So then, I took the train to Moscow. There was a woman and teenage-ish girl from Ярослав (Yaroslav) (maybe, if memory serves), and then another woman from St. Petersburg going to Moscow, as well as a family from the Caucases going home. We chatted, with the woman from St. Petersburg joking that I was a spy. Although from St. Petersburg, she had no particular love for it, and the older woman having lived, I think, in St. Petersburg and studied in Moscow (or the reverse) chided her lack of patriotism; she herself loved St. Petersburg far more than Moscow, saying that St. Petersburg was the cultural center, and Moscow was simply торгова [commercialized]. She was also fairly racist, not liking Armenians, Georgians, or Blacks. Вот.
I got to Moscow, took the metro to my stop, and then got fairly lost, since there was no way to know which way to go from the metro (left or right). I, of course, picked the wrong way, and this was further complicated by the fact that I expected to cross train tracks, and in fact I did (just not the right ones), even though it was the wrong way. Russia's oft lack of street signs didn't help either, nor did the fact that it was dark, and my map doesn't have all the streets on the overview-of-the-city side. I asked some other people who didn't know (though it was indeed close), and eventually two guys got me a cab for 200 rubles ($8) and had me buy them each a beer as well. Whatever. On the plus side, I'd seen an internet cafe, so I kept that in mind for later. So, much later, exhausted from walking around for maybe an hour with my suitcase and backpack, I reached the hotel, which was fairly annoying. The elevators are Russian-style, like the dorms - i.e. they are frustratingly dysfunctional. I can't take the stairs due to renovations, which, walking to my room from the elevator (from one end of a U to the other) I pass all sorts of construction. The room is frustratingly arranged; the outlets are behind a (small) desk, the bathroom is raised for some reason, so stepping out I pratically fell the first few times, plus there's a few-inch lip on which I stubbed my toes a few times. There's no soap dish in the shower, so I have to go back and forth to the sink. The map to and from the metro that they give is of little help, as half the streets are unmarked, and some are not streets, but you wouldn't know this because the thick red line denoting the routes occludes parts of it. The first few times I found my way back and forth completely by accident.
Anyway, the next day I went to the city center, and finally saw the Kremlin, right there! It was unbelievable to really be there. I walked around all day before meeting my friend Natasha at 5. We went to a traktir, called "rakes" (I've forgotten the Russian), and met up with a friend of hers, who also had apparently been at the New York Institute last year, but I didn't remember him. After dinner, he had to go, and so Natasha and I continued to walk around, but in circles, seemingly unable to escape Red Square. She admitted she didn't really know the city that well herself; her friend had chided her for living there for 23 years and still not knowing it.
The next day at breakfast (also mediocre), I heard my name and turned around, even as I realized how silly it was to respond to my name so far away from anyone who would know me. Well, much to my surprise, it was Lidia (from Italy)! She and her mom happened to be staying in the same hotel, and indeed, two doors down from me. How about that. I walked around the city center for a while, and saw the inside of St. Basil's cathedral (the famous one- the one that you probably think is the Kremlin). Anyway, it was old (15th century?) but wasn't terribly exciting. Shortly thereafter I left and some sort of military parade/demonstration began in Red Square! Neat. Later on I met up with Irina Kazanina, who was now also sporting a mullet. We went to the Tretyakov gallery, and then to ёлки палки (yolki palki), another traktir, with a funny name that, I guess, roughly would be the analog to "fudge" for another word that starts with "f". We then walked around a bit, and we agreed to change into bathingsuits and meet up at 12:15 (pm) with two of her friends (another Tanya and Katya, incidentally) to go to a "foam (soap suds) party." Well yeah, ok, why not. That was obviously interesting; it was basically a giant roller rink turned into a club (theme: 'fire', hence the soapsuds pretending to be fire-extinguisher foam), and indeed, there was a giant soap suds cannon as well as various apparati shooting it from the ceiling. My Москва для вас! (Moscow for you!) map didn't fare too well, especially since I forgot about it and left it in my pocket until the next morning.
The next day I hunted down the internet cafe I'd seen, which I found after a while. I walked around for a while, agreeing to meet with Natasha at 6:30 at Lubyanka (former KGB headquarters). There was a little street game at the Arbat with a bike whose wheel turned opposite the handle. For 100 rubles you could try it 3 times, to win 300 rubles for making it 3 meters, or 500 for 5. I watched for a while but no one succeeded (the attendant could, of course, ride it fine). I continued walking; later on I saw a Bentley/Lamborghini/Maserati/Ferrari dealership (earlier on I'd seen the Rolls-Royce one in passing). I'd seen several Ferraris in the city already. Новые рускии (new Russians).
So then to Lubyanka, outside the former KGB headquarters. I sat and wrote for a while outside the metro station, with a guard coming by every so often, then we walked a (long) while first through some boulevards, seeing a little history "exhibit" for Moscow's 860th (!) birthday, then walked down the embankment of the Moscow river, and got lost trying to find the metro, a trend that had been repeating itself throughout the trip. But eventually we found it, and went home.
Friday, August 31, 2007
More on Petersburg (and economics, incidentally)
So, while in Petersburg, after my trip to Pavlovsk, I met up with Polly Gannon at Cafe Zoom (where else?). We chatted for a while, obviously about my travels, and also her imminent plans to visit Helsinki, at whicih I mentioned the group on the train from Arkhangelsk. I also talked about how I watched the news much more while I was away in Murmansk, and said I'd also tried to watch it in Russian a bit, and remarked about some of the differences in coverage, for example about a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (group including Russia, China, and several other former Soviet bloc countries) meeting in Bishkek - the western news mentioned some joint military exercises, whereas, as far as I could tell, the Russian news didn't. I also talked about how nice it had been to be divorced from all the trivialities of the west that pollute the news, which had resurfaced again when watching, say CNN.
One thing that was especially nice to be away from was all the market crap. I was in Murmansk just as the "US mortgage crisis" began tumbling the markets around the world. I was bemused at all the finger pointing, and all-around pompous crap, with analysts going on about this and that. All of this хрен has always annoyed me, with rich executives suffering no fallout for any bad decisions, even when they're quite evident to everyone else who doesn't have a golden parachute - the constant sacrifice of long-term opportunities in favor of short-term gains that the market loves, followed by inevitable pain later on is something that constantly repeats itself. Layoffs of thousands solely to boost the stock price for a while, etc. I raised the example of Daimler-Chrysler - when they merged, there were serious questions raised, but hey, who cares, parties were thrown, the execs made truckloads of cash, and certainly they are not paying for the fallout. They're almost always not only insulated from these bad decisions, but practically rewarded for them. It seems to me like just a constant plundering, where people cash in on these short-term gains, and the unlucky end up holding the bag when it all collapses. Then the cycle begins again with something else.
Honestly, I saw this housing bubble coming a mile away; once I heard about home prices leveling off (and some other things), I figured it was all going to come crashing down, since people were buying houses they couldn't afford, waiting for the value to go up so they could sell it and make a profit. And somehow this constituted an economy. Banks were giving absurd mortgages to people with bad credit, no assets, little income, etc, and what do you know, housing prices didn't go up forever, and then things all went to hell, and now everyone's looking for someone to blame. Let's see, I, a simple student with little to no interest or training in economics, saw this coming a mile away from scattered bits of news in passing, as did many others - I read in the Times about an investor who somehow bet/hedged/however that works much of his company on this happening, and now is raking in the dough even as everyone else tries to figure out how this could have happened and who's to blame. How indeed. Where was all the money being made actually coming from? Thin air? Eventually you were going to have people buying houses and not being able to sell them at a profit - obviously that couldn't go on forever (there's a skit on the Simpson's with Disco Stu showing a graph of disco investing that ends at the 1970s, and he says, "if these trends continue...hey!"). But the problem was that the houses were now being sold to people who couldn't afford to keep them, and kaboom. The collapse came from zeal, and not ensuring that people could actually afford what they were getting in to. But of course in the US, nay-sayers are unpatriotic/terrorists/pessimists/hurting America/etc and just otherwise personae non-grata (help me out with the latin?). It was all like the internet bubble; it was all based on thin-air economics, and sure enough, it eventually dried up. It's like a pyramid scheme on a giant scale, and eventually you run out of new people for the bottom and it all comes crashing down. I wonder about Google as well, with its sky-high stock price, seemingly based solely on hype. Who knows.
Anyway, afterwards I met up with Lena, one of Katya's friends from the philological faculty, and we met at some Indian-esque with someone named Oleg who sells shoes, drives a black Land Rover, and flies to Moscow from time to time. Вот. He ordered us a bunch of things, most of which I tried and ate.
The next day, I met up with Julia Vorobiova (one of the staff, who took care of lots of stuff) at Ням Ням, the bliny place next to the dorms. We chatted about things, mostly languages, and then said our farewells, and later on that evening did I meet up with Katya and Tanya, again at Cafe Zoom, then went to Fidel and said our покаs. Until, hopefully, next year!
One thing that was especially nice to be away from was all the market crap. I was in Murmansk just as the "US mortgage crisis" began tumbling the markets around the world. I was bemused at all the finger pointing, and all-around pompous crap, with analysts going on about this and that. All of this хрен has always annoyed me, with rich executives suffering no fallout for any bad decisions, even when they're quite evident to everyone else who doesn't have a golden parachute - the constant sacrifice of long-term opportunities in favor of short-term gains that the market loves, followed by inevitable pain later on is something that constantly repeats itself. Layoffs of thousands solely to boost the stock price for a while, etc. I raised the example of Daimler-Chrysler - when they merged, there were serious questions raised, but hey, who cares, parties were thrown, the execs made truckloads of cash, and certainly they are not paying for the fallout. They're almost always not only insulated from these bad decisions, but practically rewarded for them. It seems to me like just a constant plundering, where people cash in on these short-term gains, and the unlucky end up holding the bag when it all collapses. Then the cycle begins again with something else.
Honestly, I saw this housing bubble coming a mile away; once I heard about home prices leveling off (and some other things), I figured it was all going to come crashing down, since people were buying houses they couldn't afford, waiting for the value to go up so they could sell it and make a profit. And somehow this constituted an economy. Banks were giving absurd mortgages to people with bad credit, no assets, little income, etc, and what do you know, housing prices didn't go up forever, and then things all went to hell, and now everyone's looking for someone to blame. Let's see, I, a simple student with little to no interest or training in economics, saw this coming a mile away from scattered bits of news in passing, as did many others - I read in the Times about an investor who somehow bet/hedged/however that works much of his company on this happening, and now is raking in the dough even as everyone else tries to figure out how this could have happened and who's to blame. How indeed. Where was all the money being made actually coming from? Thin air? Eventually you were going to have people buying houses and not being able to sell them at a profit - obviously that couldn't go on forever (there's a skit on the Simpson's with Disco Stu showing a graph of disco investing that ends at the 1970s, and he says, "if these trends continue...hey!"). But the problem was that the houses were now being sold to people who couldn't afford to keep them, and kaboom. The collapse came from zeal, and not ensuring that people could actually afford what they were getting in to. But of course in the US, nay-sayers are unpatriotic/terrorists/pessimists/hurting America/etc and just otherwise personae non-grata (help me out with the latin?). It was all like the internet bubble; it was all based on thin-air economics, and sure enough, it eventually dried up. It's like a pyramid scheme on a giant scale, and eventually you run out of new people for the bottom and it all comes crashing down. I wonder about Google as well, with its sky-high stock price, seemingly based solely on hype. Who knows.
Anyway, afterwards I met up with Lena, one of Katya's friends from the philological faculty, and we met at some Indian-esque with someone named Oleg who sells shoes, drives a black Land Rover, and flies to Moscow from time to time. Вот. He ordered us a bunch of things, most of which I tried and ate.
The next day, I met up with Julia Vorobiova (one of the staff, who took care of lots of stuff) at Ням Ням, the bliny place next to the dorms. We chatted about things, mostly languages, and then said our farewells, and later on that evening did I meet up with Katya and Tanya, again at Cafe Zoom, then went to Fidel and said our покаs. Until, hopefully, next year!
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Arkhangelsk back to St. Petersburg
One day in Arkhangelsk was sufficient. I walked around a bit in the morning before checking out, and parts felt like the Wild West, as I walked down a large dirt/mud road with bushes growing and wooden planks lining it as sidewalks. It certainly was not a heavily developed city. I then walked along the embankment, seeing a bunch of monuments and maybe the White Sea (Белое Море). It was sort of tough being just on my own.
I took the bus to the train station, and saw that indeed I could have taken the bus from the airport to the hotel and saved myself 290 rubles, but oh well. The train station was interesting; there was no evident way to move between the tracks, which I thought meant that all trains came on the same track next to the platform, but no, I then realized you just crossed the tracks directly and were careful about it.
The train ride itself turned out to be quite interesting as well. The view and sunset were nice, especially as we crossed a large bridge, and then at the next stop the remainder of my compartment filled up (3 more people). The woman next to me asked if I was also going to Finland; confused (and not sure whether I understood correctly) I answered that no, I was from America, much to her surprise. A woman from the next compartment came in and asked if I could switch so they could be together and I said sure. In the next cabin was a woman and two boys, and as it turned out the 7 of them were studying English, with this woman being their teacher. She spoke slowly and deliberately, telling me that they were on their way to Finland as part of a program in order to practice for a week. She told me at length about the program and its virtues; I had thought the boys were studying at a university, but in fact the one was in 8th grade, which again reinforced the quick maturity of Russian youth. In Murmansk, Katya had quoted, "if you want to live two lives, live in Russia." Shortly thereafter, the 4 other women came by so that they could practice. The two boys spoke well, but the women didn't have as easy a time, which was not surprising as children have a far easier time with languages. The teacher's birthday was a few days before, so we celebrated on the train until late at night with some wine ("Bear's Blood" from Bulgaria) and a surprising large amount of food, with seemingly every suitcase and backpack dedicated to bringing food along.
The next day we played some games, like "guess the object" (describe something and everyone else guesses what it is) and "at the party," which consisted of writing down responses to prompts ("name a famous polititician", "name a famous actress", etc) and then took on personae based on those answers, so you were the politician, your wife was the actress (or husband the actor) and so forth. We then had to introduce ourselves to each other, which got repetitive after a short while as each pair did it. Moreover, I had the good fortune of moving into the cabin where the window was the emergency exit and didn't open, and it was damned hot throughout the ride. In any case it was interesting to have the shoe on the other foot, that is, now I needed to speak especially slowly and clearly in order to be understood, and it was still too fast, just like the directors of our program needed to do when speaking Russian when we started. I shared my similar experience and assured them it would get easier eventually as now I could understand normally, however frustrating as it was may have been at the beginning.
I met up with Katya at the stop; she hadn't slept well, due to noisy girls discussing makeup, little dogs and cats in neighboring compartments, a pair of loud women, and various other things. Later on I visited and saw all that she'd described, and then returned and lay down to sleep. When I awoke, there was another batch of guests; 4 more students (a boy and 3 girls) and a fairly old woman. They were another group on the program from another town, with another teacher in an adjoining car. We chatted for a while, and then I joined them in their cabin. The teacher in the first group and the old woman in the second played the classic Russian hosts, stuffing me with food long after I'd had enough. The old woman asked, "Do you want something?" "No thanks," I replied; she proceeds to make a sandwich. "How about a sandwich?" "Well, all right." While I eat she makes another one sandwich, and when I finish that asks if I want another. I say "no thanks," but she says, "just one more," and makes another. She offers me another, which I turn down, and so instead gives me more cheese. She asks if I want tea or coffee, I say "no thanks," so she says she'll give me some coffee; I say tea would be better, and she asks "green or black," so I take some green tea, and she still asks whether I want to have both together, which I turn down. The quantity of food they all brought was astounding. After this, I went back and chatted with Katya for a while, and then we pretty much were arriving in St. Petersburg, so I returned to my car and wished the group well.
I took the bus from the station, which, for a surprisingly convenient change went straight to the station from a stop not far from me (although on the way there when I went to Murmansk I missed the stop as the station was occluded). While I was on the bus home, there were a bunch of cars with people hanging out of the doors and sunroofs, honking and going nuts. I thought it was something to do with football (fine, soccer), but they did it again in the other direction with many more cars, this time stopping in groups and making a mess of traffic, with cars ranging from beat up Lada station wagons to Supras (2 at least). I asked Katya if she knew what it was all about; she said it was хрен (horseradish).
On the way home from the bus stop I saw a woman yelling at and walking away from a car in a short black outfit, and as I passed her she started telling me that he had told her to сайдись ("come sit here") and how it was not right and so on. I assented as we walked and she continued to talk about it, a beer in hand at obviously at least a bit drunk. As we passed a nice Escalade she said something to the effect that she would have at least thought about it if he'd offered, but for a crappy little Lada, no dice. She asked where I was coming from, indicating the suitcase, and I said simply that I had returned from Arkhangelsk, and she said she'd been there. It was somewhat difficult for me to understand her, so I didn't say all that much, and she asked if I understood what she was saying. I said, "more or less," and shortly thereafter she came to the realization, "you're not Russian, are you?" and I said no, I was from America, and she started laughing hysterically. She said to wait while she stopped into a store from some more beer, then our paths parted soon after and she wished me well and to watch out for such jerks, and I continued home.
The next day I walked along the English embankment, where the Leutenant Schmidt bridge was finally done and operating! with some obvious confetti remaining in the streets and the temporary one now closed. The following day I went to Pavlovsk, which was yet another palace, not too extraordinary, but had a nice park. I was sort of disappointed that when I tried to order a ticket for taking pictures, they wanted to charge the foreigner price and all sorts of chaos broke loose until I showed my St. Petersburg student Id, since they didn't know there was a foreigner in the group (thus affecting prices). It's frustrating that it's still (and will always be) so obvious. I understood little of the tour, which was also frustrating. I was surprised to see my hostess coming back home when I returned, who was unhappy about coming back to the city, a sentiment echoed by Katya (life at the dacha is so much calmer than life in the city, obviously). When I came home my hostess asked about the cruise (of which she'd helped plan a great deal), and we looked at my pictures for a while that I took while on the cruise. Tanya and I met up with Katya the next day, and then Katya and I said "poka" (bye), and she quoted someone, that "лето - маленькая жизнь (summer is a small life)," and then the next day it was off to Moscow!
I took the bus to the train station, and saw that indeed I could have taken the bus from the airport to the hotel and saved myself 290 rubles, but oh well. The train station was interesting; there was no evident way to move between the tracks, which I thought meant that all trains came on the same track next to the platform, but no, I then realized you just crossed the tracks directly and were careful about it.
The train ride itself turned out to be quite interesting as well. The view and sunset were nice, especially as we crossed a large bridge, and then at the next stop the remainder of my compartment filled up (3 more people). The woman next to me asked if I was also going to Finland; confused (and not sure whether I understood correctly) I answered that no, I was from America, much to her surprise. A woman from the next compartment came in and asked if I could switch so they could be together and I said sure. In the next cabin was a woman and two boys, and as it turned out the 7 of them were studying English, with this woman being their teacher. She spoke slowly and deliberately, telling me that they were on their way to Finland as part of a program in order to practice for a week. She told me at length about the program and its virtues; I had thought the boys were studying at a university, but in fact the one was in 8th grade, which again reinforced the quick maturity of Russian youth. In Murmansk, Katya had quoted, "if you want to live two lives, live in Russia." Shortly thereafter, the 4 other women came by so that they could practice. The two boys spoke well, but the women didn't have as easy a time, which was not surprising as children have a far easier time with languages. The teacher's birthday was a few days before, so we celebrated on the train until late at night with some wine ("Bear's Blood" from Bulgaria) and a surprising large amount of food, with seemingly every suitcase and backpack dedicated to bringing food along.
The next day we played some games, like "guess the object" (describe something and everyone else guesses what it is) and "at the party," which consisted of writing down responses to prompts ("name a famous polititician", "name a famous actress", etc) and then took on personae based on those answers, so you were the politician, your wife was the actress (or husband the actor) and so forth. We then had to introduce ourselves to each other, which got repetitive after a short while as each pair did it. Moreover, I had the good fortune of moving into the cabin where the window was the emergency exit and didn't open, and it was damned hot throughout the ride. In any case it was interesting to have the shoe on the other foot, that is, now I needed to speak especially slowly and clearly in order to be understood, and it was still too fast, just like the directors of our program needed to do when speaking Russian when we started. I shared my similar experience and assured them it would get easier eventually as now I could understand normally, however frustrating as it was may have been at the beginning.
I met up with Katya at the stop; she hadn't slept well, due to noisy girls discussing makeup, little dogs and cats in neighboring compartments, a pair of loud women, and various other things. Later on I visited and saw all that she'd described, and then returned and lay down to sleep. When I awoke, there was another batch of guests; 4 more students (a boy and 3 girls) and a fairly old woman. They were another group on the program from another town, with another teacher in an adjoining car. We chatted for a while, and then I joined them in their cabin. The teacher in the first group and the old woman in the second played the classic Russian hosts, stuffing me with food long after I'd had enough. The old woman asked, "Do you want something?" "No thanks," I replied; she proceeds to make a sandwich. "How about a sandwich?" "Well, all right." While I eat she makes another one sandwich, and when I finish that asks if I want another. I say "no thanks," but she says, "just one more," and makes another. She offers me another, which I turn down, and so instead gives me more cheese. She asks if I want tea or coffee, I say "no thanks," so she says she'll give me some coffee; I say tea would be better, and she asks "green or black," so I take some green tea, and she still asks whether I want to have both together, which I turn down. The quantity of food they all brought was astounding. After this, I went back and chatted with Katya for a while, and then we pretty much were arriving in St. Petersburg, so I returned to my car and wished the group well.
I took the bus from the station, which, for a surprisingly convenient change went straight to the station from a stop not far from me (although on the way there when I went to Murmansk I missed the stop as the station was occluded). While I was on the bus home, there were a bunch of cars with people hanging out of the doors and sunroofs, honking and going nuts. I thought it was something to do with football (fine, soccer), but they did it again in the other direction with many more cars, this time stopping in groups and making a mess of traffic, with cars ranging from beat up Lada station wagons to Supras (2 at least). I asked Katya if she knew what it was all about; she said it was хрен (horseradish).
On the way home from the bus stop I saw a woman yelling at and walking away from a car in a short black outfit, and as I passed her she started telling me that he had told her to сайдись ("come sit here") and how it was not right and so on. I assented as we walked and she continued to talk about it, a beer in hand at obviously at least a bit drunk. As we passed a nice Escalade she said something to the effect that she would have at least thought about it if he'd offered, but for a crappy little Lada, no dice. She asked where I was coming from, indicating the suitcase, and I said simply that I had returned from Arkhangelsk, and she said she'd been there. It was somewhat difficult for me to understand her, so I didn't say all that much, and she asked if I understood what she was saying. I said, "more or less," and shortly thereafter she came to the realization, "you're not Russian, are you?" and I said no, I was from America, and she started laughing hysterically. She said to wait while she stopped into a store from some more beer, then our paths parted soon after and she wished me well and to watch out for such jerks, and I continued home.
The next day I walked along the English embankment, where the Leutenant Schmidt bridge was finally done and operating! with some obvious confetti remaining in the streets and the temporary one now closed. The following day I went to Pavlovsk, which was yet another palace, not too extraordinary, but had a nice park. I was sort of disappointed that when I tried to order a ticket for taking pictures, they wanted to charge the foreigner price and all sorts of chaos broke loose until I showed my St. Petersburg student Id, since they didn't know there was a foreigner in the group (thus affecting prices). It's frustrating that it's still (and will always be) so obvious. I understood little of the tour, which was also frustrating. I was surprised to see my hostess coming back home when I returned, who was unhappy about coming back to the city, a sentiment echoed by Katya (life at the dacha is so much calmer than life in the city, obviously). When I came home my hostess asked about the cruise (of which she'd helped plan a great deal), and we looked at my pictures for a while that I took while on the cruise. Tanya and I met up with Katya the next day, and then Katya and I said "poka" (bye), and she quoted someone, that "лето - маленькая жизнь (summer is a small life)," and then the next day it was off to Moscow!
From Murmansk to Arkhangelsk
I was in Murmansk for only a few days; as I'd feared, it was tough to have to say goodbye every few days; only a few days before our group had dispersed, and now I had to say another goodbye, probably for at least another year or so assuming I come back to Russia again next year (which I hope to do). And every few days would be the same thing, and then I'd just be on my own, as I would be for the day in Arkhangelsk. I took a plane to Arkhangelsk; the airport was far outside the city center so I took a taxi. The driver and I chatted along the way, about little things like what cars people drive (I said mainly family sedans and SUVS), but also about the quality of healthcare in the US/Russia, which happened to be what I wrote about for my final essay in our classes, though I kept jumbling the words for insurance (страхование / strakhovanie) and healthcare (здравоохранение / zdravookhranenie). And typing the transliterations, by the way, is extremely difficult, as my fingers keep trying to use the Russian keyboard layout since they're Russian words, though I'm trying to type them with the Latin alphabet, with a completely different keyboard layout. Similarly, I'm hopelessly unable to write in script in English now, as I keep mixing up the Russian letters that look like English but have different sounds, but I'll get to that.
Anyway, he also asked what I thought about the Russian people, and I've heard this question fairly often when meeting Russians; it seems almost as insecurity. I've given the same response I've already written, that there are differences but not especially big ones, that government conflicts have little bearing to ordinary people, and that in general we all just want to live normal lives and so forth, as I've mentioned already. I do sometimes point out the irony that if our countries' relations were less cool right now, the program that brought me here would probably not have existed and I might not be doing all this other traveling.
At the airport, I couldn't really understand the announcements, which for boarding were repeated in English (and still hard to understand). It was all a simple affair; I checked in, which involved them writing my name on a list and handing me a laminated card which was my boarding pass, put my luggage through (including liquids! Though I understand that will change soon), and waited, and then the plane was sitting on the tarmac. It was a small turboprop (an Antonov 24), and we just walked to it and took any available seat. I stupidly sat next to the engine at first in a seat with a broken tray, and by the time it occurred to me to relocate I couldn't get a seat with any kind of a good view. The flight was fine, but the turboprops vibrated the plane thoughtout the flight, and the food skittered along the tray table. The overhead luggage was a short rack. It was an interesting experience. We landed, and walked out, and left the tarmac not even into an airport but into a parking lot, basically. I looked for a taxi, and the one I asked was fortunately already taken as I might have otherwise left without my suitcase - the luggage pickup was another building consisting of just the luggage carousel. One thing I did appreciate was that they actually match up the ticket to ensure it's your baggage and not another's, which was always crossing my mind during other trips. Arkhangelsk is flat, and the airport was fairly far from the center, and during the ride there was a great view of the sunset across the distance, which I regretted I probably wouldn't see again, since I'd be leaving in a day and buildings began occluding it as we approached the center. There were thunderstorms in the distance, and I could clearly see the lightning strikes, which if not a first is certainly something I've rarely seen, as it was in the distance across flat land, whereas prior to that the storms were either too far away to see or right on top of me. As we approached the center it became clear that the thunderstorms were indeed there. When we reached the hotel it began to pour heavily at the instant we arrived, and the driver and I exchanged "of course"s. After a minute or so it settled down a bit and I disembarked and went into the hotel. The hotel had little English and a дежурная/dezhurnaya who keeps the keys, which contrasted with Murmansk. The hot and cold water were mislabeled, which was quite fun to figure out (at first I thought there was no hot water when I showered the next day).
Anyway, he also asked what I thought about the Russian people, and I've heard this question fairly often when meeting Russians; it seems almost as insecurity. I've given the same response I've already written, that there are differences but not especially big ones, that government conflicts have little bearing to ordinary people, and that in general we all just want to live normal lives and so forth, as I've mentioned already. I do sometimes point out the irony that if our countries' relations were less cool right now, the program that brought me here would probably not have existed and I might not be doing all this other traveling.
At the airport, I couldn't really understand the announcements, which for boarding were repeated in English (and still hard to understand). It was all a simple affair; I checked in, which involved them writing my name on a list and handing me a laminated card which was my boarding pass, put my luggage through (including liquids! Though I understand that will change soon), and waited, and then the plane was sitting on the tarmac. It was a small turboprop (an Antonov 24), and we just walked to it and took any available seat. I stupidly sat next to the engine at first in a seat with a broken tray, and by the time it occurred to me to relocate I couldn't get a seat with any kind of a good view. The flight was fine, but the turboprops vibrated the plane thoughtout the flight, and the food skittered along the tray table. The overhead luggage was a short rack. It was an interesting experience. We landed, and walked out, and left the tarmac not even into an airport but into a parking lot, basically. I looked for a taxi, and the one I asked was fortunately already taken as I might have otherwise left without my suitcase - the luggage pickup was another building consisting of just the luggage carousel. One thing I did appreciate was that they actually match up the ticket to ensure it's your baggage and not another's, which was always crossing my mind during other trips. Arkhangelsk is flat, and the airport was fairly far from the center, and during the ride there was a great view of the sunset across the distance, which I regretted I probably wouldn't see again, since I'd be leaving in a day and buildings began occluding it as we approached the center. There were thunderstorms in the distance, and I could clearly see the lightning strikes, which if not a first is certainly something I've rarely seen, as it was in the distance across flat land, whereas prior to that the storms were either too far away to see or right on top of me. As we approached the center it became clear that the thunderstorms were indeed there. When we reached the hotel it began to pour heavily at the instant we arrived, and the driver and I exchanged "of course"s. After a minute or so it settled down a bit and I disembarked and went into the hotel. The hotel had little English and a дежурная/dezhurnaya who keeps the keys, which contrasted with Murmansk. The hot and cold water were mislabeled, which was quite fun to figure out (at first I thought there was no hot water when I showered the next day).
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Uniquely Russian
For the day we went to the Russian prison, we had hired a bus to take us there. It wasn't too far away, somewhere in the area of Cruiser Aurora, but the coverage of the bus routes isn't really that great (as evidenced by my 35 minute walk to school each morning). But the bus didn't come, and after about an hour of waiting, we started taking gypsy cabs. There were about 20 of us. This in itself was hilarious (well, not at the time; I think we were tired of standing in the sun waiting). So 5 minutes pass; we get one car for 4 people. Another 5 minutes or so, and we get another car. Now there are still about 13 of us left (I know this because I remembered that it was not evenly divisible into car-loads). Eventually a hotel shuttle pulls up (for Pribaltiyskaya, incidentally), and what do you know, he decides to take the rest of us there in the little hotel van, which greatly amused us. Only in Russia!
I forgot to mention what actually prompted our final closing parties the night before the group's flight out. The flight was to leave at about 5:50 in the morning (ouch). But of course, one needs to be at the airport a while before that, let's say around 3 or 4 in the morning (big ouch). That in itself is really tough, but then there's another problem: about half the people on the flight live on Vasilievskiy Island...and the bridges over the Neva are still up at that time...so there would actually be no good way to get to the airport! (Only in Russia). So what we ended up having to do was hire a bus to go to everyone and pick up their luggage, starting in the afternoon, and then all of us would actually meet at a cafe (on the mainland, of course) until it was time to go. Of course, in reality this bus driver too was horribly behind schedule, and so although we were to meet at 11:30, some people didn't make it until well after that. Unfortunately the purse of someone in our group was stolen, which really sucked (but they were not leaving on the flight, so that was one less problem).
Last year in Russia, as I already mentioned, started off with difficulty. One of the reasons for this was the less-than-great bathrooms in the dorms. Well, as one should know, it's foolish to say that there's nothing worse, because sure enough, we were in for a pleasant surprise on the cruise. We opened the bathroom (the foul smell of which was nothing short of incredible), to the left, the sink; the right, the toilet. Well, wait a minute, it seems they forgot the shower. Oh, no they didn't, it's hanging on the wall, attached to the sink, and the shower curtain is in the back by the toilet. That is to say, the entire bathroom was the shower. Efficient, but, well, yeah.
So anyway, I'm having a good time here in Murmansk, with my friend showing me around. It's nice to be in a hotel, with a normal functional bathroom for the first time in about 2 months. The shower at home ("home" being the apartment in St. Petersburg) has a very sketchy water heater which rattles and creaks and decides to stop working at random times; I'm always afraid the thing was going to randomly burst into flames at some point; the large burn mark on the front of it (like that of my outlet in the dorms last year) only increases my confidence. Anyway, when I arrived, my friend asked me if I'd flown here. Nope, I took the train (28 hours). She was in disbelief, and asked if I'd ridden купе (second class). Nope, плацкарт (third/lowest class). Further disbelief. It wasn't too bad, well, relatively speaking. The 30 hour bus ride to and from New Orleans was far worse; whereas I more or less lay down through most of the train ride. Of course, the beds were far too short, and so I would either have my feet hanging off the edge of the bed into the doorway, with people walking into them from time to time (I was on the top bunk), but there was little choice anyway since and there was no room to sit up in the top bunk. They don't have food on the trains, so I brought some things and made myself a sandwich from time to time. A day later, there I was. At the railway station there was no kind of pocket map so I was kind of flustered about what to do, and sort of ambled around outside for a minute, when someone asked me where I wanted to go, and taxied me to the hotel for 100 rubles (like $4). There were maps and guides and things in the hotel, so that was only a temporary problem. So the first day Katya and I walked around, with her showing me around, and of course there is the obligatory Lenin statue on Проспект Ленина ("Lenin street"), the city's main street, and a movie theater named "Родина" (motherland), and she was amused when I guessed these things. There are the obligatory Karl Marx and Komsomol'kaya streets as well. Katya's mother works at a city museum so yesterday we went there, where first Katya guided me around, and then as it was getting close to closing time, her mom gave me a whirlwind tour through some of the rest of it (though of course I understood slightly less at this speed). The city has a population just shy of 400 000, with a great view of the bay, and as it was an important city in WWII there are a lot of monuments, including a large soldier (30 meters or so) on a hill overlooking the bay, as well as various other monuments spread throughout the city. The climate here isn't very well liked, though. As it's above the Arctic Circle, in the summer it's always light (polar days), and in the winter practically always dark (polar nights), and the long summer days and the northern lights just don't make up for the polar nights.
I forgot to mention what actually prompted our final closing parties the night before the group's flight out. The flight was to leave at about 5:50 in the morning (ouch). But of course, one needs to be at the airport a while before that, let's say around 3 or 4 in the morning (big ouch). That in itself is really tough, but then there's another problem: about half the people on the flight live on Vasilievskiy Island...and the bridges over the Neva are still up at that time...so there would actually be no good way to get to the airport! (Only in Russia). So what we ended up having to do was hire a bus to go to everyone and pick up their luggage, starting in the afternoon, and then all of us would actually meet at a cafe (on the mainland, of course) until it was time to go. Of course, in reality this bus driver too was horribly behind schedule, and so although we were to meet at 11:30, some people didn't make it until well after that. Unfortunately the purse of someone in our group was stolen, which really sucked (but they were not leaving on the flight, so that was one less problem).
Last year in Russia, as I already mentioned, started off with difficulty. One of the reasons for this was the less-than-great bathrooms in the dorms. Well, as one should know, it's foolish to say that there's nothing worse, because sure enough, we were in for a pleasant surprise on the cruise. We opened the bathroom (the foul smell of which was nothing short of incredible), to the left, the sink; the right, the toilet. Well, wait a minute, it seems they forgot the shower. Oh, no they didn't, it's hanging on the wall, attached to the sink, and the shower curtain is in the back by the toilet. That is to say, the entire bathroom was the shower. Efficient, but, well, yeah.
So anyway, I'm having a good time here in Murmansk, with my friend showing me around. It's nice to be in a hotel, with a normal functional bathroom for the first time in about 2 months. The shower at home ("home" being the apartment in St. Petersburg) has a very sketchy water heater which rattles and creaks and decides to stop working at random times; I'm always afraid the thing was going to randomly burst into flames at some point; the large burn mark on the front of it (like that of my outlet in the dorms last year) only increases my confidence. Anyway, when I arrived, my friend asked me if I'd flown here. Nope, I took the train (28 hours). She was in disbelief, and asked if I'd ridden купе (second class). Nope, плацкарт (third/lowest class). Further disbelief. It wasn't too bad, well, relatively speaking. The 30 hour bus ride to and from New Orleans was far worse; whereas I more or less lay down through most of the train ride. Of course, the beds were far too short, and so I would either have my feet hanging off the edge of the bed into the doorway, with people walking into them from time to time (I was on the top bunk), but there was little choice anyway since and there was no room to sit up in the top bunk. They don't have food on the trains, so I brought some things and made myself a sandwich from time to time. A day later, there I was. At the railway station there was no kind of pocket map so I was kind of flustered about what to do, and sort of ambled around outside for a minute, when someone asked me where I wanted to go, and taxied me to the hotel for 100 rubles (like $4). There were maps and guides and things in the hotel, so that was only a temporary problem. So the first day Katya and I walked around, with her showing me around, and of course there is the obligatory Lenin statue on Проспект Ленина ("Lenin street"), the city's main street, and a movie theater named "Родина" (motherland), and she was amused when I guessed these things. There are the obligatory Karl Marx and Komsomol'kaya streets as well. Katya's mother works at a city museum so yesterday we went there, where first Katya guided me around, and then as it was getting close to closing time, her mom gave me a whirlwind tour through some of the rest of it (though of course I understood slightly less at this speed). The city has a population just shy of 400 000, with a great view of the bay, and as it was an important city in WWII there are a lot of monuments, including a large soldier (30 meters or so) on a hill overlooking the bay, as well as various other monuments spread throughout the city. The climate here isn't very well liked, though. As it's above the Arctic Circle, in the summer it's always light (polar days), and in the winter practically always dark (polar nights), and the long summer days and the northern lights just don't make up for the polar nights.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Путешествие (Travels)
After the program’s end (today, essentially), I will continue to travel around, visiting friends and visiting places of interest. This was really difficult to plan, and once I started digging into planning, at times I just wanted to give up entirely and come home. There are two main issues that make this scheduling difficult. The first is that I plan to travel by train for all of this. When traveling by airplane, one can pretty much take for granted that one can find a flight on any given day to any given place, and get there that same day; this simplifies booking hotels, especially since you can take care of it all online in one step. On the other hand, the train doesn’t necessarily go where you want when you want, and one might not need a hotel depending on the train schedule or the length of the trip, and I can’t just book it all together online (though fortunately, I found train schedules online, which was the biggest step. The second issue is that my visa expires on September 1st. This means I can’t stay as long as I’d like in many places, and coupled with the train issue, makes it very complicated, since, if one is staying in a place for a few days (e.g. 4 or 5), it doesn’t really matter if the arrival or departure is at 8 AM or 8 PM, whereas, because in some places I was planning to stay only one day, there is a big difference between arriving at 8 AM and leaving at 8 PM, as opposed to, for example, arriving at 1 PM and leaving at 3 PM.
My first destination is Murmansk, followed by Arkhangelsk, and then back to St. Petersburg for a few days. One friend from St. Petersburg (Katya Uskova, our friend from last year) was going to be returning from her dacha on the 19th, and another from the US that was with me last year (Tanya) was going to be in St. Petersburg from the 13th to the 24th (which of course meant she would be arriving just as I’d be leaving) and I of course wanted to see both of them. With this in mind, I figured I’d go to Murmansk (about a 28 hour train ride from St. Petersburg) from the 13th to the 16th (visiting a friend I’d met last year at the New York Institute, Katya Shevchuk) and then take the train to Arkhangelsk on the 17th, and leave the 18th to come back the 19th (another day-long train ride). Coincidentally, it turns out that the first Katya was going to be returning from the suburbs of Arkhangelsk, and so if I took that train we would both end up on it. This more-or-less cemented the schedule.
There is no direct train between Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (Murmansk in on a peninsula, and Arkhangelsk is across the sea), so when I tried to actually buy the tickets, it became clear that this wasn’t going to work, because I’d need to transfer at Vologda, and the trip between these two would actually take a full two days, and so I would get into Arkhangelsk just in time to leave again. I looked for a plane ticket on Expedia/Travelocity/etc, but it was $400 (one-way, remember) and connected in St. Petersburg, which bothered me on principle. I was beginning to think I’d scrap Arkhangelsk (which I’d wanted to visit for no good reason), but then I saw on the map in class that there was a ferry between them (which I figured might be the case) but when I started asking about actually getting tickets, it was apparent that there was no way to be sure about doing that, and of course I couldn’t take that chance. But, finally, I found through another site a direct flight between them for about $220, which wasn’t that bad, and was only 2 hours, as opposed to 50, so I decided we were back in the game after all, but the issue was that I couldn’t buy it directly at the site (in the normal sense, of paying online and getting an e-ticket) so I had to go to an office of theirs in the Angleterre hotel (next to Astoria, by St. Isaac’s), so at long last I finally cemented this, and consequently bought the train tickets to Murmansk and from Arkhangelsk and reserved hotels in both cities (since I obviously couldn’t do this knew where I was actually going and how long). Note the length and complexity of this process, which covers less than a week of travel to two other cities. I still had two weeks and four other cities to plan. The final outcome of this is:
8/13 train from St. Petersburg to Murmansk
8/14 arrive in Murmansk
8/17 fly to Arkhangelsk
8/18 train from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg
8/19 arrive in St. Petersburg
I planned to stay in St. Petersburg until the 23rd, at which point I’d head down to Moscow for a few days, until the 27th, followed by, in no particular order, Smolensk, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod. The reasoning behind Moscow is obvious, although I will be meeting some friends there from last year, including Lidia, who is from Italy but will happen to be there in this timeframe, as well as another student I met last year, Natasha Ivlieva, and also Irina Kazanina, the sister of Nina Kazanina who taught at the New York Institute both last year and this year. Each Sunday, Polly Gannon (another staff member at St. Petersburg University, who teaches at the New York Institute but has also been part of our program this year) is at Café Zoom with whoever wants to meet her, and I decided to go there after my phone got stolen as I was feeling pretty down, and both of them were there along with Blake and invited me to visit. I’m visiting Smolensk for no good reason, just as Arkhangelsk, and Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod were recommended to me. Smolensk, Moscow, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod are all in a line from west to east, so I figured I’d try to take day trips between them. This posed similar issues to the first set, in that schedules are really important when one is only in a place for a day. I thought about it a lot and then decided it’d really be a lot easier to eliminate one of the latter two cities (Vladimir/Nizhny Novgorod) and spend one night in each of the remaining, taking a day to travel between them via Moscow. This worked out and so the schedule is:
8/23 train from St. Petersburg to Moscow
8/23 arrive in Moscow
8/27 train from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod
8/29 train from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow
8/29 train from Moscow to Smolensk
Now the question was when and where to actually exit the country. The original plan was Kiev, Ukraine, but Minsk, Belarus is right next to Smolensk, so I thought about that but quickly learned that I’d need a visa for that, and moreover, Belarus is kind of unfriendly right now (a clue was the list of places from which you don’t need a visa: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, etc). This meant I’d need to go through Moscow, so the schedule became:
8/31 train from Smolensk to Moscow
8/31 train from Moscow to Kiev
9/1 arrive Kiev
And thus is planned the entirety of the Russia trip. Of course, it would be too easy to say everything is all tied up in a bow; before we left on our cruise I tried to take care of all of the remaining train tickets and hotel reservations. The train tickets were fine; I happened to find a cashier right near the Gostiniy Dvor metro station and it all worked out fine, which was great. As for the hotels, it started much more simply since I could do everything online, but I ran into a snag with Smolensk, namely that none of the sites I tried acknowledged its existence. I figure I’ll take care of that at one of the travel places I worked with along the way here (for the Murmansk/Arkhangelsk train/plane tickets I used two different places) once I come back to St. Petersburg. A more serious snag came up on the cruise; in spite of the fact that I told my credit card company when and where I’d be traveling (in general terms, obviously), they decided to block my charges when I started booking the hotels. Fortunately the Murmansk/Arkhangelsk reservations went through (as I’m writing this, I am realizing exactly how incredibly fortunate that is), but the St. Petersburg and Moscow reservations were blocked until I cleared them. I worried that the reservations would be canceled when the charges were denied, and wondered what would happen when they cleared the charges through, and sure enough when I checked the status of these bookings, they were canceled, so hopefully this works out without my being charged twice. On the other hand, I decided to ask my “host mom” as it were, if I could pay some more and stay there for those few days, and she said fine, so that’s one fewer hotel and a lot less money spent.
My first destination is Murmansk, followed by Arkhangelsk, and then back to St. Petersburg for a few days. One friend from St. Petersburg (Katya Uskova, our friend from last year) was going to be returning from her dacha on the 19th, and another from the US that was with me last year (Tanya) was going to be in St. Petersburg from the 13th to the 24th (which of course meant she would be arriving just as I’d be leaving) and I of course wanted to see both of them. With this in mind, I figured I’d go to Murmansk (about a 28 hour train ride from St. Petersburg) from the 13th to the 16th (visiting a friend I’d met last year at the New York Institute, Katya Shevchuk) and then take the train to Arkhangelsk on the 17th, and leave the 18th to come back the 19th (another day-long train ride). Coincidentally, it turns out that the first Katya was going to be returning from the suburbs of Arkhangelsk, and so if I took that train we would both end up on it. This more-or-less cemented the schedule.
There is no direct train between Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (Murmansk in on a peninsula, and Arkhangelsk is across the sea), so when I tried to actually buy the tickets, it became clear that this wasn’t going to work, because I’d need to transfer at Vologda, and the trip between these two would actually take a full two days, and so I would get into Arkhangelsk just in time to leave again. I looked for a plane ticket on Expedia/Travelocity/etc, but it was $400 (one-way, remember) and connected in St. Petersburg, which bothered me on principle. I was beginning to think I’d scrap Arkhangelsk (which I’d wanted to visit for no good reason), but then I saw on the map in class that there was a ferry between them (which I figured might be the case) but when I started asking about actually getting tickets, it was apparent that there was no way to be sure about doing that, and of course I couldn’t take that chance. But, finally, I found through another site a direct flight between them for about $220, which wasn’t that bad, and was only 2 hours, as opposed to 50, so I decided we were back in the game after all, but the issue was that I couldn’t buy it directly at the site (in the normal sense, of paying online and getting an e-ticket) so I had to go to an office of theirs in the Angleterre hotel (next to Astoria, by St. Isaac’s), so at long last I finally cemented this, and consequently bought the train tickets to Murmansk and from Arkhangelsk and reserved hotels in both cities (since I obviously couldn’t do this knew where I was actually going and how long). Note the length and complexity of this process, which covers less than a week of travel to two other cities. I still had two weeks and four other cities to plan. The final outcome of this is:
8/13 train from St. Petersburg to Murmansk
8/14 arrive in Murmansk
8/17 fly to Arkhangelsk
8/18 train from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg
8/19 arrive in St. Petersburg
I planned to stay in St. Petersburg until the 23rd, at which point I’d head down to Moscow for a few days, until the 27th, followed by, in no particular order, Smolensk, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod. The reasoning behind Moscow is obvious, although I will be meeting some friends there from last year, including Lidia, who is from Italy but will happen to be there in this timeframe, as well as another student I met last year, Natasha Ivlieva, and also Irina Kazanina, the sister of Nina Kazanina who taught at the New York Institute both last year and this year. Each Sunday, Polly Gannon (another staff member at St. Petersburg University, who teaches at the New York Institute but has also been part of our program this year) is at Café Zoom with whoever wants to meet her, and I decided to go there after my phone got stolen as I was feeling pretty down, and both of them were there along with Blake and invited me to visit. I’m visiting Smolensk for no good reason, just as Arkhangelsk, and Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod were recommended to me. Smolensk, Moscow, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod are all in a line from west to east, so I figured I’d try to take day trips between them. This posed similar issues to the first set, in that schedules are really important when one is only in a place for a day. I thought about it a lot and then decided it’d really be a lot easier to eliminate one of the latter two cities (Vladimir/Nizhny Novgorod) and spend one night in each of the remaining, taking a day to travel between them via Moscow. This worked out and so the schedule is:
8/23 train from St. Petersburg to Moscow
8/23 arrive in Moscow
8/27 train from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod
8/29 train from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow
8/29 train from Moscow to Smolensk
Now the question was when and where to actually exit the country. The original plan was Kiev, Ukraine, but Minsk, Belarus is right next to Smolensk, so I thought about that but quickly learned that I’d need a visa for that, and moreover, Belarus is kind of unfriendly right now (a clue was the list of places from which you don’t need a visa: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, etc). This meant I’d need to go through Moscow, so the schedule became:
8/31 train from Smolensk to Moscow
8/31 train from Moscow to Kiev
9/1 arrive Kiev
And thus is planned the entirety of the Russia trip. Of course, it would be too easy to say everything is all tied up in a bow; before we left on our cruise I tried to take care of all of the remaining train tickets and hotel reservations. The train tickets were fine; I happened to find a cashier right near the Gostiniy Dvor metro station and it all worked out fine, which was great. As for the hotels, it started much more simply since I could do everything online, but I ran into a snag with Smolensk, namely that none of the sites I tried acknowledged its existence. I figure I’ll take care of that at one of the travel places I worked with along the way here (for the Murmansk/Arkhangelsk train/plane tickets I used two different places) once I come back to St. Petersburg. A more serious snag came up on the cruise; in spite of the fact that I told my credit card company when and where I’d be traveling (in general terms, obviously), they decided to block my charges when I started booking the hotels. Fortunately the Murmansk/Arkhangelsk reservations went through (as I’m writing this, I am realizing exactly how incredibly fortunate that is), but the St. Petersburg and Moscow reservations were blocked until I cleared them. I worried that the reservations would be canceled when the charges were denied, and wondered what would happen when they cleared the charges through, and sure enough when I checked the status of these bookings, they were canceled, so hopefully this works out without my being charged twice. On the other hand, I decided to ask my “host mom” as it were, if I could pay some more and stay there for those few days, and she said fine, so that’s one fewer hotel and a lot less money spent.
Cruise
After our 6 weeks of lessons and lectures, we had a week-long cruise through the Russian north (well, more north than St. Petersburg). This was a great ending to our program, though it’s tough to believe that in less than a day we’ll all be going our separate ways. We had a stop every day:
Мандроги / Mandrogi: this was the first place we stopped, and was pretty disappointing as it is essentially a fake country village solely existing the benefit of tourists. Anna Maslennikova dubbed it a “tourist trap.” One of the first things we saw when disembarking was a large tent, on which was written “Mandrogi: Welcome to Show.” It was just sad. It was good that we got this out of the way first, as it paled compared to all the other stops, but we were worried the rest would be more of the same.
Петрозаводск / Petrozavodsk: a small city, which was nice to see since St. Petersburg is fairly unique with all of its excessive palaces and cultural places. Petrozavodsk had a lot of gift sculptures (from other countries), and halfway through our guided tour we wondered if that was all we were going to see. After that was free time, and I went on a very long exploration through the city, which I can barely begin to recount, but all I can say is that I’m glad I have a good sense of direction (in spite of any counterexamples you may have).
Кижи / Kizhi: an island with an old monastery (not sure if it’s exactly a monastery) with a wooden church that is unmistakably traditional Russian styled. We took a boat ride to some adjacent islands and saw some other interesting places.
Свирьстрой / Cvir’stroy: a Russian derevnya (village) which was also interesting to see in contrast to the cities. A Russian guy had cut his head open while swimming but his friends were on the other side of the lake, so we helped him back to the boat.
Валаам / Valaam: more islands and monasteries, but very different from Kizhi (the first part of the excursion was about a 7 km hike).
This was a great trip, and it was very interesting to see all of these places which are obviously very different than St. Petersburg, which was the only place I’d been in Russia up to this point. Tonight is a farewell party, and then the program is over; it’s tough to believe that the 7 weeks have already come and gone. Another interesting aspect of this program, as opposed to most of what I’ve done so far, is that we are from all over the country; most students from Stony Brook live within an hour or two of it, so last year after our study abroad program, most of us were still able to hang out all the time during the rest of the summer, but that will obviously not be the case this time. Another interesting thing: duck, duck, _____. In Minnesota, it’s not “goose,” but “grey duck.” Вот.
Мандроги / Mandrogi: this was the first place we stopped, and was pretty disappointing as it is essentially a fake country village solely existing the benefit of tourists. Anna Maslennikova dubbed it a “tourist trap.” One of the first things we saw when disembarking was a large tent, on which was written “Mandrogi: Welcome to Show.” It was just sad. It was good that we got this out of the way first, as it paled compared to all the other stops, but we were worried the rest would be more of the same.
Петрозаводск / Petrozavodsk: a small city, which was nice to see since St. Petersburg is fairly unique with all of its excessive palaces and cultural places. Petrozavodsk had a lot of gift sculptures (from other countries), and halfway through our guided tour we wondered if that was all we were going to see. After that was free time, and I went on a very long exploration through the city, which I can barely begin to recount, but all I can say is that I’m glad I have a good sense of direction (in spite of any counterexamples you may have).
Кижи / Kizhi: an island with an old monastery (not sure if it’s exactly a monastery) with a wooden church that is unmistakably traditional Russian styled. We took a boat ride to some adjacent islands and saw some other interesting places.
Свирьстрой / Cvir’stroy: a Russian derevnya (village) which was also interesting to see in contrast to the cities. A Russian guy had cut his head open while swimming but his friends were on the other side of the lake, so we helped him back to the boat.
Валаам / Valaam: more islands and monasteries, but very different from Kizhi (the first part of the excursion was about a 7 km hike).
This was a great trip, and it was very interesting to see all of these places which are obviously very different than St. Petersburg, which was the only place I’d been in Russia up to this point. Tonight is a farewell party, and then the program is over; it’s tough to believe that the 7 weeks have already come and gone. Another interesting aspect of this program, as opposed to most of what I’ve done so far, is that we are from all over the country; most students from Stony Brook live within an hour or two of it, so last year after our study abroad program, most of us were still able to hang out all the time during the rest of the summer, but that will obviously not be the case this time. Another interesting thing: duck, duck, _____. In Minnesota, it’s not “goose,” but “grey duck.” Вот.
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