Suomi Finland II

Rantakatu. Pretty people walking along a fashionable street.


People riding their bikes along the river.


The tori, or market square, where you can buy flowers, fruits, vegetables, and fish. My favorite of course are the strawberries which you can buy by the liter.




The Aurajoki river one very beautiful, clear, quiet morning.


A man taking his boat out on the Aurajoki.


Our dear friend Hannele in her new appartment (!)
It was wonderful seeing everyone while I was there, though unfortunately I wasn't able to get ahold of the Lehtolas...I think maybe they were on vacation.


Eini sitting by the feast she prepared for me : D


View of Russian Karelia out the train window as we came back to Piter.

Petergof-Petrodvorets

The grand entrance to the palace and parks

Fairy-tale beauty. Being surrounded by the sound and freshness of falling water was wonderful as well.



The grand cascade, which Peter the Great designed himself.


Peter the Great's study

Crystal and Risa on the train back from Petrodvorets which annoying went about 2 miles an hour the entire way!

Joana & Freddy

Week Five

What a week this has been. The weekday part of it was hellishly busy. Classes were long and teachers gave extra homework ; the temperatures were in the upper 90’s ; every day after class I ended up trudging somewhere or other difficult to find and in some way unpleasant ; once I got home I talked to my parents on the phone for a long time trying to straighten out all of our travel plans which, as always, are so complicated they seem to have taken on a life of their own.

Exciting news : from Thursday until Tuesday I’ll be in Turku, Finland ! I’m thrilled. I’ve made a long list of people and places I want to see and the foods and things I want to buy. I think the prettiness and orderliness of Finland will do me good. I have a 6 hour afternoon train ride both ways which will go across Karelia and I think will be gorgeous.

Well, now a little about this past weekend. On Friday after classes I went home and sat in my room staring at the wall in exhaustion and directing irritated thoughts towards Russia in general. On Saturday, Alla and I left very early in the morning for the dacha (summer cottage), which is about two and a half hours away. We spent the day there with her best friend and her best friend’s grandson. It was marvelous. We swam in a dirty lake. picked strawberries, blueberries, and elderberries, read lying in the sun, napped, and played badmitton. Saturday night I came back to the city tired, sunburnt, and very happy, to go out with Robyn and some of our friends from the program. I wont go into all of the details of the night here, but it involved lots of vodka and terrible Russian elektronica and was quite fun. At one of the clubs we went to, the bouncer tried to confiscate this enormous chocolate bar that I’d bought, and but I argued and refused to give it up so after a while he just started laughing and let me through with it, which was funny. He had a completely surprised look on his face. I don’t think he’d ever had a foreigner girl 1/3 his size argue with him over a chocolate bar before. Clearly he didn’t understand my love for chocolate.

Дача

Alla and me outside her dacha in Karelia.


Alla and Banya walking back from swimming at the lake. I was just excited because I didnt get a single leech.

Alla and Banya, her best friend's 11 year old grandson who I played Badmitton with for hours.

Russian writers on St Petersburg:

« Granite city of glory and troubles »
Anna Akhmatova

« Magnificent city, poor city »
Pushkin

« All fraud, all dreams, all that is not what it seems ! It is found on Nevsky Prospekt »
« How strange is my existence in Russia ! Sad dream ! Oh, to wake up soon ! »
Gogol

Pure Touristy-ness

Kanal Griboedava, with Church On Spilled Blood in the background

The Summer Garden, one of my very favorite places

The Winter Palace, home of The Hermitage

The beautiful entrance to the Hermitage

My neighborhood

According to something I read on Soviet architecture, the buildings in my neighborhood are from the Brezhnev period since they have 11-14 stories and cover entire blocks.

A closer look at a whole lot of nothing.


Women talking outside one evening.


Football, always popular.

Week Three

On Wednesday we had an Екскурсия to the Russian museum, which focuses solely on Russian art. After a boring, difficult to understand 2-hour tour, I wandered a bit and looked at things at my own pace, which was a pleasure. First I saw a Soviet art exhibit with tons of Malevich paintings which were really cool, especially after having talked about Malevich so much in my Soviet history class. Then I came across Petro-Vodkin’s terrific portrait of Anna Akhmatova, which is sort of cubist and done in these gorgeous green and teal shades. I could have just stood and looked at it for hours.

I hung out with Yuliya some more and had a wonderful time. Tuesday we went to this cool, dingy little coffee shop and shared cake and talked. Afterwards she gave me the CD of one of her favorite Russian groups, DBERU, which I’ve been listening to. Its bubblegum pop, but I’m no music snob, and I really like « Do skora bvstrechi » which has an awesome music video as well.

Recently we went to see Dostoevsky’s « The Idiot » done by a small theatre company. They’re unique in that their set is an actual rundown old apartment, and the actors are right in front of you, not out on stage. Anyways, we went up to the apartment, climbed 6 flights of insanely grimy stairs and then were herded into the smallest, hottest, grimiest room you’ve ever seen. I now have a complete appreciate for how person could go insane living in St Petersburg’s filthy 19th century underbelly. Anyhow, we sat around the room, and the idiot was in the center, ranting and raving at us with just the light of a candle. It was very unpleasant, not just because I dislike Dostoevsky, but because the idiot kept disappearing and then emerging from the darkness right front you with a chillingly maniacal laugh. The following day, everyone I talked to said they’d had nightmares.

On a completely different note, I’ve become fascinated with St. Petersburg style. The guys are all wearing tight jeans with these long black leather shoes that kind of look like witch boots and take up far too much room in the crowded metro. The Babushka’s are all wearing scarves and layers of wool sweaters, no matter how warm it is. Women over 30 tend to dress like they’ve stepped right out of the American 1950’s. As for Russian girls, they go for tons of makeup, elaborate, skintight clothes, and (minimum) 4-inch stiletto heels. To my eyes, they look trashy, but they certainly always look really put together and perfect for Russian standards, which surprises me. I never look perfect, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t in Russia. I just don’t know how someone can walk miles in high heels, ride on a hot, packed metro, work all day without air-conditioning, use bathrooms without running water, soap, or mirrors, and still look so perfect. It’s really bizarre.

A day in Russia...

-get up at 7 :30 ; try to take a shower but discover there’s no hot water.
-rush out of the appartment at 8 :30 and try to take the elevator downstairs to get out of the building ; no matter which button you push, the elevator takes you to the 11th floor. You end up taking the stairs.
-After a 15 min walk to the metro station, you arrive ; it is closed for some reason, possibly a suicide. You take the bus to another station.
-You miss the first train because a violent Babushka shoves you aside.
-You make the second train, which has a temperature of 95 degrees. People are packed in like sardines, and no part of your body isn’t stuck to someone else’s.
-You arrive at Nevskyi Prospekt drenched in sweat only to have a pimply young police man stop you to check your documents and very sternly tell you lots of things you don’t understand.
-you arrive to class late, but luckily the profesor is late as well
-over lunch you try to buy bottled water at the store next door. It takes half an hour to get through the line. 4 People cut in front of you despite your fierce elbowing and death stares. Woman at the cashier claims she doesn’t have change for the equivalent of a one-dollar bill and makes you squirm.
-You go to afternoon class, which gets out twenty minutes late.
-You walk 9 blocks to an internet cafe, but their main system goes down immediately after you pay for one hour, so you stand waiting for 50 min while they try to fix it. Once it starts working, they refuse to give you a new hour’s worth of time at a computer, so with the remaining 10 min you try to read as many emails as possible.
-You go to a cafe for a snack. You order Blinyi with cheese, but they are out. You order salad, but they are out. You order Borsht, but they are out. You finally just order a glass of juice. After drinking it, you use the restroom at the cafe. Unfortunately, all of the following things are missing : toilet seat, toilet paper, running water, soap, paper towel, mirror.
-Since your metro station is (handily) closed from 4 :00-6 :30 every afternoon, you have to walk down packed Nevsky Prospekt to the next one. You take the metro home.
-You walk from your local metro station towards home. You can see your appartment building looming in the distance, and you walk and walk towards it along a dusty, filthy road, but the buildings and distances are so big that it seems like you’ll never actually get there.
-Having navegated the elaborate appartment security system (going through 5 doors, all with locks), you arrive home covered in sweat.
-Trying to rinse off your filthy, blistered feet, you discover that now there is no cold water, only boiling hot water, coming from the taps. Oh, and its brown.