Nizhni Novgorod: It Begins

Our excursion started with an overnight train ride on Thursday. After school we all met at the aptly named "Moscow Train Station" (if you couldn't guess, the trains all go to Moscow or cities in that area). I love taking overnight trains in Russia, everyone is crowed into these tiny little coupes with four bunks a piece, with another two lying parallel to the aisle across from you. It's kind of romantic in a way, everyone sits around the tiny tables and eats, since there is pretty much nothing else to do for the twelve plus hours on the train. I had a lovely time sitting and chatting with my bunk mates, eating, laughing, and trying to organize a night of partying in Moscow with the son of the head of the North American Cossack League (he is also a Duma member) but unfortunately those plans fell through, since he was apparently off doing Cossack things in Rostov on Don. In the end it didn't matter, we did just fine for ourselves in Moscow, but that's a story for a different blog post...
We arrived in Nizhni really early Friday morning. As much as I love Russia trains, sleeping on them is absolutely impossible. I had ended up passing out around 10 without actually having made my bed. Coverless, I spent a night of fitful sleep getting my feet mangled by approximately every single person on the train. The bunks on these trains were made for someone approximately the size of a leprechaun, meaning that a rather large portion of my body hangs off the bed and into the aisle. Over the summer, I always had the top bunk, so when I wasn't squeezed into the overhead storage bin like I was on my first ride when my feet ended up hanging out the window, my feet were safe to dangle in the aisle. Since nobody wanted to rick getting my sasquatch feet to the face, they usually ducked out of the way. Being on the bottom bunk was a completely different matter. Having your feet at knee level is practically asking for mutilation. I honest think people made a conscious effort NOT to get out of the way, if only to see my combination look of sleepy consternation and grimace of pain. Nizhni Novgorod itself is a beautiful city, and one of my favorites of the whole excursion, we first visited the apartment that was used to basically imprison the inventor of the Soviet A-bomb (his name escapes me at the moment). I found the museum to be dreadfully boring, I was stuck at the tour group with a small group of people, so we couldn't really hear anything people said. We ended up having to entertain ourselves. IE, sign the guestbook and sit on this guys furniture. The rest of the city I loved though. Nizhni's Kremlin walls are still standing, and command a giant hill that overlooks the city. The Kremlin even has WWII tanks, trucks, artillery, and planes that the city produced during the war on display which, if so inclined, one can climb on. I was so inclined and spent a blissful 10 minutes or so climbing all over T-34 tanks and Katyusha rocket trucks. That evening a few friends and I went to explore the city ourselves. We ended up getting more than a bit lost and ended up in some of the city's seedier areas, but even so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. My highlight was our adventure to find water. Which ended in a basement grocery store which one could only get through by walking down a dilapidated stair case and going through a door which I couldn't really differentiate from the wall around it. Only in Russia I guess...
The evening was spent on the boat. That night we had our first encounters with Vera and Denis, otherwise know as the waitstaff from Hell. Vera, who you will hear much more about in future entries, was a dour, rather unpleasant girl, who was our waitress for the week. Everything and everyone appeared to be a major inconvenience for her, and that included us and getting our food. The first night dinner took over two hours because Vera was so slow, and we simply left when she apparently refused to bring us our after dinner tea (a necessity in Russia) Denis was the barman's assistant upstairs. Denis wouldn't serve anyone a second drink until they had payed for the previous one, a system which he didn't bother to inform anyone of. So after one rather delicious white Russian, we spent a good 45 minutes trying to order drinks that never came. Finally, we threatened to just walk out, it was only then that nasty Denis bothered to inform us of his preposterous system. Needless to say we left in quite a huff. The evening was saved however, and I spent a rather lovely couple of hours drinking wine downstairs in another bar with a couple of friends. I apologize that my photos of Nizhni are rather limited in number, I had various camera fails throughout the day (no batteries, no memory card, etc.) and unfortunately as of this moment only a few other people have posted their pictures of the excursion. I do have a few though, and hopefully those will suffice.

Long Time No Post

After receiving a surprising amount of hate mail concerning my lack of posting, I've decided to get my act together and sit on Friday night and write blog posts (not that I would be doing anything better, it's snowing outside and I have no urge to battle snow in mid-October). I have more than two weeks, and a giant cruise down the Volga to cover so I'm going to try to punch these bad boys out as quick as possible. Two Wednesdays ago our excursion was to Pushkin, formerly know as Tsarkoye Selo, which is home to the famous Catherine Palace. I've been in Russia for almost four months now, and I can tell you by this point, I was pretty much palaced out. It's kind of a "you've seen one, you've seen them all" type deal. Painfully, and sometimes grossly ornate palaces, often (or so it seems) filled with second rate art works that didn't quite make it into a museum. I have to say though that Catherine's Palace was an exception. The palace is an eye-catching shade of robin's egg blue and is covered in gold and white trim. The interiors are huge, lined with gold leafed sculptures of cupids, angels, and human figures, and mirrors, all a refreshing change from the endless enclosed rooms of other palaces. The Catherine Palace (named for Peter's wife, not Catherine the Great as many believe) is also home to the amber room, a room paneled in amber. The original room was stolen by the Nazis in World War II as they gave the palace the stereotypical German treatment (IE completely ransacking the place) and was lost for decades. I believe it was recently discovered that the panels were destroyed in a fire accidentally set by the advancing Red Army somewhere near Koenigsberg, but I could be mistaken. The room has been painstakingly restored however and is now a proud symbol of the new Russia. The room is awe inspiring, even though it doesn't cover the entire room (the original was a gift from Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, and was meant to cover a room a quarter of the size) the amber is beautiful as it is, but it has been carved into picture frames, trim, and about anything else you can imagine. I wish I could have taken a picture, but unfortunately the army of babushkas guarding the room were quite vehement about enforcing the no photography rule. I've decided, if I ever become the Theocrat of a country, I'm going to build myself an exceeding opulent palace like the Catherine Palace, complete with my own Amber Room, which will take up the ENTIRE room. The rest of the afternoon after the afternoon was spent rather peacefully wandering the extensive gardens and grounds of the palace.

Some Musings on Russia and the Russians

As I lay in bed with a stomach infection (I get to have an ultrasound Tuesday to see if there is swelling in my stomach), pondering why it seems that I have caught every kind of bizarre disease known to mankind, I've decided to change things up and be a little bit more insightful and thoughtful than simply just tell you what I've done since my last blog post (Sit in my bed and watch South Park). I've been in Russia almost three months now, and as cliche as it sounds, I'm still learning new things about Russian culture and life everyday. Russian culture often seems to be completely obtuse and preposterous to those who see it from the outside. "Potatoes, vodka, bears, and suffering" was how one friend of mine summed up his thoughts on Russia. While I won't deny you that I've seen more potatoes and vodka here than I ever care to see again, that I've seen my fair share of bears on leashes walking down Nevsky Prospekt (I've seen two!), and that the suffering of many Russians is completely mind-numbing, there is much more to Russia than that. In my three months here I've met some of the most interesting and intelligent people. I really feel like I've grown to appreciate the life I have after my time here. Whether it be discussing world politics over a dinner of beer and raw fish (anyone wonder how I got a stomach infection?) or just learning to enjoy sitting on a bench in the park for a few hours, I've grown to see life from a different perspective.
While that's all well and good, there are still some things about Russia that even I still find to be preposterous. I find that no matter how intelligent many Russians are, they often believe, and say, the most absurd, ridiculous things. They believe in the most obtuse and irrational things, that time and time again completely throws me for a loop.
Take for example an encounter I had in class a week or so ago. We were sitting in class as usual, and as unfortunately seems to happen more often than not, I had absolutely no clue what was going on. As is par for the course, there was a complete jump from what I thought, quite possibly wrongly, we were talking about (something about perfective, imperfective verbs and aspect) and jumped to something completely different, and completely irrelevant to the subject of grammar. All of sudden, at a decibel level that was more than slightly uncomfortable, we started hearing about the city of Paris. We were told, quite correctly I assume, that Paris is one of, if not the single, most beautiful city in the world. We then told that there was a huge problem in Paris. The city was being defiled by cigarette butts. I completely agreed. Cigarette butts are gross, the ground in St. Pete is covered in them and it's really disgusting. I was pretty pumped, "She agrees!" I thought, "Ok, you say it lady!" Alas, it was at this point that the rationality train completely derailed. "Do you know why," she asked, "there are cigarette butts all over Paris?" I had no idea why Paris is plagued by cigarette butts, and quite eagerly waited to hear the source of this menace. Her answer? "Muslims. Muslims and all those Arab and African foreigners who come to France to work." I'm fairly confident the sound of the palm of my hand being slapped against my forehead could have been heard for miles around. For real? Arab and African immigrants are the reason for Paris's problems? My god, I wonder what she has to say about the purpose of the pyramids or the JFK assassination...
But that is Russia I guess. "Conspiracy syndrome" as I call it, seems to be another one of the quirks of the Russian character. And while at times it can be kind of shocking, or evenly offensive to some with more delicate tastes (luckily I have never been one of those). I just find it amusing. In my opinion, it's kind of endearing and something that definitely can keep a conversation going. Who doesn't want to argue about whether the Chernobyl reactor exploded because it was dirty (an actual argument I have had) and whether now it is still radioactive (apparently, according to this woman, it stopped being radioactive five years after the explosion).
That about does it from here. The highlight of my week has definitely been the new kitten my host sister brought home two days ago. He doesn't have a name yet (I bounce between calling him Thaddeus and Frankidor) and he's super tiny (he can sit in the pal of my hand) but he's super adorable. He sits with me and chases just about everything, string, the cursor on my computer screen, any moving part of my body. He's been my buddy for the past couple of days, sitting with me as I lay in bed. So I leave you with a rather adorable string of pictures my mom and dad took as I was skyping them today,

Hermitage: 2 Tom: 0

Sickness may have kept me in bed for four days, but it didn't stop me from failing to update my blog. I spent Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday in bed, and by Sunday was very close to dying of boredom. As such I decided that perhaps a little bit of an outing was what I needed. My friend Hannah and I ventured to the Hermitage, in hopes of seeing a new exhibit or trophy art stolen by the Red Army as the Soviets rampaged across Eastern Europe and Germany at the end of WWII. Many of these pieces, such as Heinrich Schliemann's gold from the city of Troy, are super valuable, and in many cases, thought lost forever until they "turned up" in the Hermitage's vast storage facilities as little as five years ago. We were however, defeated in our quest, not only did we not see the exhibit, we couldn't even FIND it. Not that that fact is particularly surprising. The Hermitage is unnecessarily huge, filling up three stories of the former winter palace and an adjoining building. And that's simply the art on display. Legend holds that the Hermitage's collection is so extensive, that to even glance at each piece of the collection for a couple of seconds, one would need nearly nine years.
As such we spent the next few hours wandering about the museum. The most surreal part of the day for me was going up to the museum's third floor. In dark, dingy rooms lit with fluorescent lights like you would find in a public school classroom, filled with famous Monets, Matisses, and other works by French artists. The visit, while completely unsuccessful, was a good deal of fun. I spent the evening with Lyuda, we went to the movies. We ended up seeing some French movie about oceans. I can't say as though I found the movie particularly entertaining or enjoyable. Take Planet Earth, remove the audio, and then replace it with classical music and some really pretentious narration about discovery and some other mumbo jumbo I couldn't understand. And then make it last almost 2.5 hours. And to top it all off, end the movie with a 10 minute montage of beautiful dolphins and whales getting harpooned, bludgeoned, and stabbed to death. Needless to say I didn't eat the fish I was offered for dinner that night...
Today, instead of an excursion (apparently no one checked to see if the museum we were planning to visit was open on Wednesdays...) Hannah and I (this time with some reinforcements) again ventured to the Hermitage, determined to find this damned exhibit. The Reader's Digest version of the story is that once again the Hermitage foiled our plan. Another few hours spent wandering the museum in the desperate hope of finding what I would like to think would be a pretty obvious exhibit. On the plus side though, we did see two Da Vinicis and I got to go to my favorite part of any museum, the arms and armour. Hopefully if I don't procrastinate too much/understand my homework, I'll write another post tonight, but right now I'm going to go eat dinner.

Down With The Sickness

The downsides to being sick are obvious. 1. I'm sick... Nobody likes spending the day with their head spinning and their stomach hurting. 2. You don't see any of your friends. 3. You don't get any work done.
What it does mean however is that I can write blog posts! I'll keep this one short though, I'm on my last legs for the day. Our excursion this week was to the fortress of орещек, or roughly translated, "the nut" due to the fact that it looks like a nut when viewed from above(?) I can't say as though I found it to be particularly nut-like. The fortress is now largely a ruin, located on a wind swept island at the mouth of the Neva River on Lake Ladoga. Despite it's ominous, and decidedly melancholy appearance, the fortress has a fascinating history. Built first by the Swedes in the 11th or 12th century, and again by the Republic of Novgorod in the 14th, the land around Ladoga was the prize territory sought by the Swedes and Russians over seven hundred years of warfare. After it's seizure by Peter the Great during the Great Northern War, the fortress took on the role of prison, housing many famous inmates, such as Ivan VI, the ill-fated Russian heir to the Tsarist throne who spent all 24 years of his life in prison, before being shot and killed by prison guards during a botched breakout attempt by his supporters, to Lenin's older brother, who was hung beneath the fortress's crumbling walls. In more recent history, the fortress served as a vital bastion in the defense of Leningrad that prevented the Germans and Finns from completely sealing off the city. The fortress withstood three years of nearly constant bombardment from German artillery, and kept open the vital "Road of Life" across Lake Onega, allowing the beleaguered city to cling to life for the nearly 900 day siege. Surprisingly enough, the Soviet garrison of the fortress only suffered 24 casualties in almost three years of fighting. To put that into perspective, the 1943 offensive to break the German blockade only miles away ended in almost 50,000 Soviet deaths. Now the fortress is only a ruin, a stark memorial to a long history of violence and death.
That being said, the tour was fascinating, and it was quite enjoyable walking around, and in some cases climbing on, the rather surreal ruins of walls, towers, and churches. My friend Rob climbed the spire of the fortress's dilapidated church, a harrowing and impressive feat that I imagine required no small amount of skill/
Alas however, now I am ill, my plans to meet with Lyuda have once again been torpedoed, and my work load is piling up. Such is life I guess...

Whoops?

Per usual, I fail to update my blog in any sort of timely manner, so now I have a whole week of stuff to fill you in on. First of all, I AM RABIES FREE! OFFICIALLY! Last Tuesday was my last shot, and I am finally free from weekly visits to the health clinic. Unfortunately no one at the clinic seemed to join me in my enthusiasm, the nurse refused to let me give her a celebratory hug after she jabbed me with the needle, and the doctor as usual asked why I had asked for a doctor's consultation (in my defense I NEVER asked for a consultation with a doctor after the first shot, and this time they told me it was against policy clinic not to have a doctor's consultation, fail?). They did know who I was when I called this time though, which was rather heartening, maybe that was their way of congratulating me...
Wednesday was our first excursion day, like over the summer we did a tour of the canals and waterways of St. Petersburg. The tour was meant to introduce the new American students to their Russian tutors. The excursion differed from in the summer however in that approximately none of the Russian tutors showed up. No matter though, I knew Lyuda wasn't coming so I had a lovely time sitting outside (it was a beautiful day) sitting outside, chatting, and taking pictures.
The rest of the week was pretty quiet, two other students were moved into Pasha's and my group, Sean, a graduate student with beautiful Russian, and Kristina, who speaks Russian at home. I feel like I've been put in the ring with heavy weights. It's for the best though, I'm being pushed to my speaking limits everyday, which I'm sure will do wonders for my Russian.
Friday night was interesting, it is prohibitively for me to take a taxi home after the metros close, so every night I go out I have to choose between going home at midnight, or staying out until 6 when the metros open. I chose to stay out. The night started out fun, we went to a club called mode on the roof of a building near 'sposno krovi' or the Church on Spilled Blood, a beautiful St. Petersburg monument. I met a lot of the people in the Flagship program and was having a great time. The night kind of went downhill from there. Starting around 2:00 AM we started losing people, and me and a few other people were led away by a Russia guy who probably hadn't showered in a few weeks who I none so kindly dubbed 'The Goatee of Lies'. Goatee of Lies said he knew some great clubs in another part of the city. after leaving three bars/clubs, all of which I found quite enjoyable, Goatee of Lies led us to approximately the middle of nowhere, home to his infamous clubs. The clubs were as followed, two closed clubs (apparently closed for quite some time), and pretty sketchy looking club that thankfully wouldn't let us in, and a reggae club with approximately seven people in it. Anyway, after half an hour of watching four geeky men dance to a remarkably horrible DJ, I and the two other survivors of the evening decided to hit the road. We journeyed back to the bars we had found earlier and spent the rest of the night/morning there. However, I lost my friends after about four, so I spent the two hours between four and six AM by myself. Long story short, by the time I found an open metro station by seven I was rather thirsty and thoroughly miserable. I consoled myself over a bowl of borscht at about 7:30, and was in bed at 8.
The week thus far has been better. After having given a presentation about our excursion Monday, we went to the palace of Gatchina on Wednesday. Gatchina is an odd place, a castle that looks more like a fortress than anything. The palace belonged to any number of people throughout history, Peter's sister, a knightly order with an impossible name, the infamous Count Orlov, the Tsars' personal physicians, and finally Paul I. The palace was subjected to extensive renovations by all who possessed it. In the end, it is a rather ungainly looking leviathan of gray stone, half fortress, half french castle, complete with extensive English gardens, a grotto that answers questions, and Paul I's personal 'Island of Love'. The palace was occupied by the Germans during WWII, and per usual, the Nazis did a stellar job with the upkeep. By the time the city was liberated in 1994, the palace was almost entirely obliterated by Luftwaffe bombs and Wehrmacht tanks, and the gardens were almost entirely chopped down, burned, or otherwise destroyed. Restoration of the palace continues to this day, with many rooms still bombed out and bare. It is really quite sobering to see the bare walls and shell holes that still dominate many of the rooms.
That about does it for me. Lyuda comes back from Sochi tomorrow, so hopefully I will be able to see her soon. I'm still trying to make friends, so it looks like I will be going out at least one night this weekend, and next weekend I might go see a soccer game, very exciting! Hope all is well back home!

Russia 2.0: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I'm back! Today was our first of class. This semester is going to be a bruiser, my class is only two people, me and my friend Paul (henceforth known as Pasha). That means I'm really going to have to be on my game everyday. Nowhere to hide now when I don't know how to conjugate a verb or haven't quite finished the day's домашнее задание. I guess I can't complain, my русский is going to be pretty damn good come December.
My first four days have been pretty quiet, getting to know everyone in the new group and getting re-adjusted to life in Russia. Even after only three weeks of being home, coming back is still a change. Whether it be avoiding the flock of pigeons that apparently decided to die in the courtyard of my apartment block, fighting my way onto the metro (I will never understand why St. Petersburg feels the need to close metro stations during rush hour.), almost getting pick-pocketed, or averting a disasterous attempt by my host mother to flavor spaghetti with maple syrup, life in Russia is always exciting, if not slightly ludicrous and non-sensical.
I hope everyone at home is doing well and enjoying the warm weather, it's already pretty cold here!