night rolled around, but I figured I would still meet up with people beforehand and play it by ear from their. After not hearing from anyone for a while, I called Ingrid and asked where they were and where I should meet them. She told me to get to the Gostiny Dvor metro station and call her from there, so I headed out to the metro. This was my first time riding the metro (any metro in fact) alone, but it was a breeze. I only had to go one stop. I got there and tried calling Ingrid and Nick, but neither of them would answer, so I decided to walk around for a bit and then try again. I cross one street and look down and see the Church on Spilt Blood looming a few blocks away, so I head towards it and start snapping pictures. It’s totally amazing. It’s exactly what most people probably think of when they think if Russia. Bug domes and ornate decorations and everything (again, check out the flickr). There was a guy who approached me in front of the church. I said I didn’t understand so he tried speaking in English. He only knew a few words. I think he was trying to say that he paints portraits. He kept saying what sounded like, “Portrait… here… time… 5 minute,” and I said “sorry, maybe another time” and walked away. Both Nick and Ingrid had tried calling while I was walking towards the church but the phone kept cutting out (I’m telling you, cell phone service in Russia is terrible) but after I saw the church I was ready to find them. I called Ingrid back and Kara answered. She said they were in an Irish Pub called Telegraph and explained the directions to me. This is where things went wrong. I told here I was at the Gostiny Dvor metro (which I was, in fact, approaching from the church) and she said to take a right from there onto Nevskiy Prospekt. So I did. I got all the way down to the Hermitage when I realized that I had obviously gone the wrong way somehow, because the Hermitage is at the very end of Nevskiy. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the Hermitage and then headed back, knowing that the bar must have to be on the other side of the metro station. I headed back but I kept getting distracted by things along with way, like the Kazan Cathedral and some cool little park with a big statue. I walked past another exit from the Gostiny Dvor metro station, and realized that this must have been the way they rest of the group had come out and for them it would have been a right indeed. That explains it. I eventually made it to the bar with about ten minutes to spend there before everyone was leaving. It wasn’t a really big crowd, only Nick, John, Reed, Abby, Kara, Tsvety, and Ingrid. I pulled up a chair and explained the mix up to them and after a couple minutes this big Russian guy from the table behind me comes up to me and just stares at me intimidatingly. After a few seconds he starts speaking to me in Russian, none of which I could easily understand. HE put his arm around me and got really close. He shook my hand and kept trying to explain what he wanted to me through his drunken haze. I finally figured out that, from where I was sitting I was blocking his view of the TV that was playing a soccer game, and so I crammed into the side booth to accommodate him. It was a little scary but no problem in the end. His friend apologized to me for him in English on his way out. I told him it was no bog deal. So, the rest of the group decided not to go to club Metro but instead to some little place they had heard about called Dacha. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to go in, but I followed them there anyway. It was a few blocks away on a small, sketchy side street. It wasn’t really a dance club, but more of just a night club. It was packed and looked hot a sweaty and smoky, and by that point I wasn’t really up for something like that. A guy outside said to us in English, “welcome to the most democratic of all the night clubs in the Soviet Union!” I told everyone I was cutting out and they said goodbye and went inside. By this time it was about 12:30 and I was now stuck with the dilemma of how to get home. The public transportation had apparently all stopped, so I was in a bit of a rut. I started walking down Nevskiy and saw a couple other people waiting for a bus. I remembered that bus number 147 goes from Nevskiy to right in front of my apartment, and if these other people are waiting then maybe there is one more bus to ride. I waited for about 15 minutes with no luck. The other option for late-night transport is to hail a cab. Mind you, these aren’t regular cabs. Most of them are people who own their own cars who drive around at night giving rides to people who flag them down. Apparently it’s totally safe and everybody does it all the time, but I wasn’t up to the challenge of negotiating prices in Russian and didn’t really want to pay for a cab fare by myself, so that left me with just one option to get home: walk. So, that’s what I did. To Gavanskaya all toe way from Nevskiy. I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything to anybody reading this, but let me assure you, it’s pretty far. Especially if you are walking alone at 1:00 AM. But I did it anyways. It was pretty crazy of me I guess, but I figured it would be good two have walked it at least once while I was in St. Petersburg. I tried calling the Diamond in Eugene during my walk by nobody was home. I left a brief message. There were some great views of the city at night from the bridge to Vasilevskiy and walking along the Neva. But, I don’t think I will ever walk that again. When I got back home and took off my shoes I discovered three huge blisters on my feet. My boots are great for walking in the snow and slush, but apparently aren’t to great on my feet. They’ll be alright, though, Mom and Dad (Grandma too), I know you’ll be reading this, don’t worry about my feet. The boots will be fine. After draining my blisters I went to sleep. I haven’t left my room yet this morning. I am meeting Katie at the metro station at 2:00 and we will go to Soiree where I will hopefully be able to upload these last couple posts to the blog and my pictures to flickr. Tomorrow it’s back to school. Hope everyone’s doing alright. Talk to you later.

-Austin

Jan 27

2006-01-29T14:58:00.000+03:00

Today is Friday, the 27th of January (65th anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad by the way [oh, and two days ago was Russian folk singer Vladimir Vysotskiy’s birthday]). I didn’t write any updates the last two days mostly because my evenings were occupied with my secret project of making an inner pocket in my jacket. I kept it a secret only from my host family, mainly because I didn’t want to try and explain what I was doing. I told everyone at school about it though. I’ve discovered that an inner pocket is essential here. There are thieves everywhere and they all want to steal things from you pockets! Or so we’ve been told. I want to carry my camera around but I don’t want to leave it in a pocket where it could be easily snatched. Since now I’ve been carrying it around in my bag where it’s probably safe but much more of a hassle to get out and as a result I end up taking a lot less pictures. So I thought it over the other day and realized I had everything I would need to make the pocket with:
1. a knife
2. a sewing kit
3. a piece of cloth
I ended up using an extra handkerchief I had brought and was willing to sacrifice for the good of the pocket. On Wednesday night I began phase one: making the pocket. I cut the handkerchief in half, folded part of it up, folded in the corneres and sewed them up. I’m no seamstress (or seamster? I don’t know what the masculine form would be), so it was pretty poor workmanship and it took me a while to tie the knots and loop the thread and all that, so it took my a few hours. I commenced with phase two the following night: sewing it into the jacket. I felt bad cutting a slit in my jacket, but I new it would all be worth it in the end. I cut the slit to the right length and sewed in both edges, and voile! I know have an inside pocket to keep my camera and/or other valuables! It’s pretty crude, but it does the trick. The best part is, my jacket basically has a huge inner cavity that you can access from the hood zipper, which means you can pretty much fill the jacket full of things if you wanted to, and the pocket hangs inside this cavity, so if my sewing skills fail me and the pocket gives way (which it very well might), whatever is in the pocket will just fall into the big cavity where it will be safe until I retrieve it. It’s perfect. Check the flickr account for pictures. I think I might do a second one for the other side of my coat later, since I have that whole other half of the handkerchief. So yeah, I’ve been pretty excited about that lately. Other than making pockets, I’ve been doing some more exploring of the city. On Wednesday Vickie and I used the computers at the school and then headed back to Vasilevskiy Island where some people were meeting at a bar. We couldn’t get a hold of anyone for a while and we were both feeling pretty frustrated with the trials and tribulations of being in a foreign country (around here we call those “phase 2 days”), so we decided to go to McDonalds for some comfort food. We both had to buy more airtime for our cell phones, so we went to the place that Kara had recommended and got our cards and went to “Kofe Khaus” to sit down, have a drink and figure out how to add the time to our phones (Did I mention that I’ve been drinking coffe pretty much everyday? Aside from the occasional café stop, my host mom gives it to me with breakfast every morning. It’s alright as long as I add a bunch of sugar. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I would ever NEED it, I never feel the effect of caffeine anyway). Once we had our minutes added we were able to get a hold of some people and found out they were at a bar pretty much across the street, so we went there and met up with the gang. It was called “Choomadan”, which apparently means “large suitcase”, and it’s pretty cool. In fact, we’re all meeting up again there later tonight. I sat and talked with people for a while and had a beer while all the Russians sitting around us gave us weird looks and obviously annoyed by the room full of loud Americans. These two guys across the bar kept eyeing me and I expected them to approach me about something at any moment, but they left me alone. When the party was over Vickie and I caught the Marshrutka home, where I started said pocket-project. On Thursday we got a little more adventurous. We decided to go to an open-air market in the far north of the city that Nick had heard about from one of the returning students. Apparently it was a good place to buy coats. We had to ride the Green Line to Gostiniy Dvor / Nevskiy Prospekt, transfer to the Blue Line and take it all the way to the last stop. The market wasn’t that great, mostly meats and produce. I’ve heard there are much larger, much more diverse markets in other parts of the city where you can buy all kinds of crazy knick-knacks. I also really want to find the booths that sell bootleg CDs and DVDs for dirt-cheap. I want to find out about cool Russian music that way. I also want to buy kitschy soviet memorabilia and stuff like that for myself and for presents for people. But there was nothing like that at this market. I did buy a couple of delicious cheese blinis, however, for a dollar each. You can’t beat that. On the metro ride back Vickie accidentally got stuck on the train without us and had to ride to the next stop, get off and get on the next one with us. It was pretty funny. We got home alright and after dinner I finished my pocket. I guess I haven’t really written about the food I’ve been eating here. My host mom makes all my breakfasts and dinners, and for the most part it’s pretty monotonous. Every morning this week I’ve had a fried-egg patty with bread and cheese on the side, a cup of yogurt, and a cup of coffee. Dinner always starts with a huge bowl of soup. Usually it’s a weird mix of vegetables, beef and hot dog chunks. After that is the main course, which is always a meat dish with something starchy, usually potatoes but sometimes pasta or rice. Last night was different though. She made me borscht for the first time (not bad, I have to say), and then the main course was chicken curry with rice! She explained to me how in Russia they eat food from all over: China, Japan, India, etc. As if I thought that people in Russian never ate anything but Russian food. I had blinis last weekend so I hope she’ll make them for me again this weekend. They are quite delicious. I’ve finally discovered the small grocery store across the street too, so if ever I’m still hungry some evening (not likely), I can skip over to the store and get whatever I want. Stuff at the grocery stores is amazingly cheap. The other day I bought to bottles of water, an orange soda (Mirinda. I haven’t had it since the Czech Republic!) and a bag of candy and it all cost me about $2. I will definitely be stopping there more often, especially for water since you can’t drink out of the tap here and most homes don’t usually have a supply of drinking water on hand. Sometimes I get a little freaked out by the thought that I can’t drink as much water as I want whenever I want and wherever I want, I have to plan ahead and make sure I have water available when I might want it. So, right now it’s about 5:30 and I’m just hanging around the apartment until 7:30 when we are going to go meet up with everyone at Vasileostravskaya Metro Station and head to Choomadan, and then we might go somewhere else from there. Nobody wants to stay out too late tonight because we have a group excursion to the Peter and Paul Fortress at 10:00 tomorrow morning. Oh, and we have to get HIV tests again cause apparently the ones we got in America are no good here and we never really needed to get them in the first place. Tomorrow night there’s talk of going to a dance club, which I’m a little nervous about but am interested in trying it out none the less. To me it seems like people in those kind of clubs take themselves way too seriously and I don’t really like that. I mean, I like to dance, but the way I like to dance is silly and fun and not meant to be taken seriously at all and I feel like that wouldn’t fly in a dance club. But, I talked about it with Ingrid and Kara and they assured me that in European dance clubs nobody really knows how to dance well and I’ll fit in just fine. So, we’ll see how it goes. I guess that’s quite enough typing for now. Sorry to make such long posts like this, but being able to write them at home and then post them later I have the luxury of taking my time and not having to worry about my internet minutes running out. So, I guess you’ll just have to get used to reading long posts if you want to know what I’m doing. I hope everyone back home is doing alright, and I look forward to talking with you sometime soon. Later!

-Austin

three

2006-01-25T14:11:00.000+03:00

So I took my laptop to Café Soiree today to try and take advantage of the free wireless internet, but was deeply saddened by the fact that the internet would barely work for me while it seemed fine for the other people with their laptops. It would work in sporadic bursts and then not load any pages forever. I managed to check my email and that’s about it. I’m guessing it’s a Mac thing. Perhaps Russia is not very Mac-friendly. So, I am stuck writing again from my apartment without the internet. Tomorrow I will put some money on my account at the school’s computer lab and then I should be able to upload everything there. It must be weird for anybody reading this blog to see the posts come all at once like this when in fact they have all been written over a longer period of time. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to put up with it. Today was the first day of classes, and all in all it wasn’t too bad. My first class of the day was Newspaper Reading, which will probably end up being the hardest and my least favorite class. Today it required a lot of listening and repeating, which I’m bad at, and I think I made a bad first impression on the teacher. She handed out workbooks that I assumed were ours too keep, and only after I had taken notes in it did she tell us that they weren’t ours and that we have to buy our own from the bookstore. I hope she doesn’t look in the one I use and get mad. My next class was Conversation, and it was actually really great. The teacher is really funny and easy going and basically the class is just going to be us talking about whatever subjects come up or that we feel like talking about. Today he just asked us for some topics and then went off on them for a while having us contribute something every now and then. After Conversation we had lunch, and then our next class was a literature lecture. I think this class will be pretty interesting. Today we learned all about the life and works of the Russian author Ivan Bunin, and our future classes will all be about different authors and themes. On other days I have classes on grammar and phonetics and a lecture on civilization. Mind you this is all in Russian. So far it’s actually been pretty easy to understand everything the professors are saying. I understand them a lot more than I understand other Russians when I hear them talking on the street or where ever, and I guess it’s part of their job to be able to speak to foreign students in a way that they can understand but it’s encouraging none the less to listen and understand them. And it’s only going to get better as the term progresses. After classes about six of us caught a bus to get to Soiree where we hung out for a while using (and not using, in my case) the internet, eating chicken wings and drinking beer. After it started getting dark Vickie and I headed to the Metro station to get back home. I’m starting to get comfortable using the Metro, even with the crazy rush-hour crowds like today. I heard that they are raising the price of the Metro and all public transportation by 2 rubles starting on February first, so it will be a little annoying to have to get out 12 rubles instead of ten, but it’s still pretty cheap (about 40 cents). From Vasileostravskaya station back home we rode the marshrutka again. I guess I’ll explain what that is now. The marshrutkas are minivans that hold about ten people each and travel in set routes that mimic the bus routes and sometimes even have the same route number. The difference is that you can hop on or off at any point during the marshrutka’s route by waving it down or telling the driver to stop. It’s kind of intimidating at first, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it. Actually, I still haven’t had the need to ask the driver to stop yet because every time there is someone else getting on or off at the right spot and I just get out then. The way you pay is also interesting. The driver handles all the money, so once you get inside and get settled in your seat you have to pass your money up to the front, and when the driver gives you your change the other passengers often have to pass it back for you. If you sit in the front you end up passing lots of money back and forth and asking how people each amount is for and telling the driver, etc. It’s weird, but it’s a good way to get around. Oh yeah, the weather really warmed up today! Instead of –20 degrees Celsius it was hovering just below zero degrees most of the day, and it actually felt warm almost compared to the days before! I’ve been assured that this is now the normal winter weather in St. Petersburg, and I think I can definitely live with it. Well, right now I’m tired and I need to take a shower soon, so I will end this here. Bye.

-Austin

two

2006-01-25T14:10:00.000+03:00

Boy, there’s just so much to write about that I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll pick up from where I left off before and try to be brief about everything. Today is Monday, and yesterday I met with a bunch of people from the group and we all got cell phones. This is the first real cell phone I’ve ever had, and so far it’s been pretty exciting. It took us forever to all choose out our phones and get them all set up. We filled up this little cell phone store and they had to turn away a lot pf other people who came in. After the cell phones and calling cards were taken care of a bunch of us went to a nice café and hung out for a while before heading home. I live right next door to one of the other program members, Vickie, and together we tried walking back to our apartments. The cell phone place and café were both near the Vasileostrovskaya metro station, which is the closest metro station to Vickie and my apartments but it’s still about a mile and a half away. We had ridden a Martrushka (I’ll explain what those are another time) earlier to meet the rest of the group at the McDonalds near the metro station, but we decided to try walking back home despite the cold, just so we could get a better idea of our surroundings. It was a straight shot down Sredniy Prospekt (Middle Street) back to our apartments on Gavanskaya, but we found out quickly that a few blocks beyond the metro station Sredniy becomes a very sketchy street with very few street lamps and hardly anybody out on the streets. At one point the road was all ripped up as if it were under construction, but it looked like there had been no construction taking place for months, I also saw Nazi / Russian nationalist graffiti on the fences (it said “slava Rossia”, or “long live Russia,” which I’ve heard is their slogan). All in all, it was not a good place to be after dark, and we were debating heading back and trying to catch another martrushka home, but we pushed onward and eventually came upon our street. We are definitely going to avoid walking down Sredniy as much as possible from now on. This morning we had to get all set up for our classes, so in order to get to the campus all the way across town at Smolniy, my host mom had to escort me to the hotel where the mini-van for foreign students picks everyone up and takes them to campus. It was relatively easy and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do it by myself (well, with Vickie I guess) every day from now on. At the campus we were all taken to a big hall where they administered our language placement tests. This consisted of a few short answer questions and a 140-question exam that was supposed to test our grammar. The written answers were easy enough, and the grammar exam started out easier enough but it got really hard really fast, and I ended up guessing on many of the questions. It’s kind of unfair, though, because the reason I didn’t know a lot of the answers was because I didn’t know some of the words they were using, which would just be testing my vocabulary knowledge and not so much my grammar skills, Oh well. The other part of the placement test was a brief interview with a couple of the staff members. I was a little nervous going in, but it proved to be really easy. They asked simple questions about where I’m from, where I go to school, family, etc. I felt like I did pretty well over all, and the graders must have thought so to, because when we got our class assignments I found myself in Group 2, or the second highest group. Group 1 is mainly for the students who were here in the fall and are continuing with a second semester (only three us “new” students were placed in Group 1), so I feel pretty good about my placement. Hopefully I can live up to it. We got a tour of the facilities and the area around the campus (there are some amazing cathedrals that are part of the Smolniy complex, check the flickr account), and were then able to head out on our own for the day. I followed a group down to Nevskiy Prospekt, the big main street in St. Petersburg. We stepped inside the Vosstania metro station to get warm for a second and almost became the victims of a street scam, but luckily they warned us all about this kind of stuff at our orientation. A guy came up to us and started speaking to me in particular. I still don’t know Russian well enough to understand what he was saying, but it didn’t matter because we all knew he was up to no good and we weren’t about to fall victim to his trick. I told him that we didn’t understand him and then we all walked back outside while he stood there with a disappointed look on his face. It had become blatantly obvious to all of us that the man standing against the wall on the other side of us was his partner, and was waiting for us to be distracted by the first guy so he could pick out pockets or take things from our bags, but we are all too paranoid after the horror stories about street crimes that the program directors had told us, so we knew what was going on (Speaking of scams, I also had my ATM / Debit card account breached after my first try using a Russian ATM at the airport the first day I arrived. I talked to the program director about it and he said it’s actually pretty common for this to happen at airport ATMs, and it happened to him at the airport in Burlington, Vermont of all places. Apparently members of Bulgarian or Romanian crime syndicates places sensors on ATMs that pick up PINs and allow them to get into peoples’ accounts, and they especially target airport ATMs because there are always lots of people coming and going from all over the world and it’s really hard to track the people who do it. No money was lost luckily, and everything should work out fine, but it’s pretty annoying). After the incident at Vosstania we ducked into a café on Nevskiy where I had an espresso and a bon-bon, and after our little rest we broke up into smaller groups. I went with a group to try and find the café with free wireless internet called “Soiree.” It’s only a couple blocks off of Nevskiy at the corner of Vosstania and Zhukovskogo. We peeked inside and it looked really great. A nice, quiet atmosphere that wasn’t too crowded, all sunken below the sidewalk. I think I’ll probably end up spending a lot of time there with my laptop. After that the group split up again and again it was just down to Vickie and me. We’ll probably end up hanging out a lot because at the end of the day with both need to end up at the same place and it’s a lot better to get back home with somebody else than it is alone. She followed my to help me find the apartment where my friend Emily supposedly lives. I know Emily from school, where we met the first week of freshman year in our Russian class of course, and we’ve been pretty good friends since then. She has been living and studying in St. Petersburg since August and, as I understand it, now lives in an apartment with circus performers. I had copied down her address from Facebook.com and discovered that it was about a block away from Soiree, so Vickie and I went looking for it. We got to the area where the building should be when I realized that I don’t really know how to find the exact building or apartment, and since it was really cold out and we were both really tired we decided to just head home. I’ll have to get a hold of Emily through email soon. We decided to try riding the metro for the first time, and it was pretty intimidating. It was right during the 5 to 6 o’clock rush and the station was way crowded. We stood around looking at the map trying to figure out which line to board and where until we finally figured it out and made it safely to Vasileostrovskaya station. We didn’t want to walk down Sredniy again like the night before, so we caught the Marshrutka and despite our anxiety about not knowing when or where to get off we made it home just fine, and here I am now. I still haven’t gotten on the internet yet so I have to keep writing entries in word and then pasting them into blogger later, but it seems like it’s working fine that way. I have so many other little observations and small anecdotes that I want to tell but that would take forever. I guess all the best stuff will find its way to the blog eventually. As far as pictures go, I haven’t really been taking that many. I guess I just feel weird taking out my camera and taking pictures of everything like a tourist when there are so many people around, plus I’m afraid of letting everyone around me know that I have a camera and becoming a target for theft (see what horrible those stories of street crimes has done to me?!), but I have taken some and there should be some up on flickr by the time anyone reads this. I will start taking more soon, I promise. Tomorrow we start our classes and I’m a little nervous but I think it’ll be just fine. I have to get myself to campus without my host mom’s help, but I think that will be fine too. I am going to stop typing now, I’ve gone way longer than I had anticipated. I hope nobody minds. Bye bye for now.

-Austin

one

2006-01-25T14:09:00.000+03:00

I’m here in St. Petersburg now. I got to my host family’s apartment yesterday afternoon. I am writing this in a Word document, which I will put on my thumb drive and upload to the blog later, and this is how I suspect I will be writing most of my entries. Actually, maybe not, because apparently all I have to do is buy a special card and get a phone cable and I can get on the internet from the apartment. I’m going to have to look into that. Well, what can I say about Russia so far? I guess I haven’t really done enough to really comment on it. All the students met in a big group at the airport and we were whisked of to a small town outside of the city called Repino for our orientation. The town is northwest of the city and used to be part of Finland. The temperature has been hovering steadily around –20 C, which is somewhere just below –5 F, so, it’s cold. The group stayed in a hotel in Repino and we all got to know each other. I have to say that I really like the group I’m with. Everyone is really nice and cool and easy to get along with for the most part. The program directors are great too. At night we would go to the small bar on the hotel grounds and hang out and drink Russian beer. There was a “disco” Friday night which basically consisted of a few members from our group and a handful of older Russians hanging around. All in all, the orientation was a great first experience of Russia and a great way to get acquainted with the group. On Saturday after lunch we packed up all our things and were loaded on to minivans and brought back to St. Petersburg to be dropped off at our host families, whom we had just learned about the day before. I’m living in an apartment on Vasilevskiy Island, which makes up a major chunk of the city. The street I live on is called Gavanskaya, which I discovered is derived from the word “gavan” which means harbor (the Gulf of Finland is only a few blocks away). My host mother’s full name is Svetlana Alekseevich Belova. I have no host father. The program director told me a little bit about the family situation. Apparently, my host mother is a widow whose husband was a fisherman and died in a boating accident (much like my uncle, so I’ll have something to talk about). Svetlana has two sons, Aleksandr and Aleksee, but I guess only one of them lives here in the apartment. The director told me that they too are fisherman, but once I met my host brother I realized this had to be false. He is a very hip looking young man who apparently had a bunch of friends over last night while I was sleeping (I could here them coming and going until about 4 in the moning). I’m not even sure which host brother this is yet, and in general I’m still kind of confused about the whole family situation. I’m sure it will become clear soon enough. They host students a lot apparently, but the mother speaks no English and I’m not sure about the son(s) yet, so it’s been a little difficult communicating so far but all in all I think I’m doing OK with my Russian. I was so exhausted from my trip and not getting much sleep in Repino that I went to bed at 8:00 without even really saying goodnight. I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I didn’t get up until I heard my host mom up and about, which was about 10:00, so I was in bed for quite a while. I had breakfast (blini, which were delicious) and took a shower and now I’m writing this. I think my host brother is up now, or someone else is here, so I should probably go out and be a little more social. So, that’s everything so far. More as it develops.

-Austin

Guess where I am...

2006-01-19T04:26:00.000+03:00

No, not Russia (yet). I am actually thousands of feet above the North Atlantic Ocean on my way to Frankfurt. Yeah, apparently they have internet on airplanes now. It's kind of expensive, but what the hell. I found a promotional code that cuts the cost in half, so there you go. This flight isn't nearly as interesting as the flight from New York to London I took a few years back. Then they had lots of different things to entertain yourself with, with personal screens and lots of cool music channels, and a map that shows you where the plane it at. They have that map on this flight to, but they only show it when they feel like it up on the communal screens. Right now all they're showing is some stupid movie about soccer (it's a Lufthansa flight, go figure). I managed to score a seat in the front row because the flight isn't very full, but it still isn't all that comfortable. Oh well, only three more hours or something. Yikes. I tried to get up and use the bathroom a little bit ago, but a flight attendant told me I have to go sit back down. There was a lot of turbulence earlier, but not when I got up. Whatever. I think it's OK ti get up now, so I'll wrap this up. Now, for sure this time, the next post will be from Russia! Bye.

-Austin

P.S. Apparently the temperature in St. Petersburg right now is -15 degrees Farenheit. This is going to be great.