Land of Vodka

Okay, so its currently 23:54 November 27th. I don’t feel like going to sleep yet so I decided to write a little blurb here. It most likely won’t be a lot.

Currently in Russia, it is in the high 30s – mid 40s, cloudy, and raining. It rains about every single day here and I am ready for this soaking precipitation to snow. I am ready for the snow. For those of you who don’t know, St. Petersburg is having unusually warm weather. Usually by now there is snow accumulated on the ground, but this year we have had about only two dustings. I must admit that if there is not snow on the ground by December 1st, I will sadden. My current mind set is:

I’m in Russia and its Winter

Winter = Snow

There should be snow!

I’m starting to think that buying my snow boots might have been a waste of money. I have about 4 1/2 weeks left here and in the next 10 days there is hardly (aka only freezing precipitation) in the forecast. Actually in the next 10 days it is only supposed to get to freezing once and that is tomorrow.

Related to the weather is the daylight in St. Petersburg. Or more accurately, the lack of day light. This week the “sun technically” rises around 10:30 am. Aka it gets dusky. The sun, if it ever emerges from those pesky clouds, starts setting around 3:30 and it is basically dusk by 4:00 with pitch blackness by 5:00. You cannot escape the darkness. And every day it just gets worse. I’m secretly looking forward to the equinox in December. It will be interesting to experience the shortest day of the year this far north.

I’m tired. Will blurb about the Hermitage tomorrow, and the Ex Porn star who visited our art class.

39 days, battling the elements: rain, snow (if it comes), Combatting challenges: metro, language, cabbage, crazy babushkas. Hopefully I’ll be the sole (jk) survivor.

Okay, so I admit that I have been watching several seasons of Survivor in my free time. By a few I mean its a number that I will not admit to. I tried watching Последный Герой (The Last Hero), Russia’s version of Survivor, yet like the majority of Russian television shows I couldn’t sit through the low budget, corny dialogue, and shaky camera. I tried.

So in short, if you didn’t get my joking above, I have 39 days left in Russia. And looking back its been about 30 days since I last updated this blog. Yes, I suck. So what have I been doing since October 22nd?

Well Halloween came. There was a party at the dorms, but my stomach decided to hate me that day and I couldn’t make the hour commute to the dorms without a bathroom. So Halloween went. Boo hoo. The only benefit was that my friend carved a Cheburashka pumpkin! If you don’t know who that is, google it.

Moscow Adventure

At the beginning of November my group went to Moscow/Mosco/Москва! It was amazing adventure. The adventure started at 10:00 pm when we arrived at the train station and boarded a sleeper train. This was the first time that I had ridden in a passenger train longer than 3 hours. Its was also the first time that I had been in a sleeper train sharing a compartment with three of my friends. The week before we left I made sure to watch Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, sadly our train was neither as elegantly fancy nor did a murder take place. But it was a great trip. I believe I am now a fan of sleeper trains. You make idle chit chat with passengers for about an hour, go to sleep, and when you awake you are already at your destination! Its almost like teleportation. Okay not really but the gratification of being at your destination when you open your eyes seems akin to if you teleported. In Moscow we stayed at Godzilla’s Hostel. It was a very impressively clean hostel that was American run. It was decked out Ikea-style and was nicer than some hotels that I stayed in. I was in a room with 9 other Smolny kids. The first day in Moscow we toured the Kremlin, which is where Putin and Medvedev work for those of you who don’t know. Located inside the Kremlin were several churches, and statues one resembling the Liberty Bell on Steroids.  It was a cold cloudy day. Surprisingly, Moscow was about 20 degrees colder than St. Pete so it was about -9 Celsius. Also on the first day we walked through the Red Square and had a walking tour of a major street that starts with a T and I can’t remember or be bothered to look it up. The only thing that I really remember was that there was a Starbucks Старбакс (in Russian) there. The sadly-limited menu Starbucks was playing Christmas music (a plus) however their countdown said that they would not be serving holiday drinks until 6 more days. Boo. We were there only for the long weekend.

Also on that first day around 1:00 we were trying to walk to our restaurant, when the police deterred us.  Then we saw a black limo with flags going down the street with police escorts. Somebody important was inside…Putin or Medvedev? It was somebody political as it was a national holiday: Unity Day. That evening we celebrated that holiday by going to a bar.

Saturday we spent the morning at the Tretyakov Gallery. Beautiful artwork however this excursion would have been much better if 1) our tour guide wasn’t 1/2 hour late, 2) our tour guide went over by 40 minutes 3) if we had no tour guide. I personally enjoy museums and exhibits more if I get to look at stuff on my open time. I don’t like looking only at what the tour guide deems important. We had the rest of that day free, and some friends and I wandered Moscow and ended up at Starbucks. After dinner we landed at TGI Fridays (dinner part 2) where we chatted with our Russian waiter who studied in New Zealand and spoke with a Kiwi accent. The off to the same bar as the day before, I forgot the name but it was located not far from the Red Square, and the Ferrari/Bentley/Maserati dealership. (Moscow has a lot of billionaires…). I left the bar and caught the last metro back to the Hostel at 1am while the majority clubbed until 4….some regretted it the next morning.

Sunday friends and I ate brunch and traveled to the Red Square. Once again Lenin’s mausoleum was closed so unfortunately I didn’t get to see the leader’s embalmed body.  It was a beautiful sunny day. On the square we were stopped and interviewed by some Russian college students who where doing a project on British English…..we tried our best to answer how British English influenced/was apparent in American English… the Puritans, accents/dialects, the Beetles, and Hugh Laurie were in our answer. Then we went inside St. Basil’s. The most beautiful church (looks more like a castle) that I have been in. I was disappointed that St. Basil’s wasn’t on our cultural program and that we had to go on our own time and money. But it was worth it. Everybody is familiar with the exterior of St. Basil’s, if you don’t think you are think ONION DOMES, but the interior is hard to describe. I’m at a lost of words. Its much less gaudi than other churches, and in great condition for being 450 years old. If you are every in Moscow, it is a must see. We also passed by the building of the State Duma, and unfortunately forgot to go by the KGB building.

Sunday night we got back on our train and arrived in St. Pete at 6:30 am. Yuck. I had class from 11:00-4:30 that day.

The Ballet

The night before the ballet we met the family of one of our Smolny comrades. It was his 21st birthday and his parents, the nicest people in the world, payed for the whole group to celebrate with them!! All I have to say is a lot….a lot of personal beer taps. Broken glasses and Russian bread sticks.

So also during November we saw Swan Lake in the Mikhailsky Theater. It was beautiful performance, though somewhat long. I don’t know much about ballet but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was the first time that during an intermission that the line to the bar was much longer than the line to the bathroom. After the ballet which could have been an hour shorter if they cut the 2 30 minute intermissions, we headed to Carl Jr’s for a late night meal. Firstly, Carl Jr’s is sooooo much better than McDonalds…the beef was beefy and the lettuce was actually fresh and green. Also they had chili cheese fries and when you buy a combo ketchup is free.

The Opera

Last weekend we saw Prince Igor at the oh so famous Mariinsky Theater. Think grand, tsar-like. The opera was good, long at 3 hours 35 minutes, but in my opinion more entertaining than the ballet. We had front row seats which was impressive. Of course the opera had english supertitles…and I found it funny that you could tell who spoke/understood english by seeing who was reading the supertitles. Afterwards I was deemed uncultured by not knowing about the history of the Mongols.

I will update after Thanksgiving with more info about “winter” in Russia! Time to study.

Warning this post might contain Russian words. My mind is floating in/out of english. So last night I was introduced to the Trololo man. Apparently the whole world, кроме меня (except me), knows about this guy from Colbert. I made a Russian friend, Sasha (guy), who is a journalism/film grad student and is interviewing the guy this week.  If you are like me, pop-culturally глупая, the video is below.

А также, last night we (Sasha, Natasha, Abbey, Marie, Grace, and I) played the card game Mafia. The last time that I played Mafia was at Russian house last spring with the department. Главные три человека in the game are the Mafia, the Police Office, and the Doctor. Well apparently here instead of the Doctor its the “Prostitute” however she still has the same function as the doctor – can save someone from being murdered by Mafia. I don’t quite understand how a Prostitute has the same occupation as a Doctor, but just went with it. While we were playing we had an interesting convo about relationships (to say the least) in Russia, and Hard Cider was consumed (the worst thing ever as it was totally not an apple product waste of ~45p for 1.0 L ($1.45).

Speaking of fakes, piracy and counterfeiting is common here.  I watched a Moscow news segment which stated that 40% of wine sold in stores is fake – not wine. Additionally if you pay with a 500p banknote or higher  (500p = $16.31), the cashier will scrutinize the note to make sure its real. On a side note I was in a shoe store today and they were selling “Uggs” as legitimate Uggs (“tags” and all)…they were totally fake. I have previously read Ugg’s article on how to spot counterfeits but despite that it was totally obvious. Wrong texture/colors. Most dvds/cds/video games are fake. Torrenting is the norm.

On a different note, I want to mention public transportation. During the day it can be annoying how the buses are so crowded and take their time at each stop and get stuck not being able to make a left hand turn due to oncoming cars. Firstly, so I am told, traffic laws do exist here; I have not seen any followed or enforced. Red is like the new green. Yellow means go, and green means continue at your high speed. Crossing walk? I’ll still honk at you as I still try to turn/aggressively act like I might hit you so you will walk faster. Sidewalks? Hell no. They are not for pedestrians, silly. They are for going around slow cars, and as you know more importantly, for parking. Yesterday I was riding a bus in the evening (8pm) and it nearly got t-boned due to a fact that some car thought that red meant continue driving like an asshole on the wet road. Collision was avoided due to the sharp skills of the bus driver. Bus drivers, at night, are sometimes damn slow on their routes aka the buses don’t come on schedule or at a regular interval. Last night I waited from 11:20 until 11:55 for my bus to show up. Annoyed as I was, I have to admit that the bus driver was awesomely awful. If no one acted like they were going to exit about 2 minutes before the upcoming stop, and if he saw no one standing on the street….what stop? Just kept on driving. It made the normally 45 minute bus ride take 15 minutes. Got home, dry from the rain, warm, and in bed faster. Appreciated not following the rules then.

Since I’ve been slightly under the weather and standing in the rain for over 1.5 hours yesterday didn’t help, I’m doing a movie night.

Пока.

P.S. I feel like I should be writing in Russia but…если я писал по-русски, то никто не могли знать о чём я написали. Но я могу…..и я должно говорить и писать, кроме того, думать (!) по-русский. В прошлой пятницу, занятия была смешная. Пока мы учились, я взяла крючком. Профессора не думала ничего об этом, но она сказала что я “как бабушка.” Господи! Это не первый раз что я слышала этот. Но хорошо, я как бабушка. Не плохо. Мне нравится моя жизнь…..

So its almost been a month since my last update. I have to apologize for my laziness and hiatus. In the past month a lot has happened. Its now October, well almost November. The beginning of this month I travled to Pskov and Izborsk. These two “towns” (well Pskov is) are full of history from the past aka 14-15th century Russia I believe (I could be possibly wrong). There we saw a lot of beautiful churches full of art, though slightly awkward when we walked into a prayer session and when everybody started crossing themselves. I guess I just feel uncomfortable inside churches. We also hiked in the rain down to a holy spring. Yes, I did taste the water with reservation. Parasites were on my mine. We also went to a monastery in Izborsk. Quite colorful for what I would have expected.

Religion put aside, it was wonderful to experience the Russian country side. Immediately as we left St. Pete, the air became cleaner and crisper and trees! Finally some trees and fall foliage. During free time some friends and I explored a park in Pskov. We decided it would be fun to make a giant pile of leaves, jump in them, and have a leaf fight. It was amazing. After the leaves, we found this old, rickety amusement part/bumper cars, we also found this old abandoned rock tower. There are so many abandoned rock structures in this town.

Besides Pskov, its been quiet in Russia. Classes have been going slowly. I’ve been asking for extra homework to learn more. The Smonly staff seems like it is having some sort of medical epidemic. Everyday some teacher is sick. Apparently in the fall everyone gets sick in Russia. I was sick for a day and a half this past week. Midterms are next week.

Rambles

I’ve been making friends, both American and Russian. Social life is going well. Nightlife is expensive in Russia. Mostly we hang out in the dorms byob style. It saves you money and a liver. In my spare time I’ve been crocheting and watching bad tv. I’m 1/3 done with Zatsy’s blanket after which I’m going to make myself one.  The first snow was this week. Sadly, it didn’t stick. But it encouraged me to buy snow boots – I was successful. I went against the russian black leather high heeled boot as a snow boot. I will have to worry about icicles falling on me (there are several deaths per year) and walking on Galernaya (the filthiest street I’ve ever seen) I don’t want to additionally worry about falling on my ass every step I take. I went with a legit snow boot from Columbia. Cheap, water proof, and guaranteed to keep my feet warm until -25F.  They are orange/blue. I’m bringing back first year Addie: the hey you look like a crayon box. It’s only for this semester. Warmth > vanity. Oct 29th Tomorrow we are going to see Swan Lake. Being all classy going to the ballet.

I’ll make a less rambly post soon.