sooo, this will probably be my second to last update before i leave for my trip before flying home. i can't lie these last three and a half months have left me exhausted. i am wanting to try and get everything done i can before our exams and graduation, but it's definitely becoming tiring. but i know i would regret it if i didn't, so i am just sucking it up and getting out there to finish those last few things on my list.
tuesday of last week we had an awesome, ridiculous excursion to an ice sculpture gallery. we walked in, and the lobby was decorated in the most cheesy, outlandish wall murals, painted benches, and ghetto christmas decorations. this is also ignoring the fact that this "ice gallery" was actually not much more than a metal trailer in the middle of a sketch park across the river from the center of the city. nonetheless, i was excited because i expected it to be pretty cool (pun completely intended). we got there and the man in charge (who was apparently at least a little intoxicated and slightly irritated that we were late) just went on a tirade of russian for at least 5 minutes. lena translated but it was obvious he was mad that we took forever to get there. he eventually got around to bringing out a block of ice that was pre-shaped into what looked like a bird. he told us he was going to give us a demonstration on how to use ice sculpting tools to create a shape. i was sitting in his line of sight, and he looked straight at me and asked me to come up and help, haha. i usually don't like volunteering in front of groups but everyone was friends so i didn't feel uncomfortable. he basically told me to throw myself right into it, i was supposed to be making a dove. i tried my best but somehow i got the feeling he was disappointed, haha. oh well. a few other people tried and failed, and then he told us we were going to be going into the back room to see the main display, the ice gallery. i was actually more excited about the coats we were given to wear, they were huuuge, poofy, baby blue coats with hoods. everyone was engulfed inside these massive things, and we all looked ridiculous, so it was pretty funny. when we finally got into the back room, i was completely taken aback at how well done and just how many ice sculptures were there. the theme was something alone the lines of -fantasy-medieval-kings-queens- you get the idea. my favorite part was a small ice cottage with a kitchen inside. they had taken pieces of fruit (pineapples, bananas, apples, etc) and encased them inside blocks of ice, so it looked as though they had been suspended in mid-air. there were ice dragons, princes, princesses, animals, it was basically a whole ice kingdom. i had never, ever seen anything like that before, and i was thoroughly impressed. i think we all had a good time.
on wednesday, me and a couple of friends had planned to skip our lecture and attempt a bus trip to vladimir, one of the golden ring towns. basically, very, very long story short, it was a nightmare finding the bus departure area and then, after it started to downpour, we basically gave up after about an hour and a half of searching. needless to say, i wasn't the happiest camper, because i had really been looking forward to the trip. it's not terrible, because we are getting a chance to visit one of the golden ring towns this week, actually, but i was still disappointed. after that, i ate, we walked around a little bit, and then i basically used the rest of the day to just relax.
on thursday, we planned a thanksgiving celebration, of course. i was glad it all came together, because things like this tend to not turn out well, at least when our large group is concerned, but a lot of people really wanted to do it and we got it done. some of us went to the store and we all decided on different dishes we would contribute. the spread turned out to be huge, and while it wasn't exactly a conventional thanksgiving meal, it was filling and delicious nonetheless. i made garlic bread from scratch, which, if i do say so myself, was pretty darn good haha. on top of that, we had pasta, green beans, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, along with a couple other small things. we decorated the kitchen in the dorm with hand turkeys, which were really fun to make. we definitely brought the thanksgiving spirit to moscow.
on friday, i didn't really have anything planned, but i ended up back at old arbat by myself that night because i wanted to go back to this sandwich restaurant i found a few weeks back that has this amazing chicken teriyaki/pineapple hoagie. after i ate, i ended up meeting back up with sam, erin, and kari, and we went back to the hookah bar for the last time. they wanted to stay out all night, but i just wasn't feeling up for it, so i took a taxi back to svetlana's around 3 or so. it was surprisingly a lot cheaper than i thought. something else struck me during that taxi ride too..and i don't deny that my russian has definitely improved tenfold here, but sometimes, it's hard to notice it in practice. however, i was able to talk with the cab driver and give him coherent directions without really thinking about it, and with no communication problems at all. those little moments are probably bigger realizations that all of the work and immersion in general here really do what no class back home can, which is help you to speak confidently in everyday, real life situations. so that made me smile, just a little bit.
on saturday, we had an excursion to the museum of the great patriotic war at park pobedy. of course i'd been to park pobedy before, and it still remains my favorite place in moscow, besides red square. the park just has this amazing air of tranquility and placidity, and the architecture of the monuments there is incredible, so i never have a problem going back for another visit (in fact i will definitely go back probably one more time before leaving). but this excursion was just to see the museum, which i had not seen on my previous visit. the museum was beautiful inside, and the amount of artifacts from WWII that they've acquired was impressive. they have 6 dioramas of various battles of the war, all partially 3d installation art. some also include sound effects. some of these were the fall of berlin (with the reichstag and brandenburg gate in the background), the leningrad blockade, the battle of stalingrad, etc. our tour guide was hilarious. he was this old man who spoke english with such a bizarre accent, for the first 15 minutes of the tour, it took everything i had to not laugh. but he was really passionate about the museum and knew a ton. we were there for probably a good two hours, and there was a huge variety of things to explore. i wish i had more time/energy to explore more, but we all know i never have either of those things anymore, haha. we lost people gradually until it was just me, rudy, and amanda, starving to death. we ended up walking down the street looking for food, and came across possibly the sketchiest restaurant ever. but it was like a godsend, a papa john's in moscow. the building was tucked away in a corner alley with no lights outside, just the sign. i honestly thought it was either closed or nonexistent, but we went inside and, lo and behold, it was a papa john's, and we proceeded to stuff our faces. i think i ate too much but it was worth it haha. afterwards, i headed home and pretty much went to sleep. 2 pizzas will do that to you.
and then on sunday, kari, erin, sam and i had made plans to visit the izmailovo souvenir market, which we had previously attempted to visit, but got there too late and close to closing time. this time, we got there with enough time to shop. this market is huge, the biggest souvenir market in moscow, and probably in russia. it's a huge collection of stands, selling everything from traditional russian souvenirs, soviet junk, to pirated electronics and everything in between, basically. the trick is that you can bargain for what you buy, and while not really my forte, hey i tried. money disappears quicker here than gas from the ukrainian pipeline, mostly because you're pressured to either buy or not. i did get a lot of good stuff though, but i still need to go back and finish off my souvenir shopping for everyone else somewhat, and a few more things i wanted to get for myself. after shopping, we were hungry, so we found what seemed to be an azerbaijani style cafe close to the market, and ate there. afterwards, we split up, and kari and decided to ride the dark blue line all the way to the other side of the city outskirts, to strogino, the last stop, somewhere i had been wanting to visit for fun for a while. there is supposedly a lake there, since the suburb is surrounded almost entirely by the moskva river and small basins, but of course, by the time we got there, it was dark and difficult to find. if i have time, i want to go back, in the light if at all possible. we walked around though, and the area was far enough out from the city that it didn't really feel like moscow, but almost more like a true suburb, if not for the still existent high rise apartments, which haunt russia everywhere you go. we found a mcdonalds for some quick dinner and then headed home for the night.
today, i decided to take a breather from sightseeing (probably my last breather until i get home). tomorrow, i want to do something, but i'm not sure quite what yet. on wednesday, we are taking a bus trip about an hour outside of moscow to see sergiev posad, a small golden ring town famous for it's monastery. i'm excited for the trip and just a chance to see the countryside outside of moscow a little bit. and it'll be a nice relaxing ride, hopefully, as long as the roads aren't too terrible, though i'm not counting on that. this will also technically be out last excursion, since the only other one, next sunday, is to the souvenir market, and i will probably just go on my own time instead of with the group. but yeah, i have just a little more than a week left before ele and i leave for st. petersburg. it's creeping up so quickly, and we still have to book a hostel in tallinn and helsinki, as well as our ferry trip across the gulf of finland. we're almost done with it though, which is a relief, because then i can just look forward to the trip. it's gonna be an adventure though, that's for sure! we have the TORFL next monday and tuesday, which i'm dreading, but shouldn't really be worried about. only one more weekend left with the group, which is sad, but i think a lot of people are ready to head back. my trip will be a nice last little break though. but yeah, i think that's it for now. i will definitely make sure to do one last update, probably next wednesday sometime, since that will be my least busy day next week, and then i will be out of touch until the 19th of december, when i return to moscow. so until next week, i'm out!
mitya
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
если день плохой, проснись, улыбнись..всё хорошо будет
jeez these weeks go by so quickly. so, last time i updated was about 8 days ago. this past week was really busy, mostly because i made it busy for myself. i think i am just really realizing that if i want to see the rest of the places i want to see, then i need to do it myself. on sunday, we were supposed to have our excursion to the historical museum, but i slept in because i was out really late the night before and missed it. i felt lazy, so i decided to go myself later on in the afternoon to see the grounds and campus of moscow state university. i hadn't gotten around to seeing it yet and i decided it was a good day for it. MGY is located just outside the ring line of moscow's downtown, on sparrow hills, overlooking the city. it took a while for me to walk there, but when i finally got there, the views were amazing. i walked around the main building first, which is this simply immense structure of stalinist architecture. it's present in the background of moscow from a lot of places, but until you see it up close, you don't really understand the scope of how large it actually is. as a plus, there was literally nobody on campus, since it was dark and late, so i was able to wander around myself and take pictures. also, it had freshly snowed that day, so everything looked even nicer. as you walk down the promenade away from the university, you reach the overlook, where there are the best views of the entire city of moscow. you can see arbat, the moskva river, and the new moscow business center. it's a great view. there's also a ski jump on this hill that gave me vertigo just looking at it, haha. but basically, afterwards, i decided to head back to the metro, but a different way that i *thought* would be quicker. well, needless to say, i got lost for about 90 minutes, wandering around in circles most likely. when i finally found it, i was starving, so i found this really nice random mall closeby to get something to eat. the mall was large, and i had been wanting to buy a few cds of russian singers that i like and can't buy at home, so i checked out an electronics store. i found what i was looking for and went to check out, and the lady asked me a question which sounded like "did you find everything you were looking for?" i answered yes, and she gave me the craziest look ever, so i can only assume i was wrong, haha. no idea what she actually asked me. anyhoo, i ate and headed home with sore feet. got a lot done that night though.
on monday, i went to the park of fallen monuments with erin and sam. this was somewhere else i had had on my short list of places to drop into. it's basically a huge park right across the road from gorkii park and next to the river. this is where the new russia threw a TON of soviet monuments, statues, and art after the soviet union fell. most things are just strewn with not much organization, but it's really cool to see all of the lenin statues in one place. we spent a good deal of time there, though.
on tuesday, we had class as usual and they're starting to ask for all of our flight information now, which is kind of sad. but i do have stuff to look forward to when the program ends, so it's not all sad. more later about that though. after class, we decided on our usual tuesday plans of going out to the restaurant with the unlimited beer and really cheap food. amanda, kelly, rudy, and our russian friend ilya ended up joining us too, so we had a big group. it's weird though, because sometimes this restaurant is extremely crowded on tuesdays, with loud music and a lot of people, and other weeks, it's dead. so this past tuesday there was barely anyone there, not that i'm complaining though, since we get better service (or you'd think so at least).
wednesday..hm, well, we have our lectures on wednesday, if you can call them that, and i've never missed one, so i decided to take a week off and get some more sightseeing done. i slept in a little and made my way all the way back out to VDNKh, the metro stop north of the city where we went way back in september to visit Ostankino, the tv tower. there's also an old soviet exhibition center at this metro stop that i had really wanted to explore. there's a lot of old, soviet buildings and monuments there too. so i got there and of course it was almost dark already. the park was really interesting though, and surprisingly crowded for the time of day (night :P). obviously the fountains, which are really ornate and i'm sure look even more beautiful turned on, were off, but the park was still worth the visit. not easy to describe, one of those things you kind of just have to see for yourself. afterwards, i ate at mcdonalds, where i'm becoming a pro at ordering haha. granted, i always order the same thing, but that's only because mcdonald's selection here in russia is like, 10 times smaller than in america. they have the basics though so that's all i need to be happy. afterwards, i headed home to do some homework.
on thursday, after class, ele and i needed to go to the post office to get stamps (for my last batch of postcards!!) which ended in somewhat of a language miscommunication disaster, but we got stamps so whatever. after that, we headed downtown to arbat to buy more postcards that we both needed. i found what i was looking for, and then we found this really amazing restaurant right on arbat called baggeteriya. we both got these sandwiches that had chicken teriyaki, chili sauce, green onions, and pineapple on them. it was cheap and amazing tasting. finally, before we went home, we wanted to check out Dom Knigi, so we spent about a good hour or so in there and ended up buying a pair of fairytale books for kids, which is good practice. another long day and another day i didn't get to nap. blah.
annnd then on friday, we had class, and then an evening excursion. this was at a performance hall we'd already been to, and it was another folk dance, but this was from a different region in russia, Bashkortostan. the dances seemed to be a lot more intense than the folk dancing we had seen previously, though. we enjoyed that but left halfway through because we had reservations at an english pub for dinner. this pub turned out to be really authentic, they served a lot of english beers as well as a great selection of food with portion sizes that could actually satisfy more than say, a small infant (i'm looking at you coffee house). we stayed there for a while and then headed home because we had made plans for saturday morning to visit izmailovo souvenir market.
unfortunately, on saturday, we got to izmailovo too late, and since it gets dark so early here, they were already getting ready to pack up shop. but we made plans to come back earlier in the day next sunday, so don't fear, everyone will still receive their souvenirs haha. after that, we relaxed at a shokoladnitsa for a while before going back to the hookah bar we had been to two weeks ago. nothing too exciting, because we had an excursion planned for today. which brings me to...
today. we had a planned excursion to novodevichy convent. i was surprised because i thought that the convent would be a little bit bigger, but the grounds were very nice and pretty much what i expected for a convent. we had a tour guide show us around for a little while, but it was cold, dark, and rainy, so i got a feeling our tour was kind of cut short. they took us into an icon exhibition for most of the time, actually, and then we mostly just left. i am kind of churched out at this point, but i did want to see novodevichy, so i'm glad i went. after we parted ways with lena, we made a quick stopover at the novodevichy cemetery next door, which is a massive, expansive cemetery where a lot of famous russian leaders and cultural icons are buried. just for example, Gogol', Chekhov, Gorbachyov, and most recently, Yeltsin are all buried here. Yelstin's grave was really cool too, basically a 3 dimensional russian flag made out of colored stones for the red, white, and blue. but we didn't stay too long because of the rain, and made our way to get some food before heading back home.
and so here i am, i have about 2 and a half weeks before i leave. i have mostly finalized my end of semester plans, through lena's prompting. ele and i are sticking with our original plan of taking a night train back to st. petersburg on the night of the 10th. we're going to spend 2 more days there because we didn't get to see peterhof, and we also want to make a day trip to lake ladoga, which is a huge lake to the east of the city with a lot of beautiful scenery and wildlife. then, we're going to take another train to tallinn, estonia, and spend a couple days there before hopping on a ferry to helsinki, finland. we'll tour helsinki for a few days, and then head back to tallinn by ferry, where i'll come back to moscow and stay for a couple last days before flying back home. i'm really excited for the trip because i know next to nothing about estonia and finland, per se, and i like the idea of the adventure. i think it'll be fun for both of us.
but yeah, those are my plans. we basically have 2 weeks of classes left, and then two days of TORFL testing before graduation on thursday the tenth. it's sad to think that my semester is almost over, but i know looking back i will be amazed at everything i've done and seen, so i'm excited for the home stretch. look out for postcards soon if you haven't gotten one already. hope everyone has a great thanksgiving! until next time!
mitya
on monday, i went to the park of fallen monuments with erin and sam. this was somewhere else i had had on my short list of places to drop into. it's basically a huge park right across the road from gorkii park and next to the river. this is where the new russia threw a TON of soviet monuments, statues, and art after the soviet union fell. most things are just strewn with not much organization, but it's really cool to see all of the lenin statues in one place. we spent a good deal of time there, though.
on tuesday, we had class as usual and they're starting to ask for all of our flight information now, which is kind of sad. but i do have stuff to look forward to when the program ends, so it's not all sad. more later about that though. after class, we decided on our usual tuesday plans of going out to the restaurant with the unlimited beer and really cheap food. amanda, kelly, rudy, and our russian friend ilya ended up joining us too, so we had a big group. it's weird though, because sometimes this restaurant is extremely crowded on tuesdays, with loud music and a lot of people, and other weeks, it's dead. so this past tuesday there was barely anyone there, not that i'm complaining though, since we get better service (or you'd think so at least).
wednesday..hm, well, we have our lectures on wednesday, if you can call them that, and i've never missed one, so i decided to take a week off and get some more sightseeing done. i slept in a little and made my way all the way back out to VDNKh, the metro stop north of the city where we went way back in september to visit Ostankino, the tv tower. there's also an old soviet exhibition center at this metro stop that i had really wanted to explore. there's a lot of old, soviet buildings and monuments there too. so i got there and of course it was almost dark already. the park was really interesting though, and surprisingly crowded for the time of day (night :P). obviously the fountains, which are really ornate and i'm sure look even more beautiful turned on, were off, but the park was still worth the visit. not easy to describe, one of those things you kind of just have to see for yourself. afterwards, i ate at mcdonalds, where i'm becoming a pro at ordering haha. granted, i always order the same thing, but that's only because mcdonald's selection here in russia is like, 10 times smaller than in america. they have the basics though so that's all i need to be happy. afterwards, i headed home to do some homework.
on thursday, after class, ele and i needed to go to the post office to get stamps (for my last batch of postcards!!) which ended in somewhat of a language miscommunication disaster, but we got stamps so whatever. after that, we headed downtown to arbat to buy more postcards that we both needed. i found what i was looking for, and then we found this really amazing restaurant right on arbat called baggeteriya. we both got these sandwiches that had chicken teriyaki, chili sauce, green onions, and pineapple on them. it was cheap and amazing tasting. finally, before we went home, we wanted to check out Dom Knigi, so we spent about a good hour or so in there and ended up buying a pair of fairytale books for kids, which is good practice. another long day and another day i didn't get to nap. blah.
annnd then on friday, we had class, and then an evening excursion. this was at a performance hall we'd already been to, and it was another folk dance, but this was from a different region in russia, Bashkortostan. the dances seemed to be a lot more intense than the folk dancing we had seen previously, though. we enjoyed that but left halfway through because we had reservations at an english pub for dinner. this pub turned out to be really authentic, they served a lot of english beers as well as a great selection of food with portion sizes that could actually satisfy more than say, a small infant (i'm looking at you coffee house). we stayed there for a while and then headed home because we had made plans for saturday morning to visit izmailovo souvenir market.
unfortunately, on saturday, we got to izmailovo too late, and since it gets dark so early here, they were already getting ready to pack up shop. but we made plans to come back earlier in the day next sunday, so don't fear, everyone will still receive their souvenirs haha. after that, we relaxed at a shokoladnitsa for a while before going back to the hookah bar we had been to two weeks ago. nothing too exciting, because we had an excursion planned for today. which brings me to...
today. we had a planned excursion to novodevichy convent. i was surprised because i thought that the convent would be a little bit bigger, but the grounds were very nice and pretty much what i expected for a convent. we had a tour guide show us around for a little while, but it was cold, dark, and rainy, so i got a feeling our tour was kind of cut short. they took us into an icon exhibition for most of the time, actually, and then we mostly just left. i am kind of churched out at this point, but i did want to see novodevichy, so i'm glad i went. after we parted ways with lena, we made a quick stopover at the novodevichy cemetery next door, which is a massive, expansive cemetery where a lot of famous russian leaders and cultural icons are buried. just for example, Gogol', Chekhov, Gorbachyov, and most recently, Yeltsin are all buried here. Yelstin's grave was really cool too, basically a 3 dimensional russian flag made out of colored stones for the red, white, and blue. but we didn't stay too long because of the rain, and made our way to get some food before heading back home.
and so here i am, i have about 2 and a half weeks before i leave. i have mostly finalized my end of semester plans, through lena's prompting. ele and i are sticking with our original plan of taking a night train back to st. petersburg on the night of the 10th. we're going to spend 2 more days there because we didn't get to see peterhof, and we also want to make a day trip to lake ladoga, which is a huge lake to the east of the city with a lot of beautiful scenery and wildlife. then, we're going to take another train to tallinn, estonia, and spend a couple days there before hopping on a ferry to helsinki, finland. we'll tour helsinki for a few days, and then head back to tallinn by ferry, where i'll come back to moscow and stay for a couple last days before flying back home. i'm really excited for the trip because i know next to nothing about estonia and finland, per se, and i like the idea of the adventure. i think it'll be fun for both of us.
but yeah, those are my plans. we basically have 2 weeks of classes left, and then two days of TORFL testing before graduation on thursday the tenth. it's sad to think that my semester is almost over, but i know looking back i will be amazed at everything i've done and seen, so i'm excited for the home stretch. look out for postcards soon if you haven't gotten one already. hope everyone has a great thanksgiving! until next time!
mitya
Saturday, November 14, 2009
so much moscow so little time
so, i have about a month left here. the time has gone by so quickly. at home, a month seems so long, but here, it makes me sad, because it feels like i'll be gone in a blink of an eye. there's still so many things i want to see and do, so i'm trying to write them all down and get as many of them done as possible before i leave.
i wrote last thursday, and last weekend wasn't extremely exciting. we didn't have any excursions scheduled until sunday because of our petersburg trip the week before, however, i was invited to a dinner at a georgian restaurant with alyssa through the sras program we are both here through. the georgian dinner was free for us and the restaurant was off of the new arbat. this was on friday, and after class that day, i took a nap during the afternoon before going. when i woke up, i didn't really look outside until i stepped out the door of my apartment. when i did, i was completely surprised because it was snowing, heavily, the most it has snowed since i got here. i was excited but obviously underprepared, haha. it didn't help that the restaurant was not easy to find, it was down a small alley and not really marked. however, i did eventually find it. we had a small room in the basement to ourselves, and the georgians seems excited to have us there. the dinner consisted of a beef and been stew, kachapori (cheese bread), vegetables, and georgian red wine (which in case you don't know is essentially banned in russia as russia has ceased all imports of georgian produced wine since their little tiff last summer, and continues to refuse to import any of it). however, the georgian wine is brewed on site so it was still as authentic as i can get here, and pretty darn good. there were a lot of people at the dinner that i didn't know, but it was informative because there were several americans there who have been living in russia and explained the ins and outs as well as what they actually do (one woman is in the foreign service and explained in detail how the testing works for diplomats etc). i had a good time and i think it was a worthwhile experience.
saturday was lazy, i think haha, but sunday we had the performance of swan lake at the state kremlin theater. this theater is actually inside the kremlin, and is where a lot of speeches made during communist times were given. the ballet itself was very well done, and even though i honestly probably preferred ruslan and ludmila, which we had seen previously, because of its modern interpretation, i still really enjoyed the opportunity to see swan lake.
this past week hasn't been too eventful, though. i have been busy with class, and we have the TORFL at the beginning of december. on thursday, kari and i had planned to go to sokol'niki to see a world calligraphy exhibit which i had stumbled upon during a previous visit to the park. it actually turned out to be really interesting because they had calligraphy from all over the world, as opposed to only japanese/chinese calligraphy. we saw calligraphy from russia, belarus, norway, germany, france, and even the united states (although written english should never be called calligraphy, it was the worst of the entire exhibit). but it was definitely interesting and i'm glad we went and saw it.
on friday, we had a planned excursion to a hockey game. it was ЦСКА versus Череповeц. the rink itself was pretty crowded and the crowd was extremely energetic, as usual. it was funny because there were scantily clad girls dispersed throughout the stands to act as cheerleaders and dance to the techno music which was periodically played while the clock was stopped. the game was fairly competitive though, and it was tied after three periods. we left since the tie wasn't being resolved, but it was a good time all around.
today, i slept in a little since i hadn't for a long time, and then i made my way over to the park of fallen monuments, which is basically a park where the new Russia threw all of the statues honoring stalin, lenin, and all of the other soviet premieres after the fall of the USSR. the park was HUGE, a lot bigger than i ever thought it was. the park was actually featured on the amazing race, which is part of the reason why i knew about it, haha. but it had a ton of statues, monuments, you name it, it was there. so i met up with sam and erin and we walked around for an hour or so to see everything, and then we went to a japanese restaurant for dinner and to watch the Russia versus Slovenia World Cup qualifier match. Russia beat Slovenia 2-1, but Slovenia was basically an easy win. doesn't matter though russians get excited about anything having to do with soccer haha. afterwards, we found a hookah bar, which turned out to be amazing, because we ordered a grapefruit and mango hookah, and they actually put a WHOLE legit grapefruit on top of our hookah haha, something i've never seen in the US. they also had good music, live bellydancing, and they played america's best dance crew on tv. so that pretty much added up to a good day.
tomorrow, we have an excursion to the state historical museum on red square, and i've been wanting to go there for a while, so i'm looking forward to that. beyond that, we always seem to have mystery excursions during the week, since they only tell us the scheduled weekend excursions, so who knows what will be scheduled next week. this next upcoming weekend, we have a scheduled excursion to the Novodevichy Convent, which is a beautiful convent and church complex located right near the ring line of the moscow metro. and the week after we have a bus trip to the town of Sergiev Posad where there's an historical monastery. i'm actually really looking forward to that.
other than that, in russian class, we're just continuing to practice for the TORFL, which will be during the first two days of our last week of classes. it's sad that we only have a month left, but that also means i am really starting to think about my end of semester plans. my flight doesn't leave until the 21st, and classes end on the 11th, or sometime around the, which means i have about a week of time to do whatever. my original plans were to travel back to st. petersburg with ele, visit estonia, and then come back to moscow for my flight. however, we still have not had our visas renewed, and i'm not sure how much it will cost to pay for a multi-entry visa into russia (which is what i would need). if it turns out to be too much, my plan B is to choose a russian city (most likely west of the urals of course haha) and spend 4 or 5 days there touring and sightseeing before i head back to moscow. either way, i am really excited and anxious to see something new before i come home. in the same vein, i also really want to plan a trip to a small town outside of moscow via train or bus either by myself or with someone who might want to join me, just for a weekend. the problem is that i don't want to miss an excursion i really want to go on in moscow. i am tentatively thinking possibly the weekend after thanksgiving, but it's still up in the air.
so yeah, i have a lot of things to think about, not even including my next semester at pitt, which i am sure will hit me like a ton of bricks since i have done crap in terms of actual schoolwork this semester haha. this has basically been like a huge vacation (and believe me, i'm not complaining). but yeah, the chips will fall as they may, i suppose.
i will try my best to update again soon. until then, stay well!
дима
i wrote last thursday, and last weekend wasn't extremely exciting. we didn't have any excursions scheduled until sunday because of our petersburg trip the week before, however, i was invited to a dinner at a georgian restaurant with alyssa through the sras program we are both here through. the georgian dinner was free for us and the restaurant was off of the new arbat. this was on friday, and after class that day, i took a nap during the afternoon before going. when i woke up, i didn't really look outside until i stepped out the door of my apartment. when i did, i was completely surprised because it was snowing, heavily, the most it has snowed since i got here. i was excited but obviously underprepared, haha. it didn't help that the restaurant was not easy to find, it was down a small alley and not really marked. however, i did eventually find it. we had a small room in the basement to ourselves, and the georgians seems excited to have us there. the dinner consisted of a beef and been stew, kachapori (cheese bread), vegetables, and georgian red wine (which in case you don't know is essentially banned in russia as russia has ceased all imports of georgian produced wine since their little tiff last summer, and continues to refuse to import any of it). however, the georgian wine is brewed on site so it was still as authentic as i can get here, and pretty darn good. there were a lot of people at the dinner that i didn't know, but it was informative because there were several americans there who have been living in russia and explained the ins and outs as well as what they actually do (one woman is in the foreign service and explained in detail how the testing works for diplomats etc). i had a good time and i think it was a worthwhile experience.
saturday was lazy, i think haha, but sunday we had the performance of swan lake at the state kremlin theater. this theater is actually inside the kremlin, and is where a lot of speeches made during communist times were given. the ballet itself was very well done, and even though i honestly probably preferred ruslan and ludmila, which we had seen previously, because of its modern interpretation, i still really enjoyed the opportunity to see swan lake.
this past week hasn't been too eventful, though. i have been busy with class, and we have the TORFL at the beginning of december. on thursday, kari and i had planned to go to sokol'niki to see a world calligraphy exhibit which i had stumbled upon during a previous visit to the park. it actually turned out to be really interesting because they had calligraphy from all over the world, as opposed to only japanese/chinese calligraphy. we saw calligraphy from russia, belarus, norway, germany, france, and even the united states (although written english should never be called calligraphy, it was the worst of the entire exhibit). but it was definitely interesting and i'm glad we went and saw it.
on friday, we had a planned excursion to a hockey game. it was ЦСКА versus Череповeц. the rink itself was pretty crowded and the crowd was extremely energetic, as usual. it was funny because there were scantily clad girls dispersed throughout the stands to act as cheerleaders and dance to the techno music which was periodically played while the clock was stopped. the game was fairly competitive though, and it was tied after three periods. we left since the tie wasn't being resolved, but it was a good time all around.
today, i slept in a little since i hadn't for a long time, and then i made my way over to the park of fallen monuments, which is basically a park where the new Russia threw all of the statues honoring stalin, lenin, and all of the other soviet premieres after the fall of the USSR. the park was HUGE, a lot bigger than i ever thought it was. the park was actually featured on the amazing race, which is part of the reason why i knew about it, haha. but it had a ton of statues, monuments, you name it, it was there. so i met up with sam and erin and we walked around for an hour or so to see everything, and then we went to a japanese restaurant for dinner and to watch the Russia versus Slovenia World Cup qualifier match. Russia beat Slovenia 2-1, but Slovenia was basically an easy win. doesn't matter though russians get excited about anything having to do with soccer haha. afterwards, we found a hookah bar, which turned out to be amazing, because we ordered a grapefruit and mango hookah, and they actually put a WHOLE legit grapefruit on top of our hookah haha, something i've never seen in the US. they also had good music, live bellydancing, and they played america's best dance crew on tv. so that pretty much added up to a good day.
tomorrow, we have an excursion to the state historical museum on red square, and i've been wanting to go there for a while, so i'm looking forward to that. beyond that, we always seem to have mystery excursions during the week, since they only tell us the scheduled weekend excursions, so who knows what will be scheduled next week. this next upcoming weekend, we have a scheduled excursion to the Novodevichy Convent, which is a beautiful convent and church complex located right near the ring line of the moscow metro. and the week after we have a bus trip to the town of Sergiev Posad where there's an historical monastery. i'm actually really looking forward to that.
other than that, in russian class, we're just continuing to practice for the TORFL, which will be during the first two days of our last week of classes. it's sad that we only have a month left, but that also means i am really starting to think about my end of semester plans. my flight doesn't leave until the 21st, and classes end on the 11th, or sometime around the, which means i have about a week of time to do whatever. my original plans were to travel back to st. petersburg with ele, visit estonia, and then come back to moscow for my flight. however, we still have not had our visas renewed, and i'm not sure how much it will cost to pay for a multi-entry visa into russia (which is what i would need). if it turns out to be too much, my plan B is to choose a russian city (most likely west of the urals of course haha) and spend 4 or 5 days there touring and sightseeing before i head back to moscow. either way, i am really excited and anxious to see something new before i come home. in the same vein, i also really want to plan a trip to a small town outside of moscow via train or bus either by myself or with someone who might want to join me, just for a weekend. the problem is that i don't want to miss an excursion i really want to go on in moscow. i am tentatively thinking possibly the weekend after thanksgiving, but it's still up in the air.
so yeah, i have a lot of things to think about, not even including my next semester at pitt, which i am sure will hit me like a ton of bricks since i have done crap in terms of actual schoolwork this semester haha. this has basically been like a huge vacation (and believe me, i'm not complaining). but yeah, the chips will fall as they may, i suppose.
i will try my best to update again soon. until then, stay well!
дима
Thursday, November 5, 2009
north of nowhere - st. petersburg
so i finally am getting the chance to tell you all about our trip to st. petersburg. again, apologies for the wait, it took me a few days to recover from the trip and such. but needless to say, we ALL had a blast, it was great to get a week off of school and see [as many] of the sights (or as the russians say достопримечательности) as we could during our trip.
on monday i pretty much just finished packing my things up, because we weren't schedule to meet at the train station until midnight. of course it was raining, so i had all my bags and my umbrella to deal with. fun. we got to the station and after waiting a little, boarded the train. now, i had been on a train in europe only one other time, when i traveled from prague to krakow, but i'd never been on an overnight train. we were all separated into compartments with 4 beds each, so i was with 4 of the other guys in our group. we were due to arrive in petersburg around 9:30 in the morning, so most of the group went to bed fairly early. however i was starving because i barely eat in russia in general and who knows when my previous meal had been, so i went to the dining car with victor, rudy, and kyle. i got some french fries and a coke (it was kind of cold!!!!), paid, and then went back to our compartment. fast forward 6 hours...we woke up around 9ish and were greeted with the wonderful ghetto train station suburbs of st. petersburg. haha but no really, i slept surprisingly well, since i don't usually sleep well on moving things. we disembarked (grumpily) and made our way to the hostel.
lena of course booked it through like lanes of traffic and such, making it even more difficult to keep up with her with our baggage. we finally got to the hostel and checked in, though. the hostel was pretty much what i expected, except i was glad that we actually got small rooms to share between a few people (for the guys anyway). it was pretty basic though, beds, wardrobes, a small kitchen, shower, toilets, etc. good enough for 4 days though. after we all kind of unpacked and got settled, we immediately had a bus tour scheduled. i was pretty excited though since i always am a fan of activities that don't involve the use of my feet. unfortunately, it was raining (as if we expected anything else) so it was pretty much impossible to take pictures out the bus window. however, our tour guide, ксения, was amazing. she had a great sense of humor and knew a ton about petersburg in general. i won't go into what we drove by since i visited everything we saw on the tour later anyway, but the tour was a lot of fun even though it was about 3 hours long. (you don't get THAT far in petersburg, or russian for that matter, traffic in that amount of time)
anyway, after the bus tour, a lot of people were exhausted, rightfully, so some people took naps. my foot felt like it was going to fall off but i hate wasting opportunities so i decided to just explore myself for the night. i always get way too excited about seeing a city's metro, so i wanted to be the first person in the group to officially ride the petersburg metro. and if there's one thing you need to know about the metro in st. petersburg, it's that it's not nearly as complete as moscow's. whereas in moscow, as long as you are downtown, you are pretty much guaranteed to stumble upon a metro no matter which way you walk, in petersburg, unless you get really lucky, you better know where you are going, because otherwise, you'll end up miles from a station and a very unhappy patron of the petersburg public transportation system. i decided to walk down nevskii, which is petersburg's main thoroughfare for restaurants, stores, and the like. it has beautiful architecture and a lot to see. i took the metro there to start. nevskii eventually leads down to the Neva, the massive river which essentially divides st. petersburg's downtown into several islands. nevskii also ends where the hermitage begins, so i walked around palace square a little bit. then i had a decision as to whether i wanted to walk back to where i came from or continue walking along the river, cross it, and head to the next closest metro on a neighboring island. i decided to do that, since i'd see new things. it was actually really relaxing, and the Neva at night is beautiful. i finally made it across the bridge and started searching for the metro i needed. i literally searched for at least an hour, and it just wasn't there. i had no idea what the problem was, but long story short, i was forced to traverse basically the entire length of the island to the ONLY other metro on that end. ugh. boo st. petersburg metro (although on the plus side it is a lot cleaner, clearer, and less crowded than the moscow metro. and it has really cool stop names like electric strength! haha) but anyway, i got back fine but tired, and probably got like 4 hours of sleep that night.
the next morning, we had our excursion to the winter palace and hermitage. the hermitage houses one of the largest collections of art in the world, second only to the louvre actually. it used to be the tsar's winter palace in petersburg. we had a 3 hour guided tour with ксения again, and the building itself was just amazing. SO large, you'd get lost guaranteed without a guide and signs. the rooms were so beautifully and ornately decorated with gold leaf, antique russian furniture, and of course the art. y0u could spend weeks and weeks looking at everything it has to offer. some of the highlights and my favorite parts were the room where the russian revolution literally began, where the bolsheviks stormed the palace and effectively took over the provisional government. we literally stood on history there. also, i really enjoyed being able to see the quarters of the last romanov ruling family, before he was forced to abdicate the throne and go into hiding. there was picasso, monet, davinci, pretty much every famous artist you can thing of. i would love to go back someday.
after the hermitage, i decided to go off and do my own thing again, because it's basically a proven fact i never get anything done that i want to do when i go with groups of people. basically, my goal for the day was to visit the bay of finland, which lies to the west of the city. i went with amanda because she really wanted to come with. the closest metro stop on my map to the bay was приморская, literally "arrival to the sea". so we rode the metro all the way out west and got off there. it was about a 10 minute walk from the station to the "shore". haha, so basically, despite the fact that russia does have a considerably large amount of coastline to its name simply because it's a large country, doesn't mean it has a lot of nice beaches. i can't even begin to imagine, besides in the crimea, anywhere else in russia where anyone would want to hang out on a beach. currently, it seemed as though petersburg is taking on a hefty and ambitious renovation project - notice i attempt to say this with the utmost sarcasm in my words. the entire area is basically a mess of massive abyss holes, dirt, mud, construction equipment, and what looked like land reclamation going on right off the coast. but surprisingly, there WAS a beach. and it was sand. so i was satisfied nonetheless. we sat on the edge of the water for a while, and even though it was cold and windy, it was pretty cool to be on the edge of what was essentially the baltic sea. so we hung out for a while, found a pretty nice grocery store and got some snacks, and then headed back.
on thursday, we had our excursion to peter and paul fortress, which is a small island situated right in the middle of the neva river, and is considered to be the birthplace of the city of st. petersburg. it's mostly a collection of historical buildings, a few small churches, and various other things. most notably though, in the church of st. peter and paul, are the tombs of a vast majority of russian tsars, tsarevichs, their families and the like. also in the church is one of the sights i have been wanting to see since i got to russia, which are the tombs of the romanovs. nicholas, his wife, and his children are all buried in their own room in the church. it was really sad to see, and despite the controvery surrounding their deaths, you can tell that at least the people of st. petersburg still hold the family (and especially the children) in high regard.
after the fortress, i wandered around the area a bit with a few other people, and lena took us to a blini restaurant, kind of fast foodish. i actually felt kind of sick and i was not in a good mood because i had to register for classes that night. i ate and then headed back to the hostel since i was dead tired. i ended up spending the rest of the night picking classes and registering. after that, a group of us decided to go to a club/bar type place which was literally right down the road from our hostel. it was actually a lot better than i expected. in my opinion, the DJ was really, really good, he played a mix of new and old american music, and also russian music, which made me happy. the drinks were fairly cheap too. we stayed there pretty late, probably until about 3 or so, just enjoying the music, and the staff were also extremely nice. went back to the hostel and passed out haha.
friday was our free day because our train was due to leave at 10 that night. i wanted to make the most of the day so i set out to basically ride the metro around to different areas of the city i hadn't been to yet. my first stop was старая деревня/old village. i thought it would be nice because of the name, but it turned out to be really ghetto and industrial haha. i found the market there and met a really nice old babushka who i bought a hat from. she asked me where i was from, and when i told her america, she immediately asked "los angeles?" haha so i was endeared right there. i spent a little while in the area because there were lots of cool factories and smokestacks that i for some reason enjoy taking pictures of, and then i left because it was cold.
after that i headed downtown again to find a coffeeshop because i was thirsty and cold. found one, had a coffee, left haha. i had made it a point to visit park pobedy (a lot of russian cities have a park pobedy/victory park) because i wanted to compare it to moscow's park pobedy. so i headed down that way, which is south of downtown. when i got there, i was actually pleasantly surprised by the area. the area was beautiful, and it reminded me of central park in new york. the park was surrounded on all four sides by tall, older buildings with very nice architecture. i walked around the park for an hour or so and then i decided to walk down the main street in the area, which was lined with the same really nice buildings. i eventually found a bookstore and bought a book which i had been wanting to do for a while now just to speed up vocabulary acquisition. as luck would have it i found a metro stop at the other end of the road so i didn't even have to traipse back. afterwards, i headed back to the hostel and just relaxed until it was time to leave. we headed back to the train station and caught our train back to moscow. i felt like crap and was so tired, but i ended up staying up really late playing mafia with about 8 or 9 other people, which was a TON of fun. (mostly because i was mafia and almost won haha). when we arrived back the next morning, i literally slept all day haha. but it was worth it.
so all in all, st. petersburg was amazing. it's such a huge contrast to moscow, it's impossible to even explain all the differences. it's funny because the only thing i really thought was the same were the people, at least to me. the architecture, the sights, transportation, geography, they were all a complete 180 from moscow, but the people still had that same russian spirit. so as much as st. petersburg is definitely more european than moscow, there's still enough russian influence there that i think it will always be more of a russian city.
so ending on that note, i have been back for a little less than a week now, and have just been taking it easy and getting back into my schedule. tomorrow is ele's birthday, so we are going bowling after she has dinner with a few people from our group. i won't be going to the dinner because i have a group dinner with sras at a georgian restaurant, so i will meet up with them afterwards. and then on sunday is our next excursion, and we're seeing swan lake, so i am really excited about that since it's a ballet people actually know, haha. this coming monday, i only have 6 weeks left here. the time has really flown and i feel like i want to do so much more, so i am trying to make the most of the rest of the time i have. hope everyone had a great halloween and i will try and update again as soon as i get the chance!!
dima
on monday i pretty much just finished packing my things up, because we weren't schedule to meet at the train station until midnight. of course it was raining, so i had all my bags and my umbrella to deal with. fun. we got to the station and after waiting a little, boarded the train. now, i had been on a train in europe only one other time, when i traveled from prague to krakow, but i'd never been on an overnight train. we were all separated into compartments with 4 beds each, so i was with 4 of the other guys in our group. we were due to arrive in petersburg around 9:30 in the morning, so most of the group went to bed fairly early. however i was starving because i barely eat in russia in general and who knows when my previous meal had been, so i went to the dining car with victor, rudy, and kyle. i got some french fries and a coke (it was kind of cold!!!!), paid, and then went back to our compartment. fast forward 6 hours...we woke up around 9ish and were greeted with the wonderful ghetto train station suburbs of st. petersburg. haha but no really, i slept surprisingly well, since i don't usually sleep well on moving things. we disembarked (grumpily) and made our way to the hostel.
lena of course booked it through like lanes of traffic and such, making it even more difficult to keep up with her with our baggage. we finally got to the hostel and checked in, though. the hostel was pretty much what i expected, except i was glad that we actually got small rooms to share between a few people (for the guys anyway). it was pretty basic though, beds, wardrobes, a small kitchen, shower, toilets, etc. good enough for 4 days though. after we all kind of unpacked and got settled, we immediately had a bus tour scheduled. i was pretty excited though since i always am a fan of activities that don't involve the use of my feet. unfortunately, it was raining (as if we expected anything else) so it was pretty much impossible to take pictures out the bus window. however, our tour guide, ксения, was amazing. she had a great sense of humor and knew a ton about petersburg in general. i won't go into what we drove by since i visited everything we saw on the tour later anyway, but the tour was a lot of fun even though it was about 3 hours long. (you don't get THAT far in petersburg, or russian for that matter, traffic in that amount of time)
anyway, after the bus tour, a lot of people were exhausted, rightfully, so some people took naps. my foot felt like it was going to fall off but i hate wasting opportunities so i decided to just explore myself for the night. i always get way too excited about seeing a city's metro, so i wanted to be the first person in the group to officially ride the petersburg metro. and if there's one thing you need to know about the metro in st. petersburg, it's that it's not nearly as complete as moscow's. whereas in moscow, as long as you are downtown, you are pretty much guaranteed to stumble upon a metro no matter which way you walk, in petersburg, unless you get really lucky, you better know where you are going, because otherwise, you'll end up miles from a station and a very unhappy patron of the petersburg public transportation system. i decided to walk down nevskii, which is petersburg's main thoroughfare for restaurants, stores, and the like. it has beautiful architecture and a lot to see. i took the metro there to start. nevskii eventually leads down to the Neva, the massive river which essentially divides st. petersburg's downtown into several islands. nevskii also ends where the hermitage begins, so i walked around palace square a little bit. then i had a decision as to whether i wanted to walk back to where i came from or continue walking along the river, cross it, and head to the next closest metro on a neighboring island. i decided to do that, since i'd see new things. it was actually really relaxing, and the Neva at night is beautiful. i finally made it across the bridge and started searching for the metro i needed. i literally searched for at least an hour, and it just wasn't there. i had no idea what the problem was, but long story short, i was forced to traverse basically the entire length of the island to the ONLY other metro on that end. ugh. boo st. petersburg metro (although on the plus side it is a lot cleaner, clearer, and less crowded than the moscow metro. and it has really cool stop names like electric strength! haha) but anyway, i got back fine but tired, and probably got like 4 hours of sleep that night.
the next morning, we had our excursion to the winter palace and hermitage. the hermitage houses one of the largest collections of art in the world, second only to the louvre actually. it used to be the tsar's winter palace in petersburg. we had a 3 hour guided tour with ксения again, and the building itself was just amazing. SO large, you'd get lost guaranteed without a guide and signs. the rooms were so beautifully and ornately decorated with gold leaf, antique russian furniture, and of course the art. y0u could spend weeks and weeks looking at everything it has to offer. some of the highlights and my favorite parts were the room where the russian revolution literally began, where the bolsheviks stormed the palace and effectively took over the provisional government. we literally stood on history there. also, i really enjoyed being able to see the quarters of the last romanov ruling family, before he was forced to abdicate the throne and go into hiding. there was picasso, monet, davinci, pretty much every famous artist you can thing of. i would love to go back someday.
after the hermitage, i decided to go off and do my own thing again, because it's basically a proven fact i never get anything done that i want to do when i go with groups of people. basically, my goal for the day was to visit the bay of finland, which lies to the west of the city. i went with amanda because she really wanted to come with. the closest metro stop on my map to the bay was приморская, literally "arrival to the sea". so we rode the metro all the way out west and got off there. it was about a 10 minute walk from the station to the "shore". haha, so basically, despite the fact that russia does have a considerably large amount of coastline to its name simply because it's a large country, doesn't mean it has a lot of nice beaches. i can't even begin to imagine, besides in the crimea, anywhere else in russia where anyone would want to hang out on a beach. currently, it seemed as though petersburg is taking on a hefty and ambitious renovation project - notice i attempt to say this with the utmost sarcasm in my words. the entire area is basically a mess of massive abyss holes, dirt, mud, construction equipment, and what looked like land reclamation going on right off the coast. but surprisingly, there WAS a beach. and it was sand. so i was satisfied nonetheless. we sat on the edge of the water for a while, and even though it was cold and windy, it was pretty cool to be on the edge of what was essentially the baltic sea. so we hung out for a while, found a pretty nice grocery store and got some snacks, and then headed back.
on thursday, we had our excursion to peter and paul fortress, which is a small island situated right in the middle of the neva river, and is considered to be the birthplace of the city of st. petersburg. it's mostly a collection of historical buildings, a few small churches, and various other things. most notably though, in the church of st. peter and paul, are the tombs of a vast majority of russian tsars, tsarevichs, their families and the like. also in the church is one of the sights i have been wanting to see since i got to russia, which are the tombs of the romanovs. nicholas, his wife, and his children are all buried in their own room in the church. it was really sad to see, and despite the controvery surrounding their deaths, you can tell that at least the people of st. petersburg still hold the family (and especially the children) in high regard.
after the fortress, i wandered around the area a bit with a few other people, and lena took us to a blini restaurant, kind of fast foodish. i actually felt kind of sick and i was not in a good mood because i had to register for classes that night. i ate and then headed back to the hostel since i was dead tired. i ended up spending the rest of the night picking classes and registering. after that, a group of us decided to go to a club/bar type place which was literally right down the road from our hostel. it was actually a lot better than i expected. in my opinion, the DJ was really, really good, he played a mix of new and old american music, and also russian music, which made me happy. the drinks were fairly cheap too. we stayed there pretty late, probably until about 3 or so, just enjoying the music, and the staff were also extremely nice. went back to the hostel and passed out haha.
friday was our free day because our train was due to leave at 10 that night. i wanted to make the most of the day so i set out to basically ride the metro around to different areas of the city i hadn't been to yet. my first stop was старая деревня/old village. i thought it would be nice because of the name, but it turned out to be really ghetto and industrial haha. i found the market there and met a really nice old babushka who i bought a hat from. she asked me where i was from, and when i told her america, she immediately asked "los angeles?" haha so i was endeared right there. i spent a little while in the area because there were lots of cool factories and smokestacks that i for some reason enjoy taking pictures of, and then i left because it was cold.
after that i headed downtown again to find a coffeeshop because i was thirsty and cold. found one, had a coffee, left haha. i had made it a point to visit park pobedy (a lot of russian cities have a park pobedy/victory park) because i wanted to compare it to moscow's park pobedy. so i headed down that way, which is south of downtown. when i got there, i was actually pleasantly surprised by the area. the area was beautiful, and it reminded me of central park in new york. the park was surrounded on all four sides by tall, older buildings with very nice architecture. i walked around the park for an hour or so and then i decided to walk down the main street in the area, which was lined with the same really nice buildings. i eventually found a bookstore and bought a book which i had been wanting to do for a while now just to speed up vocabulary acquisition. as luck would have it i found a metro stop at the other end of the road so i didn't even have to traipse back. afterwards, i headed back to the hostel and just relaxed until it was time to leave. we headed back to the train station and caught our train back to moscow. i felt like crap and was so tired, but i ended up staying up really late playing mafia with about 8 or 9 other people, which was a TON of fun. (mostly because i was mafia and almost won haha). when we arrived back the next morning, i literally slept all day haha. but it was worth it.
so all in all, st. petersburg was amazing. it's such a huge contrast to moscow, it's impossible to even explain all the differences. it's funny because the only thing i really thought was the same were the people, at least to me. the architecture, the sights, transportation, geography, they were all a complete 180 from moscow, but the people still had that same russian spirit. so as much as st. petersburg is definitely more european than moscow, there's still enough russian influence there that i think it will always be more of a russian city.
so ending on that note, i have been back for a little less than a week now, and have just been taking it easy and getting back into my schedule. tomorrow is ele's birthday, so we are going bowling after she has dinner with a few people from our group. i won't be going to the dinner because i have a group dinner with sras at a georgian restaurant, so i will meet up with them afterwards. and then on sunday is our next excursion, and we're seeing swan lake, so i am really excited about that since it's a ballet people actually know, haha. this coming monday, i only have 6 weeks left here. the time has really flown and i feel like i want to do so much more, so i am trying to make the most of the rest of the time i have. hope everyone had a great halloween and i will try and update again as soon as i get the chance!!
dima
Monday, October 26, 2009
cold days and midnight trains
so right now, it's about 6:30 and i have about 6 hours until my train leaves for st. petersburg. i'll be there until the end of the week and then i'll return back to moscow. but anyway, it's been a while since i last updated, so let's see...
it's been a lot colder lately, snow weather, you would think, unfortunately luzhkov seems bent on preventing it if at all possible, so who knows whether it'll actually fall or not. but it's definitely been close to freezing this whole past week, and the gloves and scarf and starting to feel like they're not enough haha. cloudy days are pretty much expected, i've only seen the sun maybe once or twice in the past 7 days.
last week we were pretty busy, we had an excursion to tolstoy's childhood home in the middle of moscow, and it was remarkably well preserved and definitely a lot nicer than what i would have expected. i didn't really know a lot about him and his family, but our tour guide spoke english extremely well and it turns out his whole family was very talented. so we got our tour and saw a lot of the antique furniture that was preserved. it was a nice change of pace to see something historical for a change since we had been seeing a lot of live performances lately.
that night, tuesday, me and a couple of my friends had heard about a restaurant at a metro stop close to us that offered unlimited house beer for a set (cheap) price on tuesday nights. we decided to check it out and the area turned out to be extremely sketchy. classic russia, the restaurant was right in front of 2 nuclear power plant cooling towers. we did find it though, and we had a pretty good time. the food was good as well.
the next day, we had our first test in our lecture class. needless to say, i don't think i aced it, but i certainly knew enough just from prior exposure to russian history that it didn't really matter that aleksandr's lectures are terrible. but yeah, all i need is a C, so i'm not really worried about it at all.
on thursday, i went out to a cafe to do some homework and get a small dinner with 2 of the other girls, and our waitress was really nice, and we found out she spoke english, russian, french, italian, german, and spanish. she was only 18, but she saw us doing our russian homework and basically ended up doing it for us haha. so that was a lot of fun and i would love to go back and see her again.
friday, kathryn and i went on an excursion with the kids from the school we had visited previously that i had spoken about. they were happy to see us, but the visit was bizarre again as i had expected, haha. we were originally going to take an [old, soviet, scary] bus, but since our group wasn't big enough, we packed into a marshrutka type van and off we went. we were going to the kuzminki estate, which is basically an old estate house with large, expansive grounds and an apparently long history. it was pretty close to the school so it only took a little while to get there. when we got there, we had a tour inside before we went to visit the horse stables. kathryn and i mainly ended up talking to nina and leviza, two girls who we hadn't met before at the school the first time. neither of them spoke english very well, so it was a great chance to practice our russian. they were both really nice and eager to talk to us. neither of them were ethnically russian, nina was from georgia, and leviza was from uzbekistan, but they both spoke russian as well. we ended up exchanging emails and phone numbers so hopefully we can keep in touch. the horse stables were pretty cool, the horses were beautiful and obviously well cared for. i'm not much of an animal person myself so i kept a distance but the girls all loved them. after that, we headed off and i went back home for the night.
on saturday, we FINALLY had our excursion to lenin's tomb and the kremlin wall necropolis, which was easily one of the excursion i was most looking forward to. we waited in line for a while on red square before we finally got to go in. basically, you go through the intense metal detector entrance, and then follow the paths through the garden towards lenin's tomb. the paths are lined with the gravestones of famous russians, most of whom i didn't know. halfway through, you reach the tomb, enter, and walk down a couple flights of stairs. it's pretty dark inside, entirely made of marble, and just creepy in general. there are militsiya lining the stairs all the way down, so that just adds to the creepiness. when you reach the bottom, you turn the corner into the room with lenin's body. his body is set up in an extremely ornate casket with a glass viewing box on top. guards are all around and you have about 30 second to walk around 3 sides of the casket before exiting. let's just say that those 30 seconds aren't enough for anyone to ever decide whether it's really all of his body there or not. it doesn't even sink in what you've actually just seen until later, though. after exiting, you continue past the really elaborate headstones of some of the soviet premiers and other important figures: brezhnev, kalinin, andropov, and of course stalin. after that, you follow the path out which is lined with carnations, yuri gagarin's grave is also located there. and that's it, all in about 10 minutes of walking. but the tomb is free so anyone can go back and see it again whenever. but i'm satisfied with one visit, i think haha.
on sunday, i spent the whole day out. i went to another CSKA soccer match, which was basically a massive loss for them against FK moskva, so that wasn't too exciting. afterwards i headed to the mall with a couple other people because we all needed some clothes for st. petersburg. it took me forever but i finally found a pair of [expensive] jeans that i liked so i got those. then we headed out to мир пиццы for some drinks and snacks. i was exhausted by the end of the day, so i just headed home and went to bed.
so that leaves me at...today. i didn't really do much, i packed earlier this afternoon, and i went to the store down the street to get some snacks for the train. i'll leave svetlana's around 10:30 or so and make my way to the metro. we're meeting at midnight. we're due to arrive in petersburg tomorrow early, and then we have a bus tour around the city, and then the rest of the day is free time. i'm kind of disappointed we don't have a very long time there, but i'm going to try and make the most of it and see and do what i want to do as opposed to what the group wants. i just like to explore by myself and i feel like i get more satisfaction out of that and get more done when i'm by myself. but either way i'm definitely pumped for the trip and can't wait to see everything! i think that's it for now, but i will make a huge effort to update this when i return (on halloween) so all of the petersburg stuff is fresh in my mind. hope everyone is still doing well and that everyone's halloween festivities are fun!
dima
it's been a lot colder lately, snow weather, you would think, unfortunately luzhkov seems bent on preventing it if at all possible, so who knows whether it'll actually fall or not. but it's definitely been close to freezing this whole past week, and the gloves and scarf and starting to feel like they're not enough haha. cloudy days are pretty much expected, i've only seen the sun maybe once or twice in the past 7 days.
last week we were pretty busy, we had an excursion to tolstoy's childhood home in the middle of moscow, and it was remarkably well preserved and definitely a lot nicer than what i would have expected. i didn't really know a lot about him and his family, but our tour guide spoke english extremely well and it turns out his whole family was very talented. so we got our tour and saw a lot of the antique furniture that was preserved. it was a nice change of pace to see something historical for a change since we had been seeing a lot of live performances lately.
that night, tuesday, me and a couple of my friends had heard about a restaurant at a metro stop close to us that offered unlimited house beer for a set (cheap) price on tuesday nights. we decided to check it out and the area turned out to be extremely sketchy. classic russia, the restaurant was right in front of 2 nuclear power plant cooling towers. we did find it though, and we had a pretty good time. the food was good as well.
the next day, we had our first test in our lecture class. needless to say, i don't think i aced it, but i certainly knew enough just from prior exposure to russian history that it didn't really matter that aleksandr's lectures are terrible. but yeah, all i need is a C, so i'm not really worried about it at all.
on thursday, i went out to a cafe to do some homework and get a small dinner with 2 of the other girls, and our waitress was really nice, and we found out she spoke english, russian, french, italian, german, and spanish. she was only 18, but she saw us doing our russian homework and basically ended up doing it for us haha. so that was a lot of fun and i would love to go back and see her again.
friday, kathryn and i went on an excursion with the kids from the school we had visited previously that i had spoken about. they were happy to see us, but the visit was bizarre again as i had expected, haha. we were originally going to take an [old, soviet, scary] bus, but since our group wasn't big enough, we packed into a marshrutka type van and off we went. we were going to the kuzminki estate, which is basically an old estate house with large, expansive grounds and an apparently long history. it was pretty close to the school so it only took a little while to get there. when we got there, we had a tour inside before we went to visit the horse stables. kathryn and i mainly ended up talking to nina and leviza, two girls who we hadn't met before at the school the first time. neither of them spoke english very well, so it was a great chance to practice our russian. they were both really nice and eager to talk to us. neither of them were ethnically russian, nina was from georgia, and leviza was from uzbekistan, but they both spoke russian as well. we ended up exchanging emails and phone numbers so hopefully we can keep in touch. the horse stables were pretty cool, the horses were beautiful and obviously well cared for. i'm not much of an animal person myself so i kept a distance but the girls all loved them. after that, we headed off and i went back home for the night.
on saturday, we FINALLY had our excursion to lenin's tomb and the kremlin wall necropolis, which was easily one of the excursion i was most looking forward to. we waited in line for a while on red square before we finally got to go in. basically, you go through the intense metal detector entrance, and then follow the paths through the garden towards lenin's tomb. the paths are lined with the gravestones of famous russians, most of whom i didn't know. halfway through, you reach the tomb, enter, and walk down a couple flights of stairs. it's pretty dark inside, entirely made of marble, and just creepy in general. there are militsiya lining the stairs all the way down, so that just adds to the creepiness. when you reach the bottom, you turn the corner into the room with lenin's body. his body is set up in an extremely ornate casket with a glass viewing box on top. guards are all around and you have about 30 second to walk around 3 sides of the casket before exiting. let's just say that those 30 seconds aren't enough for anyone to ever decide whether it's really all of his body there or not. it doesn't even sink in what you've actually just seen until later, though. after exiting, you continue past the really elaborate headstones of some of the soviet premiers and other important figures: brezhnev, kalinin, andropov, and of course stalin. after that, you follow the path out which is lined with carnations, yuri gagarin's grave is also located there. and that's it, all in about 10 minutes of walking. but the tomb is free so anyone can go back and see it again whenever. but i'm satisfied with one visit, i think haha.
on sunday, i spent the whole day out. i went to another CSKA soccer match, which was basically a massive loss for them against FK moskva, so that wasn't too exciting. afterwards i headed to the mall with a couple other people because we all needed some clothes for st. petersburg. it took me forever but i finally found a pair of [expensive] jeans that i liked so i got those. then we headed out to мир пиццы for some drinks and snacks. i was exhausted by the end of the day, so i just headed home and went to bed.
so that leaves me at...today. i didn't really do much, i packed earlier this afternoon, and i went to the store down the street to get some snacks for the train. i'll leave svetlana's around 10:30 or so and make my way to the metro. we're meeting at midnight. we're due to arrive in petersburg tomorrow early, and then we have a bus tour around the city, and then the rest of the day is free time. i'm kind of disappointed we don't have a very long time there, but i'm going to try and make the most of it and see and do what i want to do as opposed to what the group wants. i just like to explore by myself and i feel like i get more satisfaction out of that and get more done when i'm by myself. but either way i'm definitely pumped for the trip and can't wait to see everything! i think that's it for now, but i will make a huge effort to update this when i return (on halloween) so all of the petersburg stuff is fresh in my mind. hope everyone is still doing well and that everyone's halloween festivities are fun!
dima
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
парк победы is so big, so russia is probably hiding something in it
hey everyone. it's me again. let's see, where should i start.. last weekend i didn't
do a whole lot. on friday night we went out to the ballet to see what i believe was originally
a french ballet. it was pretty interesting but by the time it was over i was definitely ready to
leave. the story just wasn't that great, but the dancing was amazing, obviously. afterwards
i went with kelly and amanda to mu-mu, the cow themed restaurant chain in moscow. we met
two russian guys there who spoke english, and they invited us to come to a dance club
where they played old, retro american songs. we ended up going and meeting some of their friends, all of whom were extremely nice.
saturday and sunday i was pretty tired and i didn't really do all that much. it has been raining
a lot lately and the weather has definitely gotten a lot cooler. i have been saying i needed to buy
a heavier coat for a while now, but the expensive prices and the effort involved in shopping here
has made me procrastinate for a while. i originally had decided to go on monday and seriously look until i found one, but it rained all day and so i had to forego the trip and wait until tuesday.
on tuesday i left right after class by myself (because i never get anything done when i am with
other people haha) to a supposedly giant mall i had never been to before but had heard about
through several other russians. it was right by the kievskaya railway station, one of the largest
if not the largest railway station in moscow. i exited randomly from the metro and lo and behold
i picked the right exit and found myself right at the entrance of the mall.
now, i originally had thought the underground mall was huge that i had previously visited outside
red square, but this mall was gigantic. it was at least 5 floors, i think a parking garage on the 6th,
and had hundreds of stores. in the middle was an atrium and a fountain with exposed elevators,
and in the fountain was a gigantic clock that lit up and told time by the second with really
creative lights that lit up in a circle all the way around the rim of it. it was probably
the coolest mall i've ever been to. sorry, king of prussia. so anyway, i walked around for a while
but it's so difficult to shop in russia because i always feel like i am being watched. although
i suppose it doesn't help that i have shopping anxiety in america anyway haha, so i always
get nervous and just walk out of the stores. i ended up finding a not crazy expensive store
(aka the coats were only $100 as opposed to $300+) and i found a coat i actually really liked.
i wanted to try it on. now, as is the problem in many places in russia, nothing makes sense,
which includes dressing rooms. there was a large line, all with women, even though the store had men's clothing. i got in line and was told "no" by the lady in charge. i had no idea what she said to me after that, but i thought she meant it was only the lady's dressing room, but there wasn't a men's, so i have no idea what the problem was. i ended up trying it on outside and just bought it because it fit well enough, was a good price, and looked nice.
i also found a long scarf that i liked at another store and then i decided to go up to the food
court and eat something, which i did (pizza and mashed potatoes mmm). i walked around a little more but didn't really feel like staying any longer so i left.
my plan for tuesday night was to visit park pobedy, which is a famous park just outside the center of the city which is dedicated to WW2 veterans, and just WW2 in general. i didn't really
know what to expect because i had only read basic things about it. however, it was a huge surprise because the park was amazing. you exit the metro onto a giant cobblestone promenade, and in the distance is the main park pobedy memorial, an enormous obelisk and a semi circle white stone building surrounding one side of it. it was a HUGE memorial and the area it was in was really lively and seemed clean and more modern. i walked around for a while and found a small church before i made my way to the actual obelisk. it's even taller up close, almost like the washington monument except with a bunch of enscriptions and engravings all the way up the sides of it. what i was disappointed by although were the fountains around the monument, which are supposed to be on, and they are also supposed to glow red at night to commemorate the blood of the killed soldiers. they weren't even turned on, let alone red haha. i think they were doing work on them, but i am afraid they are already off for the winter for good, which would really suck since i wanted to see them. either way, it was still fun. i walked further into the park and it was so nice to have a nice relaxing walk in fresh air by myself for a change, and to get out of the dirty city/metro/freaking vykhino. it was a huge expanse of trees and woods, with paths through all of it, and there were also a bunch of monuments and small chapels and building scattered throughout the park. i eventually found a really neat artificial harbor which had replicas of old WW2 boats and artillery. they even had fake mines floating in the water. and the best part was that there was hardly anyone in the park, so i didn't feel crowded at all. it was starting to get dark, so i headed back out of the park towards the main monument. it was all lit up at that point so it looked even more imposing that it did during the evening. park pobedy metro stop also has great views of moscow in general, you can see the new moscow business center, also, straight down a huge main highway off to one side, you can see a ton of highrises, and it's all lit up at night of course. and of course i was all warm and toasty in my new coat haha. but i had a really great time and i think the park was my favorite place i've been to in moscow yet, maybe besides red square. it was nice to just explore myself and do what i wanted to do. i am definitely going to go back sometime soon.
so yeah, i think i'm almost at the halfway point of my trip, and i feel like we've had a lot of
excursions and we see a lot, but moscow is such a huge city, there's still a lot more to see.
some of us were talking about possibly taking a day trip one weekend to see one of the golden
ring towns, which i really want to see while i'm here, since they're so historically important.
some of the other upcoming excursions i know about are lenin's tomb, the tretyakov gallery, which is this weekend, tolstoi's house, and then also i believe a famous monastery somewhere on
the outskirts of the city. st. petersburg is also in less than 2 weeks and i'm really excited
to see the city and the hermitage, winter palace, and everything else. in general, you learn a lot
more about st. petersburg cultural sites/churches etc in russian culture classes back in america
because there tends to be a larger spread of architectural styles (baroque/rococo/classical etc)
there than in moscow, i believe. so i'm super excited and will probably take a ton of pictures just there haha. my camera has been getting a work out is for sure.
tonight, we're going to the circus, and we haven't really been told anything, so i'm not sure
what to expect, since i haven't been to the circus since jeez, i was probably younger than ten.
it will be fun though i'm sure and i hope the food is good, haha.
other than that, everything is going well, my cold is gone (woohoo!) and my foot is nearly 100%
so that's also good. this next week and a half before stpete i am going to try and do a little
more exploring myself since i always enjoy when i do that, and once we get back, it will
feel like the home stretch and i don't want to feel like i've missed out on seeing anything.
so yeah, i think that's it, and maybe i will try and post sooner again this weekend. i know i always say that but internet says otherwise. also, postcards still in the works (aka stamps are hard to get here and i don't know french). hope all is well at home. out!
dmitrii
do a whole lot. on friday night we went out to the ballet to see what i believe was originally
a french ballet. it was pretty interesting but by the time it was over i was definitely ready to
leave. the story just wasn't that great, but the dancing was amazing, obviously. afterwards
i went with kelly and amanda to mu-mu, the cow themed restaurant chain in moscow. we met
two russian guys there who spoke english, and they invited us to come to a dance club
where they played old, retro american songs. we ended up going and meeting some of their friends, all of whom were extremely nice.
saturday and sunday i was pretty tired and i didn't really do all that much. it has been raining
a lot lately and the weather has definitely gotten a lot cooler. i have been saying i needed to buy
a heavier coat for a while now, but the expensive prices and the effort involved in shopping here
has made me procrastinate for a while. i originally had decided to go on monday and seriously look until i found one, but it rained all day and so i had to forego the trip and wait until tuesday.
on tuesday i left right after class by myself (because i never get anything done when i am with
other people haha) to a supposedly giant mall i had never been to before but had heard about
through several other russians. it was right by the kievskaya railway station, one of the largest
if not the largest railway station in moscow. i exited randomly from the metro and lo and behold
i picked the right exit and found myself right at the entrance of the mall.
now, i originally had thought the underground mall was huge that i had previously visited outside
red square, but this mall was gigantic. it was at least 5 floors, i think a parking garage on the 6th,
and had hundreds of stores. in the middle was an atrium and a fountain with exposed elevators,
and in the fountain was a gigantic clock that lit up and told time by the second with really
creative lights that lit up in a circle all the way around the rim of it. it was probably
the coolest mall i've ever been to. sorry, king of prussia. so anyway, i walked around for a while
but it's so difficult to shop in russia because i always feel like i am being watched. although
i suppose it doesn't help that i have shopping anxiety in america anyway haha, so i always
get nervous and just walk out of the stores. i ended up finding a not crazy expensive store
(aka the coats were only $100 as opposed to $300+) and i found a coat i actually really liked.
i wanted to try it on. now, as is the problem in many places in russia, nothing makes sense,
which includes dressing rooms. there was a large line, all with women, even though the store had men's clothing. i got in line and was told "no" by the lady in charge. i had no idea what she said to me after that, but i thought she meant it was only the lady's dressing room, but there wasn't a men's, so i have no idea what the problem was. i ended up trying it on outside and just bought it because it fit well enough, was a good price, and looked nice.
i also found a long scarf that i liked at another store and then i decided to go up to the food
court and eat something, which i did (pizza and mashed potatoes mmm). i walked around a little more but didn't really feel like staying any longer so i left.
my plan for tuesday night was to visit park pobedy, which is a famous park just outside the center of the city which is dedicated to WW2 veterans, and just WW2 in general. i didn't really
know what to expect because i had only read basic things about it. however, it was a huge surprise because the park was amazing. you exit the metro onto a giant cobblestone promenade, and in the distance is the main park pobedy memorial, an enormous obelisk and a semi circle white stone building surrounding one side of it. it was a HUGE memorial and the area it was in was really lively and seemed clean and more modern. i walked around for a while and found a small church before i made my way to the actual obelisk. it's even taller up close, almost like the washington monument except with a bunch of enscriptions and engravings all the way up the sides of it. what i was disappointed by although were the fountains around the monument, which are supposed to be on, and they are also supposed to glow red at night to commemorate the blood of the killed soldiers. they weren't even turned on, let alone red haha. i think they were doing work on them, but i am afraid they are already off for the winter for good, which would really suck since i wanted to see them. either way, it was still fun. i walked further into the park and it was so nice to have a nice relaxing walk in fresh air by myself for a change, and to get out of the dirty city/metro/freaking vykhino. it was a huge expanse of trees and woods, with paths through all of it, and there were also a bunch of monuments and small chapels and building scattered throughout the park. i eventually found a really neat artificial harbor which had replicas of old WW2 boats and artillery. they even had fake mines floating in the water. and the best part was that there was hardly anyone in the park, so i didn't feel crowded at all. it was starting to get dark, so i headed back out of the park towards the main monument. it was all lit up at that point so it looked even more imposing that it did during the evening. park pobedy metro stop also has great views of moscow in general, you can see the new moscow business center, also, straight down a huge main highway off to one side, you can see a ton of highrises, and it's all lit up at night of course. and of course i was all warm and toasty in my new coat haha. but i had a really great time and i think the park was my favorite place i've been to in moscow yet, maybe besides red square. it was nice to just explore myself and do what i wanted to do. i am definitely going to go back sometime soon.
so yeah, i think i'm almost at the halfway point of my trip, and i feel like we've had a lot of
excursions and we see a lot, but moscow is such a huge city, there's still a lot more to see.
some of us were talking about possibly taking a day trip one weekend to see one of the golden
ring towns, which i really want to see while i'm here, since they're so historically important.
some of the other upcoming excursions i know about are lenin's tomb, the tretyakov gallery, which is this weekend, tolstoi's house, and then also i believe a famous monastery somewhere on
the outskirts of the city. st. petersburg is also in less than 2 weeks and i'm really excited
to see the city and the hermitage, winter palace, and everything else. in general, you learn a lot
more about st. petersburg cultural sites/churches etc in russian culture classes back in america
because there tends to be a larger spread of architectural styles (baroque/rococo/classical etc)
there than in moscow, i believe. so i'm super excited and will probably take a ton of pictures just there haha. my camera has been getting a work out is for sure.
tonight, we're going to the circus, and we haven't really been told anything, so i'm not sure
what to expect, since i haven't been to the circus since jeez, i was probably younger than ten.
it will be fun though i'm sure and i hope the food is good, haha.
other than that, everything is going well, my cold is gone (woohoo!) and my foot is nearly 100%
so that's also good. this next week and a half before stpete i am going to try and do a little
more exploring myself since i always enjoy when i do that, and once we get back, it will
feel like the home stretch and i don't want to feel like i've missed out on seeing anything.
so yeah, i think that's it, and maybe i will try and post sooner again this weekend. i know i always say that but internet says otherwise. also, postcards still in the works (aka stamps are hard to get here and i don't know french). hope all is well at home. out!
dmitrii
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
the metro stop is called electric factory; what did you expect the area to look like?
so this past weekend i ended up doing a lot of museum stuff. on friday we went to the mayakovsky museum, which actually turned out to be pretty interesting. it was a lot of installation type art and the ladies that worked in the museum were really nice and helpful, putting up with our bad russian haha. that night we ended up at a nice irish pub type bar called mollie's. they had really good nachos and we stayed there for a while, and then we went to mcdonalds because some people wanted milkshakes before we headed back home.
on saturday we had planned to visit the gulag museum and when we got there it was actually a lot smaller than i thought it would be. there were a bunch of babyshkas that worked there as well and they were extremely excited to take us around and show us everything. they only spoke a little english but they spoke slowly enough in russian so we could understand the tour for the most part. when we had finished looking around they set up a dvd movie for us and we watched an incredibly depressing documentary about various russians who had survived stays in a gulag. i never really knew extensive details about the camps, so it was definitely informative, but we left halfway through because you could only really watch so much.
i was really excited for sunday because we got to go to a soccer match between a moscow team and another russian team who were visiting from the crimea. the fans were crazy for the moscow team, i had never seen so many organized chants at any other sporting event. i bought a scarf which were really cheap, and also since i kind of collect them because i got one for a team in the czech republic when i was there. CSKA, the team from moscow, ended up winning 4-0, so the game wasn't too exciting, but it was still a lot of fun and i was glad i went. when we were leaving, there were literally hundreds of militsiya lined up outside the metro for crowd control, and they followed everyone down into the metro too. the fans were insane on the metro after the game so we got off as soon as we could.
this week so far i haven't done a ton because i have had a cold for the past week, and my foot has
also been hurting for some reason. yesterday, on tuesday, me and a couple of friends went to a part of the city we hadn't been to before to try and find a cemetery that was supposedly pretty well known because it was really old and had a lot of graves of foreigners in german, french, dutch, etc. we got to the area and took a tram to where we thought it was. unfortunately it started to rain and then we realized we had no idea where we were. we asked someone on the street who turned out to be really helpful and he took us to where the cemetery was. and of course, like everything always is in moscow, it was closed. so we were pretty pissed but it was also kind of funny. we decided to take a bus back to the metro, so we found one and got on. i guess we didn't pay enough attention because it started to take us into what looked like a kind of sketchy area of town. it never bodes well when you start seeing massive rusting soviet factory complexes. so we got off at the end of the line and just kept walking, and we eventually found a metro stop. so it was kind of an adventure in the end, haha.
but yeah, other than that i've been kind of taking it easy lately so my foot can get better. i am
going to the american center tomorrow to see if i can start volunteering soon. i am also having
a minor class registration crisis because i have to register online while i am in st. petersburg
(the trip is in less than 3 weeks! wooo) in a hostel, and i don't even know if i will have internet.
but i will find a way somehow, i guess. and then this friday night we are going to the legit ballet,
so that will be fun. saturday is a museum excursion to the museum of decorative and applied arts, which sounds like it will be either really boring or possibly kind of exciting. and then i think
the weekend before st. petersburg is our excursion to the inside of lenin's tomb which i am really,
really excited for.
but yeah, sorry that this has turned into only a weekly thing, i usually have no time/internet so
it seems to always only be posted once a week. also, the postcard situation is still pending
because i never get a chance to go to the post office. eventually, though. but yeah, that's pretty
much all that's interesting for now, so maybe if i get the chance i will try and make an extra effort to update this again before the weekend is over. we'll see how it goes. hope everyone is well!
dima
on saturday we had planned to visit the gulag museum and when we got there it was actually a lot smaller than i thought it would be. there were a bunch of babyshkas that worked there as well and they were extremely excited to take us around and show us everything. they only spoke a little english but they spoke slowly enough in russian so we could understand the tour for the most part. when we had finished looking around they set up a dvd movie for us and we watched an incredibly depressing documentary about various russians who had survived stays in a gulag. i never really knew extensive details about the camps, so it was definitely informative, but we left halfway through because you could only really watch so much.
i was really excited for sunday because we got to go to a soccer match between a moscow team and another russian team who were visiting from the crimea. the fans were crazy for the moscow team, i had never seen so many organized chants at any other sporting event. i bought a scarf which were really cheap, and also since i kind of collect them because i got one for a team in the czech republic when i was there. CSKA, the team from moscow, ended up winning 4-0, so the game wasn't too exciting, but it was still a lot of fun and i was glad i went. when we were leaving, there were literally hundreds of militsiya lined up outside the metro for crowd control, and they followed everyone down into the metro too. the fans were insane on the metro after the game so we got off as soon as we could.
this week so far i haven't done a ton because i have had a cold for the past week, and my foot has
also been hurting for some reason. yesterday, on tuesday, me and a couple of friends went to a part of the city we hadn't been to before to try and find a cemetery that was supposedly pretty well known because it was really old and had a lot of graves of foreigners in german, french, dutch, etc. we got to the area and took a tram to where we thought it was. unfortunately it started to rain and then we realized we had no idea where we were. we asked someone on the street who turned out to be really helpful and he took us to where the cemetery was. and of course, like everything always is in moscow, it was closed. so we were pretty pissed but it was also kind of funny. we decided to take a bus back to the metro, so we found one and got on. i guess we didn't pay enough attention because it started to take us into what looked like a kind of sketchy area of town. it never bodes well when you start seeing massive rusting soviet factory complexes. so we got off at the end of the line and just kept walking, and we eventually found a metro stop. so it was kind of an adventure in the end, haha.
but yeah, other than that i've been kind of taking it easy lately so my foot can get better. i am
going to the american center tomorrow to see if i can start volunteering soon. i am also having
a minor class registration crisis because i have to register online while i am in st. petersburg
(the trip is in less than 3 weeks! wooo) in a hostel, and i don't even know if i will have internet.
but i will find a way somehow, i guess. and then this friday night we are going to the legit ballet,
so that will be fun. saturday is a museum excursion to the museum of decorative and applied arts, which sounds like it will be either really boring or possibly kind of exciting. and then i think
the weekend before st. petersburg is our excursion to the inside of lenin's tomb which i am really,
really excited for.
but yeah, sorry that this has turned into only a weekly thing, i usually have no time/internet so
it seems to always only be posted once a week. also, the postcard situation is still pending
because i never get a chance to go to the post office. eventually, though. but yeah, that's pretty
much all that's interesting for now, so maybe if i get the chance i will try and make an extra effort to update this again before the weekend is over. we'll see how it goes. hope everyone is well!
dima
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
honey, devils, and some soviet propaganda
hey all. hope everyone is doing well. i always feel like it's been forever since my last post.
last week, like i had said, i didn't really do much until saturday. on friday night i went out
with kerri, erin, joey, kate, and jenny to try and find patriarch's pond. i'd never been to
this part of the city and it was actually in a really nice area. it was still really close to
the center of downtown but it didn't feel like that at all. it kind of reminded me of when i
was in prague because the streets were really small and the buildings were old but still
preserved beautifully. i got the impression it was a fairly affluent area judging from the
amount of mercedes parked on the streets. but anyway, we found patriarch's pond (the pond
from bulgakov's master and margarita novel) and it was nice. it wasn't a touristy area at all
and there were some cool statues and monuments around the pond. unfortunately the weather was pretty cold and cloudy but that's pretty much the norm now though. so afterwards we were going to try and get some dinner at the margarita cafe but you had to have a reservation, so we had to look somewhere else. there were a few restaurants and we ended up going to this bar with a fat man on the sign haha. i got a really good pasta dish and garlic bread and also a french
beer which was surprisingly good. afterwards we went across the street to another cafe for
dessert and i had the best dessert i've eaten in a long time. it was this apple pastry thing
and it was amazing. i will definitely go back there haha. after that we just headed home.
on saturday we had our group excursion to tsaritsyno estate and the honey fair. now, since i
am a homestay person, i usually just make my way to the metro stop where we are meeting by
myself since it's easier than meeting everyone somewhere. so we were supposed to meet at the stop by 12. i woke up around 10 and showered, changed etc. i am not used to eating breakfast at home so i just have a bad habit of not factoring in the 30 min. breakfast eating time that i need
to here. i also severely underestimated how long it would take me to get to this stop since i had
never actually been on this specific metro line before. so it took me forever basically, and
i ended up being 20 minutes late, so i felt kind of bad about that.
but the estate itself was beautiful, it was on a huge plot of land and there were a ton of
buildings, ponds, and bridges. there was also a huge singing fountain that played tchaikovsky
and a couple other songs. the story goes that there was a contest to choose an architect to
build this woman's estate, and after the first architect was chosen, she hated the design and
had it mostly destroyed. it was rebuilt and restored and so now there are the new buildings
and some of the old ruins from the old estate.
we walked around for a while and took photos and then we eventually headed across the street to where the honey fair was going on. the honey fair was crazy. it was hundreds of little stands selling homemade honey. all of the honey sellers were so aggressive about you trying and buying
their honey. i figured all of the honey was good so i eventually just bought a couple containers
of one that i liked. there were so many kinds though, i never knew that honey was so umm..
complicated? but it was fun and we had a good time. we lost a few people because the maze of
honey stands was impossible to escape from. after we were done we took the metro downtown and kind of were indecisive for a while until we ended up just going to get lunch.
saturday night, people had been talking about going out to a club, and so once the dust settled,
me, amanda, kelly, and sam ended up going out. we looked up directions for propaganda, which
is supposed to be a popular club downtown with no cover charge or face control (bleh). so we
took the metro to our stop and started looking. it's amazing how simple google maps makes directions and streets look, and then you get there, and the streets look nothing like how they did on the computer. we wandered and eventually stopped two extremely well dressed guys. they actually spoke some english so they told us where to go, and they also recommended another club called fabrique, because according to them, propaganda is "old". we decided to go to propaganda first anyway, though. we got there fine and the place was pretty small. it was really dark and they really only played techno house music ALL night. literally the beat never changed. this was a lot different from the clubs i had been to in prague where they actually played legit songs. so i was kind of disappointed, but the drinks were really cheap and it was still fun, so we stayed for a while.
after about an hour or so we decided we decided to try fabrique since the guys had recommended it. we left and got a taxi there. the driver was really nice and we attempted conversation, haha. anyway, we got there and it was pretty obvious that fabrique was a lot nicer since A) there were a lot more people hanging out outside and B) there was a hefty cover (like 500 roubles). we got in and checked our coats (note this for later haha) and looked for seats somewhere. fabrique was a LOT bigger than propaganda, probably 5 times at least. i liked the atmosphere better and they kind of played real songs (aka techno mixes of radio edits). so we hung out for a while and it was starting to get late. the metro didn't open until around 5 so we had to stay until at least 4:30 or so. we danced a few times and amanda actually got up on stage with one of the dancers haha. after a while she started to feel sick so a bouncer took her to a bathroom and we kind of sat around, danced, waited etc. when it was time to go, we all went up to get our coats and amanda couldn't find her ticket. unfortunately the charge for a lost ticket was 500 roubles, roughly 15 dollars, which the four of us combined didn't have. eventually one of the club employees offered to walk amanda to the nearest atm (which in moscow is not near at all) to get money. i walked with her and it took about at least 30 minutes to get there and back. we were both extremely tired and when we finally got back to the club and met sam and kelly, we realized the money amanda had just withdrawn was missing. so yeah, needless to say it was kind of a disaster. apparently, while we were gone, the club's manager, aleksei, talked with sam and kelly, and he offered to go get her coat for her. no questions asked, he just walked in and grabbed it. THEN he offered to take us to breakfast, in his escalade haha. so we went with and we went to a pretty upscale restaurant with him and one of his um..lady friends. at this point i was ready to pass out and we literally sat and ate and drank tea for 3 hours at least. quite possibly the most bizarre night of my life, he told us about how he cheats on his wife but it's ok if you don't get caught haha. he was hilarious. when we FINALLY left, he drove us to the metro, i went home, slept, did my homework and that was basically my sunday.
so the weekend really killed me, and lucky me, we had an excursion on monday to what i would describe as a ballroom/russian folk/satanic dance concert. it was basically three parts. the first was an amazing exhibition of different types of ballroom dance from all over the world. puts dancing with the stars to shame. the second was traditional russian folk dancing in the infamous ridiculously brightly colored costumes. and then finally, apparently based on a folk story set in ukraine, there was a probably 20-30 minute long dance with witches, demons, the devil etc. the choreography was amazing and it just blew my mind. it was probably my favorite excursion so far.
today, tuesday, i had signed up to visit and russian high school to speak with kids about life in
america, in general, things like that. they didn't really give us much information but
i wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary. ele, amanda, kathryn, kate, anya, and me went
with lena and andrei, a director from the school, took two freaking marshrutkas to get there.
we got to the school and, this is so ridiculous, as we walked through the front doors, we could see
a fairly sizeable group of kids waiting anxiously inside, holding up cameras, taking a million
pictures, and surrounded by balloons. they were SO excited to see us. i couldn't even believe it.
one of the kids spoke english fairly well and so he gave us the grand tour of the school. and for
russia, it was pretty decent. after we had our tour, they led us to a classroom with a long table
set out, and they sat us every other chair so we could have russian students between everyone. they started bringing out pastries, tea, chocolates, and blini. i was in awe the entire time because
i hadn't expected anything like this at all. i mean, from what i can remember, whenever guest speakers came to my high school it practically took threats from the teacher to get us to do more than stand up and say hi.
so after andrei gave a little introduction, we started to eat and it was basically just an open
forum to talk with whoever we wanted. a good majority of the russian students spoke english fairly well, and i think all of them understood it at leat a little. some were definitely better than others though. i sat next to a kid named yura and i didn't think he spoke english at first since he only asked me questions in russian, but he did speak english eventually, and well enough for me to understand. i talked with him in russian for a fairly good amount of time though about volleyball (he asked, no idea why this is so popular in russia) and other things. his friend joined us halfway through and they wanted me to explain to them how baseball works. it took a good mix of my english and russian to get them to the point where i *think* they understood. afterwards, andrei helped the kids set up a game where we had to match important russian events with the years in which they occurred. we did that, chatted a little more, and then left. before we left, andrei asked us if we'd be interested in coming back and working on some sort of group project with the students (such blatant desperation for english practice haha, but it's fun so w/e) and we told him we would. but the students were beyond friendly and really enthusiastic which is always a plus, so we'll probably be back soon.
so yeah i guess i didn't realize how busy i have been since the end of last week, and i still managed to catch up with survivor somewhere in there, of course. nothing is really planned now until sunday, we're going to a soccer match at luzhniki stadium, which is the huge golden domed stadium on the moskva river. i'm super excited for this because i love to watch soccer. i'll be glued to the field the entire time. also, there's a possibility of aleksei inviting kelly, me, etc to a barbecue at his dacha or something haha, but we're not really sure what's going on with that. so we'll see. our petersburg trip was moved (boo) back a week so that's not til the week before and leading up to halloween. will keep everyone updated. hoping everyone is well!
mitya
last week, like i had said, i didn't really do much until saturday. on friday night i went out
with kerri, erin, joey, kate, and jenny to try and find patriarch's pond. i'd never been to
this part of the city and it was actually in a really nice area. it was still really close to
the center of downtown but it didn't feel like that at all. it kind of reminded me of when i
was in prague because the streets were really small and the buildings were old but still
preserved beautifully. i got the impression it was a fairly affluent area judging from the
amount of mercedes parked on the streets. but anyway, we found patriarch's pond (the pond
from bulgakov's master and margarita novel) and it was nice. it wasn't a touristy area at all
and there were some cool statues and monuments around the pond. unfortunately the weather was pretty cold and cloudy but that's pretty much the norm now though. so afterwards we were going to try and get some dinner at the margarita cafe but you had to have a reservation, so we had to look somewhere else. there were a few restaurants and we ended up going to this bar with a fat man on the sign haha. i got a really good pasta dish and garlic bread and also a french
beer which was surprisingly good. afterwards we went across the street to another cafe for
dessert and i had the best dessert i've eaten in a long time. it was this apple pastry thing
and it was amazing. i will definitely go back there haha. after that we just headed home.
on saturday we had our group excursion to tsaritsyno estate and the honey fair. now, since i
am a homestay person, i usually just make my way to the metro stop where we are meeting by
myself since it's easier than meeting everyone somewhere. so we were supposed to meet at the stop by 12. i woke up around 10 and showered, changed etc. i am not used to eating breakfast at home so i just have a bad habit of not factoring in the 30 min. breakfast eating time that i need
to here. i also severely underestimated how long it would take me to get to this stop since i had
never actually been on this specific metro line before. so it took me forever basically, and
i ended up being 20 minutes late, so i felt kind of bad about that.
but the estate itself was beautiful, it was on a huge plot of land and there were a ton of
buildings, ponds, and bridges. there was also a huge singing fountain that played tchaikovsky
and a couple other songs. the story goes that there was a contest to choose an architect to
build this woman's estate, and after the first architect was chosen, she hated the design and
had it mostly destroyed. it was rebuilt and restored and so now there are the new buildings
and some of the old ruins from the old estate.
we walked around for a while and took photos and then we eventually headed across the street to where the honey fair was going on. the honey fair was crazy. it was hundreds of little stands selling homemade honey. all of the honey sellers were so aggressive about you trying and buying
their honey. i figured all of the honey was good so i eventually just bought a couple containers
of one that i liked. there were so many kinds though, i never knew that honey was so umm..
complicated? but it was fun and we had a good time. we lost a few people because the maze of
honey stands was impossible to escape from. after we were done we took the metro downtown and kind of were indecisive for a while until we ended up just going to get lunch.
saturday night, people had been talking about going out to a club, and so once the dust settled,
me, amanda, kelly, and sam ended up going out. we looked up directions for propaganda, which
is supposed to be a popular club downtown with no cover charge or face control (bleh). so we
took the metro to our stop and started looking. it's amazing how simple google maps makes directions and streets look, and then you get there, and the streets look nothing like how they did on the computer. we wandered and eventually stopped two extremely well dressed guys. they actually spoke some english so they told us where to go, and they also recommended another club called fabrique, because according to them, propaganda is "old". we decided to go to propaganda first anyway, though. we got there fine and the place was pretty small. it was really dark and they really only played techno house music ALL night. literally the beat never changed. this was a lot different from the clubs i had been to in prague where they actually played legit songs. so i was kind of disappointed, but the drinks were really cheap and it was still fun, so we stayed for a while.
after about an hour or so we decided we decided to try fabrique since the guys had recommended it. we left and got a taxi there. the driver was really nice and we attempted conversation, haha. anyway, we got there and it was pretty obvious that fabrique was a lot nicer since A) there were a lot more people hanging out outside and B) there was a hefty cover (like 500 roubles). we got in and checked our coats (note this for later haha) and looked for seats somewhere. fabrique was a LOT bigger than propaganda, probably 5 times at least. i liked the atmosphere better and they kind of played real songs (aka techno mixes of radio edits). so we hung out for a while and it was starting to get late. the metro didn't open until around 5 so we had to stay until at least 4:30 or so. we danced a few times and amanda actually got up on stage with one of the dancers haha. after a while she started to feel sick so a bouncer took her to a bathroom and we kind of sat around, danced, waited etc. when it was time to go, we all went up to get our coats and amanda couldn't find her ticket. unfortunately the charge for a lost ticket was 500 roubles, roughly 15 dollars, which the four of us combined didn't have. eventually one of the club employees offered to walk amanda to the nearest atm (which in moscow is not near at all) to get money. i walked with her and it took about at least 30 minutes to get there and back. we were both extremely tired and when we finally got back to the club and met sam and kelly, we realized the money amanda had just withdrawn was missing. so yeah, needless to say it was kind of a disaster. apparently, while we were gone, the club's manager, aleksei, talked with sam and kelly, and he offered to go get her coat for her. no questions asked, he just walked in and grabbed it. THEN he offered to take us to breakfast, in his escalade haha. so we went with and we went to a pretty upscale restaurant with him and one of his um..lady friends. at this point i was ready to pass out and we literally sat and ate and drank tea for 3 hours at least. quite possibly the most bizarre night of my life, he told us about how he cheats on his wife but it's ok if you don't get caught haha. he was hilarious. when we FINALLY left, he drove us to the metro, i went home, slept, did my homework and that was basically my sunday.
so the weekend really killed me, and lucky me, we had an excursion on monday to what i would describe as a ballroom/russian folk/satanic dance concert. it was basically three parts. the first was an amazing exhibition of different types of ballroom dance from all over the world. puts dancing with the stars to shame. the second was traditional russian folk dancing in the infamous ridiculously brightly colored costumes. and then finally, apparently based on a folk story set in ukraine, there was a probably 20-30 minute long dance with witches, demons, the devil etc. the choreography was amazing and it just blew my mind. it was probably my favorite excursion so far.
today, tuesday, i had signed up to visit and russian high school to speak with kids about life in
america, in general, things like that. they didn't really give us much information but
i wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary. ele, amanda, kathryn, kate, anya, and me went
with lena and andrei, a director from the school, took two freaking marshrutkas to get there.
we got to the school and, this is so ridiculous, as we walked through the front doors, we could see
a fairly sizeable group of kids waiting anxiously inside, holding up cameras, taking a million
pictures, and surrounded by balloons. they were SO excited to see us. i couldn't even believe it.
one of the kids spoke english fairly well and so he gave us the grand tour of the school. and for
russia, it was pretty decent. after we had our tour, they led us to a classroom with a long table
set out, and they sat us every other chair so we could have russian students between everyone. they started bringing out pastries, tea, chocolates, and blini. i was in awe the entire time because
i hadn't expected anything like this at all. i mean, from what i can remember, whenever guest speakers came to my high school it practically took threats from the teacher to get us to do more than stand up and say hi.
so after andrei gave a little introduction, we started to eat and it was basically just an open
forum to talk with whoever we wanted. a good majority of the russian students spoke english fairly well, and i think all of them understood it at leat a little. some were definitely better than others though. i sat next to a kid named yura and i didn't think he spoke english at first since he only asked me questions in russian, but he did speak english eventually, and well enough for me to understand. i talked with him in russian for a fairly good amount of time though about volleyball (he asked, no idea why this is so popular in russia) and other things. his friend joined us halfway through and they wanted me to explain to them how baseball works. it took a good mix of my english and russian to get them to the point where i *think* they understood. afterwards, andrei helped the kids set up a game where we had to match important russian events with the years in which they occurred. we did that, chatted a little more, and then left. before we left, andrei asked us if we'd be interested in coming back and working on some sort of group project with the students (such blatant desperation for english practice haha, but it's fun so w/e) and we told him we would. but the students were beyond friendly and really enthusiastic which is always a plus, so we'll probably be back soon.
so yeah i guess i didn't realize how busy i have been since the end of last week, and i still managed to catch up with survivor somewhere in there, of course. nothing is really planned now until sunday, we're going to a soccer match at luzhniki stadium, which is the huge golden domed stadium on the moskva river. i'm super excited for this because i love to watch soccer. i'll be glued to the field the entire time. also, there's a possibility of aleksei inviting kelly, me, etc to a barbecue at his dacha or something haha, but we're not really sure what's going on with that. so we'll see. our petersburg trip was moved (boo) back a week so that's not til the week before and leading up to halloween. will keep everyone updated. hoping everyone is well!
mitya
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
sorry sir, i don't carry change
sorry for not updating in a while, last week was kind of busy since all the new students arrived, and i've been getting a lot of russian homework. but anyway, i think i left off around a week ago. we went to the opera last tuesday night which was interesting. i didn't really understand anything at all, but it was done in the more modern style as opposed to the classic style, so the costumes and sets were really colorful and abstract. not really sure what my opinion of it is, but it was an experience nonetheless.
this past weekend we had our excursion to the kremlin, which was on saturday. we had to wake up really early since our tour was at 10:30, so we met outside the kremlin and got some breakfast before heading in. our tour guide lady was so nice, she was sweet, very russian, and had a kind of odd sense of humor. inside the kremlin was not what i was expecting at all. it literally looks like a small town with streets, parks, and churches. if nobody told
you, you really wouldn't realize it was a government area. well, i guess the militsiya give it away, but still haha. so yeah, we walked around and got a short but thorough tour of the grounds. since it was a saturday it was empty aside from tour groups. we saw some of the more prominent goverment buildings, a huge cannon, and the tsar's bell, which was saved from a fire and now has a huge crack in it. it's a GIGANTIC bell. after that, we visited some of the churches and went inside to see all of the icons. this was my favorite part because i've
taken a couple classes on russian icons and it was amazing to actually see some of the icons i had studied in person. the restoration work done on some of the churches is incredible, though. in one of the churches, we were lucky to catch a small choir of about 5 people who sang in russian for a couple minutes. the tour was short but we definitely got to see a lot.
after the kremlin, i stayed out the rest of the day with a bunch of people. we went to get some lunch and then mostly wandered around for a while. i bought a book of skazki (fairy tales) which i will attempt to read and it will probably take me all semester to read one story, haha. more for vocab practice though. we also went to tsum, which is the [supposed] baby version of gum, the dept. store on red square. this was without a shadow of a doubt the most expensive store i have been in in my entire life. i honestly don't even know who shops here. even if i was rich i wouldn't shop there. i saw a tshirt for 200 dollars, and that's all it was...a tshirt. everything
else was upwards of 1000+ dollars. so yeah, we weren't there for very long. we also went to a vegan restaurant since one of the girls in our group is vegan. it was actually pretty cool and i probably would've eaten something if i had been hungry. we met a few guys who spoke english there too so we sat with them and talked for a while. afterwards, we met up with some of the other kids from our group and tried to find a bar to go to for the night. we were aiming for karaoke but never actually found it, so we ended up at a live jazz club, which actually
turned out to be a lot of fun. although we really need to find somewhere for cheap drinks here because so far nowhere has been. so that was my entire saturday, basically.
sunday i didn't really do anything at all, except homework. on monday i had class again and i'm really enjoying my language class here. i feel like i'm progressing a ton and i learn new words all the time and our teacher does a realy good job of enforcing the use of new words repetitively, which is good, since i learn best that way. after class, ele, kelly, both amandas and i decided to try and get dinner in a part of the city we'd never been to before, so we picked out a georgian restaurant which claimed to have a great view of novodevichy monastery. we met up and took the metro to where we needed to transfer, and only then did we realize the guidebook said the
restaurant required suit and tie type dress haha. so we decided to just get off where we were (park kultury) and find somewhere there. it was actually a pretty nice area of the city, right near the river, and we found this outdoor restaurant. we were starving and the food took forever, but it was decent. although my chicken was um..dark, i think, not so sure i will be ordering meat so soon here again. but everything else was good, and i even spotted a SUBWAY!!! right near the restaurant, which i didn't even know existed here in russia, so i will
definitely be making a trip back there soon. on the way back home we were waiting for our train in the metro when this drunk man came up to us and just started talking. he claimed to have been born in moldova, and spoke russian, greek, and "1000% english". which was just absolutely not true at all. it was pretty funny until he followed us onto the train and started bothering kelly, so we just got off at the next stop and caught the next train. but seriously, this happens on a MONDAY night???!!? so yeah i was exhausted again and had not done any of my homework, and i didn't get home until like, 11:30, so i was up forever.
oh and so good news, i actually was able to download some tv here so i am actually going to go watch survivor when i am done typing this up. but yeah, forgot to mention that. woohoo.
hmmm and then yeah, yesterday, tuesday, grint had their moskva boat tour excursion, so this was my second boat tour. it was a little colder than the first but still nice and yeah, ya know, the same thing. we hung around for the rest of the night and got dinner at coffee house (i hate this chain so much they are literally on every block in moscow) and the service was pretty terrible. more about dining in general in a bit. but yeah and then we just walked around a little bit, went back to gum where i saw some really cheap cds of russian singers i like that i will probably go back and buy at some point. and then i headed back to svetlana's.
as far as this week goes, i don't really have anything planned until saturday. on saturday we're heading out to the tsaritsyno estate, which is just basically a big national park area with historic sites, and there's also a honey fair going on (YESSS) which is sure to enable my procurement of many cheap and delicious jars of honey goodness to bring back home and share with all. maybe i will actually go to a legit nightclub this weekend, who knows. i noticed this crazy looking bar or something on top of a building right outside red square the other night and i had never noticed it before. i want to look into it and see if i can figure out what it is.
but anyway, a couple more pieces of russian craziness. first of all, i need to talk about the dining out situation here. rule number one: service sucks. sometimes you have a nice ofitsiant(ka) but most of the time, no, and you have to hail them everytime you want to order/get more whatever/pay. otherwise they would let you sit there all night long. it's ridiculous. and then the one thing that drives me crazy, in the states and anywhere else. separate checks. alright, i understand that not all restaurants can do it, but really russia, since 99% of your stores will bitch me to hell if i try and pay with a 1000 rouble note ($30 people) i NEVER have small bills (also almost ALL atms give out massive size bills) so it's hell to try and split a bill in a restaurant. this leads to confusion/angry staff/loss of money etc etc. even when the bill is like, thousands
of roubles, they will still proceed to present you with a check a mile long including everyone's orders and then huff and puff when you take too long to work out your money situation. most of the time one person just ends up paying for it all with their credit card and getting money from everyone else later. but really, i don't understand the contempt for giving change here. which leads me to...
SMALL CHANGE. ahhh this drives me INSANE. ok, at home, i never, ever do this. i know some people (aka old women and people who like to hold up lines at stores) enjoy doing this, but i never give extra coins to a cashier in order to avoid them having to give me change with coins. i just don't care and especially since i don't have a purse like girls do, my change is never organized and i would just hold up the line. well, here, almost all cashiers in stores EXPECT you to give them that extra 30/40/50 whatever kopecks. and when i tell them i don't have it
i get the ugliest glare and they proceed to throw my change at me without so much as a thanks. now i know customer service is not alive and well here but oh jeez i sure am tired of seeming like the only person who doesn't carry around and use spare change.
lastly, this is something i noticed from the first couple days but never really realized how amusing it was. the metro here is seriously a place of business for so many people. first, there are just hordes of babushkas outside the entrance selling everything from fruits to clothes, and then the biggest ticket item, flowers. the flower business here in russia, for whatever strange reason, is huge. wherever you go there are people carrying/selling/buying flowers. i don't know for what or for whom but it's all over. so these old babushkas are so industrious, even at midnight they are still on the metro trying to pawn off their last few bouquets. i will probably
eventually buy one for svetlana, but it's just so funny how flowers are so popular here. also on the metro, there are ordinary people who i assume, for extra income, agree to purchase and then attempt to resell crappy things that nobody wants to the commuters on the train. so you can just be sitting there and someone will get up and start talking about and demonstrating how to use a head rest, or a flashlight, or whatever other piece of crap they have that day. i have never seen anyone buy anything, because frankly it's super sketchy and creepy, and i can't imagine how it could be profitable.
but anyway sorry for taking forever to update, i'll try to update again before the weekend comes around, or maybe right after the honey fair. hope everyone is well!
dima
this past weekend we had our excursion to the kremlin, which was on saturday. we had to wake up really early since our tour was at 10:30, so we met outside the kremlin and got some breakfast before heading in. our tour guide lady was so nice, she was sweet, very russian, and had a kind of odd sense of humor. inside the kremlin was not what i was expecting at all. it literally looks like a small town with streets, parks, and churches. if nobody told
you, you really wouldn't realize it was a government area. well, i guess the militsiya give it away, but still haha. so yeah, we walked around and got a short but thorough tour of the grounds. since it was a saturday it was empty aside from tour groups. we saw some of the more prominent goverment buildings, a huge cannon, and the tsar's bell, which was saved from a fire and now has a huge crack in it. it's a GIGANTIC bell. after that, we visited some of the churches and went inside to see all of the icons. this was my favorite part because i've
taken a couple classes on russian icons and it was amazing to actually see some of the icons i had studied in person. the restoration work done on some of the churches is incredible, though. in one of the churches, we were lucky to catch a small choir of about 5 people who sang in russian for a couple minutes. the tour was short but we definitely got to see a lot.
after the kremlin, i stayed out the rest of the day with a bunch of people. we went to get some lunch and then mostly wandered around for a while. i bought a book of skazki (fairy tales) which i will attempt to read and it will probably take me all semester to read one story, haha. more for vocab practice though. we also went to tsum, which is the [supposed] baby version of gum, the dept. store on red square. this was without a shadow of a doubt the most expensive store i have been in in my entire life. i honestly don't even know who shops here. even if i was rich i wouldn't shop there. i saw a tshirt for 200 dollars, and that's all it was...a tshirt. everything
else was upwards of 1000+ dollars. so yeah, we weren't there for very long. we also went to a vegan restaurant since one of the girls in our group is vegan. it was actually pretty cool and i probably would've eaten something if i had been hungry. we met a few guys who spoke english there too so we sat with them and talked for a while. afterwards, we met up with some of the other kids from our group and tried to find a bar to go to for the night. we were aiming for karaoke but never actually found it, so we ended up at a live jazz club, which actually
turned out to be a lot of fun. although we really need to find somewhere for cheap drinks here because so far nowhere has been. so that was my entire saturday, basically.
sunday i didn't really do anything at all, except homework. on monday i had class again and i'm really enjoying my language class here. i feel like i'm progressing a ton and i learn new words all the time and our teacher does a realy good job of enforcing the use of new words repetitively, which is good, since i learn best that way. after class, ele, kelly, both amandas and i decided to try and get dinner in a part of the city we'd never been to before, so we picked out a georgian restaurant which claimed to have a great view of novodevichy monastery. we met up and took the metro to where we needed to transfer, and only then did we realize the guidebook said the
restaurant required suit and tie type dress haha. so we decided to just get off where we were (park kultury) and find somewhere there. it was actually a pretty nice area of the city, right near the river, and we found this outdoor restaurant. we were starving and the food took forever, but it was decent. although my chicken was um..dark, i think, not so sure i will be ordering meat so soon here again. but everything else was good, and i even spotted a SUBWAY!!! right near the restaurant, which i didn't even know existed here in russia, so i will
definitely be making a trip back there soon. on the way back home we were waiting for our train in the metro when this drunk man came up to us and just started talking. he claimed to have been born in moldova, and spoke russian, greek, and "1000% english". which was just absolutely not true at all. it was pretty funny until he followed us onto the train and started bothering kelly, so we just got off at the next stop and caught the next train. but seriously, this happens on a MONDAY night???!!? so yeah i was exhausted again and had not done any of my homework, and i didn't get home until like, 11:30, so i was up forever.
oh and so good news, i actually was able to download some tv here so i am actually going to go watch survivor when i am done typing this up. but yeah, forgot to mention that. woohoo.
hmmm and then yeah, yesterday, tuesday, grint had their moskva boat tour excursion, so this was my second boat tour. it was a little colder than the first but still nice and yeah, ya know, the same thing. we hung around for the rest of the night and got dinner at coffee house (i hate this chain so much they are literally on every block in moscow) and the service was pretty terrible. more about dining in general in a bit. but yeah and then we just walked around a little bit, went back to gum where i saw some really cheap cds of russian singers i like that i will probably go back and buy at some point. and then i headed back to svetlana's.
as far as this week goes, i don't really have anything planned until saturday. on saturday we're heading out to the tsaritsyno estate, which is just basically a big national park area with historic sites, and there's also a honey fair going on (YESSS) which is sure to enable my procurement of many cheap and delicious jars of honey goodness to bring back home and share with all. maybe i will actually go to a legit nightclub this weekend, who knows. i noticed this crazy looking bar or something on top of a building right outside red square the other night and i had never noticed it before. i want to look into it and see if i can figure out what it is.
but anyway, a couple more pieces of russian craziness. first of all, i need to talk about the dining out situation here. rule number one: service sucks. sometimes you have a nice ofitsiant(ka) but most of the time, no, and you have to hail them everytime you want to order/get more whatever/pay. otherwise they would let you sit there all night long. it's ridiculous. and then the one thing that drives me crazy, in the states and anywhere else. separate checks. alright, i understand that not all restaurants can do it, but really russia, since 99% of your stores will bitch me to hell if i try and pay with a 1000 rouble note ($30 people) i NEVER have small bills (also almost ALL atms give out massive size bills) so it's hell to try and split a bill in a restaurant. this leads to confusion/angry staff/loss of money etc etc. even when the bill is like, thousands
of roubles, they will still proceed to present you with a check a mile long including everyone's orders and then huff and puff when you take too long to work out your money situation. most of the time one person just ends up paying for it all with their credit card and getting money from everyone else later. but really, i don't understand the contempt for giving change here. which leads me to...
SMALL CHANGE. ahhh this drives me INSANE. ok, at home, i never, ever do this. i know some people (aka old women and people who like to hold up lines at stores) enjoy doing this, but i never give extra coins to a cashier in order to avoid them having to give me change with coins. i just don't care and especially since i don't have a purse like girls do, my change is never organized and i would just hold up the line. well, here, almost all cashiers in stores EXPECT you to give them that extra 30/40/50 whatever kopecks. and when i tell them i don't have it
i get the ugliest glare and they proceed to throw my change at me without so much as a thanks. now i know customer service is not alive and well here but oh jeez i sure am tired of seeming like the only person who doesn't carry around and use spare change.
lastly, this is something i noticed from the first couple days but never really realized how amusing it was. the metro here is seriously a place of business for so many people. first, there are just hordes of babushkas outside the entrance selling everything from fruits to clothes, and then the biggest ticket item, flowers. the flower business here in russia, for whatever strange reason, is huge. wherever you go there are people carrying/selling/buying flowers. i don't know for what or for whom but it's all over. so these old babushkas are so industrious, even at midnight they are still on the metro trying to pawn off their last few bouquets. i will probably
eventually buy one for svetlana, but it's just so funny how flowers are so popular here. also on the metro, there are ordinary people who i assume, for extra income, agree to purchase and then attempt to resell crappy things that nobody wants to the commuters on the train. so you can just be sitting there and someone will get up and start talking about and demonstrating how to use a head rest, or a flashlight, or whatever other piece of crap they have that day. i have never seen anyone buy anything, because frankly it's super sketchy and creepy, and i can't imagine how it could be profitable.
but anyway sorry for taking forever to update, i'll try to update again before the weekend comes around, or maybe right after the honey fair. hope everyone is well!
dima
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
the weekends here always go so quickly, or at least they seem to haha. i had class on friday again and we took a while to decide what we wanted to do on friday night. we decided to walk arbat (the tourist-y pedestrian street) and then find a bar or something like that. we were originally going to go a jazz bar, but we couldn't find the one we were looking for, so we ended up going to a pub we found. it was called john bull, who is apparently england's equivalent of uncle sam. john bull was umm...unique, haha. it was themed kind of like an early 1900s
bar/saloon/tavern, take your pick. the waitresses were dressed in little plaid dresses, and the entire restaurant was covered in a hazy smoke. but it was really nice, and the food and drinks weren't too expensive. i think our waitress liked how hard we tried to speak to her in russian. but it took us a while to get her to understand that we wanted to keep one menu so we could order more, haha. they had a bunch of irish and english beers, so i got a few of those, and we shared some garlic breads and things like that. but yeah, thanks john bull for a thoroughly
entertaining night!
i felt like being really lazy on saturday so i slept late and then svetlana made me breakfast. i know, do i even need to say it anymore? um, yogurt, salad, and empty omelette. although, i will say that among all of these breakfast disasters i think i am slowly becoming extremely friendly with kefir, which is..um, spoiled milk. it's an entirely russian invention, although i believe it has made it's way to the states in various forms. but in russia, and especially on russian tv, it's advertised as an extremely healthy digestive product, kind of like metamucil or something. technically, it's even called "bio-kefir". but yeah, i put it in my yogurt every morning and it's actually really tasty. i don't know if i'm at the point where i will drink it straight from a cup like svetlana though, haha. maybe someday...
but yeah, svetlana left for the day so i had the apartment to myself so i decided to do some exploring and to my surprise i found a super secret room off of her bedroom. actually it's really just a window balcony, but the mystery as to where she dries my clothes has been solved. showered and headed to the dorms to try and get homework done (did not happen). oh and one of the new students arrived the other night. her name's anya. so we hung out for a little bit and then i went home.
then on sunday we had the organ concert downtown. it was ok, it was basically just a recital open to the public and the woman played for about 90 minutes. i had a lot of homework though so i just went back to svetlana's afterwards and did that for the rest of the night.
then monday, all of the new students (about 10) from the arizona program finally got here, so they were doing their orientation while we were in morning classes. i met some of them but not for very long. we're supposed to get one new person in our class even though zoya apparently would prefer nobody, haha. but yeah, that was my weekend. and then tuesday night we went to the opera. it was called ruslan and lyudmila and was about a princess who got
kidnapped and the prince who tried to save her. i understood nothing but it was fun to watch. afterwards we went out for pizza and then went back.
oh, so a few more things i have noticed about russians, since i have been told many a person enjoyed the last installment. i know i have mentioned this kind of already, but russians will drive and park their cars ANYWHERE. i am not even honestly sure if it's possible to be issued a parking ticket in russia. i have seen cars parked in the middle of major roads, backs sticking out into traffic (accident waiting to happen), and just about anywhere in general. also, so many of the roads here are too small for two lane traffic, so people will regularly drive up onto curbs and sidewalks to let each other pass. also, i was watching tv with svetlana the other day, and i can now rest easy knowing that trashy american tv has found its way to russia. it was, generally speaking, judge judy, except instead of the judge screaming, the plaintiff and defendant would just go at it for like, 10 minutes straight. i'm not even sure if i saw either of them pause to take a breath. there was no way i was ever going to understand what they were arguing about because they were being so belligerent and obnoxious, but it was fun to watch. i have also been told there is a show similar to jerry springer, but i haven't actually seen it so i will have to keep an eye out for that.
alright so that's it for now because my internet sucks. we are having an excursion to the kremlin on sat. though so that will be fun. also, expect postcards semi-soonish.
mitya
bar/saloon/tavern, take your pick. the waitresses were dressed in little plaid dresses, and the entire restaurant was covered in a hazy smoke. but it was really nice, and the food and drinks weren't too expensive. i think our waitress liked how hard we tried to speak to her in russian. but it took us a while to get her to understand that we wanted to keep one menu so we could order more, haha. they had a bunch of irish and english beers, so i got a few of those, and we shared some garlic breads and things like that. but yeah, thanks john bull for a thoroughly
entertaining night!
i felt like being really lazy on saturday so i slept late and then svetlana made me breakfast. i know, do i even need to say it anymore? um, yogurt, salad, and empty omelette. although, i will say that among all of these breakfast disasters i think i am slowly becoming extremely friendly with kefir, which is..um, spoiled milk. it's an entirely russian invention, although i believe it has made it's way to the states in various forms. but in russia, and especially on russian tv, it's advertised as an extremely healthy digestive product, kind of like metamucil or something. technically, it's even called "bio-kefir". but yeah, i put it in my yogurt every morning and it's actually really tasty. i don't know if i'm at the point where i will drink it straight from a cup like svetlana though, haha. maybe someday...
but yeah, svetlana left for the day so i had the apartment to myself so i decided to do some exploring and to my surprise i found a super secret room off of her bedroom. actually it's really just a window balcony, but the mystery as to where she dries my clothes has been solved. showered and headed to the dorms to try and get homework done (did not happen). oh and one of the new students arrived the other night. her name's anya. so we hung out for a little bit and then i went home.
then on sunday we had the organ concert downtown. it was ok, it was basically just a recital open to the public and the woman played for about 90 minutes. i had a lot of homework though so i just went back to svetlana's afterwards and did that for the rest of the night.
then monday, all of the new students (about 10) from the arizona program finally got here, so they were doing their orientation while we were in morning classes. i met some of them but not for very long. we're supposed to get one new person in our class even though zoya apparently would prefer nobody, haha. but yeah, that was my weekend. and then tuesday night we went to the opera. it was called ruslan and lyudmila and was about a princess who got
kidnapped and the prince who tried to save her. i understood nothing but it was fun to watch. afterwards we went out for pizza and then went back.
oh, so a few more things i have noticed about russians, since i have been told many a person enjoyed the last installment. i know i have mentioned this kind of already, but russians will drive and park their cars ANYWHERE. i am not even honestly sure if it's possible to be issued a parking ticket in russia. i have seen cars parked in the middle of major roads, backs sticking out into traffic (accident waiting to happen), and just about anywhere in general. also, so many of the roads here are too small for two lane traffic, so people will regularly drive up onto curbs and sidewalks to let each other pass. also, i was watching tv with svetlana the other day, and i can now rest easy knowing that trashy american tv has found its way to russia. it was, generally speaking, judge judy, except instead of the judge screaming, the plaintiff and defendant would just go at it for like, 10 minutes straight. i'm not even sure if i saw either of them pause to take a breath. there was no way i was ever going to understand what they were arguing about because they were being so belligerent and obnoxious, but it was fun to watch. i have also been told there is a show similar to jerry springer, but i haven't actually seen it so i will have to keep an eye out for that.
alright so that's it for now because my internet sucks. we are having an excursion to the kremlin on sat. though so that will be fun. also, expect postcards semi-soonish.
mitya
Friday, September 11, 2009
останкино и мы плаваем по москве
so even though i didn't have class on wednesday i've been keeping pretty busy. zoya gave us a ton of HW on tues. night so that took forever to do. on wednesday, since aleksandr is on vacation..somewhere, we went to ostankino tv tower instead of our normal lecture. it was nice because i got to sleep in for a couple more hours, and then we met at VDNKh, which is a neighborhood on the outskirts of the northeastern end of moscow. it's a really nice
area, a lot nicer than vykhino sadly. the walk to the tower was far but it was nice seeing a different suburban neighborhood for a change, as opposed to downtown. VDNKh had its own monorail, which is unfortunately lacking in vykhino, and it was just nicer in general. we got to the tower and were a little early so we walked around a bit. and ok let me just say that the security at this thing was ridiculous. compared to prague's tv tower, i had to give them my passport, student id, and then they had to make us actual plastic id cards just for a tour. i also
had to check my backpack and was mostly stripped of all my worldly possessions. and then finally we had to go through 2 separate security checkpoints and metal detectors. but overall it was worth it, the views from the tower were pretty incredible, you could see the kremlin, arbat, the new moscow financial center, and um, lots of nuclear power plants. it was funny because the tour was in russian, and they made us watch a video beforehand about what to do in case of an emergency. obviously we didn't understand it, but they used hilarious photos and examples
which included people in gas masks. and that's all i'll say about that. but Lena was with us and she eventually got the lady tourguide to give us a private tour from the observation deck and lena translated. so yeah we were there for about 3 hours or so. it was fun though. afterwards kathryn, katya, alyssa and i found a park and walked around, got ice cream, etc etc. we found a small children's amusement park that was kind of decrepit but apparently still in use. pity the children.
oh and i forgot, svetlana's daughter Lyena was over the apartment the other night when i got home, and she speaks some english, so i was thrilled because she translated some semi-pressing issues to svetlana for me, such as laundry. turned out i was correct in what i had thought svetlana told me, but i just wanted to make sure. we watched the end of a movie which, from what i gathered, had something to do with a man who could see the future and um, yeah. that's it. lyena is nice though so i hope she comes over again. she said she likes to practice her english so who knows.
hmm let's see. thursday i had class again and it was zoya's birthday so we got her flowers and chocolates. she was happy, i think haha. it's also a russian tradition to give other people candy or small crap on your birthday so she bought some french truffles for us. mmmmm. lunch was gross as usual (lately they have been serving terrible things such as kicel' which is a drink that has a consistency halfway between juice and jello).
anyway the boat tour of downtown was after lunch so i went with katya and alyssa. it was pretty cool, we passed by the kremlin, sparrow hills, red oktober chocolate factory, gorkii park and stuff like that. i bought a czech beer on the boat which i had had when i was in prague, but the bottle turned out to be huge (i had no idea i swear) so by the end of the ride i was a little blehh. it was fun though.
i don't really have plans for this weekend yet, besides sunday we're going to the moscow conservatory for some kind of organ concert. nobody really ever gives us information prior to excursions so they always seem to be somewhat of a surprise, haha. russians don't really like to plan too far ahead. some of us also might be going out on friday night with someone we met on the boat tour, not sure about that yet though. we haven't really done much nightlife stuff yet because we've still been figuring out how everything will work and stuff.
but yeah i think i have been getting more confident in ordering things in russian and just making small conversation with people wherever. the other day i went into the elevator with someone and they asked me which floor and i understood and [promptly] responded haha, so i was proud of myself. but yeah umm i guess that's it for now, but hopefully next time i will probably talk about the conservatory trip and any possible nightclub trips from this upcoming weekend. which i am highly looking forward to haha.
дима
area, a lot nicer than vykhino sadly. the walk to the tower was far but it was nice seeing a different suburban neighborhood for a change, as opposed to downtown. VDNKh had its own monorail, which is unfortunately lacking in vykhino, and it was just nicer in general. we got to the tower and were a little early so we walked around a bit. and ok let me just say that the security at this thing was ridiculous. compared to prague's tv tower, i had to give them my passport, student id, and then they had to make us actual plastic id cards just for a tour. i also
had to check my backpack and was mostly stripped of all my worldly possessions. and then finally we had to go through 2 separate security checkpoints and metal detectors. but overall it was worth it, the views from the tower were pretty incredible, you could see the kremlin, arbat, the new moscow financial center, and um, lots of nuclear power plants. it was funny because the tour was in russian, and they made us watch a video beforehand about what to do in case of an emergency. obviously we didn't understand it, but they used hilarious photos and examples
which included people in gas masks. and that's all i'll say about that. but Lena was with us and she eventually got the lady tourguide to give us a private tour from the observation deck and lena translated. so yeah we were there for about 3 hours or so. it was fun though. afterwards kathryn, katya, alyssa and i found a park and walked around, got ice cream, etc etc. we found a small children's amusement park that was kind of decrepit but apparently still in use. pity the children.
oh and i forgot, svetlana's daughter Lyena was over the apartment the other night when i got home, and she speaks some english, so i was thrilled because she translated some semi-pressing issues to svetlana for me, such as laundry. turned out i was correct in what i had thought svetlana told me, but i just wanted to make sure. we watched the end of a movie which, from what i gathered, had something to do with a man who could see the future and um, yeah. that's it. lyena is nice though so i hope she comes over again. she said she likes to practice her english so who knows.
hmm let's see. thursday i had class again and it was zoya's birthday so we got her flowers and chocolates. she was happy, i think haha. it's also a russian tradition to give other people candy or small crap on your birthday so she bought some french truffles for us. mmmmm. lunch was gross as usual (lately they have been serving terrible things such as kicel' which is a drink that has a consistency halfway between juice and jello).
anyway the boat tour of downtown was after lunch so i went with katya and alyssa. it was pretty cool, we passed by the kremlin, sparrow hills, red oktober chocolate factory, gorkii park and stuff like that. i bought a czech beer on the boat which i had had when i was in prague, but the bottle turned out to be huge (i had no idea i swear) so by the end of the ride i was a little blehh. it was fun though.
i don't really have plans for this weekend yet, besides sunday we're going to the moscow conservatory for some kind of organ concert. nobody really ever gives us information prior to excursions so they always seem to be somewhat of a surprise, haha. russians don't really like to plan too far ahead. some of us also might be going out on friday night with someone we met on the boat tour, not sure about that yet though. we haven't really done much nightlife stuff yet because we've still been figuring out how everything will work and stuff.
but yeah i think i have been getting more confident in ordering things in russian and just making small conversation with people wherever. the other day i went into the elevator with someone and they asked me which floor and i understood and [promptly] responded haha, so i was proud of myself. but yeah umm i guess that's it for now, but hopefully next time i will probably talk about the conservatory trip and any possible nightclub trips from this upcoming weekend. which i am highly looking forward to haha.
дима
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
if you build it [underground], they will come
so yesterday i went with ele and amanda to okhotny ryad, which is the large 3 floor underground mall right outside of red square. you wouldn't really know it was there unless you were told, most likely, but i had known about it previously and so i was excited to see what it was like. it's neat though because there arethese big glass domes above ground that actually form part of the roof. but the mall itself is actually pretty similar to a lot of malls in the US. it was pretty much all clothing stores, but i was on the hunt for a jacket haha, so that was what i was hoping for. the prices were....meh well they were kind of expensive. it was just weird because some things were overpriced while other things were relatively reasonable. i saw a lot of coats that i wouldn't expect to pay over $100 for at home that were $250+. i did eventually find a good fall jacket for
about $35 though. the only thing i didn't like about the mall was, and this seems to be a problem in general in moscow, that there was mostly nowhere to sit and rest. i tried to stop and rest a few times only to nearly be trampled by the neverending stream of people. as previously mentioned, russians do not like to move out of your way, haha.
after the mall we kind of just hung out and got some ice cream (russians loooooove ice cream, there are stands everywhere, literally everywhere, and people are walking around eating it all the time). we went and saw the eternal flame outside the kremlin for the WWII soldiers, and we actually got there right before the changing of the guard, so we got to see that which was cool.
as far as school, well..it's really really laid back, at least i feel like it is anyway. i always have russian homework, but it doesn't take me like five bajillion hours to do like it does at home, although i feel like that's ok because i already spend over 3 hours speaking constantly in class, not to mention the rest of my day. i already feel like my russian is improving a lot though just by learning so much new vocab and stuff, though. just the repetitiveness of seeing and using certain things that i wouldn't really ever use at home in class helps my memory retain it a lot more easily. but yeah, overall, i barely do anything school-wise which is amazingggg.
we also don't have lecture class this wednesday so we're going on an excursion to Ostankino tv tower. i'm pretty excited for it actually since it should have amazing views of moscow. it's also the tallest freestanding structure in europe..i believe. and then on sunday night we're going to some sort of musical concert, not too sure about specifics more later i suppose.
hmmm...svetlana is still doing well. she has started doing my laundry so i am thrilled, needless to say. i talked to her about how much she wants me to pay her and when, and i believe she wants me to give her money at the end of every month. not 100% on that though, haha. she also changed my sheets tonight wooo.
oh and a new group of kids is supposed to be arriving sometime at the end of this week, from the arizona program that partners with grint. they are moving into the dorms so i will meet them when they do i guess. apparently there are a couple more guys which is cool since viktor and i are the only two right now haha. we also have been wanting to find a bar/club whatever to sample some beers and stuff but we haven't really gotten a chance yet just because we've only just figured out the metro well enough. maybe this weekend or definitely next though. going to patriarch pond today. also, possible moskva river cruise on thursday? not sure though.
but anyway i will try and update again before the weekend about all of that...
до свидания
митя
about $35 though. the only thing i didn't like about the mall was, and this seems to be a problem in general in moscow, that there was mostly nowhere to sit and rest. i tried to stop and rest a few times only to nearly be trampled by the neverending stream of people. as previously mentioned, russians do not like to move out of your way, haha.
after the mall we kind of just hung out and got some ice cream (russians loooooove ice cream, there are stands everywhere, literally everywhere, and people are walking around eating it all the time). we went and saw the eternal flame outside the kremlin for the WWII soldiers, and we actually got there right before the changing of the guard, so we got to see that which was cool.
as far as school, well..it's really really laid back, at least i feel like it is anyway. i always have russian homework, but it doesn't take me like five bajillion hours to do like it does at home, although i feel like that's ok because i already spend over 3 hours speaking constantly in class, not to mention the rest of my day. i already feel like my russian is improving a lot though just by learning so much new vocab and stuff, though. just the repetitiveness of seeing and using certain things that i wouldn't really ever use at home in class helps my memory retain it a lot more easily. but yeah, overall, i barely do anything school-wise which is amazingggg.
we also don't have lecture class this wednesday so we're going on an excursion to Ostankino tv tower. i'm pretty excited for it actually since it should have amazing views of moscow. it's also the tallest freestanding structure in europe..i believe. and then on sunday night we're going to some sort of musical concert, not too sure about specifics more later i suppose.
hmmm...svetlana is still doing well. she has started doing my laundry so i am thrilled, needless to say. i talked to her about how much she wants me to pay her and when, and i believe she wants me to give her money at the end of every month. not 100% on that though, haha. she also changed my sheets tonight wooo.
oh and a new group of kids is supposed to be arriving sometime at the end of this week, from the arizona program that partners with grint. they are moving into the dorms so i will meet them when they do i guess. apparently there are a couple more guys which is cool since viktor and i are the only two right now haha. we also have been wanting to find a bar/club whatever to sample some beers and stuff but we haven't really gotten a chance yet just because we've only just figured out the metro well enough. maybe this weekend or definitely next though. going to patriarch pond today. also, possible moskva river cruise on thursday? not sure though.
but anyway i will try and update again before the weekend about all of that...
до свидания
митя
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Спассная Башня
so before i say anything else, because i keep forgetting...every morning when svetlana gives me my tea, she gives it to me in this mug that says around the inner rim: we wanna live healthily, being healthy is beautiful, do you like vegetable? so that always makes me laugh and she probably has no idea why it's funny.
but anyway, hmm, let's see, on friday night we went out to get dinner and ended up going to a blini stand where i ordered my own blini in russian. i was proud of myself. it was blueberries and cream and it was really good. then we made a stop at dom knigi (house of books) which is a bookstore in russia that's pretty much their equivalent of barnes and noble. it's decent, i guess. i just wanted to get a book in english so i have something to do when i'm bored on school nights since i get basically no homework here. i found something even though the books are really overpriced. afterwards we went to shokoladnitsa (chocolate-y or something? haha) which
turned out to be a really fancy restaurant after we were directed to the basement. we mostly got dessert and drinks though. we ordered in russian there too and the waitress was slightly confused when we tried to explain that we wanted our checks split.
i slept until 2 yesterday just because i was tired and went to bed late. we were supposed to meet lena (our events coordinator, she's really nice) at pushkinskaya around 5 so i left svetlana's around 4 to meet everyone else at the metro. svetlana left a few minutes before i did but i have no idea where she was going since she hardly ever leaves the apartment, so when she does it's kind of a big deal. plus she had makeup on and everything. go figure. so anyway we met lena and hung out around tverskaya for a while. this weekend is all devoted to moscow day celebrations so they had closed down the major streets to cars and had a bunch of stages and stands set up. it was a lot of fun, actually. we watched the singers they had for a little bit who were singing crazy russian techno songs and then headed towards red square. we ate lunch at sbarro [pause so i can roll my eyes] and just got pizza. there were several problems with this. first is that even though lena is really nice, she doesn't really understand that some people in our group don't know any russian at all, and she also walks REALLY fast in crowds. so we got split up while we were ordering at sbarro, and so we had to pair up and order together. so not only did i have to order my own food but i also had to butcher the menu items and order food for someone else. the cashier lady basically just stared at me as i thought for like five minutes about how to translate "i want tomato pizza and she wants spinach" haha. at least it was good pizza, which is surprising for sbarro.
after we had dinner we found out seats in red square which were actually really good. we were directly across from st. basil's and right next to lenin's tomb (which i still have not seen yet). the entire performance lasted about 3 hours. it was amazing. militaries from a bunch of different countries (finland, france, UK, israel, india, china, italy, russia, kazakshtan, armenia etc) performed and there was also a singer and a ton of fireworks at the end right over st. basil's. i had a great time and it was definitely an awesome thing to be able to see.
so before i end, i said last time i would mention some of the things that i have noticed since arriving in russia. first is that there definitely are a LOT of stray animals running around. it doesn't personally bother me, but it is kind of sad even though i'm not a huge cat/dog fan. not so many cats but i've seen a few. but nobody really seems to even pay any attention to them. also, the russian mullet is still very much in fashion. i don't really understand why...but they seem to like it haha. i have also been able to see a good amount of russian tv so far thanks to svetlana's addiction to russian soap operas, and literally any hour of any day, you can find a soap on. i mean, i guess some of them are actually prime time dramas, but they all have the same production values so it's not like you can tell the difference like you can between good shows like survivor and crap like days of our lives or something haha. and then several other things that i think are funny quickly...
-russian people seem to fall into one of two categories: either really ugly or really good looking
-russians do not move out of your way, you move out of theirs
-bathrooms here are 95% likely to not have toilet paper (not even GUM!)
-there are about 20 different commercials that run on a constant loop on tv. they never change.
and so i guess that's it for now..my internet still sucks and looks as though it will continue to do so, so possibly updates every 3-4 days is likely but not guaranteed. second week of classes starts tomorrow so maybe ill go into more detail on my russian class next time.
do svidaniya!
brandon
but anyway, hmm, let's see, on friday night we went out to get dinner and ended up going to a blini stand where i ordered my own blini in russian. i was proud of myself. it was blueberries and cream and it was really good. then we made a stop at dom knigi (house of books) which is a bookstore in russia that's pretty much their equivalent of barnes and noble. it's decent, i guess. i just wanted to get a book in english so i have something to do when i'm bored on school nights since i get basically no homework here. i found something even though the books are really overpriced. afterwards we went to shokoladnitsa (chocolate-y or something? haha) which
turned out to be a really fancy restaurant after we were directed to the basement. we mostly got dessert and drinks though. we ordered in russian there too and the waitress was slightly confused when we tried to explain that we wanted our checks split.
i slept until 2 yesterday just because i was tired and went to bed late. we were supposed to meet lena (our events coordinator, she's really nice) at pushkinskaya around 5 so i left svetlana's around 4 to meet everyone else at the metro. svetlana left a few minutes before i did but i have no idea where she was going since she hardly ever leaves the apartment, so when she does it's kind of a big deal. plus she had makeup on and everything. go figure. so anyway we met lena and hung out around tverskaya for a while. this weekend is all devoted to moscow day celebrations so they had closed down the major streets to cars and had a bunch of stages and stands set up. it was a lot of fun, actually. we watched the singers they had for a little bit who were singing crazy russian techno songs and then headed towards red square. we ate lunch at sbarro [pause so i can roll my eyes] and just got pizza. there were several problems with this. first is that even though lena is really nice, she doesn't really understand that some people in our group don't know any russian at all, and she also walks REALLY fast in crowds. so we got split up while we were ordering at sbarro, and so we had to pair up and order together. so not only did i have to order my own food but i also had to butcher the menu items and order food for someone else. the cashier lady basically just stared at me as i thought for like five minutes about how to translate "i want tomato pizza and she wants spinach" haha. at least it was good pizza, which is surprising for sbarro.
after we had dinner we found out seats in red square which were actually really good. we were directly across from st. basil's and right next to lenin's tomb (which i still have not seen yet). the entire performance lasted about 3 hours. it was amazing. militaries from a bunch of different countries (finland, france, UK, israel, india, china, italy, russia, kazakshtan, armenia etc) performed and there was also a singer and a ton of fireworks at the end right over st. basil's. i had a great time and it was definitely an awesome thing to be able to see.
so before i end, i said last time i would mention some of the things that i have noticed since arriving in russia. first is that there definitely are a LOT of stray animals running around. it doesn't personally bother me, but it is kind of sad even though i'm not a huge cat/dog fan. not so many cats but i've seen a few. but nobody really seems to even pay any attention to them. also, the russian mullet is still very much in fashion. i don't really understand why...but they seem to like it haha. i have also been able to see a good amount of russian tv so far thanks to svetlana's addiction to russian soap operas, and literally any hour of any day, you can find a soap on. i mean, i guess some of them are actually prime time dramas, but they all have the same production values so it's not like you can tell the difference like you can between good shows like survivor and crap like days of our lives or something haha. and then several other things that i think are funny quickly...
-russian people seem to fall into one of two categories: either really ugly or really good looking
-russians do not move out of your way, you move out of theirs
-bathrooms here are 95% likely to not have toilet paper (not even GUM!)
-there are about 20 different commercials that run on a constant loop on tv. they never change.
and so i guess that's it for now..my internet still sucks and looks as though it will continue to do so, so possibly updates every 3-4 days is likely but not guaranteed. second week of classes starts tomorrow so maybe ill go into more detail on my russian class next time.
do svidaniya!
brandon
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