Россия

Have I forgotten about you, my faithful readers? Not to worry, I did not. I waiting for a picture to be uploaded from a girl with a broken computer and I didn't want to write about the UK first. She did yesterday, so here goes the blog!

At 6:40 am on Sunday morning, the morning of daylight savings time, my group met at the Copenhagen airport bound for Saint Petersburg. We arrived and were greeted with the ridiculous cold and wet in that city. We checked into the hotel, had our passports collected because the Russians need to know where all foreigners are at all times, and were set loose in the city to find ATMs and food. I went with the two girls I roomed with and we found a little cafe. The food was delicious and I had my first conversation in Russian with a local Russian. It was exciting.

We then went on a "metro sight-seeing tour". Aka we used the metro instead of walking between everything. We saw the Nevsky Prospect, the original Duma building, random palaces, and just gorgeous, gorgeous buildings.

Nevsky Prospect


The next morning we went out to see more sights including Saint Isaacs Cathedral, the Bronze Horseman statue, and the Peter and Paul Cathedral/Fortress. Unfortunately, this was also the day of the Moscow metro bombings which I wrote about in the last post. I'm not going to go into it again, other than to say it definitely set a somber mood over the group because you never expect something like that to happen. The Peter and Paul Cathedral was definitely the highlight of the morning because it is amazingly beautiful inside. I have nearly 20 pictures of just the inside of the cathedral uploaded on Facebook, but it is impossible to show the beauty through pictures. Also inside were the tombs of the tsars after Peter the Great, including both him and Catherine the Great. It was really interesting to see the burial place of important tsars in history that I have learned about in a place so beautiful.

Outside the Peter and Paul Cathedral


inside


That afternoon we went on a walk to see where Dostoevsky and the protagonist of his novel Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, lived. We saw the Haymarket Square, the building where Dostoevsky lived, the one where Raskolnikov lived, and the likely building where the pawnbroker lived. If you don't understand my references, go read the book :) I thought it was a good walk because I got to see a part of Saint Petersburg that only dedicated Dostoevsky lovers usually see because it's not the typical, beautiful Saint Petersburg façade.

That night was the performance of Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theater. Inside the theater and the ballet were both beautiful. It was a little difficult to follow the plot of the ballet but I still enjoyed the experience.

Tuesday morning began with one of my two favorite experiences of the tour, the "St. Petersburg Behind the Facade" tour. We split up into three groups and a local gave us a tour of their city. We went behind the overly European styled buildings to see typical apartment buildings where just by looking at the quality of the windows you could tell the wealth of the inhabitants and whether it was still a communal apartment. During the tour we were taken to a local market with delicious looking food where we purchased pickles, then to a little shop where we had vodka shots at 10:40am. Because it was a Russian thing to do to get through the cold, miserable work day. We also walked around the Nevsky Prospect more and visited a man who makes designer shoes while living in a church. It was my favorite part of the tour because I really like to see the differences between what cultures show the rest of the world and what they show themselves. Like the Dostoevsky walk, I saw what typical tourists wouldn't. And I loved it.

That experience contrasted especially with our visit to the Winter Palace and the Hermitage that afternoon. The Winter Palace is filled with grandeur and beauty that the rest of the city doesn't come close to sharing. I enjoyed the actual Winter Palace part of the excursion, but art museums bore me so the Hermitage wasn't exactly my style. All of the history, from the tsars to the Provisional Government, was in one building. It was overwhelming.



The next morning we departed for Novgorod, the northern capital of the ancient Kievan Rus' state. I was really looking forward to this part of the trip because I knew nothing about Novgorod. With Saint Petersburg and Moscow, I was a bit of a snob because of the knowledge gap between what I know and what everyone else didn't - they would ask questions that I thought were stupid and obvious but unfortunately they didn't. I felt bad about it but there's nothing I can do about it now. At Novgorod, we were all on a more-or-less level playing field of information. We wandered around in the snow for awhile, checked out a couple churches, and learned all about the history of Novgorod (again, interesting, look it up). In the afternoon we went to see a monk who had apparently offensive views on non-Orthodox religions, saying they were far from what actual Christianity should be. I'm sure if I were religious I'd be offended too, but I am always interested in all of the different views people hold on religion, no matter how biased or how "wrong" others perceive them.

A little after 9pm that night, we boarded a night train to Moscow. After my previous night train experience from Paris to Barcelona in high school, this was amazing. Despite the sad, sad moment where I left my favorite pair (and only one in Europe) of sweatpants on the train as we departed at 5am, it was a pretty solid experience. Jon, our fearless leader, commended us on not scaring the Russians too much by behaving not like typical American stereotypes (loud, obnoxious, etc), he sent us off to our rooms in the hotel (in the complex built to house the Olympic athletes in 1980) to sleep/shower for a few hours. We loved him for that. A lot.

After our naps, we went on a bus tour of Moscow because we sadly weren't allowed to use the metro. We went to Red Square, saw the Kremlin wall, Saint Basil's, and Lenin's mausoleum. Lenin's mausoleum was probably the creepiest thing I have ever seen because it's filled with guards, nobody is allowed to talk, and Lenin's embalmed body is lying on a platform in the middle of the room, looking like a wax figure that could sit up at any minute. Creepy. We saw where Stalin and Brezhnev and other important Soviets (including Gagarin - the first man in space) were buried in the Kremlin wall. Later we went to the cemetery where Khrushchev and Yeltsin were buried.

Kremlin wall, museum, and Saint Basil's


That evening began the second of my favorite Russia experiences, meeting local students. Me and my fellow two Americans were assigned to two students, Andrew and Lena, who would take us back to the dorms at Moscow State University (MGU) which is the top university in Russia. We read all about it in Russian textbooks. We hung out with them, got dinner, were shown around the building, made spiced wine, and smoked hookah. It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad we met them.

the three Americans are standing on the left, then Roman (Andrew's roommate), and Lena. One of Andrew's friends is sitting on the left and Andrew is in the plaid


Our final day in Russia began with a guided tour of the Kremlin. We saw the buildings where Putin and Medvedev do their work, a conference center, and all of the palaces/churches left over from pre-Petrine tsarist Russia (nerdiest statement I think I've ever made). The tour started out very intimidating with the Russian security guard yelling at me because my belt set off the metal detector and the guide telling us to make sure we don't step off the sidewalks onto the road because the officers would get very angry. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see inside the Kremlin, but it wasn't overly impressive like Saint Petersburg had been. It was cool to see the three churches that made up the cycle of Russian tsars - where they were born and baptised, where they became tsars, and where they were buried. Unfortunately, Ivan the Terrible was buried in a place where the public isn't allowed to go. I would have really liked to see his tomb. Sadly, no Putin or Medvedev sightings while I was in the Kremlin.

For the rest of the day we were given free time to explore. That was the day I went to the site of the Park Kultury station explosion. I also went back to the market near the hotel to do my souvenir shopping. It is an enormous market but wasn't fully opened because it was a weekday and spring. On the weekends during the summer, I'd imagine it's complete chaos with a lot of things to buy. It was called the "Izmailovo Kremlin" and was a caricature of castles. Our week in Russia concluded with a farewell party that our new Russian friends were invited to. It was a nice way to end the week and get ready to move on to the next week of travel break.

That week in Russia I learned a lot about my abilities in the language and just how much information I've gotten over the past few years. Despite all of the frustration I felt towards the others in my group and how much I wished I could have gone with others who have the same level of knowledge as I do, it was an enjoyable week. I have no regrets about going and I really want to go back.