A Tale of Three Cities (Part I)

Well, St. Petersburg mouse has been a very bad mouse indeed. She is dreadfully sorry to have been so delinquent in her updating!

A lot has been going on lately round these parts – in addition to all of the adventures I’ve been having, which hopefully will be related to my dear readers in due time, depending on the extent to which I get my act together for my last three weeks in Russia, by the way, how do you feel about summer updates?, the semester is coming to a close at last, which means I’ve been busy with studying for finals, writing final papers, etc. Also, after some issues with my host mother, the details of which we don’t really need to get into, I finally struck out on my own and rented an apartment which I moved into Wednesday. I still haven’t finished unpacking yet, doubtless shocking to all concerned, but I’ve really been enjoying my new place. A great grocery store is a 10 minute walk away, and I start every morning with a 15 minute walk through a beautiful park on my way to the metro. I have a roommate named Dasha, who is very nice, although we pretty much just keep to ourselves, and neither of us is here very often, but cooking for myself and not having to answer to my stereotypically overbearing and perhaps not a little bit crazy Russian grandmother has been a huge relief.

Anyway, now to the juicy stuff: over the last, erm, embarrassingly long and to remain unspecified span of time since my last letter, our group has left familiar (gasp!) St. Petersburg and gone on several excursions to some other Russian cities: Moscow, Velikij Novgorod, and Vyborg. Now, I’m not going to deny that I might have some slight issues with long-windedness, so we’ll try to get right to the meat and make this as painless as possible!

Новгород

There are two cities in Russia by the name of Новгород (Novgorod – we’ll say this means Newtown) – Великий (Velikij – great, as in size and importance, not as in groovy) and Нижний (Nizhni – let’s translate that as “lesser”). We took an overnight trip to Velikij Novgorod, and let me just tell you right now, Velikij it ain’t. Now don’t get me wrong, at one point in time, Novgorod was quite the place to be for forward-thinking individuals. Founded in the ninth century, it was Russia’s first (and arguably only?) successful democratic society. The city is built around the original Kremlin (the Russian word кремлин, kremlin, literally just means “fortress.” Every city has one, not just Moscow. Think of the walled-in cities of Western Europe and you’re on the right track.) At it’s heyday, inside the city walls was what was, at least by 9^th century standards, a pretty bustling city, replete even with a city square, where the townspeople met to discuss the goings-on of the town, in organized town-meeting style. The movie Alexander Nevskij opens in Novgorod and all of the townspeople stretch their democratic legs in this very square in one of the opening scenes as they discuss what to do about an impending enemy invasion. Eventually they decide to call Alexander Nevskij, who in the movie is busy fishing. You should watch this movie. Anyway, that was the Novgorod of yore. But let me backtrack a bit and switch to a more chronological style.

Our Novgorod adventure began with a bus ride. I was really excited by the prospect of this bus ride, as it was to be the first time I was going to leave the city and actually see some Russian countryside. After we finally left St. Petersburg, we drove through some forest. Not really through the forests exactly, but along the highway you could see forests off in the not-so-distant distance. For a long time you’ll see nothing but this forest and the field between you and it, and then you come to a village. The villages we saw all consisted of maybe a dozen or two pre-fab looking, brightly-colored, absolutely falling apart huts, all crowded together and separated by chain-link fences. Also there was the odd garden plot and abandoned and scrapped rusting car. I don’t remember seeing any people walking around in the villages, but just these random little collections of huts at random intervals along the highway. The huts definitely looked Russian – with the trimmings along the windows and roof, and the sorts of pastel colors I was expecting. But when I say falling down, I mean it. Caved in walls, sagging roofs, boarded up windows. I wish I knew more about post-collectivization/post-fall-of-Soviet-Union life in the Russian village, so I could say something insightful, but alas I don’t and thus can’t. But that’s my impression, anyway. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, and it was rather sobering. Also, I imagine that there must be more prosperous villages in Russia, and they just don’t happen to be roadside.

When we arrived in Novgorod, we took a walking tour of the Kremlin. The highlight of this tour for me was simply the fact that I was in a city that was 1100 years old. As far as I could gather, the Kremlin walls are mostly original, so that was really neat. Again, they themselves aren’t that neat, but the fact that they’re a good 3 times as old as my entire country is neat to say the least. There was also a giant and beautiful bridge across the river whose name I should but don’t remember. Also within the Kremlin are an endless number of churches. I can’t even begin to pretend to count the number of churches I’ve toured in Russia. Too many. Maybe if I knew anything about Russian Orthodoxy, or anything about architecture, or anything about icon painting, I’d have something to say about these churches. I apologize for my utterly abhorrent skills at putting my reader in the action, but there were just a lot of churches and we looked at all of them and that was that. The final point of our tour was the Russian millennium monument, which was really cool. It’s like a giant bronze layer cake, and on the outside are depicted if not all, then at least a whole bunch, of Russian historical figures. One panel depicted Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, et al schmoozing in somebody’s drawing room. Another depicted a bunch of soldiers defeating one or another Scandinavian army sometime in the middle ages. It was all of Russia’s history in one giant mob of a sculpture, and it was great. I was able to identify a goodly amount of the characters and the scenes, but it made me realize how absolutely massive Russia’s history is, and how absolutely massive is the amount about it that I don’t know. In case you missed this: it’s called the millennium monument. As in a millennium of Russian history. As in 1000 years. As in whoa.

After our walking tour, we attempted unsuccessfully to check in to our hotel. The reason for our lack of success? (Now might be a good time to run to the bathroom, maybe get a cup of tea, put on your slippers and take the phone of the hook. I’m about to let you in on the intricacies of Russian immigration bureaucratic red tape, and it will be rather a scary ride if you’re not comfortable and prepared.) To come to Russia you need a visa. That’s an unspeakable mess, but we’ll assume for the sake of everyone’s sanity that that just happens. Visa in tow, you arrive at the airport or train station or border or whatever and are given an immigration card. When you get to your destination city, you have to register yourself and have your registration papers. Mind you, you’re registered for the particular city. If you want to go to a different city, you have to re-register when you get there. Our group came into Russia on single-entry three-month visas, meaning we could only come into Russia once (i.e. can’t travel to Finland and expect to come back). The plan was, once we arrived in Russia, to change these into multi-entry visas that would last longer. When we applied to do this, they invalidated our single-entry visas, meaning that our legal status in the country while our multi-entries were pending was dubious. However, we were all registered in St. Petersburg, so it wasn’t really a problem.

Again however, when we attempted to register in Novgorod, it became a problem. Thing is, we didn’t realize until we got to Novgorod that our visas had been invalidated and our immigration cards confiscated. Why didn’t it occur to us that the Russian government would invalidate our visas and confiscate our immigration cards, both of which are required to be on our person at all times in order to be considered legally in Russia? Hmmm… Anyway, so there we are, illegally in Novgorod, and ambiguously legally in Russia at all. So our tourguide takes us all to the police station. At the station, we are all herded into a room that looks exactly like what you would expect a big room in a Russian immigration control office to look like. Cement floors, harsh fluorescent lighting, and a bunch of those desks where the back of one bench is the desk that the people sitting on the bench behind you write on. So we all sit in those desks, and are given paper and pens. We sit there for awhile, and our tourguide comes back. We have to write explanations of why we’re in Novgorod illegally. They have to be officially worded, and they have to be written in our own handwriting, so we can’t just sign something. So we all sit there, and she dictates to us what the paper is supposed to say, and we attempt to spell everything correctly, which is no mean task considering that we don’t know what over half of the words being dictated to us even mean. Eventually we finish our little task, and are let free into the city. This was a good thing.

However other than the Kremlin, which we had already seen, Novgorod really doesn’t have much to offer. There’s a Baskin-Robbins. A couple of small grocery stores. We were told that there was one night club, but that we shouldn’t go to it because we would get beat up because we’re foreigners. (Think of a foppish French dandy at a barn rave in North Dakota.) So we walked around the, erm, city, a bit more, then just hung out all together in the hotel, the sights having been seen. Not exactly as velikij as one might hope.

The next day things picked up, as we left Novgorod. The day began with tours of two monasteries. This was interesting, but for me it was mostly interesting because we were out in nature and I could look at trees and smell fresh air and that was nice. We learned a little bit about the multiple incarnations of the monastery spaces under the Soviet Union, but mostly we just looked at the churches. I won’t lie – I was a little underwhelmed by the whole experience. But then came the event that made the whole Novgorodian ordeal worth it: the wooden architecture museum.

Please don’t read any sarcasm into this, because this remains probably my favorite part of my trip to Russia so far. The wooden architecture museum is a huge tract of land, on which are built a bunch of recreations of traditional Russian wooden village architecture. Most of the buildings you just looked at from the outside, but they were all really cool. There were churches and houses, and if Russian villages had buildings with other functions then I’m sure they would have been there, too. But some of the houses were open, and had been set up to look like Russian peasants lived there. So you enter through the barn, and see all of the 19^th century farming equipment. (See previous entries: given my limited knowledge of the history of Russian agriculture, I’m pretty sure that I could use the phrases “19^th century farming equipment” and “15^th century farming equipment” to mean pretty much the same thing.) Then you climb some stairs into the main house (read: room), and they have a traditional Russian stove, and all of the accoutrements necessary to a traditional peasant household, including a table, some benches for the family to sleep on, and a few cooking utensils. The Russian stove is a giant contraption, that takes up about half the room. In Russian fairy tales the lazy brother always “sleeps on the stove,” which should be taken literally, because there’s room for about three lazy brothers to warm up and loll about on these things. Our tourguide told us that the way the stoves worked involved the mother of the household waking up at 3 am and starting the fire. She then waits for the entire house to fill with smoke. Then open go the windows, the smoke flows out, and the room begins to heat up, just in time for pa and the boys to wake up and demand breakfast before heading out to the fields. Central heating is over-rated.

So, with the endlessly notable exception of the architecture museum, our Novgorod excursion wasn’t exactly something to write home about. (Ooops!) But it was a really cool feeling to return to Petersburg and have it be familiar, and to actually think of ourselves as coming “home.”

I just wrote four pages on the least interesting of the three cities I wanted to write about. Hooo boy. Okay, I abort. I’ll try to get to Moscow and Vyborg soon, as they were both infinitely more fascinating. But hopefully those four pages will give you something to chew on for a bit. I hope all is well with all of you, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Love,
Annie

Grocery Store Stream of Consciousness

This update comes to you after my having looked over the previous emails I’ve sent, and realized that I’ve come a long way! I also realized that a lot of what I mentioned before is no longer true. Living here isn’t really a daily adventure anymore – it’s just life. I’m not surprised anymore when my host babushka speaks Russian to me, and I don’t just follow what she’s saying, but actually understand each word that she says.

I don’t think twice about taking public transportation – I’ve taken buses, trams, trolleys, cabs, the metro and marshrutkas, all without worrying about it. (NB: A marshrutka is kind of like a cross between a bus and a cab – they’re minibuses or vans that are numbered like buses and follow the bus routes, but you hail them like cabs and have to tell the driver when you want him to stop.) Also, usually the main streets the bus hits are printed on a sign on the outside of the bus, and I know the city well enough at this point that I can pretty much figure out whether the particular bus is going to take me where I want to go.

Also, if I need to buy something, I know for the most part a) whether it’s reasonable for me to expect to find it in Russia and b) if so, where to get it and c) how to know when I’m being totally ripped off. In example: I’ve spent several weeks questing to find the cheapest Diet Pepsi in the city. Once I found it for 16 rubles a bottle, but that was nowhere near anywhere I go regularly. I can usually find it for about 24 rubles at most grocery stores, but since it isn’t 16 I never stock up, so when I want a Diet Pepsi, which is always, I usually just buy one at school for 30. You don’t have to tell me that doesn’t make any sense, economic or otherwise. Anyway, I’ve gone into every grocery store I’ve passed for about three weeks now, and finally found 18 ruble Diet Pepsi at a grocery store about three blocks from my school, so my quest is over, much to the relief of all of my friends, who are sick of talking to me about my Diet Pepsi Quest.

Of course there are still things to get used to, but for the most part I know what those things are and am either in the process of getting used to them or have given up trying so as to spend my emotional energy on pursuits that promise to yield more fruit than, for example, trying to get used to the fact that I can’t expect to eat spicy food again until June. It’s just to terrible to think about! (Parents prepare yourselves: we’re stopping at Baja Fresh on the way home from the airport.)

But independent of the Great Diet Pepsi Quest, I’ve developed quite a little penchant for trolling about in grocery stores generally. I’ll go into a grocery store and just walk up and down every aisle checking stuff out, be there for upwards of an hour, then leave without buying anything. Sometimes I’ll buy a candy bar or a box of cereal (or a Diet Pepsi) or some other little Russian goodie that I want to try out, but mostly I just like being in the grocery store and looking at all of the stuff they have or don’t have, and looking at the things people buy, how the stores are organized, etc. I know this sounds really weird. Even for me. Especially for me, actually, because in the States I hate grocery shopping and avoid it like the plague and get really overwhelmed and anxious in grocery stores. Which is also weird, I guess. And I know I’m in a city where I could probably go to a different museum every day for a year and see all of them, and I know that there are a million theatres and ballet companies and musical performances every day, and even if I don’t feel like being ‘cultured’ it’s spring and there are beautiful parks and walks along the river etc., and I’m spending all of my free time in grocery stores. I know.

I was planning on explaining my grocery store thing, but I ran into a bit of a technical difficulty – some sort of stream-of-consciousness chain reaction went off in my brain when I started to explain about the grocery stores, so I’m just going to get a lot of random rubbish out of the way, and then I’ll go back to the grocery store thing:

• In addition to every kind of beer on the planet, you can also choose from a fairly extensive selection of hard liquor at even the smallest grocery stores.
• It’s illegal to buy liquor in a grocery store after 11 pm, but beer isn’t really considered alcohol, so you can buy beer whenever you want.
• You can also drink it on the street or on the metro or in class, despite the law against drinking liquor in public.
• Same goes for mixed drinks, which you can buy canned at grocery stores. Canned Gin and Tonic is especially popular, but there are also alcoholic energy drinks and all manner of your typical mixed drink.
• You can buy beer in little roadside stands that are everywhere. I can’t think of an analogy in the US except maybe hot dog vendors in New York.
• There are also hot-dog-vendor-style huts that sell exclusively dairy products, bread products, tobacco products, and produce.
• The produce huts should not be confused with the random little fruit and vegetable tables: people sell fresh fruits and vegetables in these little improv markets where they sell bootleg videos and nylons and flowers and grated cabbage in large plastic bags. I’m pretty sure everything else sold in these markets is bootlegged, it’s literally just people with a bunch of stuff laid out on folding tables, and everything about the way this particular produce is proffered absolutely screams bootleg. Though I don’t pretend to be able to rightly comprehend the Wallace-and-Grommit style absurdity and intrigue that would accompany the bootlegging of vegetables.
• Although there is bootlegged liquor – any bottle of vodka that costs less than four dollars a bottle, and there are many, is probably bootlegged, which means diluted methanol followed by blindness and/or death, though I think the government has been cracking down on this. “Cracking down” in the actual sense of the word, not in the usual Russian government sense of the word.
• And lastly, stemming from the cabbage in plastic bags: this country, or at least the city, has a weird fixation with plastic bags. Everything comes in plastic bags. I mean EVERYTHING. You can buy milk in plastic bags. And mayonnaise in plastic bags. And salad dressing in plastic bags. And grated cabbage in plastic bags. Bananas come in plastic bags. Clothing stores give exclusively plastic bags. But at grocery stores, you have to pay for a plastic bag to put your groceries in, so people usually bring canvas ones. (Yay!) But the Cult of the Plastic Bag doesn’t stop at the plastic bag as a mere conveyance of recent purchases – oh, no! You can also buy rather more durable and, erm, fashionable? plastic bags at the improv markets described above, right between the socks and the birch bark baskets. So people carry these plastic bags instead of backpacks or briefcases. For example, women always carry cute little purses and NEVER backpacks or briefcases or shoulder bags or anything like that. Instead, anything that won’t fit in their purse they put in a plastic bag.

Whew! That was absurd. Sorry. I initially put all of that in the paragraph about the grocery stores, and they were nested parenthetical statements, but then I ended the paragraph with a dozen )’s in a row and realized that what I had done was ridiculous. So now, back to the kernel of all of that nonsense:

Foreigners don’t go to grocery stores, and I feel like when I go to grocery stores I’m getting to see a closer approximation of St. Petersburg as Russians see it rather than as Americans do. And let me just say, Russian grocery stores are absolutely nothing like American ones. And no two are alike, either. There are “western-style” grocery stores, but that just means they’re bigger than a 7-Eleven and they’re on the less-kassa-like end of the kassa system spectrum. Admittedly, these are the ones I usually go into, but they aren’t organized like American grocery stores at all. For example, there aren’t really snack aisles because there isn’t really snack food here per se. Rather, by the beer aisles, yes that ‘s’ was put there intentionally, (here’s where the first bullet above sprang from) you have beer snacks. Beer snacks include chips, which are either Lays, or these odd but tasty puffed potato things. Also instead of Sour Cream and Onion, they have Sour Cream and Dill flavor chips. But more than chips, beer snacks consist of dried, salted fish. In any number of varieties. A mind-boggling number of varieties, actually. There is also non-dried fish, but that’s a vodka chaser, not a beer snack. I don’t know.

Then, by the tea, there are the snacks that go “к чаю,” (k chayu) which I guess means “with tea.” But this same construction is used to say that this is the jacket that goes with that skirt, or this is the sauce you use for the fish, so it has this idea of matching involved. Or, more accurately, that whatever goes к the other thing has that relationship as its sole purpose and even its destiny – the jacket was made just to match the skirt, or the sauce wouldn’t exist if it weren’t to go on the fish. The snacks in this area are what you’d expect – little cakes and cookies and things like that, but all the same the к чаю phenomenon is something I don’t really understand. Whenever I’m having dinner, my babushka always offers me tea. Then she asks if I want something к чаю. But I thought I was having my tea with dinner, so what do I need to go with the tea? She usually then gives me a little chocolate jam roll or something. I usually think of this as dessert, but she always offers me dessert after dinner, so I think the cake thing was really just for the tea. But then one of my options for what I would like к чаю is always jam, and I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do with the jam… I know I don’t put it in the tea, because putting something in the tea is a different construction. Do I eat the jam with a spoon? Is there an implied, tacit piece of bread involved? I don’t know.

Anyway, back to the grocery store. They all pretty much have the feeling of scaled-down Costco or, for my east coast readers, Sam’s Club without the negative Wal-Mart association. Yogurt isn’t refrigerated, but rather just set up in a pile in the middle of an aisle. The stores aren’t usually big rooms with aisles, but rather three- or four-room mazes lined with shelves. Also, you can usually buy jewelry and cell phones at grocery stores.

So I like going to the grocery store, just because it’s different and I feel like I’m absorbing the “real Russia” without actually having to interact with people, which, although it invariably ends well, is really scary. But lately my grocery store addiction has grown more serious, and it’s been harder and harder to get a fix. The “western-style” stores just aren’t satisfying anymore! I need a new kind of store – a more exciting grocery store – a non-Western grocery store! So yesterday, in a froth of grocery store craving, I boldly entered two of the grocery stores by my apartment, which stores I had been eyeing ravenously in secret for some time.

The first was just overwhelming. I went in but was only in there for about 10 minutes, because there was just too much going on and I couldn’t figure it out. It was a giant warehouse of a grocery store, but everything was kassa system. So there were probably over 100 counters, each selling a really narrowly defined subset of groceries, and they were all jammed together, and it was just incredible. I think that particular store was a few levels above my current grocery shopping abilities, but I’ll go back when my Russian is better and after I’ve experimented with a few less-intimidating kassa-style grocery stores.

The second store is my new favorite. It was also a little overwhelming, and I’ll probably wait a few weeks to go back because I was kind of intimidated, but all the same it was my favorite grocery store experience so far. The basement of this particular store was a building store. (I saw a man coming out of it as I came in carrying some two-by-fours in a plastic bag. No, I’m not making it up for literary cohesion.) It was organized about like the other stores, but it was in a sort of run-down shopping complex, and so the clientele was different. By different, I mean drunk middle-aged men. Not exclusively, but there was definitely a good-sized contingent of drunk middle-aged men in need of groceries. They were all very good-natured shoppers. Also in this grocery store, there were two things I hadn’t seen before: first, bulk frozen vegetables. As in, a bin of frozen vegetables in the freezer instead of bags of frozen vegetables, and you take your scoop and take out as many scoopfuls of green beans or chopped potatoes or sliced mushrooms or berries as you want. That was really cool.

The second new experience was samples. In American grocery stores samples are pretty common, but I hadn’t seen anything even remotely resembling sample-giving in Russia. This particular sample was a mayonnaise sample. I was looking at the frozen bulk veggies, and a middle-aged woman was talking to the mayonnaise women, and the mayonnaise women called me over to try the mayonnaise with the middle-aged woman, and the four of us stood and chatted about the mayonnaise for awhile. By “the four of us chatted” I mean, of course, they chatted, and I smiled and threw the occasional nod or chuckle into the mix. The mayonnaise, which came in a plastic bag with a picture of olives on it, was quite tasty as far as mayonnaise goes.

After the mayonnaise, I made a cursory cruise around the rest of the store, grabbed an ice cream and a pack of gum, and got in line to pay. I was waylaid in making my purchases, because a crazy old man was standing at the exit chatting up the check-out girl. He started by singling me out to tell me about how he had been in school with the guy ahead of me in line, which made said guy laugh, and said check-out girl divert the conversation back to her, as she could tell I was a bit taken aback. The guy ahead of me finished paying, and the check-out girl asked if I could wait for a sec, because the old crazy man wanted to buy something without waiting in line, and none of us in line were about to impede his progress towards that end. This was a very good natured old crazy man, but crazy all the same. At this point a dog ran by. We’re still in the grocery store, mind you. The dog ran up to the line, from the area of the frozen bulk veggies, and came up to sniff my feet a bit, then ran over to the crazy guy. The check-out girl asked if it was his dog, he answered it was, and asked if he could have two Snickers bars. I was standing by them, so I gave the check-out girl two Snickers bars, she ran them up for him, and he paid for them, offered to buy one for the check-out girl, she politely declined, and he left. I paid for my gum and ice cream, and walked home in an extremely good mood!

I wasn’t actually intending that whole post to be about grocery stores. In fact, I was a little embarrassed by my grocery shopping habit, and so wasn’t going to say anything. But I’m glad I did, because look at all the fun stuff we got to talk about as a result! It was a fruitful topic, as it were. Haha.

Anyway, I hope everyone is well and enjoying spring weather. The weather here has been fantastic, and the city is all the more beautiful. I’ll try to write again soon, hopefully about something mildly interesting!

If anybody has a request for a literary style they would like to see employed in my blog please let me know

Boy, have I ever been delinquent in my email-writing! Sorry to have disappeared! But I haven’t written in so long mostly because I’ve been busy with lots of adventures, about most of which you, my captivated (more likely captive!) audience are now to be subjected to reading:

For my last post, I had devised a terribly clever organizational structure. You never got to see this structure in its full glory because I spent four pages writing about the first bit and never got to the rest of them. Since then, my list of things to write about has grown to an unwieldy full page in Microsoft Word, and I’m simply not up to organizing that. So, instead, I present you now with a collage of tasty morsels of Russian experience. A series of vignettes, if you will. (A thought here occurs to me: perhaps if I took less pleasure in writing full paragraphs of self-indulgent prose conveying absolutely no knowledge or meaning whatsoever this whole blogging business would be a bit more streamlined and I would be better able to achieve my goal of communicating to my readers the various goings-on in my life without causing them to be bored out of their gourds. Well, as my grandma says, (Hi, grandma!) “Things are tough all over!”) Onward!

Sex, Drugs, and 19^th Century Russian Literature
Our group recently took a tour of the Dostoevsky museum. The museum consisted of two parts: first, the apartment in which he lived with his family, and second, the neighboring apartment which has been snatched up by the museum for the purpose of housing the “literary exposition” portion of the museum. The first part was pretty straightforward. I gathered from the tour guide (though I can’t stress enough the fact that what I translate for you as having come from the tour guide is in no way intended to be taken as having been fully or in any way accurately understood, and any resemblance to an accurate translation is pure coincidence) that the furniture etc. in the apartment was not so much Dostoevsky’s as remarkably similar to it. This is true with the notable exception of, among a few other things, a package of tobacco and cigarette papers, on which package Dostoevsky’s daughter wrote that he had died at a particular date and time, and which package now lives under a big plastic bubble. The other exception is the divan on which Dostoevsky died, and the clock that was in his room and was stopped, according to Russian-famous-person custom, the moment of his death.

The literary exposition portion of the museum opened with a giant wall-map of St. Petersburg, on which were demarcated the locations of various of the plot elements of Dostoevsky’s novels. Dostoevsky was really into describing geography to a tee, and you can take a Crime and Punishment walking tour of the city so you can visit the apartments where all of the characters lived, etc. Except for the wall map, which was pretty cool, the exposition consists mostly of life-sized dioramas of all of Dostoevsky’s novels. At one point on our tour, we were standing by a window and happened to look out and see the neon lights of a sex shop right across the street. We all started to giggle a bit, hoping the tour guide wouldn’t notice that we were acting like pre-pubescent boys by being amused by the fact that we were on a tour of a literary museum and looking out the window at a sex shop, when the tour guide actually pointed out the sex shop to us! She then started a commentary about how Dostoevsky had written not about the high-society, politically minded Petersburg of Tolstoy, but rather of the poor, dirty, sin-ridden side of the city, and how his neighborhood had over time turned into a neighborhood that would be found in one of his novels! She concluded by saying that, in her opinion, Dostoevsky would be pleased to know that there was a sex shop across the street from his museum.

A Three Hat Day
I’ve noticed that the шапки (shapki – fur hats that are exactly like the fur hats you would expect to see Russians wearing in winter) that people wear here tend to closely mimic the wearers’ eyebrows. Old women with thin, wispy eyebrows generally have thin, fluffy, wispy hats. Young women with elegantly plucked and shaped eyebrows have elegantly shaped hats. My favorites are the old men with unruly, bushy eyebrows wearing giant, unruly, bushy hats.

Meta-McDonalds
So I’ve given in to temptation. I’ve been to McDonald’s here. Sometimes you’re homesick and you just need a cheeseburger. But it’s always a really weird experience for several reasons, including but not limited to the fact that if you don’t ask for ketchup they give you cheese sauce for your fries, there is a walk-up window, and people here actually treat McDonald’s as a restaurant as opposed to a “fast food joint.” All that’s fine, but what always weirds me out about going to McDonald’s is that by ordering a чизбургер (chizboorger – you’ll never guess what the English translation is!) I’m saying a word that is an American word that has been Russianized, and I’m saying the Russianization with an American accent. Just roll that over for a bit. It’s a source of endless amusement for me.

These Boots Are Made for Walking?
I threw my American fashion-sensibilities (what, you didn’t know I was a fashion diva?) to the winds and bought a new pair of fur-trimmed Russian-made boots. I love them. What I don’t love is the Russian boot ethos. Women here as a rule where knee-high leather boots with spiked heels and all sorts of crazy embroidery or beads or studs or other decoration. “Gasp!” you say. “How can they wear heels when there are three inches of icky brown muddy slush on the sidewalk, which slush we remember from your impossibly clever and endlessly interesting story about tucking your pants into your boots?” Well, that’s a fine question, but the real question is, how can they wear said boots without there EVER being even a SPECK or a DROPLET of mud on them? Not even a SMUDGE??? Seriously, there is not a dirty shoe in this entire country unless that dirty shoe is on an American foot. Women carry mini shoe-polishing kits and brushes in their purses and whip out the brushes on street corners while waiting for a light, and break out the polish on the bus on their way to work. I tried to keep my Russian boots in Russian condition, but I can’t help but miss the boots that these fur ones replaced. They were great – fashionable, comfortable, sturdy, etc., but their real virtue lay in the fact that they enabled me to tromp through mud puddles and bound over icy patches of slush with reckless abandon. Well, when in Rome…

The Great Fare Negotiation of ’07
The Metro closes in Petersburg around midnight and opens again around 6 am, regardless of the day of the week. So if you’re out past midnight and don’t want to stay out until 6, you take a cab home. But, while there are official cab services, they’re really expensive and it’s usually cheaper and easier and more convenient in every way just to take what is known here as a “gypsy cab.” Gypsy cabs are basically just people driving around who decide they want to pick up a few extra bucks by driving somebody somewhere. So when you hail a cab whoever happens to be out and about will stop, and then you negotiate your fare and get in. If they won’t give you the fare you want, you just say never mind, they drive off, and you start negotiating with the driver of the car next in the line that is invariable at least three cars long. I’ve actually gotten to be pretty good at negotiating cab fares, which is odd, because while I’m a fearless cab fare negotiator, I’ll go into a pharmacy for nail polish remover and wander around for an hour without buying anything because I’m afraid to ask a salesperson for help finding it. Anyway, now, for your reading pleasure, a re-enactment of my proudest fare-negotiating moment:

Our fearless heroine; quick-witted and graceful, which is to say, me: How much to Kazanskij Sobor?

Driver trying to fleece me: 200 roubles (about $8).

Heroine: 200? I don’t think so. Let’s say 80.

Fleecy: Fine, we’ll say 100.

Heroine: I can get to Vasilevsky for 100! (NB: This isn’t actually true. I’ve never gotten less than 150.)

Fleecy (unlocking back door): Okay, get in. 80 it is. (about $3.25)

Woot!

I Probably Shouldn’t Complain Too Much About This One Because I Still Don’t Actually Know the Order of the Letters of the Russian Alphabet Anyway
I had to buy some books for one of my classes. They were all novels in Russian, so I just went to a big bookstore downtown. As you’ll remember from the last story, I get really nervous asking salespeople for help. But I knew the authors and titles of the books I needed, and they were all fiction, so I figured I should be able to just find the fiction section, go along alphabetically by author, and then find the particular novels I needed. This didn’t work. I haven’t yet figured out how novels in Russian bookstores are actually organized, but here are some conjectures: a) by paper weight, b) by number of colors on the cover design, c) by date the publishing company in question decided they might consider printing the particular edition of the novel. So I had to ask for help. The saleswoman I talked to was quite friendly and helpful, but that doesn’t change the fact that my pleasure in lolling about in bookstores has been reduced for an indeterminate period of time.

Well, I’ve written upwards of three pages in Word at this point, so I think I’m going to cut myself off for now. But I hardly made a dent in my list, so never fear! Your excuse to not do your homework/your laundry/your taxes is not anywhere near to running out of material. I hope everyone is well!

Love,
Annie

mostly museums

Hi, everyone!

I haven't written in a while, and this update is long. Embarrassingly so. I mean really, this is a stupidly long email. I'm sorry! Maybe break it into little bits and read a little at a time? I'll try to be more regular and less self-indulgent in the future. Maybe. Also, this is only most of one part of what I had planned on writing. Hopefully the rest of this part and the other two parts will come out shortly.

I miss you all and love hearing from you, so drop me a line! Hope all is well!

Love,

Annie

Part the first: in which our heroine samples various of the historical, cultural and intellectual delights of her new city…

Kunstkammer
The Kunstkammer was the first museum in our sense of the word in Russia, and was created as Peter I's collection of medical oddities and other scientific what-have-you. Our tour started in a big room that had a bunch of telescopes in it. I gathered from the length of time we spent in this room that these were telescopes of some historical and/or scientific significance, and gathered from what the tour guide was telling us, in Russian, very little else. I was tired. But the view out the window was fantastic – the frozen Neva flanked by the never-ending green walls of the Hermitage.
We were then led up a flight of rather narrow and tightly spiraled stairs into a room with a big globe in it. The globe was handmade as a gift for somebody or other. (I did actually understand all of this, but the tour was a long time ago and I don't remember a lot of it.) Anyway, it was enormous, and hollow inside, and back in the day you and your hoop skirt and powdered wig could be handed up into it by your be-knickered beaux and his powdered wig and the two of you and select of your friends could sit inside the globe as it rotated around you displaying for your frivolous and bought-at-the-price-of-serfdom enjoyment a highly stylized portrayal of the constellations.
We then moved on to the real heart of the museum – the medical oddities bit. This is the part where you see stuffed two-headed cows and deformed fetuses in jars. I didn't much fancy the deformed fetuses in jars. Apparently Peter I's buddies went around and bought all of these fetuses from private collectors who had, in turn, bought them from surrounding peasants or their midwives. I found this whole thing really unsettling. Not only is it really gross to see a 250-year-old baby in a jar, but I couldn't help but be aware of the fact that the jarbaby was actually somebody's child. And that we were all gawking at it. However, I learned as we were leaving the museum that the collection had been created as a way of educating the Russian peasantry. Peter I, in is tireless pursuit of Westernization, was trying through his museum to help the peasants to understand that birth defects were a natural, scientific phenomenon, and not the work of evil spirits or punishment by the gods for some sort of transgression. So as much as I'm not keen on the idea of a "medical oddities" museum in general, Peter I earned some points in my book for having what I consider to be a good motivation.

Peter and Paul Fortress
There were lots of interesting things on our tour of the Fortress that either a) I didn't understand from our tour or b) have forgotten, but all of which I c) should have probably known external to the tour if I think of myself as a Russian enthusiast. Alas.
The one thing I do want to comment about here, though, is that the cathedral in the fortress is where all of the tsars and their families are buried. But they aren't really buried – they are each in a giant stone coffin set on the floor of the cathedral with a sign marking who they were and either the dates of their reign or their relationship to the reigning tsar in question. Seeing this was incredible and I have no confidence whatsoever in my ability to relate to you how moving it was.
But you read in a book, for example, or in a rambling email as the case may be, that Peter I founded this city on the gulf of Finland. But then you go and you actually see where Peter I lies now, and it all of a sudden becomes real and you understand that there was actually somebody alive at one point in whose brain actually occurred the thought, "Hey, this marsh would be a good place to set up shop and force everyone in this big, culturally and historically rich country to change everything about their way of life." And you see Catherine the Great, and you realize that she actually existed, not as some sort of omnipresent force that you can include in a cause-and-effect diagram for history class, but as a person who lived and breathed and probably had acne growing up.
Then there was a special room for the Romanovs. As I understand it, the Soviets wouldn't put the tsar and his family in the room with the rest of the tsars because they technically weren't royalty when they died, as they had been deposed then murdered. But the people weren't going to swallow just forgetting about them, so an adjoining room was built in which each of the members of the family has a large plaque on the wall, and there is a memorial to their deaths. You can't go into this room, but people leave flowers at the entrance.
All of this was really moving, and was the most real that history has ever felt to me. I didn't want to cheapen the experience by being a tourist and taking a bunch of photos of where the remains of real people were lying, but I also didn't want to forget that I had seen these people and that it had been important to me, so I did take a few photos and I'm glad I did.

Russian Museum
Our professor Kiril, he of the three-piece suit and awkward charm, invited our group to accompany him on a Saturday afternoon trip to the Russian Museum. He is an amateur artist, and has several times shown us photographs of his reproductions of famous Russian paintings. The Russian Museum is pretty much what it sounds like – an art museum that contains the works of Russian artists. The Hermitage is the one for the rest of the world.
The excursion was nice. I was a little out of sorts because I was getting over a bad cold/fever/flu-type thing, on which more later, but enjoyed the few hours spent there. They were having a special exhibit on Russian folk art, which I regret having not gotten to, and a special exhibit on Vrubel. I'm not a big fan of Vrubel. He's pretty well-loved among people with taste in art far less pedestrian than mine, but I feel that Vrubel painted a lot of Jolly Green Giants and put some rhinestones in their hair and called them devils… That was unfair. Excuse me. But Vrubel was the set-designer for a lot of the productions of the Ballets Russes, including for the premier of the Rite of Spring, every bit of which everyone hated in every way at its premier, but every bit of which was total genius, so I respect Vrubel for that and respectfully withdraw my bejeweled string-bean vendor comment from the record. But I still don't much care for him.
The permanent exhibit was really great, because we saw all of the paintings that Peter and Abby and I attempted to teach one another about in Russian Culture last semester. And, of course, they were stunning in real life. My favorite was Repin's painting of Stepan Razin. This is why: in Russian culture we learned a drinking song about Stepan (Stenka) Razin, who was a manly-man and leader of revolutions against various and sundry occupiers of Russia. In the song, as far as I can remember (Kira is probably reading this… I'm sorry I've forgotten everything!) our friend Stenka had captured a hot little peasant girl and was bringing her along on the boat with him and his warrior pals. Said same warrior pals were giving Stenka a hard time for going soft over his, erm, acquisition, so he retorted by essentially saying, "Oh, yeah? Well how's this for going soft!" and threw the poor gal overboard and she drowned. Please don't ask me why I like that song so much. I just think it's so funny!

Hermitage
The day after the Russian Museum we went to the museum to end all museums, the Hermitage. I said earlier that the Hermitage is where the rest of the world's art can be seen in Petersburg, and that's not an exaggeration. It's unspeakably enormous. We were on a two-ish hour tour and didn't even scratch the surface. Also, the original building of the collection is a palace, and so it was cool to stroll through the rooms and imagine what the tsar and his family and servants and guests and household staff and squatters (the place was huge and didn't have security cameras. There must have been squatters, no?) used the rooms for.
Our tour was mostly of classical art of various schools, and after the tour some friends and I trekked off in search of the modern art collection. What I managed to see this time around was mostly Matisse and some Picasso. The Matisse collection at the Hermitage is fantastic, and I promptly fell madly in love. Again, I don't know anything about art whatsoever, and so won't pretend to speak knowledgeably about it, but seeing room after room of Matisse just made me feel really warm and happy and alive. I think Van Gogh has been supplanted in the highly-coveted position of Annie's Favorite Artist.
I know that didn't do the Hermitage justice, but nothing can. It's just huge. Just really really big. And full of lots and lots of stuff. I mean lots of it. And it's free to Russian students (which includes me if I show my student ID and keep my mouth shut) so I'm sure I'll be making my way there again several times.

Ruslan and Ludmilla
I finally got to the Mariinsky Theater! On Friday two of my friends and I went to see Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla. I expected this to be a big event, for which we would need to get really dressed up, get tickets in advance, etc., and then be ushered into an overwhelmingly large and exquisitely decorated opera hall where we would sit in awe for several hours and then go home not an insignificant amount of money poorer. This wasn't how it happened. It was so much better.
The decision to go to the opera went something like this:

Scene: the hallway of our university, 4pm Friday
Dramatis Personae: Me, Ashley (a girl on the program who was also here last semester), Titus (a guy from the program who is a double-degree candidate in Russian and piano performance at Oberlin. Read: a distressingly talented piano player with whom its fun to be geeky about classical music but who puts my knowledge of same to absolute shame.)
Ashley: Hey, guys! So I was looking in the paper, and Swan Lake is being performed at the Hermitage tonight. Anybody want to go?
Me: Oooh! Yeah! Can I look at that? Hey, it looks like the Mariinsky is doing Ruslan and Ludmila tonight. That might be cool, instead.
Titus: Yeah, I'd be game for that.
Ashley: Okay, cool. So let's meet at the Mariinsky at 6:15?
Me and Titus: Sounds like a plan.

Ashley went home, but Titus and I didn't really have time to do that, so we went to get Shwarma (I don't know how to spell this and it isn't Russian and it's probably disease-infested and bad for you, but it's the greatest thing to have ever happened to the planet. Lamb and veggies and yogurt sauce in a hot flatbread that you buy in a roadside stand for like $1.50 and which they make right in front of you and which tastes like heaven.) Armed with Shwarma and still dressed in what we wore to school, Titus and I began the walk to the Mariinsky.
I expected the Mariinsky to be positioned on a hilltop, a glimmering beacon of high culture. (side/explanatory note: The ballet at the Mariinsky theatre is the best in the world. Nobody in his right mind cares to bicker about that. The orchestra's pretty hot, too. I know less about opera, but I imagine the Mariisnky isn't exactly at the bottom of the heap.) However, when we got into the neighborhood we had a little bit of trouble finding it! We saw a biggish building with a rounded top and Titus said, "That looks like it might be an opera house…" and I replied, "Yeah, I think you're right. Wow, it's just sitting there inconspicuously like it doesn't know it's the Mariinsky!" Slight pause… "Wait, like the building doesn't know?" I think I take some getting used to.
Anyway, we went in, waltzed up to the ticket counter, and bought three box seats for 400 rubles each. We bought the box seats because they were all that were left since we were wrong about the time and were there 20 minutes late instead of the hour early we thought we were, and thusly paid the 400 rubles (about $16) instead of the 100 that it usually costs students (see student ticket note for Hermitage).
The inside of the theater is beautiful, but pretty unassuming. It's beautiful in the way that a living room decorated with comfortable, well-loved and well-crafted antique furniture is beautiful, as opposed to the way a room decorated with furniture so expensive you only ever sit in it when entertaining and children are never allowed to touch anything is beautiful. That is, it was ornate and stylish, but also smallish and cozy, like you could really feel possession of it as your local theater if you went there often. The audience seemed to me to feel that way, too. I pictured conversations similar to ours among the audience members: "Hey, Ivan, after work ya wanna go shoot some pool?" "Nah, we did that last night. What about the opera instead?" "Hey, that's a good idea. Ruslan and Ludmilla is one of my favorites. Maybe afterwards we can go get a beer or something." "Yeah, cool." I loved that. Classical music is something that you should really get to experience and possess as your own, not something you should have to look at through a glass case. It felt at the Mariinsky exactly the way going to an opera should, in my opinion, feel.
As for the opera itself, the costumes were fantastic, the story and music were very Russian, which I enjoyed thoroughly, but the production on the whole was, to be honest, a little underwhelming. It just wasn't quite as polished as I was expecting. However, I've been told that it's the off-season and a lot of the company is on tour, and that it gets better towards spring. However, regardless of all of that, it was a fantastic show, I was on the edge of my seat and laughing and/or looking in awe exactly as I imagine a six-year-old girl might upon first glimpse of Cinderella's castle at Disneyland, and I'm totally hooked on opera now and, if I could, I would pitch a tent in the Mariinsky's unassuming foyer and just chill and go to the opera every other night.

pictures of my room, including the view out my window at 8 am

keys of doom, but only if doom were an irrational concept

Academics and Miscellany

Hello, everyone!

Well, things round these parts have finally settled into a sort of routine. Since last Monday, every morning I meet Irina and Emily on the fated corner of the last post, which corner I can now find with ease, and we take our beloved number 7 bus to our usual stop, after showing our bus passes to the grumbly lady with pink lipstick and a big fur ball on her head. (Number 7 is "our dear number 7" because, although there are several buses which could successfully convey us to our destination, number 7 is the only one equipped with a loudspeaker which calls out the names of the stops, which is helpful because the windows are not steamed up as I originally and, as it turns out, fallaciously, reported, but rather coated in sheets of ice much thicker than those which greet you on your car windshield some number of mornings during the winter.) We take the bus to campus, where, since Tuesday, we have been engaged in a battery of classes known as the RSL (Russian as a Second Language) Intensive. After Monday's placement exam we were divided into four groups, and each group attends three classes each day, but we take six courses in the group, so for some we met every day and others only once or twice during the course of the two weeks. My group consists of me, and my two good friends Emily and Courtney. Here follows what I'm sure will be a tremendously fascinating account of what those six courses are/were (we will continue to meet for some of these classes throughout the semester, but others were only for the language intensive. I'm unclear on which are which.):

1. Phonetics – The impeccably dressed and boyishly charming Kiril Kirilovich reads a phoneme in his sonorous yet shy voice, which he has us repeat over and over again in an effort to make us sound like native Russians. This call-and-response is accompanied by sidelong glances and muffled girlish chuckles among Emily and Courtney and myself.

2. Conversational practice and writing – Not exactly good for the self-esteem, this one. The goal here is to help us navigate the many idiomatic ways Russians have of communicating on a subject-by-subject basis. The result is the hard-edged Elena Nikolaevna teaching us five different words for the English word "class" and then telling us when to use which, and answering our questions with a sort of disdainful, shocked expression that unequivocally says, "Really? You're asking me that?? Well, I never!"

3. Grammar – The ebullient and endlessly charming Ludmilla Petrovna teaches us the finer points of Russian grammar in a manner that, while extremely enjoyable and inflating of the ego, does very little to forward the end of our mastering advanced grammatical constructions. A typical exchange consists of her telling us the rule and then, rather than explaining us the exceptions to the rule, of which there are invariably many, explaining that it's not our fault that there are exceptions, that we are her wise, beautiful, gentle, etc. girls, that Russian is a dreadful language and that these exceptions are simply dreadful, and best of luck to us darlings! Fortunately we covered at Swarthmore what we are covering now, so I can use class time jointly to review and refresh what I already know and bask in the praise of the red-headed and eccentrically made-up Ludmilla Petrovna.

4. Written language – In theatrically sing-song Russian, our professor attempts to teach us the nuances of academic and/or literary writing. She reads us poems and excerpts from literature, and then assigns us an essay. We usually have an essay assigned each day, so that's been difficult and I'm very grateful to have had some writing practice at Swarthmore to make this a bit easier. For our first assignment we were to use artistically abstract language to write a portrait of somebody, and the rest of the class had to guess of whom. I wrote rather a good little portrait of Elvis Presley, of which I am quite proud, and in which can be found such choice little tidbits as, "he began to eat food as rich as his voice was deep," and "his blue eyes sparkled like his blue costumes under the lights of the stage." Emily and Courtney appeared to have found all of this quite amusing, but the professor, I think, didn't quite get it. Alas.

5. AVK/SMI – I have no idea what those acronyms stand for other than boredom and gloom and unhappiness. We learn to read Russian newspapers. Mind you we learn how to read them. We don't actually read them. The course is taught by the one and only Kiril Kirilovich who, poor soul, is reduced to reading us the driest and dullest textbook that has ever been produced by the hand of man or beast, or for that matter vegetable or mineral, and then selecting for us as homework those of the exercises which, in his estimation, we might be able to stomach doing.

6. Lexicography (maybe? this is just my translation…) and word formation – this is my favorite course. (It would be, eh?) We spend two or three class periods learning about one root, and how it relates to different prefixes and suffixes to make different words. I like it. Grammar is a close contender for favorite class, just because I happen to be a bit of a nerd for such things as participles and word formation, but Vita, the professor at issue for this course, is a might bit better at professing than is Ludmila Petrovna, if maybe the worse for ego-stroking.

On Monday we take a big exam to place us into RSL courses for the semester. Then on Wednesday the semester proper begins. We will be taking eight credits of RSL, and then up to twelve credits of anything else. The program requires that I be registered for twelve total to stay on, and Swarthmore requires that I be registered for fifteen for my financial aid to continue to transfer. I registered for Russian Literature of the 1920s and 1930s in Russia and the West for four, International Law for four, and Democracy and Dictatorship: the last century of the Roman Republic for four. All three of those courses are taught in Russian. This was incalculably stupid of me. But there are a bunch of other classes I want to take, and there is a two-week shopping period in which our registration can change. So things will probably have changed a lot by the next time you hear from me. I might sign up for piano lessons, I might replace International Law with Gendered Aspects of Human Rights, and there is a course in the music department that, pending knowledge of its prerequisites, I really really really want to take, called (more articulately in Russian) Russian History in the Mirror of the Opera Stage. There are also a couple of intro. level philosophy courses I might attempt, a course on international human rights protection organs, and a course on the literary museums of Petersburg. So, considering that that is about three million credits all in Russian, and further considering that there are time conflicts to take into consideration, it's basically as though I haven't registered for anything yet. I think I'll end up taking sixteen credits in all, so I'll have to settle for two of the above-mentioned courses.

I'll wrap up this rather uninteresting update with some of the mildly amusing adventures and accomplishments in my life over the last couple of weeks:

I successfully bought a bus pass. Turns out I bought the wrong bus pass, but I did get the one I wanted and asked for, I just wanted the wrong one.

Similarly, although I have now mastered the art of getting from the metro to my apartment, I have yet to figure out how to take the bus home from campus without using the metro. Baby steps. I have, however, successfully made my way onto Nevskij to meet up with people or go to cafes or shopping or whatever several times. Always taking the metro home, of course.

I finally figured out how to use ALL of the keys to get into my house!!! This is by far the biggest accomplishment of the last two weeks. Remember there are five or six of them, depending on whether my babushka is home, and they all work in different ways, none of which even remotely resembles an American key. I took a picture of them, which I will post on my blog when I get a chance

My babushka, much to her chagrin as she believes one ought not to drink cold beverages in winter, purchased for me some requested apple juice. It is "My family" brand, and on the carton is posed what appears to be a family of four Aryan-race Amway salesmen clad all in white who seem very pleased with the thought of making available to me that special happiness which only their apple juice can provide. Turns out they are right. It is, in fact, very good apple juice, much more resembling fresh-pressed cider than anything you'll find in the typical American grocery store.

My friend Emily got sick the other day, and her host mother offered to put a cabbage on her head to help her feel better. Better than a cat, I suppose, which is what other Russian host mothers have offered to do.

I saw on television this morning that there is a Russian television equivalent of the show Judge Judy. Just think about that. The two thoughts that popped into my head: 1. the Russian legal system works now, does it? and 2. it's a "show" about a "trial." put those words together and see what turns up.

I'm in Russia, where people drink tea. I was so looking forward to drinking lots and lots of yummy Russian tea. I even declined to bring some of my beloved Lady Gray to Russia with me, thinking I would be too busy drinking authentic Russian loose-leaf from a samovar. Everyone here drinks Lipton's. Everyone. Lipton's. It's everywhere. I have Lipton's every morning at breakfast, Lipton's at the internet café, Lipton's in hotels… Lipton's. But then one evening I was sitting in a café, (interesting side note: the café is called Кофе Хаус – Kofe Haus – Coffeehouse) ordered some black tea, and it came in a little teapot. So I poured myself a cup, and what should pop out of its spout but a tea leaf! A TEA LEAF!!! So I opened the lid of the teapot and found tea in there! There were leaves just happily floating and bobbing about! It was a good day.

Well, that post was pretty long, so I'll desist. But we've been on a couple of interesting excursions, the post regarding which is guaranteed to be much more interesting, so stay tuned and don't get scared or bored reading the subject line of the next email I send.

Love,
Annie

Dr. Zhivago eats his weight in borsch

Yesterday I moved in with my host mother, Alla Alexandrovna, the babushka I had been hoping for! She lives in a big Soviet-style apartment building on Vasilevsky Island. There are two rooms, a туалет (tualet – toilet) and банная (bannaya – bath and sink) and a kitchen. My room is sort of the library/study/living room. There is my bed, two chests of drawers, a wardrobe and a bookshelf. As in most Russian apartments there aren’t any rooms designated only as bedrooms, so the space she cleared out for me consists of three drawers, the wardrobe, and two shelves, although I’ve also annexed the windowsill and the top of one of the dressers (on top of the other is a television). There are also two chairs and a little table where I can do my homework. Her room is not much different, although a little bigger – she has a bed, a chest of drawers, a bookshelf and a television. (I’ll post pictures on the website.) Overall I am very comfortable here. The apartment is very old, and its in pretty bad shape – peeling wallpaper, holes in walls, etc. But she is very proud of it and keeps it very tidy. Her husband died of lung cancer when he was 40, so she was a single mother who worked three jobs in order to be able to afford to put her son through school and eventually buy this apartment, so it is understandably very important to her.

Alla Alexandrovna and I get along extremely well. She lives alone, and so hosts students in order to have somebody to dote on, which she does very effectively! I think the main pleasure in her life is watching me eat. Yesterday when I arrived, she offered me обед (obed – the main meal of the day around 2 or 3 pm). I sat down in the kitchen, and she served me an enormous bowl of homemade borsch, which was delicious. Having heard a million times during orientation that not finishing food that has been served you is extremely rude, I finished the entire pool-sized bowl. Then came everything else. She followed the borsch with a chicken breast, some creamy, cheesy mushrooms, and an absolute mountain of fried potatoes. All the while I’m drinking cup after cup of tea (I told her I like my tea with milk and sugar, so she heats milk for me at every meal). It was a lot of food! I ate as much as I could, and tried to run some damage control by telling her that I don’t usually eat that much, and she seemed more or less to understand. I had heard warnings about her and her food-loving habits from the people on the program, so I knew I needed to stand my ground early to avoid bursting from too much food! After dinner we chatted for a long time. I followed most of it, I think… it was interesting to hear about her life and I told her what I could about mine. She was four years old and living in Petersburg (then Leningrad) during the blockade, and after the war she went to school and became a radio engineer and translated German technical documents. It will be interesting to hear, or at least understand!, more about her life as the semester goes on.

Breakfast was another adventure. She had made me kasha with mushrooms, four бутерброды (buterbrody – open-faced sandwiches, sort of… a piece of bread with meat and/or cheese on top), yogurt, and tea. I was still getting over obed from the night before! So, again, I ate what I could. I told her last night that I wanted to try lots of different Russian foods and “eat like a Russian,” and she is really excited by the experiment. So she tells me over and over again that if I try something and like it we’ll make it again, but to tell her if I don’t like it. So I did what I could to again tell her not to make me so much food all at once!

Okay, enough about food. On to today’s adventures. Today we were tasked with getting to the university on public transportation. Fortunately two of my friends, Irina and Emily, live near me so we decided to take the bus together. I left the house in the morning to meet them on the corner right by my building. However, upon leaving the building I was not on a street but rather in a big courtyard with fifteen different playgrounds and buildings all over the place, and had no idea which way to go. So I headed for the first street I saw, thinking I could then figure out where I was and go from there. So much for that. Street signs are overrated, anyway. After not too long I got out my map anyway just to look at what might have happened. So I’m standing near a playground, looking at my tiny little pocket atlas (which the program gave us and is extremely helpful – it’s about as big as a passport but all the pages are blown up so you can see everything) when a woman walked by and grumbled «что ты!» (shto ty) This literally means “what are you” but it’s sort of a rude-ish shocked type of expression that basically means “who do you think you are?” or “what are you thinking?” or something like that. I, however, decided that in this situation it must have meant she wanted to help me J. So I asked for directions to the appointed corner, and she pointed me in the right direction. Off I went with a renewed sense of confidence, only to find that a building was blocking the outlet. So I found a way around said building and eventually made it to my corner only 15 minutes late! Oh, boy. I’ll have to leave earlier tomorrow…

So I met the gals, and we trotted off to the nearby bus stop. We successfully boarded and paid for our bus ride. However, it being freezing outside and not quite as freezing inside, all of the windows were steamed up so we couldn’t see where we were going AT ALL. So Irina asked the driver to please let us know when we got to our stop, which she obligingly did about 20 minutes later and we successfully arrived at the university exactly on time, absolutely no thanks to me!

The afternoon was pretty uneventful – we had a placement exam to decide what level of Russian classes we would be taking starting tomorrow. Regular courses start in two weeks. Then a bunch of us went on some random errands – ATMs, electrical adapters, ID card photos, etc. Pretty uneventful.

Then it was time to go home. I was on my own for this part, as Irina and Emily had already left. So I decided to take the metro so I would know where to get off, so it would be easier not to get lost. Famous last words. I got to the metro station, where there was a herd of people about 150 strong crowding to get in the door. So I jumped right in and pushed and shoved my way into the station and onto the escalator. St. Petersburg was built on a marsh/swamp, so the metro tunnels are extremely deep. I timed it, and it takes over two minutes to ride the escalator onto the platform. I found my train successfully, and took it successfully to the appropriate stop. At this point I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. I spoke Russian while buying things all day, I navigated the public transportation system successfully… go me!

But when I got off the metro, it wasn’t what I expected at all. I expected to come out of the station on a street corner, where I would be able to see what streets I was on and make my way home. I had a route planned out on my handy atlas map and everything. But when I came out of the tunnel, I was in a giant market of some sort, and had absolutely no idea where any street was, much less the one I wanted. I eventually found a street, and on it was a sign pointing towards a street very close to mine, so I followed the sign. After crossing a bridge (tiny bridge – just a canal) and walking for quite awhile, I finally figured out what street I was on and pulled out my atlas. Unpleasantness followed. I had gone way out of my way, backtracking was not a workable option, and instead I had to go out on this big old loop in order to get on my street. I had already been walking probably 15 minutes by this point, and keep in mind that it’s St. Petersburg in winter at night. But, as I am an intrepid explorer by nature, and bearing in mind my blinding success with purchasing a power adapter at a kassa-system electronics store that afternoon, I kept my spirits up and started trudging. I trudged for a while. Then I trudged back over the canal from before, but via a different bridge. I trudged past a grocery store. I trudged past a park. (Is the theme song from Dr. Zhivago ringing in anybody else’s ears yet?)

At this point I might note that trudging in snow is tiring. So a snow-trudger might consider moving to the parts of the sidewalk where the snow is thinner and either passers-by have packed the snow really tightly, or the snow has simply melted away from all the people. However these inventive snow-trudgers will be disappointed, because at 8pm the clear patches are not clear patches, but ice patches, and the snow-trudger might fall on his or her bum, and then be thankful that he or she was wearing a big puffy coat to break his or her fall, although his or her wrist might be a bit sore afterwards. This is all theoretical, of course! But the snow-trudger will invariably get back up, and continue on his or her merry way. Past some apartment buildings. Past several more grocery stores.

Finally I reached a street that looked like it could very well be the street I was looking for. A man walking his dog happened to pass me, so I used my Mad Russian Skillz to ask for directions, and successfully obtained them. So I continued on my way, and finally found my street! Yay! Now it was just a matter of finding my building. So, naturally, I just looked for the giant, cement, run-down, Soviet-style apartment building. Well, that didn’t work. So I looked for the brightly illuminated signs clearly demarcating which building was which. Hmmm… for some reason I couldn’t find those signs… so I found a woman walking her child and asked her which was building 45, and she pointed it out to me. Another success! Now it was just a matter of finding my entrance! After passing two or three exceedingly unfamiliar doors, I finally found one that looked a wee bit less unfamiliar, and tried my key. (This particular key is a little metal circle that you hold up to another little metal circle, and if the door beeps then you can go through.) It worked! So in I go and onto the lift. Now it was just a matter of finding my floor!

My apartment is number 315. I assumed that would be the third floor, as it would be in America. But I remembered Alla Alexandrovna reminding me in the morning that it was actually the fourth floor. I reasoned to myself that maybe there aren’t apartments on the first floor, so that makes sense. So I go to the fourth floor. Outside the elevator is another locked door. My outside the elevator key, a small key with bumps on the handle, didn’t work in this door. Then I noticed something curious – there is an intercom outside of every outside the elevator door for each apartment behind the door. The apartments listed were in the 250s. That was odd… why would a 200 apartment be on the fourth floor? So I thought perhaps it wasn’t organized by floor as in America, but rather by section. Perhaps if you went through one door you got to the 100s, another door the 200s, etc. So I had found myself in the 200 section and needed to find the 300 section. I felt very clever. So I went back downstairs, out the door, and around the corner to the next entrance. But my round circle didn’t make the door beep. Instead the door buzzed angrily. Something was amiss. Maybe that first door was my entrance after all?

I slowly and confusedly went back to the original slightly-less-unfamiliar-looking-door. I made the door beep and went back into the lift, trying to figure out what the heck to do next. I had found the metro station, I had found the street, I had found the building; how was it possible that after all that I couldn’t find my apartment? I was in my building for crying out loud! Then it hit me: the numbers don’t make any sense at all and get bigger as you go up. So on the fourth floor are the 250s, and on the fifth the 260s, etc. I knew I remembered Alla Alexandrovna saying something about four and floor, and so I decided to try the fourteenth. Success! There was apt. 315 written on the intercom. Now all that was between me and home was the smallish bumpy key through the outside the elevator door, then the long pole key with a single tooth which, if you twist it in a particular combination of ways and pray to the right gods will unlock the top lock of the apartment’s outside door, then the smallish smooth key that would unlock the bottom lock of the apartment’s outside door, then the long pole key with two bumpy teeth for the top lock of the inside apartment door, then the long key with the holes in the pole that would unlock the bottom lock of the apartment door. So, naturally, I rang the buzzer so that Alla Alexandrovna would unlock all of the above-mentioned impediments to my arriving at home and let me in.

And after my long trek home after a long day in the city, I was ravenous. Which I think made Alla Alexandrovna very happy.

Promised Kassa note

So the касса (kassa – cashier) system in Russia is a throw-back to the Soviet union. You go into a store, and all of the goods for sale are on shelves behind counters. You aren’t supposed to go behind the counter to fetch your goods, but rather you tell the person behind the counter what you want, and they write down its price on a slip of paper. You then take the slip of paper to the cashier. Sometimes there is a different cashier for every section of the store. The cashier takes your money, and then prints out a different receipt for you. You take that receipt to the employee who originally helped you, and that employee gives you what you bought.

Besides being not a little bit inefficient, the kassa system is extraordinarily mystifying and daunting for foreigners. For example, what you want to buy isn’t always visible. So when I went to buy my power adapter, for example, I went to the electronics store. There were a bunch of different counters, none of which had power adapters behind them. So I had to pick a counter that looked like it might maybe have something to do with power adapters sometimes. I then have to push my way through a crowd, and avoid having my “place in line” (yeah, right) be taken by somebody more forceful than I. After finally getting the employees attention, I have to actually ask him (not point, as I would so like to do) if he has a power adapter, and if it is a Soviet-sized adapter as my European-sized adapters don’t work in Alla Alexandrovna’s Soviet-era apartment, and then answer his questions etc. Then fight my way through the crowds to the disgruntled cashier, have another conversation in Russian regarding price, and then back to the keeper of my power adapter who hopefully hasn’t by this time forgotten me and either lost or sold to somebody else my much desired product.

This is why the successful purchase of goods is always something to write home about!

So the formatting was messed up on those photos... sorry! But you shouldn't have too much trouble matching caption to photo :).

This is Natasha, Emily and me in front of the Neva. You can see the solid ice along the banks.
Courtney and me in front of the Smolny cathedral. It was a bit lighter than this, as can be seen in the next picture, but the moon was out.

Nastya, Courtney, me and Irina. Again, Smolny cathedral.

Me and Courtney in the hotel room at night... we all hung around and consumed the snacks and beverages that had been successfully purchased at the grocery store, kassa system notwithstanding.

First Impressions

Actually written Sunday, 1/28/07, but posted when I got around to it. More later :).

Disclaimer: This email is for my first impressions of my new city. I have a lot of them. This email will be a long one. Those of you who were unwillingly subjected to my travel emails of 2 years ago from Australia have, I hope, developed either an immunity to them, or at least some coping mechanisms. As for the rest of you… I’ve tried to make it entertaining. We’ll see what happens…

We arrived late last night in Petersburg, after a long flight on Rossia airlines, in a plane that was not exactly new and was decorated with gold and emerald green zebra stripes. We are staying in the Hotel Rus’, which is right off Nevskj Prospekt, the Champs Elyssie of Petersburg, although the hotel appears to have been the unfortunate victim of a gang war between the 1960s and the Jetsons. I have a roommate, Natasha, who is on the program with us but wasn’t able to make it to orientation. So far she and I have been getting along very well. Our room is quite comfortable, despite the late ‘70s office-style decoration (not to mention the Soviet-era wood-paneled conference room in which we had our orientation this morning…).

In fact the appearance of the whole city seems to be in the midst of a bit of an identity crisis; not between the 1960s and the Jetsons, but rather Russia’s epic battle between the West and Russia’s own traditions. Much of Petersburg is exactly what I expected - broad, snow-covered avenues bordered by pastel-colored and ornately decorated stately buildings in the distinctly French-Dutch-Italian style of Peter’s city. insert historical note But neon lights and flashing signs bearing strange Russianizations of American culture are pervasive; e.g. Карлс Джунер (Karls Djunier: Carl’s Junior) and Чикенбергер (Chikenberger: Chicken Burger).

So this afternoon, after a brief orientation meeting, some members of the group went on an expedition to get some American dollars with which to pay our host families tomorrow. We went to several ATMs, none of which had dollars. We then found a bank and decided to ask them. Here’s the exciting part: I asked them. Then they answered. Then I asked a follow-up question. They then answered my follow-up question. Then I said thank-you. IN RUSSIAN. Then on to the next bank – same thing. And finally, on the third bank, my efforts succeeded not only in having a conversation, but in obtaining money. Woot! Similar experiences occurred throughout the evening – I purchased time at an internet café IN RUSSIAN and purchased some water and snacks at a grocery store not only IN RUSSIAN, but also at the mercy of the kassa system. insert касса note

So on my first day in Petersburg, I successfully spoke Russian with Russians to get what I wanted! It feels fantastic! And I’ve got to say, I feel really proud of myself. I expected that the first week or so, at least, I would be really shy and try and get other people to ask questions and buy things, etc., but I just went for it and was met with moderate success. So I think I get a gold star for today. It’s amazing to me that all of the symbols, words and phrases I learned while sitting at a seminar table with a bunch of other Americans in Swarthmore, PA actually has meaning to a bunch of people in another country. It just sort of seems like a sort of leap of faith to be able to go to a country in which you have no experience whatsoever and expect to be able to communicate with people. It’s a pretty cool world we live in, I guess! (They told us during orientation that culture shock usually begins with a “honeymoon period” followed by reality hitting and a person’s getting really depressed, then moderately happy, then moderately depressed, and continuing on until said person is just sort of content and settled. Any guesses as to my stage?)

Later in the afternoon we took a bus tour of the city. The tour guide gave the whole tour in Russian, so while I understood basically what we were looking at and how it came into existence, there were probably a bunch of nifty factoids that I would usually be more than happy to share, but of which I am sadly completely unaware. But this tour was where it finally sunk in that I’m actually in Russia. You’d think that the Soviet hotel and the Russian speaking and the cold shower would have clued me in, but I hadn’t really stopped to think about it. But then we were driving down Nevskij and I caught sight of an orthodox Russian-style cathedral. As we approached it, I saw its onion domes, bright colors, icons… the whole nine yards. I sat there and looked at the cathedral, and at the fur-clad pink-cheeked passers-by, and all of a sudden it hit me. I’m in Russia. The same Russia that was ruled by tsars for hundreds of years. The same Russia whose music was created by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. The same Russia with the rich folk culture I’ve been learning about for so long – with their superstitions, folk music, and fairy tales. The same Russia that Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Pushkin wrote about. For that matter, the same Russia where Raskolnikov and my beloved Pierre Bezuhov found their redemption, and where Levin mowed his fields. (Explanatory note: Raskolnikov is the main character of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, in which he kills a pawnbroker then mopes around the city whining about it for 600 pages. Levin is the only well-balanced character in Anna Karenina, and he mows his fields with his peasants for a good 40 pages or so, which turns out to be quite a meaningful and redemptive experience. And finally, Pierre is my absolute favorite character in all of the literature I have ever read or probably ever will read – in War and Peace he bumbles around for about 1300 pages before he finds free will and meaning, takes control of his life, and becomes a strong and dignified human being.)

So yes, I am in fact in Russia. On a much less self-absorbed and awed note, there are two observations that I would like to make at this juncture. First, you CAN NOT escape techno-ish dance music at every turn. In lobbies, in restaurants, in stores, in elevators… it’s like a dance party all the time. On the one hand it’s rather distracting, on the other I feel extremely hip.

My second observation has to do with boots and their proper usage. In Oregon, if you tuck your jeans into your boots it means you’re off to feed the pigs or milk to cows or ride a horse or something. On the East Coast, tucking your jeans into your boots means that you want to look cool and European. As I desire to send neither of those messages, I always wear my jeans outside of my boots. In Russia, however, wearing your boots with the jeans tucked in means simply that you don’t want to be a total idiot and have to wear three different pairs of pants in one day because you spent all afternoon traipsing around the city getting your pants totally soaked in the three inches of brown, slimy, disgusting snow-dirt-mud-slush that makes its home on every sidewalk, street, and staircase. I learned that this is the meaning of such a fashion statement in Russia today. I learned this lesson the hard way. I hereby vow to wear my jeans inside my boots at all times.

Okay, that’s all for now. Tomorrow we move in with our host families, and Tuesday we take a language placement test in preparation for language classes starting Wednesday. We will have two weeks of the language intensive before regular classes start. I hope all is well with all of you! I’d love to hear how everything is going back home.

Love,

Annie