Out of Russia and On to the Rest of Europe

Lynee and I have been meaning to do a good blog post for probably at least the last two weeks. Unfortunately, I still don't think we have a ton of time, but I will try to give the highlights. The last 2 weeks in Russia would very good... but intensely busy. We went to Moscow two weekends ago, which was a lot of fun. We took our first overnight train ride, which was actually a lot nicer than I think either of us anticipated. They served a small dinner, we have private bunks with 4 beds per bunk... only our team were in these bunks... they were crowded, but I think that is to be expected. When we arrived at Moscow we were woken up about half an hour before we arrived, when we pulled into the station we realized that they weren't kidding about getting off when we arrived in the station... they wanted everyone off fast... mainly because they have more trains to pull in and unload. We stayed in a massive hotel complex built for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow... there were about 4 skyscraperish (maybe 30-40 stories) of just hotel rooms. They also were nicer then we expected, this may be partly due to being in Russia already for 5 weeks and being more accustomed to the way things look. The first day in Moscow we took a bus tour of the city... the roads were not congested on the weekends, but we are told that this massive city which is 3 times the size of London and is the largest city in Europe is almost impossible to get around during the business week. We saw the city from an overlook called "Sparrow Hill," saw a lake that Tsiolkovsky (sorry for bad spelling) was supposedly inspired to write "Swan Lake" and saw a massive Cathedral that was blown up by the Soviet Union when they were destroying churches... it was rebuilt in quick order after the fall of the USSR... which was no small feet considering its massive size and stone construction... I found that particularly interesting. We of course saw Red Square (which also meant "Beautiful Square" in old Russian... the words for red and beautiful used to be the same and are still only slightly different). It was smaller then I pictured it. St. Basil's was certainly beautiful, but I think I was less awestruck after seeing such a multitude of churches and cathedrals throughout western Russia. We did not visit Lenin's tomb because of tremendous lines. I was torn in regards to seeing the tomb. On one hand, I disagree strongly (that's an understatement) with the government philosophies he and his Bolshevik revolution pushed forward and is certainly not a historic figure I in anyway aspire to emulate... but on the other hand I cannot pick and choose only the pleasing parts of history, he ended probably 500 years of Russian Monarchy and killed the entire Romanov line (something I find very sad... especially since Nicolas... the Tsar... had already relinquished the throne before the revolution even happened...), and instituted the soviet union and played a huge role in the shaping of the 20th century. In the end, it may have been interesting to see the mummy, but it is moot because it would have taken all day to wait in line. We went inside the Kremlin (which is actually just a Russian fortified inner city, like the Forbidden City in China... there are more then one Kremlin, we went into one in Novgorod... there are actually more then one Red Square too). To close the incredibly long day off, we went to a massive souvenir market near our hotel and did some haggling. The 2nd day we went to a large art museum and a pedestrian mall... and took a bit of down time before return to St. Petersburg on the Train.

For the sake of brevity, I will leave out most of the rest of the last week in Russia. It went by like a blur, we saw St. Isaac's Cathedral (2nd largest church in Europe... second only to one in -Rome) and did many other things. We had an awful experience trying to ship some stuff home at the post office, which was remedied the next day with our professor/interpreter. We had a great all-you-can-eat lunch the last day with the group after a little graduation ceremony at a French Hotel... it didn't really feel like it was over.

For Lynee and I the last 4 days have been very interesting. Following the lunch I just mentioned we ran home, finished packing, said our goodbyes to Naliya (our "host mom") and were off to the train station for our first real traveling abroad... alone. We found the train fine (something I was stressed about) and were one of the only passengers in the First Class coach (our own room). The fun had only begun. I knew they would wake us up to do border crossing... I couldn't sleep, I knew it was coming and I didn't want to be in a deep sleep and complicate the already stressful event. Russia is the only country I have ever done border crossing To Leave. Most countries just say "see ya" and that's that. They stopped the train, finally at 4 am... I hadn't slept at all (Lynee was sound asleep... ) they started going off in Russian, we told them we don't speak Russian... they continued. They took our passports and finally returned with them after a while and we were on our way... the whole thing took about an hour.... so I figured it was all behind us and I could go to sleep... right? reasonable? No... 45 min later we stopped again, this time for Latvian border entry. By comparison, Latvia's border crossing was virtually instantaneous. They scanned our passports with portable scanners right in front of us, stamped the passports and we were off... 15 min. I don't think we could sum up how we think of the Latvian people after spending 2 days better than to say: we were there 10 min, looked a little confused trying to figure out what street we were on by the train station and a local came up... in perfect English... and asked if he could point us in the right direction... and he smiled! We quickly found the hostel, the room was small and quaint, and nice. Riga (Latvia) was amazing. I can say with no reservation it is one of my favorite countries we've been to. The "Old Town" has small, clean, cobble stone streets. People speak Latvian, Russian, and English. There are nice little cafes everywhere, a beautiful cathedral (with a wonderful architecture) we heard an organ concert in (2nd largest organ in the world). We saw most the old town in 1 day. We also visited a museum about the occupation of Latvia. Unfortunately for Latvia (and the other 2 Baltic states) they were wedged between the newly formed USSR and Nazi German governments... least to say the countries in between the two powerful countries was divided up and Latvians took their turns at living under Nazi or Soviet dominion for 50 years. It was not until the 1980's that a national awaking occurred and through considerable struggle their independence was won... well worth visiting this amazing little country. The second day we went to a nearby beach with about 32 km of coastline... the region is called Jurmala. We were nervous about buying tickets on, and using the suburban trains, but it was actually very easy to figure out, especially since all the beach-dressed locals all pretty much get off at the main stop at Majori station. We also spent that afternoon taking pictures in the very picturesque area just outside the old town with Art Novour (spelling?) and eclectic architectures. We also had dinner in a wonderful little Italian cafe which had wonderful food and atmosphere. Just to wrap things up (even with the length of the post, it just can't do all of it justice) we spent the day today flying to Warsaw on a little Dahavalin Dash (propeller) plane then to Cracow Poland. Poland is Humid! I had no idea. We've only been in Cracow for about 4 hours, but I can't tell you how warm a welcome the hostel gave us. They were waiting outside to greet us (by name) on the curb, spent probably half an hour going over the city and must see sites, gave us ice cream and water and personally walked us to our hostel (a small 4 bedroom apartment... with doorlocks on each room) just down the street, which is also very nice. I'm don't think I really know how to prepare myself, but we go to Auswitz in the morning.

Thats it for now. To sum it up. Russia was amazing, I would very much like to return, but it does have significant challenges to getting around. Though Russians may seem closed off, we met some people we really loved and it was a great experiance.

More Pictures!

Here are some more pictures of Ryan and I from our excursions over the last week. Tonight we leave for Moscow for the weekend and then we will have only one more week in St. Petersburg. We will try to post some more pictures and update you all before we leave Russia for Europe. We hope you enjoy them!

The Cruiser Aurora

The Aurora is a symbol in St. Petersburg of the Communist Revolution in Russia. It was this ship that fired a single blank shot that singled the Bolsheviks raid on the Winter Palace where they arrested the provisional government.

Yeloginsky Palace (Yelagin Island)

Rowing boats on Yelagin Island

Peterhof

Peter the Great's palace and later a royal palace.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Apartment

Dostoyevsky is one of Russia's most famous author's writing the well known novel Crime and Punishment. It was at the apartment below where he wrote another well known novel, The Brothers Karamozov, and also where he spent his last days.

Cruise to Valaam Island








(Photo taken on the cruise at midnight)

(Photo taken on the cruise at midnight)

Last Week Update (sorry for the length)

I thought I would try to recount some of the experiences Lynee and I have had over the last week. The excursions we've taken have been a little lighter in terms of length which has been a nice break. We started off last week by going on a Canal tour of the city, something Lynee and I have been looking forward to since we got here. The city was truly remarkable from the waterways. It is hard to believe having constructed the granite embankments in the 18th century, especially since it is bitterly cold here in the winter and may only have a couple hours of sunlight (the opposite of the nearly constant sunlight we're experiencing now in the summer). Following the canal tour we ate lunch at a pretty Russian style cafe, I had mostly cabbage based dishes, which is something very much a favorite by the Russians. Fortunately, Lynee and I had already developed a taste for cabbage before coming here. That afternoon we went to an Operetta... or a comedic Opera. It was a lot of fun, but it was definitely difficult to understand most of the non-visual jokes since our Russian is terrible. It was a little awkward when the whole audience was laughing and we were just sitting there. We were also terrified they would try to involve us in the performance since they did with a couple others.

During the week we went to a second Ballet at the Mariensky Theater, this time Swan Lake. I think we mentioned it previously, but the Mariensky Theater is truly world renown for ballet and is only rivaled by the “Bolshoy” (Russian for “big or large”) Theater in Moscow. Russian ballet is a big deal, and ballerinas can become quite famous. Both presidents Clinton and Bush W. have seen ballets at Mariensky. I would also say that out of the symphonies, operas, and other fine arts the ballets are my favorite. Partly because they completely bypass any language barriers, but I find them the most entertaining and often the most shocking at their complexity and execution. Especially considering Mariensky may perform 65 different productions in a year (more than 1 a week) as opposed to the 5 – 10 productions a ballet theater in Denver may do.
We went to the “Russian Museum” on Wednesday. We mentioned previously we went to the Hermitage which boasts the largest art collection in the world... yes, larger than the Louvre in Paris. But it actually doesn't have any Russian art... because it is all separated out and has its own museum. Both Lynee and I found the Russian art much more appealing than the Western European art. My favorites were dramatic paintings of shipwrecks amidst a stormy sea or paintings of a snowy forest... I just don't see what makes a painting of a Madonna (like the Mona Lisa) appealing and so expensive (worth over a hundred million dollars).

Saturday we went to the Ethnographic Museum. We don't really have anything like it in the US. It is probably the most similar to a Natural History museum, but the focus is not on nature but on different people groups. Russia makes up roughly 1/6 of the Earth's landmass and therefore encompasses literally dozens of different ethnic groups, languages and cultures. During the soviet union they had to print textbooks in over 50 different languages... and they were all for Russians. The museum showed the lifestyle of people from years ago and those ranging from the Siberian forests, mountains, arctic, and “sea” peoples.

We also went to the circus yesterday... yes, the circus. It was actually a lot of fun, and one of the most entertaining events we've gone to. It was only a 1 ring circus and by US standards from what I've seen in Denver it was rather small. But I would actually say I think it was better than Barnum and Baily and all the giant circuses... simply because it was smaller and I think encompassed more of what the circus was originally about in terms of size. The acts were smaller compared to the elephants and lions and such I've seen before. But I would not say they were any less impressive. There were several acts that were simply astonishing. One in particular involved a man and a woman dancing. Throughout the dance the woman went through probably 12 wardrobe changes... except she would literally change right before your eyes in seconds. You never saw the new garment before she had it on, or the old garment after she took it off, and she would change in maybe 1 or 2 seconds behind a curtain or under confetti falling over her...
There were several crazy experiences this week worth noting. We seem to have some of the most eventful things happen on school days when we are just trying to have a quick dinner or even just go home. One day we were just trying to go to Subway (yes, the sandwich place) on the main strip called Nevsky Prospect. We were told they had great English and good customer service. Instead I asked them (in Russian) if they spoke English and she just very dramatically rolled her eyes at us. We were then given whatever bread happened to be sitting there and when I asked for a small cup of soup I just got whatever the lady decided I wanted. It was twice as expensive as most lunches we've bought and we left hungry, so we went to a nearby coffee chain and proceeded to be ignored by the server (while he clearly helped other tables next to us) and paid another large tab and left hungry again. Wait, it gets a lot better. Another day, again trying to get something other than McDonalds for lunch, we went to Nevsky again and I turned over my shoulder to see a teenage kid about to push his hand in my front pocket... once I saw him he just ran off... but I'm still not sure what I should have done, or what I would have done if he had actually tried to pick-pocket me. We then went to lunch at a Japanese place. We got a huge spur of Russian to which I responded (in Russian) that we don't speak Russian, and again she gave me a huge spur of Russia, I again told her (in Russian) that I didn't understand... she finally told me in a very demanding, cold, very clear English to sit down. Lunch wasn't bad, but again it was expensive and we left hungry. The fun apparently hadn't even started for us though. Least to say, we thought we had ridden the metro (the subway) during rush hour... little did we know. We made our way through the slightly thicker than normal crowd and down the massive escalators (St. Petersburg has the deepest subway in the world). We got on the train near the beginning of those getting on. It started to get a little tight, then tighter and then tighter. We were crushed against all the people around us and could not lift our arm up to touch our face if we needed to. But wait, more people wanted on. They began to push the crowd as a whole and compress it further and more and more people crushed themselves in until the doors (which slam shut rather hard) could just squeeze past the outermost people. I am not sure what possesses everyone to cram in when the rush hour trains run about once every minute. Anyways, the saga continues. We obviously could not grab onto any of the hand holds, and when the train lunged forward Lynee tripped backwards over a stroller (with a baby in it) crushed into the mass of people. Someone on the other side of the stroller immediately caught her and pushed her upright, but you should have seen the look that mother gave Lynee. A minute or so later the two of us just started to laugh and giggle. I guarantee we were the only people on that train laughing, but we just couldn't help it with the ridiculousness of the whole situation. I am sure we looked like fools, but we didn't really care at the time after nearly being pick-pocket, bad customer service, being crushed and nearly falling on a stroller. It took us a couple minutes to regain our composure. When the doors finally opened at our stop the whole mass of the crowd got off at once... fortunately it was actually our stop, because they decided we were getting out whether we wanted to or not. That was a pretty extreme experience with the metro, we actually use pubic transit (mainly metro and trolleybus) everyday and are comfortable with it... you just get used to being in close quarters with strangers. There are some small areas of politeness it has been unique to observe. For example, people nearly always allow passengers to get off the metro before anyone tries to get on, young people give up their seat for an elderly person regularly, and people will pass cold hard cash through a crowded bus to the attendant and trust the strangers that the money will make it there. I panicked the first time someone gave me money and I had no idea what to do with it. I just stood there for several minutes and did nothing... she probably thought I stole it, but eventually I saw others passing it and figured out the system. Lynee has also received blatant double takes at her hiking boot shoes she is wearing... it is funny and quite obvious. All the Russian women wear high-heels, despite the cobblestone roads and irregular streets and sidewalks... they must have pretty tough ankles. I think we would explain the fashion here as a combination of high-end-boutique chic combined with 80s. Especially the women remind me of the clothing I would see on models in a high-end store or in a fashion magazine... but everyone actually wears the fashion. This is combined with an abundance of mullets... men and women... as many of the locals have said while shrugging their shoulders “...it's Russia...” Fortunately for all the tight quarters in the mass transit, BO hasn't seemed to be a big problem here and Russians seem to bathe about as much as we do in the US, as apposed to the smelliness often complained about by American's in many European cities. Our latest after school adventure happened today. We had decided we were just going to go home and take it easy. So we got on the same bus number we always do, but I very quickly noticed that things didn't seem right. After a few minutes, we were crossing a bridge... our bus isn't supposed to cross a bridge... So we quickly got off at the next stop, and were in the completely wrong side of town, far from any metro stops, and we didn't know any buses that could get us back. There aren't really any criminal slum areas, so everywhere is about the same in terms of safety so we weren't concerned, just a little upset our plans of taking an evening off had been foiled. Since there were no metro stops for miles, walking was imminent. We walked by the cruiser Aurora, an old late 19th century warship that fired a single shot signaling the start of the Bolshevik revolution (the overthrow of the Tsars and the beginning of the Soviet Union) and tried to see a cabin Peter the Great constructed in 3 days to show his seriousness of founding a city greater than all those in Europe in the swampy, uninhabited, mess of land on the Gulf of Finland that was to become St. Petersburg. So we tried to make the best of the day and see some sights on the way home. Just for comparison, the city rose from nothing in about 7 years, with intricate canals rivaling Denmark and Venice, compared to the 47 years it took the greatest French architects to build Versailles.

Sorry for the novel, if anyone is still reading this by now... you get a cookie... tomorrow we are getting on a small cruise ship and going on the largest lake in Europe, Lake Ladoga. We will cruise all night to the Island of Valaam which is quite scenic. We will be going on a nature walk (seeing the island) and visiting an old monastery. We have heard there is late night disco on the ship. When we get off the ship 3 days later we go straight to class... despite taking a small trip within a trip, we won't miss a beat of language classes.

Trip Photos

Today is officially the half way point for Ryan and I. We have now been in St. Petersburg for three weeks and have another three more to go. We thought this would be a good time to share some of photos of what we have been doing. If you want to see more detail in some of the photos, just click on the photo and it will enlarge. Enjoy!

Pavlovsk

Canal Tour of St. Petersburg

Novogrod

The Museum of Wooden Architecture

Peter & Paul's Fortress

The Hermitage Museum