Санкт-Петербург/Saint Petersburg, Day 3

Unfortunately, I have put off writing about the last day of our trip to Petersburg for so long that I now have less to say about it. But I'm long-winded enough that this entry will probably be lengthy anyway.

On the third and last day of the trip, we got up and headed by bus out of Petersburg to go to Peterhof, a palace and a bunch of fountains originally built for Peter the Great. Yeah, by bus--our guide chatted with us the whole time. I was a little cranky about that as a result of sleep deprivation. When we arrived at the palace, we were swept into the building in front of a huge mass of people who were presumably waiting to get in. No idea why we had VIP status. The place was crazy and lavish and covered in gold like most things I've seen here, palaces and churches both. I think a lot of the more indulgent stuff appeared when Catherine the Great was hanging out there--the woman really enjoyed being royal. She was just GOOD at it.

I didn't enjoy the tour or the palace all that much, but the grounds of Peterhof were wonderful. First we headed to the shore--which according to Wikipedia was on the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea--and I found a bunch of sea glass that I'm hoping to use to make pendants. Free souvenirs! I'm very excited about that. I hung out on the rocks along the shore with some friends, and then Steve and I set out to wander the grounds and see the fountains. It's such a beautiful place, it's too difficult to describe. Of course, it's very contrived beautiful--all of the trees were placed carefully, the lawns are meticulously cared for. But I liked it very much. It was packed with people. We had to leave too soon; lunch and then back to the bus.

We all fell asleep on the bus and we were woken suddenly, herded out, and made to walk up like 180 stairs. It was a bit of a shock! But when we got to the top, we were on a platform on a church in Petersburg that gave a great view of the city. It was breathtaking and full of tourists. We went back down to see the inside of the church and headed out again.

The chronology is a bit fuzzy now, but I think after that we went on the boat tour we were supposed to take the first day. We took the exact same route that some of us had been on the night before, only this time there was a very loud narration being provided via PA in English. We felt sort of conspicuous but learned a lot about the buildings we passed. After the tour, we were set free to say grab dinner and say goodbye to Petersburg. Jordan, Andrea, Rachel, Darcy, and I found an Abkhazian restaurant with excellent food and awesome dancing waiters. I finally had spice! After two months of being in Russia! It was glorious--adjika sauce.

We met up again and drove to the train station. The ride back was not as interesting as the ride there.

Here's what I intended to be the closing of my last entry about Petersburg; I wrote it right after I got back:

"Now I have a silly tan where I wear my watch—the sun here is kinder (I didn’t even burn)—and a big empty space where any motivation to do schoolwork once was. When we were in Petersburg I nearly forgot about Moscow and my life here altogether, but being back feels comfortable and right. Of course, this week, when I’m working on the four or five big assignments I have due, it may not be so pleasant. A big part of me would’ve liked to spend the rest of my time in Russia in Petersburg. Without that bus, of course."

I still have the watch tan.

Санкт-Петербург/Saint Petersburg, Day 2

I am going to try very very hard this time not to walk you through every moment of my day. Because really, the fact that the moments happened in Petersburg does not make them inherently interesting--but this day was something else.

The second day in Petersburg was a Friday. We woke up, had breakfast, and set out for our excursions—sans bus! It’s the little things. We took the Metro cheerfully and walked to the Hermitage. If you know nothing about Russia, you may not know that this is a Big Deal along the lines of going to the Met in New York or (probably a better comparison) the Louvre in Paris. What is now the main building of the Hermitage was once the Winter Palace of the tsars. We began our tour, led by a really adorable young woman named Ira (Ee-ruh, not Ay-ruh), in big grand rooms that gave you an idea of what the palace looked like when the tsars stayed there. Gradually the rooms turned into big grand rooms filled with art, and then upstairs they became small unassuming rooms filled with art. The best part, in my opinion, was the small unassuming rooms, which held newer art—Impressionist works and modern-era stuff. It was the obligatory St. Petersburg excursion, and I’m glad we went, but I don’t have much to say about it.

We grabbed (a slightly more successful) lunch at a café nearby and then headed across the river to the strangest experience of my life. An alley and a creepy barren courtyard let us to the back entrance to Kunstkamera, subtitled “Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.” Don’t let them fool you. Although most of the museum is occupied with weird “anthropological” exhibits of mannequins dressed up like people from various ethnic groups, what the museum is really all about is the biggest globe in the world, located in the barely-reachable tower of the building, and the 300-year-old, deformed stillborn infants that were the original exhibit of the museum in Peter the Great’s time. I am not kidding. 300-year-old, deformed stillborn infants. In jars. Please refer to the Wikipedia article for more information. It says this sort of collection was “a very typical type of collection in the period.” But it is no longer typical! Why does it still exist? I bet it’s because the curators have no idea how they would go about disposing of the 300-year-old fetuses.

I can’t believe I can say I saw that. To be honest, I wish I couldn’t—it was pretty disturbing. But some of our group really dug it.

Afterwards our younger tour guide dragged us off towards the river to show us “the sphinxes.” We apparently had to see these sphinxes—which turned out to be two small statues by the Neva, given to Russia by France. France apparently has a thing for statue-gifting. A very drunk middle-aged woman was swimming in the river in her underwear and talking to a bunch of young people hanging out on the steps near the Sphinxes. When she left, led by a younger woman, she let out a really excellent, animal howl. She was trashed.

We parted with our guide and Vera and headed to a dock nearby, where a few of the guys in our group were sitting with their feet in the river. Can’t say the Neva’s the cleanest water I’ve ever seen, but we all joined them anyway. The water was ice cold but we were all cheerful, looking out across the river at the beautiful European buildings that line it. Then we found a Baltika stand and indulged in beer and ice cream—some of us more than others. The sky looked threatening, so we dispersed.

A handful of us went and met up with a girl named Beth who was in our first year of Russian class and who has been studying in St. Petersburg for a year. We got potatoes at Kroshka Kartoshka (a potato-hawking chain that seems to be more popular in Moscow), then took a walk and talked. We saw some Ren-fair kids camping near the Petropavlovsky krepost—Beth explained, but I don’t remember why they were there. I heard Beth on the phone and died of envy—her accent is excellent.

Our group split up again and Trever, Kevin, Darcy, and I met up with Costya and Vladimir from the train. They took us to a place that sold beer in plastic liter bottles—whether or you were, uh, dining in or taking it to go. I found that really charming, although admittedly wasteful. The guys led us back to the apartment they were renting for their time in Petersburg, and Sasha, Masha, and Nikita were there. It wasn’t long before a Russian-English game of charades began, which was a lot of fun. Kevin got ahold of Adam and he showed up with Ben, Graham, and Steve in tow.

After the game, we all set out for the river, where we were planning to rent a boat. It immediately was obvious, standing outside the apartment, that the building was a popular place for young people. There were loud groups of people our age standing around and being idiots. Some angry tenant dropped a paket (a form of packaging that some liquids come in at the grocery store) of something from one of the top floors and it landed right in front of me, getting my feet (in sandals) and the bottom of my jeans wet, even splashing up to my shoulder. I was pretty pissed off, but luckily the liquid wasn’t sticky or fragrant. I’m just going to pretend it was water or beer.

We got to the river and each of us paid 400 rubles (about $13) for the boat. We climbed across a few others to get to ours—they were full of people, but ours was empty. It was just for us. Once we were all on board we pulled away from the dock. The buildings along the Neva were illuminated, the bridges were covered with lights, we were all giddy, and the wind was in our hair. I tiptoed to the rear of the boat to savor a moment to myself, riding backwards and watching the buildings and bridges and people rush away from me. Not far into the trip the bridges began to rise, as they do every night to admit big boats, and everyone cheered. We turned down a canal and wound through the center of the city. It was so beautiful. It felt like an eternity. It was one of the best nights of my life.

We got back to the hotel around 3:30 in the morning. The birds were already beginning to sing.

Санкт-Петербург/Saint Petersburg, Day 1

I can’t do the trip to Petersburg justice, probably, but I can’t really skip over it, either.

This means you’re going to get a lot of detailed entries with a bunch of information you don’t need.

Train and Day 1

I had never traveled by train before. There are two options—compartments and cars with open berths. As far as price goes, the open cars are the better option, and honestly it seems to me that there are two differences. 1. In the open cars, there sections with four bunks to the left (stacked two and two) and two to the right, and the two to the right don’t exist in the compartment cars. 2. There aren’t doors—but the four bunks on the left are laid out exactly like compartments. I know this is boring, I’m just trying to give you a clear picture. Darcy, Kevin, and I were the furthest back of our group, and a strange (in multiple senses of the word) woman was in the bed above Darcy. Pretty early on the woman disappeared and she didn’t come back until late, muttering something about martinis—she’d presumably been in the restaurant car.

So we had our little section to ourselves, and pretty soon friends were coming and going, offering snacks and drinks and sometimes staying to chat. Kevin pulled out a bottle of vodka, and we saw the group of young Russians next to us, who were traveling on the two-bed side of the car, break out a bottle of whiskey. We laughed and got to know one another. There were two young women, Sasha and Masha, and three guys, Costya (Sasha’s boyfriend), Nikita (Masha’s boyfriend), and Vladimir. They were going to spend three days in Petersburg, like us, and had rented an apartment. They live in Moscow and were all 22 or 23. Professions: Sasha, a designer; Masha, an economist (that was her major, at least); Costya and Vladimir, computer programmers; and I don’t know what Nikita does.

They were all very sweet and interested in us, and they seemed more American than other young Russians I’ve met randomly. As has been the case with most people I’ve talked to here, they asked us, mystified, “Why are you learning Russian?” The night was exactly what I needed. I had been getting so bored of the routine in Moscow, but the train ride was new and everyone was giddy and enjoying themselves. At around three-something in the morning, Costya took out his laptop and turned on a Guy Ritchie movie that I love, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but my eyelids were refusing to stay open. I climbed into my bunk and didn’t wake up until 8, when we were about an hour and a half from the city that Russians call the Venice of the North—not the East, of course, as they’ve worked so hard to make it Western.

At the station in Petersburg, we said goodbye to our new friends—for the time being—and got on a bus with our two guides, Tanya and a babushka whose name I can’t remember. Exhausted, we listened as The Babushka droned over the bus microphone about the sights we were passing and Petersburg history. It was awful. I couldn’t hear a damn thing because she held the microphone too close to her mouth, which resulted in a terrible droning, buzzing sound. And she never stopped. But finally we reached our hotel near the Metro station Чёрная речка (Chyornaya Rechka, or Black River, just like in Elyria—although речка is a diminutive, so it’s more like Little Black River). It was a nice place. Each room had its own bathroom and the beds were soft. I couldn’t ask for more.

An hour to rest and we met for breakfast (really, lunch) at the hotel’s restaurant. This was the first of many unsuccessful vegetarian meals for the four of us vegetarian students. Vera, our director, is a pescetarian—she eats fish. I did as well, and may do so again while I’m here, but I can’t tell you how sick I am of it and I’ve been planning on giving it up. I did not want fish, and assumed that I wouldn’t get any if I said I was a vegetarian. The other three don’t eat any meat at all. This was difficult for the restaurant to understand. Most of us ended up with fish (a rather disgusting dish topped with mayo, cheese, and eggs), one with a plate of vegetables. This was an omen of terrible meals to come.

We returned to the bus and The Babushka returned to her microphone. We, still fairly dazed and exhausted, were led to the Петропавловская крепость (Petropavlovskaya Krepost, or the Peter & Paul Fortress). First the cathedral, which I don’t actually remember clearly—all of the churches we’ve been to have been impressive and covered in icons—but I do remember the choir we saw there, a group of five monks who sang so beautifully that I cried. Next we saw a strange small-headed statue and then the prison. It was an unremarkable excursion, I think, although worth it because of the choir.

Back on the bus we went to—well, actually, my memory is so bad that I can’t remember if after the first excursion we went to another site, or if we just went to lunch. So, lunch: it was bad. We ate at another hotel. Why? No idea. They segregated us vegetarians at our own special table. We assumed this meant we would be served vegetarian food, but it was not to be so. First up: cabbage salad, because that’s how they do in Russia. Second: borscht, at the bottom of which I discovered a big chunk of beef. Thanks, Russia. Third: fish covered in mushrooms and cheese and who knows what else. Only one of us successfully received a non-fish dish, which I think was just vegetables again. But there was dessert! This could only be a good thing, right? Wrong. It was Jell-O (which is made from gelatin, which is made from animal cartilage).

My memory continues to be fuzzy on the details of the first day, probably because I was half-asleep and dazed from the train ride. If we took an excursion after lunch, I don’t remember it. Eventually they let us go and we all took about an hour to rest at the hotel before heading to the center of town. My friends stopped at МакДоналдс (McDonald’s) for dinner, and then we got on the Petersburg Metro. It is nothing compared with the Moscow Metro—not as grand, not as useful—but it got us to Невский проспект (Nevskiy Prospekt), the main street in the city, analogous to Tverskaya ulitsa in Moscow. That first night, we mostly wandered and took in the sights, noticing how much less common drinking beer on the street seemed to be in Moscow’s classier counterpart. By the time we got back to the hotel (around 11:30 pm), it still wasn’t completely dark—Petersburg is coming up on White Nights. It’s too bad we couldn’t have visited in late May or early June, when the nights are even shorter.

More entries to come about Days 2 (one of the best nights of my life) and 3, although I’m not sure how quickly.

День Победы/Victory Day

This is, I guess, an obligatory post--I can't not write about Dyen Pobyedi, and I'm going to be in St. Petersburg tomorrow until Sunday--but I doubt it'll be very exciting. I apologize in advance.

Anya, Grisha, Lyova and I set out on Sunday morning for Grisha's sister's school. Varya is nine and we joined her class on their trip to Переделкино (Peredelkino), a village at which many Russian writers kept дачи (dachi/summer homes) in the Soviet era. Now the dacha owners are mostly obnoxious snobs with Range Rovers who don't seem to enjoy living near the museums. But Pasternak, for instance, once had a dacha there. We visited the dacha-museum of Korney Chukovsky--less exciting than Pasternak because he is less internationally famous and more exciting because he is beloved in Russia, was a children's writer, and his dacha is probably not a place most foreign tourists visit. Behind the dacha is a clearing in which he held bonfires for children with magicians, clowns, poets, and other entertainment. We waited there until our tour began. I liked the dacha very much. Two favorite things: 1. Next to the house, there is a tree covered with children's shoes. When Chukovsky's daughter was small, she buried a shoe in the yard and said it would grow into a shoe-tree. Chukovsky then wrote a story about the shoe-tree. 2. In Chukovsky's room, there is a table covered in books (mostly in English--he was a translator and spoke English fluently)--the books that Chukovsky planned to read, but never did because he died before he could get to them. Morbid, maybe, but I found it interesting. On the bottom right corner of the table sits Catch-22. I thought it was a shame he never read it.

After the trip, I returned to Moscow. In Peredelkino, it was possible to forget completely that the city was alive with tanks and people and planes and music--the Victory Day celebration, which seems to be the biggest, most important state holiday--but when I got back I traveled to the center, where people were swarming the area around Red Square. I wandered and watched people while I waited to find out what my friends were up to. I realized that being a lone девушка (young woman) in the swarm of people was going to get annoying after I was approached by a couple of guys, one of whom was pretty bold. The phrase "I really like you" is somehow creepier in Russian.

As much as I appreciated the offer of ice cream, I wasn't interested, and so I headed towards Christ the Savior/metro Kropotkinskaya/Beard Papa's to meet Darcy. We got some celebratory cream puffs and settled down near the river, enjoying the sunshine. It was easily 80 degrees. I got a text from Graham saying that he was at Park Pobyedi and that there would be fireworks later. Darcy and I said goodbye and I made my way to the park. I expected the metro to be packed, but it wasn't--until I got to the Park Pobyedi station. It's usually quite empty but everyone in Moscow was turning out for the celebration. It was so insane that I didn't even have cell phone reception for a while. I finally got ahold of my friends--Graham, Ben, Hanna, and Katie were there, along with a Russian guy Katie had met on Friday and some friends of his. Ben had purchased a пилотка (pilotka), a military-style hat that was being sold everywhere, and Graham had a gigantic Russian flag. The Russians in our group were the most laid-back strangers I'd met in Moscow, and we asked one another lots of questions and talked about the holiday.

It began storming very suddenly and beautifully. The thunder shook the ground and drove the revelers into the woods and under the cover of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. Once the rain died down, we left the park and walked towards the next metro station (the Park Pobyedi station was closed to incoming traffic). But the rain stopped and so did we, waiting for the fireworks. The Russian girls started a game of charades, but it wasn't long before the show began--and it was beautiful. I wish I could have had a better view, but there were many people around and the euphoria and sense of collective celebration was more exciting than the lights in the sky. Everyone smiled, whooped, chanted, and sang. It was long, but over too early anyway and I didn't want to go home.

Странно/Strange

Last night, I was in bed reading The Reader, lent to me by Ms. Andrea. The book made me feel deeply and quietly sad in a way that reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I regretted not having my copy with me, although there was no reason I should have brought it. About ten minutes later, Anya knocked on my door and came in. She commented that I was reading something new and I told her no more than the title, the nationality of the author, and that it was sad. Suddenly, she asked, “Do you like Kundera? Because Grisha’s mom has his books in English and I thought you might want to borrow them.”

It was weird. She’s going to get them for me next time she’s at her mother-in-law’s.

In the meantime, I’ve found English copies of short stories by Chekhov and Hemingway in English in our apartment. Also in English: poetry by Byron and stories by O. Henry. The Russians LOVE them, and none of us can explain this phenomenon.

Танец/Dance - and more

Well, I've been negligent. Time to catch up--prepare yourselves for a long entry.

This past week was what I guess passed as midterms for us, though no one made an official declaration, and I had three compositions due. It was a rough week for everyone. Homesickness set in in some cases; actual sickness in others. People pulled all-nighters and got arrested at football matches (okay, just person--not me--and one football match). I think we all sort of forgot that we're also in classes--but it is much, much more interesting to spend time out on the streets of Moscow than at home doing genitive case exercises. My attention span has shortened significantly since I've been here, and you may know that it was already rather short. Oops.

Last weekend, Darcy, Andrea, Katie, and I decided to go out on Friday night and stay out until the Metro re-opened at 5:30/6:00 (some stations open earlier than others). At midnight we headed to good ol' Kruzhka and stayed there until it closed at two, talking to our waiter, Fedya. He is from Uzbekistan, and Fedya is his "Russian name." I'm ashamed to admit that I have had trouble remembering his real name. Conversation was sort of difficult because we don't speak great Russian and his is hardly better, but it was fun and he seemed very interested in cultural differences between his country and Russia and the US.

From Kruzhka we headed to Masterskaya, the club at which we saw that quartet perform tango music back in early April. The DJ was excellent and the music was a lot of fun--everything from Red Hot Chili Peppers to "Umbrella" to "99 Luftballons" to some weird sped-up hyper version of a Nirvana song that has no business being upbeat. As much as we liked the music, there weren't enough people there, and guys who weren't there with gals were bordering on incredibly creepy (we would later learn that this is just true of a lot of single dudes in clubs). We decided to move on.

Anya had taken Darcy and I to a place called Club Duma (Duma is the Russian parliamentary body) for dinner after we went to the Pushkin museum last week and we liked it a lot. We headed over to the Okhotny Ryad area to find it again. It's quite hidden, but fortunately Darcy has an excellent sense of direction--unfortunately, however, we were about 200 feet away when an obviously-exasperated girl walked past and said, "If you're going to Duma, it's closed." Bummer. At this point our feet were dying--all of us were in high high heels as is almost-dress-code for young women here. We decided to head over to Propaganda, which is in Kitai-Gorod. It was quite a hike but we pulled out the map and set out.

We went through Red Square on our way to Propaganda--and it was completely empty save for some workers doing something at GUM. We took our shoes off because we couldn't stand them any longer. I wish I could do that moment justice in words, but I won't even try.

Propaganda is a popular club for foreigners. The scene: European techno, a bunch of Euro hipsters with their Euro hipster mullets, hazy because you can smoke anywhere here, flashing lights which make it so you can't get a decent look at anyone, really. Katie got picked up pretty quickly by a guy and they danced the rest of the time. The rest of us got creeped on but avoided the advances--one guy who came up to me was so drugged up (must've been) that he just sort of stood there and stared at me rather than actually asking to dance, which was really pretty hilarious. Other times guys would just sort of hover and wait for me to acknowledge them. Sorry, guys, I prefer to be asked (or do the asking, of course).

I wasn't tired until my butt hit the seat on the Metro around 6:15 in the morning. That same day, I went to Anya's parents' apartment for Anya's birthday dinner--she's 23 now. Their apartment is really incredibly lovely, and the food, Georgian cuisine, was excellent. Anya and Grisha sang some songs they had prepared for the occasion (Grisha played guitar) including, as a joke of course, "My Heart Will Go On." Then Anya's father played guitar and sang for quite a while. He performs Russian bard music very well. Her parents had constructed a tower of vanilla, strawberry, and creme brulee ice cream and covered it in strawberries from their dacha garden. They poured liqueur all over it and lit it on fire. It didn't work at first so her mom pulled out a bottle of absinthe and tried to get it to light a bit better. They babbled in Russian and chastised Anya and Grisha when they spoke English to me, although everyone, even Anya's elderly grandparents, revealed throughout the night that they spoke English. I enjoyed myself very much.

Now for last night.

Katie and I headed to Kruzhka first again because the drinks at the clubs run about 200-300 rubles, or 8-10 bucks. Now, we're classy ladies, naturally, so we weren't looking to get drunk, but I'll take this opportunity to tell you about an interesting feature of Russian clubs. Before Katie and I went out, we were checking out the reviews of clubs on Afisha (popular arts and entertainment magazine for young people) to help us decide where to go. I think I've mentioned before that some clubs have Face Kontrol, which means that the doorman can turn you away if he feels like it. Looks and clothes are a big factor--to a varying degree depending on the club--but it seems that the biggest is behavior. This applies especially to the women. Many of the reviews I read commented on the behavior of the women at the clubs. If a reviewer had seen a sloppy drunk young woman on the dance floor, they felt this reflected poorly on the club. With this in mind, Katie and I had a couple of drinks, talked to Fedya, and headed to FAQ Cafe, which Anya told me is her favorite club.

The doorman at FAQ smiled and greeted us cheerfully. Good sign. The people inside looked interesting, but most everyone was sitting at tables or at the bar, and the room that had been cleared for dancing was pretty empty. There were maybe six other people in there when we got there. Unfortunately, that number hardly grew in the hour we were there. The music was fun but we decided to move on.

There were three other clubs around the same Metro station as FAQ according to Afisha, so we decided to see about one down the street. I didn't like the building much--sort of 70s architecture--but I didn't get the chance to evaluate the club because we were turned away, the doorman saying something about the dress code. I am just going to assume he really had some problem with our clothes, because I'd like to think we're pretty cute (and it seems that Russian men generally agree). No sweat, it was just some karaoke bar that charged you six bucks to sing a song.

We then decided to head to what sounded like the most fashionable club on our list, Fabrique. It was a Metro station or two away, but of course the Metro was closed at this point and we had to walk. It's still difficult for us to estimate how long it'll take to get anywhere in the city. I think that Fabrique was fairly far, but it's hard to say because we got lost for three hours! So maybe it was practically next door and we just walked around it for a while. Still not sure how far or how out of the way we traveled. Anyway, I enjoyed walking, with the exception of getting barked at by a stray dog. By the time we reached the club it was 5, we were tired and our legs hurt, and Katie was worried about getting turned away by the doormen because of her clothes--the girls outside of the club were pretty dressed up. I was fine with skipping it. We'll try it some other time, and now at least we know where it is.

We got on the bridge next to Fabrique to walk across the river and saw Red Square maybe ten minutes in the distance. Oh! We knew vaguely where we were. At the end of the bridge, we were approached by a man who wanted a cigarette, exasperated that the girls behind us weren't smokers. We explained that we didn't smoke. The man picked up on the accent and asked us, in English, if we were from England. No, America, we said. He was excited and began chattering at us in incredibly broken English. His friend caught up with him and asked him why he wasn't speaking Russian. "They are from America!" he exclaimed excitedly. He tried to tell us about some fire show somewhere, then said we should find somewhere to watch the sunrise, and probably a lot of other things I didn't quite catch. Katie and I just sort of stood by as these two 30-something men babbled at us and one another in mixed English and Russian. (It's very funny--almost everyone we encounter speaks at least a little English.)

They eventually decided we should go to a club nearby and swept us, sort of baffled and amused, down the street. The club, Club Kult, looked cool but the doorman turned them away (he said the club was closed, but it obviously wasn't), I expect because they were really drunk, not particularly stylish men in their 30s. They decided we would go to a supermarket so they could get something to drink and then we'd watch the sun come up. They bought us bottles of water and a bar of chocolate and got themselves a bottle of whiskey, slightly dismayed that we wouldn't drink with them. It was like 6 in the morning at this point--they explained that it was May Day (I guess it's sort of Labor Day, though apparently there's another Labor Day), so drinking was entirely reasonable.

We retraced our steps back to a bridge, but once it became apparent that there wouldn't be much of a sunrise because of the cloud cover, the guys continued on down the street, talking our ears off. The second guy, who sort of looked like Leo DeCaprio but, as Katie said, maybe more like Leo DeCaprio's uncle, told me about his trip to America in 1991. He was apparently there when the Soviet Union fell--it was an interesting story. He told me that he thought that Katie and I were brave for staying out all night in a foreign country. His English was better than his friend's. I think his name started with an S--it wasn't Sergei, I'm pretty sure, but that's what I'll call him here. Poor Katie--the first guy, Alexei, just talked her ear off about how much he loves U2 for about fifteen minutes.

The strange men we'd somehow gotten dragged along with couldn't agree on what to do about breakfast. Katie and I stood by as they argued about whether we should find somewhere to sit down (because Katie and I were tired and wanted desperately to get off of our feet) or go to a place where we'd have to stand, but where we could try what Sergei kept calling a "real domestic Russian" food--something that started with a "ch" sound, but I don't remember the name. We settled for the latter, probably because that's what Sergei wanted and he seemed hard-headed. The food was really good--greasy dough with filling, that's all. Mine had potato filling, everyone else had lamb. The guys paid, so it was hard to complain too much. They wanted to talk about music, so we did a bit. We left when they were having some sort of heated interaction with some crazy old man in the restaurant regarding the sharing of alcohol. I think. Sergei kissed my hand--ew?--and Alexei walked us to the metro station (like 200 feet away) because we couldn't seem to shake him off. But he finally left us and we headed home around 7:15.

Hahaha. What a ridiculous night. I slept until 1 this afternoon.

Now my host family has gone away for the weekend and I'm here in the apartment on my own. I guess today I'm going to eat a bunch of sirki* and pears and eggs.

Tomorrow our group is taking a trip to Yasnaya Polyana. I will probably post about it, because I love Tolstoy.

*Sirki are, hands down, my favorite part of food in Russia (which isn't saying much, although their pears are the bomb). Here's a picture that gives you an idea of what they look like--that's a different brand than my family eats. They are made from sweet tvorog covered in chocolate, and are refrigerated.

Not kidding

Tonight, I ate an éclair filled not with creme, but with butter.

It was actually fine-tasting, but...it was butter!

Искусство

Everything looks cooler when it's in Russian. The title of this entry just says, "Art."

Today I saw some Very Important Russian artist's house (Vasnetsov's house), and maybe I should be a little more respectful of the fact that he was Very Important, but--it was not terribly exciting. He produced some neat paintings of fairy tales, sure. But I also had to listen to our guide talk about things like his dining room table. And his oven.

The really good part of the day was meeting up with Anya at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Okay, tangent here: FREAKING EVERYTHING is named for Pushkin. There are two Pushkin museums (one of them is Pushkin-related, so I guess that's okay, but he didn't actually live there), a Pushkin metro station, Pushkin street, and a Pushkin cafe. Wikipedia tells me that there's a planet and a crater on the moon named after him, but those things aren't in Moscow so I guess they don't count. But the people who named them--probably in Moscow. They're obsessed with him here. Why is this relevant? Because the museum I went to today is a visual arts museum. And it's named after a writer. This makes absolutely no sense.

Anyway, the reason we went to the museum--they have a HUGE Picasso exhibition going on until late May. There are 240 pieces, and it was wonderful. The painting at the top was one of my favorites. The exhibition seemed to focus a bit on Picasso's involvement with Russia and the ways in which he was inspired by Russia--I hadn't known that he had worked with the Russian ballet. He designed, I believe, the set and costumes for a show (at least one? I don't know). Darcy told me that the dancers performed to Satie (I didn't take the time to read the information on the walls, because I could only understand some of the Russian and the other language was French, which Darcy can read). What a show! Hearing Satie and seeing Picasso. I can't imagine. I really would like to have lived in the early 20th century.

Soviet Kitsch

I hate to admit it, but I was a bit dull this weekend. I still haven't gotten out to the clubs and bars at night--but I'm working on ideas for this Friday. I'm thinking I'll go back to Masterskaya for dancing (with friends, of course) and see what happens from there--the metro doesn't re-open until 6, so it'll be an experience. Saturday is Anya's birthday; I have already been warned not to make any plans.

This past weekend, though not exciting to retell, was really delightful. Anya and Grisha really wanted to go swimming on Friday, so we dropped Lyova off with Grisha's mother, picked up his 9-year-old sister Varya, and headed to a nearby fitness club. Mostly it was not notable, but a few things struck me: it cost 400 rubles (over thirteen bucks, yikes), we had to put plastic things over our shoes when we came in (presumably because the streets are so dusty), we had to shower before we went into the pool (likely for the same reason), all of the women wore bathing caps (...I looked terrible), and the sauna was SO ridiculously hot. My bathing cap started to burn my ears after a while. I'm not much of a swimmer, so I just spent most of the time watching Varya goof off or floating on my back.

On Saturday, Anya, Grisha, Lyova and I headed out around 11 for a flea market that they were really excited to show me. It was a long trip--we took a bus to a Metro stop, took the Metro to a suburban train (элестричка) station, and took the train a few stops to the market. Best part of the train: they sold ice cream. For real. The market was delightfully run-down, just a long street dotted by sellers' tarps, on which were clothes, knick-knacks, dishes, jewelry, furniture, vinyl, army uniforms. Anyone into stuff from the Soviet era would've had a field day. I kept thinking, "Well, I won't buy that now, in case I run into something else I want. I have to take all of this stuff back to the US." But that screwed me in the end because I didn't buy anything, and after a while it started raining and most of the sellers began packing up. I left empty-handed, but I hope to go back. I want one of these (click for picture). They're metal holders for glasses. Why? I have no idea! But they're an old Russian thing, and some of them are really lovely.

After the flea market, we came back into the city and walked around other stores. I got a pair of tights to replace the ones I'd ripped on Friday (putting tights back on after being in a pool/shower is sort of difficult) at this great store which is basically just stuff for feet and legs. By the time we headed home at about 10, I was exhausted. 11 hours of walkin' around. Anya had wanted to watch Kill Freud, a Spanish film she loves, but we settled down in the kitchen for a snack and didn't leave until 2, when we couldn't stay awake any longer. We spent the whole time talking about relationships openly, and for some reason Anya and I were really giggly at some points. It was wonderful. I feel closer to them every day; it's going to be very difficult to leave.

More

I apologize for the infrequent posting. Due to personal life stuff (unrelated to my stay here) and political news from America, I have been tired and a little down, especially when I have free time. So my blog is taking a hit. I've been feeling much better, though, so I'll do my best to post regularly again now.

Today, we went on an excursion to the old Tretyakov art gallery. I'll be honest--it was pretty boring. I just can't dig pre-20th century art. I understand why others do and I can see why it's good, but it's never been my thing. We took a guided tour, which made it worse, and it was led by an employee of the museum who spoke fine English but interjected a high-pitched "Yes?" into her speech about every 30 seconds. I started a count, but I stopped at 67, about halfway through the tour, because I was tired of paying attention. After the tour a few of us realized that there were rooms of early 20th c. art that she had totally skipped, and I'm glad we found them. Modern-era art is some of my favorite. I loved this piece by Filipp Malyavin (click for the whole thing):

There is a new Tretyakov elsewhere which houses avant-garde 20th and 21st c. art, but we won't be taking an excursion there as a group, so I'll have to make time to go one of these weekends.

After the museum, some of us went to a restaurant called Ёлки-Палки--which is pronounced Yolki-Palki. Yeah. It was aptly described by someone at the table as a Russian Cracker Barrel, although it's certainly more expensive. I ended up shelling out about $20, which is entirely normal for Moscow. It wasn't the food that got me, but the juice. I had two TINY TINY glasses of grapefruit juice which ended up costing me about $6. Unfortunately, just drinking water wouldn't have been much cheaper, as the water was 120 rubles ($4). You can't get tap water here (because you shouldn't drink the tap water), only bottled. This is probably why people drink so much beer here--it's cheaper than or comparable to anything else.

From Yolki-Palki we walked to a park that had been recommended to us by the woman who organizes our excursions. She said there was a very interesting sculpture there, and she was right. It's called "Children are the victims of adult vices" (click title for Wikipedia article) sculpted by Mikhail Shemyakin. I think its greatest value for foreigners is the insight it provides into the values of Russian society--though it was very controversial when it came out, according to Wikipedia, and so of course it's not representative of all Russians. Still, artists don't make art outside of society's influence.

Covering some impressive distance, all things considered, Darcy and I led the group over to a great little place Anya showed us on Sunday. It's called, I kid you not, Beard Papa's. It is a Japanese cream puff place. They sell only cream puffs (and not even much of a variety), and I only know it's Japanese because the women behind the counter say thank-you in Japanese and because Anya told us it is. Wikipedia, however, confirms this. But the thing is--the cream puffs are heavenly. They're not the little melon-ball-sized ones you get from the grocery store. I hate those, and the stuff inside is too light and weird. I won't try to describe how awesome the cream puffs from Beard Papa's are, but if you ever come to Moscow please do swing by metro station Kropotkinskaya (not the most attractive name, I know) and hit up this tiny, inexplicable little bakery. Their website indicates that there are about a billion in California and one on the Upper West Side in New York and some in other US locations, but it just wouldn't be the same as eating a really good cream puff at a Japanese bakery with an English name in Russia.

Before being introduced to Beard Papa's on Sunday, Darcy and I met Anya at Arbatskaya to head over to Old Arbat, a pedestrian-only street, where they were holding a Flash Mob event. People had been told to wear bright colors and blow bubbles starting at 2:00 in the afternoon. We didn't get there until 4, but man, people were still going strong. There weren't a ton of bubbles then, but the excitement included:

1. Young kids, maybe junior high- and high school-age, playing a traditional Russian game in a huge group
2. Girls and some guys carrying signs that said, "Free hugs!" and sometimes, "Kiss me!"
3. A guy doing yoga-like poses on his hands, feet, and head on top of broken glass. We left when he picked up a meter-long nail-like thing that he was apparently going to swallow.
4. A drum circle
5. A quartet of young woman, probably from the music academy, playing classical music
6. Hilarious costumes and skimpy clothing in celebration of the spring weather
7. People actually smiling, even laughing and screaming and singing and dancing

That last one is a big deal in a place like Moscow. Smiling for no reason in public, especially at complete strangers, is practically verboten. This morning when I was thinking of depressing things while waiting for our group to assemble in the metro station, our excursion guide looked at me and said, "You already look like real Russians!"

The whole Arbat experience felt like recharging.

Edited to add: Still loving my host family. Grisha just came in with a glass of freshly-made grapefruit juice.