До свидания, Ярославль!

Well, I don’t think I need to tell you how busy the past few weeks have gone bye.  You can probably tell by my lack of blogging.  Between  papers, presentations, finals, and preparing (and by this, I mean packing and souveniring (yes, that is too a word haha)) I haven’t had much free time.  And to be quiet honest, the time has just flown by since Thanksgiving.  Actually, time started to go faster after our vacation, and it has continued to go faster every day.

I feel that I should mention that I am safe, too (maybe I should have put that first?)  The political demonstrations are actually really interesting, and in my opinion, it is a great time to be living in Russia for a person interested in politics, like I am.  We actually had our own little (and by little, I’m comparing it to what happened in Moscow and St. Petersburg) demonstration here in Yaroslavl’.  But there were easily a thousand people there, so I guess it wasn’t that small.  I took a go first, and then tell them that I went approach with Mom and Dad, figuring this would save us some worry.  The protest was actually great and very peaceful.  They had a fenced off section of a square that we entered through metal detectors with all of the other Russians.  And there were police and militsia everywhere.  Maybe for every 10 people there was at least one police/militsia officer.  There were people with signs and every once and a while, they would chant something or cheer.  And there were different people that got up to speak.  I didn’t understand very much of what was said for three reasons: 1) Vocabulary (I got maybe every few words).  2) They talked very quickly.  3) It was over a loud speaker, so it wasn’t always very clear.  There was one thing that I understood, however, and I even went to far as to clarify with my friend.  The people there don’t want a revolution.  They just want a clean vote.  I just thought this statement was great, and for me, being there, it really was a great example of the power of the people.

Election Poster

Next order of business: leaving.  This past week I’ve been getting homesick….but for my home here.  Don’t get me wrong, I am beyond ready to be home, but I also don’t know if I really want to leave.  Things finally started to click about a month ago.  And it makes me sad to leave my friends, my [new] Babushka and sister, Tanya and Nastya, and everything that has been my life for the past four months.  But, alas, I know that all good things must come to an end.  And I already know that I will be returning, so I have that to look forward to.

Ice fishing on Kotorosl' River (Река Которосль)

And so, this will be my last post from Yaroslavl’.  Friday morning a few of my friends and I are taking the train to Moscow to play tourist until we fly out on Sunday.  And then I’ll be home!!!

До встречи!

Happy Thanksgiving from Russia!

With love,

Kate

PS - See you in a few weeks!!

Globus Adventures

Well, after all that I wrote while traveling, I hadn’t planned on posting again for at least a little while.  But I must say, today we did something that can be deemed note-worthy.  (And in all honesty, this may not actually be blog worthy.  It may just be my fascination with something resembling a store at home.  Or it may be the fact that I have to write a three page paper in Russian for a class on Monday and I’m just procrastinating like it’s my job.  Who knows?)

Today, we went to Globus, the Russian version of Walmart.  It was spectacular!  And huge…maybe about three or four times the size of a Super Walmart.  And it has its own bus (that’s free. Woot!) that takes you to and from the store if you want.  And it has everything you could ever want!  And it’s fairly cheap.  And I think I’m getting a little too excited here.

According to Wikipedia, Globus is a “hypermarket,” meaning that it is a store that is a supermarket and a department store combined into one.  (Also, I think it is a Czech-based company, but I’m not entirely sure.)  There were candy isles, liquor isles (not next to each other, although that would have been a party), pasta isles, whole sections devoted to sausage, fish, clothing, cleaning supplies, technology, everything!  It was amazing.  And it was crowded!  Oh my God, was it crowded!  Remember when I said that the Hermitage was so crowded when we were there that it was hard to move around?  Yeah, try doing that with a cart!

Here's to you, Globus, for putting everything we
could ever need in one place.

Moscow Never Sleeps

I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for the entire week and I still haven’t figured out why.  It could be that I’m lazy (which is probably a big part of the problem).  It could also be that my to-do list this week has been three times the normal length.  But, in all honesty, I think that my brain needed a little time to process everywhere we were, everything we did, and everything we saw.

There is a song (think house music/electronic dance) entitled “Moscow Never Sleeps” and I believe this to be entirely true.  The city hums with activity, and it felt as the Muscovites never stopped going…there was always someplace to be or something to be done.  And I feel that because of this, there was a sort of tension about the city.  Moscow was also a very Russian city, especially after coming directly from St. Petersburg, which is very much like a European city (after all, that is what Peter I wanted for Russia).  I actually found it to be slightly intimidating, and Sasha went so far as to say “Москва, я боюсь тебя” [Moscow, I am afraid of you].  But all in all, we did survive.  We conquered Moskva.

Our first full day in Moscow was spent wandering.  We both agreed that Red Square was the only thing that we absolutely had to see, and since we decided to go there on Friday, we were left with a completely open Thursday.  At one point, I think we both considered just staying in the hotel and sleeping, seeing as we were both thoroughly exhausted after St. Petersburg.  But we were in Moscow, and we weren’t about to let our time there pass us by! 

Our first stop of the day was the Bolshoi Theater.  Bolshoi [большой] in Russian means ‘big’, and the Bolshoi Theater was just that.  I actually don’t have anything else to say about the theater, which is slightly disappointing.  We couldn’t go inside while we were there because the doors were locked (and we couldn’t break them down because they were большой, as well), and, although we had discussed seeing a performance while we were in Moscow, there simply was not enough time.

Большой Театр

Next, we took the metro to a district of the city named the Arbat.  But before I talk about the Arbat, let me first give a few words on the Moscow Metro.  The St. Petersburg Metro, in my opinion, is better.  The Moscow Metro is great, don’t get me wrong.  And most of the stations we were at were actually more elaborate than the stations we were at in St. Petersburg.  But when both are equally as mind-blowingly beautiful (for what they are.  I mean, after all, we are talking about the subway), it boils down to ease of access and understanding.  And for us, using the metro for the first time in both cities, St. Petersburg was easier to navigate than Moscow.  Don’t ask me why.  It could simply be that we were more tired when we were trying to figure out the Moscow Metro than the St. Petersburg Metro.  I just don’t know.  We got on the metro train at Станции Революции  [Stantsii Revolutsii] (meaning ‘Station of the Revolution’).  I think this was my favorite station by far.  The walls were lined with statues of people, the people of the Revolution.  And since we had nothing that we actually had to do, Sasha and I decided to ride the metro for a little bit.  There was one stop in between where we got on the train and where we needed to get off.  We hopped off the train one station before our destination, admired the station, hopped back on the next train, got off at the next stop after our destination, admired the station, found the train going back the other direction, and finally made it to the place we needed to be.

This was apparently the good luck statue. You can
see that the dog's nose and hind leg are shinier
than the rest of the statue, and the people would
rub the dogs nose and leg as they walked past it.

We walked around Arbat Street, which is right in the heart of the Arbat District and is one of the oldest streets in the city (dating back to the 15^th century).  The buildings were very nice and it was a nice place to walk around, but it was definitely a very touristy area.  I’d say that at least sixty percent of the buildigns were filled with souvenir shops or American food chains (we saw Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, and a Wendy’s, just to name a few).

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Old Arbat
(Also referred to as the "White House")
One of the Seven Sisters

Arbat Street

And finally, Friday.  Red Square day.  The day we had been waiting for since we arrived in Moscow.  The place where a good portion of my pictures from Moscow were taken.  I had seen pictures of Red Square, but it most certainly wasn’t the same as actually being there.  It all looks so much bigger in the pictures than it actual is.  That is, except for ГУМ – Главный Универсальный Магазин (GUM – The Main Department Store).  This was possibly the biggest and prettiest mall I’ve ever seen in my entire life!  When we were on Red Square at night, it was entirely lit up with string lights, and it reminded me of Christmastime.

We wandered around the Square for a while, dodging tourists (there were so many people there!!) and taking pictures.  St. Basil’s Cathedral reminded me of the Church of our Savior on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg.  Except for it wasn’t as big.  And it was more of a museum than a church, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but still.  In the end, I think I liked the church in Piter better.

View of Red Square from the second floor of St. Basil's.

Unfortunately, while we were there, Lenin’s Mausoleum was closed to visitors.  Both Sasha and I had wanted to go there, but now, looking back on it, I’m kind of glad that we didn’t.  Now that I think about it, the thought of seeing Vladimir Lenin’s embalmed body kind of freaks me out a little bit, so it may have been a good thing that it was closed.

Lenin's Mausoleum

Of course, our trip to Moscow wouldn’t have been complete without a few night pictures.  We bundled up and ventured out to Red Square Friday night, where we met a friend of Sasha’s who lives in Moscow.  She gave us a little tour of the city and it was great!  I think we saw more in two hours with her than we saw in our two days wandering!  It was a great way to end our time in the city that never sleeps!

You can kind of see ГУМ all lit up to the left of St. Basil's.

Река Москва
(Moscow River)

Getting off of the train in Yaroslavl on Saturday night, I realized how nice and quiet our city is, which is funny, because I remember thinking when I first arrived here a couple of months ago how loud and busy it was!  Moscow certainly put things into perspective.

It was really cold when we got back.  It seems that once the calendar turned to November, the temperature decided to drop about 15 degrees.  Yesterday, it was -2° Celsius and it felt warm, which is sad, because that means that it was even colder earlier in the week.  And it has snowed every day this week, as well, but there has been no accumulation on the ground.  Just snowflakes in the sky.  Also, it was so cold on Monday that I broke out my big wool scarf.  I walked out of the apartment bundled up almost as much as the little kid from “A Christmas Story” (You’ll shoot your eye out! Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)  And everyone must have known that I was an American (or at least not a Russian), because there were little kids walking down the street less bundled up than I was!

But for now, let’s all just keep our fingers crossed that I don’t fall on my butt anytime soon while I’m walking on the sidewalks.  I came close three times today.

St. Petersburg to Moscow by train

Well, I’m not quite rested completely, but I am by far not as silly as last night, and so I write today to reflect on our last little bit of time in St. Petersburg.

Both Sasha and I knew that the time would come where we would have to leave this wonderful city.  And I must say, we didn’t really want to.  The city is so rich with history and culture that it almost hurts (my brain, in particular…to many things to process, such little time!  And my feet/legs, too…so much walking!) When we woke up this morning, we knew that we had two goals to achieve.  The first being to successfully navigate the train station so as to find the ticket window, the train, and then our spot on the train, and the second being to get a bag of donuts from a little shop that we found while walking around on the first day.  It should also be noted that we had a hard time deciding which was more important.  We succeeded and were able to accomplish both tasks without trouble.  (And we also turned a 15-20 minute walk to the donut shop into a ten minute walk since we were short on time.  Oh yes, we know where our priorities lie!)

Our taxi ride to the train station was filled with conversation.  When the driver found out that we studied Russian, he was quite impressed, and conversation ensued.  We talked about life in America, as well as in Russia, and then about grammar for a little bit, because Sasha said something in the wrong case and the driver graciously corrected her.  It was kind of funny because he was so nice about it, but definitely professor like.  Just a little example of how helpful and patient [almost] everyone we have encountered has been with us as we spoke in Russian.  The patience of people and their willingness to help us learn is one of the things that makes me most happy here.

And as I sit on the train, leaving what possibly may be one of my new favorite cities, I’ve already decided that I will return.

Observations:

1.       We paid for museum tickets maybe twice.  And we went to a lot of museums!  (I think nine or ten different museums.)  Studencheski Bilety (Student IDs) allow you free access to most museums and places of interest in St. Petersburg, which saved us so much money!

2.       They have bliny restaurants in St. Petersburg like fast food restaurants in the United States.  They are fast and cheap and absolutely delicious!  This has not helped my newly found addiction to bliny at all, as Sasha and I ate at these places a lot while we were there.  The only sad thing is that there are none in Yaroslavl.  Of course there are cafés where you can buy bliny in Yaroslavl, but none as fast or as cheap.

3.       We saw and heard a lot of English.  Whether it be the guy in charge of breakfast who always insisted on speaking in English with us even though we spoke to him in Russian (which was very annoying and we weren’t very fond of him), tourists and their guides, signs telling you where to go or menus telling you what you could eat (it was a nice change to know exactly what I was eating haha).  And being able to read about what I was seeing in the museums was definitely a great thing!  Also, every Russian that we spoke with asked where we were from and after responding America, but that we study in Yaroslavl, they were always impressed. 

4.       Having mentioned all of the English language that we heard, I feel that I should mention English speaking tourists.  The first day that we were in Piter, we saw a small group of tourists from the south.  How could I tell, you may ask? (Because I saw them before I heard them.)  One was wearing a Yankees baseball cap (woot!) and the other was wearing a Cardinals baseball cap.  Once I heard the English, though, I felt the strongest urge to talk to them, which I thought strange, because in Yaroslavl, I talk in English with my friends often, so it’s not like I’m English deprived.  I refrained from speaking in English, and instead, Sasha and I talked about them in Russian.  But by the third day, when I heard English speaking tourists, I could have cared less, which I found funny.  By this point, I only wanted to speak in Russian.  English speaking tours were always a wonderful thing to stumble upon, though.  More than once we followed around English excursions and heard what the guides had to say.

5.       The St. Petersburg metro tops any metro system in any city in the United State any day.  Enough said.  (And I’m pretty sure that soon, I will be saying the same thing about the Moscow Metro, as well.)

6.       Fountains without water aren’t really fountains.  They’re kind of sad looking.  Thank you Peterhof.

The sassiest statue I've ever seen...definitely made up
for the lack of water in that fountain!

7.       St. Petersburg must be the place where all of the good looking Russian guys hide (because it certainly isn’t Yaroslavl!)

St. Petersburg: Day 5, The State Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Ahhh, the Hermitage.  The most essential destination in St. Petersburg.  This palace-turned-museum is a must see in Piter.  (What, am I writing for a travel company now??)  It houses the art collection of the Tsars and is one of the largest collections in the world.  According to Fodor’s travel guide to Moscow and St. Petersburg, there are so many things in the Hermitage, that if you spent one minute on each item there, you would be there for several years.  We were there for several hours, and I just found myself walking from room to room with my head on a swivel.  Long story short, I saw a lot of gorgeously decorated rooms, more chandeliers than I could count (actually, that’s a lie, because I can count pretty high in English and now in Russian….and up to twenty in Czech, although that wouldn’t have gotten me very far.  Maybe the first two or three rooms.  But still, there were a lot of big fancy lighting devices hanging from the ceilings.), and enough naked/almost naked people depicted in artwork to last me a very very long time!

So before going inside the museum, I knew that it was big.  We had been to the square a few times while we were walking around, and we could clearly see that it was an enormous building.  But it didn’t really settle in until I was walking around inside.  Sasha and I split up.  At first it wasn’t on purpose, but it was better that way because we could each go at our own pace.  So I set off, map in hand, to navigate both the ridiculous masses of people and rooms.  I walked, and I walked, and I looked at art, and I walked some more.  And then I realized that what I was looking at looked familiar.  I looked at the map and kept walking and seeing more things that I remembered.  I think that I saw the section on Russian culture and the exhibit on Palace Interiors probably three times before I asked for directions (successfully. Woot!).  The smart thing to do would have been to mark on the map every room that I walked through so that I would know what I had already seen, but that only occurred to me half way through.  But about this, I am not complaining!  Each time around, I noticed something new in just about every room, which was great.  And once I found my way out of the Russian culture section, I was able to see some works of art from other parts of the world as well, including works from Picasso and Matisse.  (How do you like how I’m pretending that I know about art work?  I actually don’t.  But I was able to read the exhibits, which helped.)

Roofs and Cathedral in Rouen. 1908.
Othon Friesz
My favorite painting in the Hermitage.

There was one thing that I read about in the tour book while on the train that I looked for when we got to the Hermitage and that was the Peacock Clock.  This was a clock made for Catherine the Great in England in 1781, and it still works up to this date, although they have stopped winding it in an effort to preserve the mechanism.  When it chimes, “the peacock spreads its wings and turns in a circle, the rooster crows, and the owl opens and closes its eyes” (thank you Foders, once again).  Since they no longer wind the clock, we were unable to see the little show, but it was still a beautiful piece of work.

The Peacock Clock

All in all, the Hermitage was great!  It was a lot to process, though, so I am not going to write as much about it as I have written about other things.  And I also feel that there should be a little disclaimer to go along with this post.  I am exhausted (but in a good, we saw so many interesting things on vacation, kind of way), and so this post may be slightly silly in parts.  Haha  But still….on to Moscow tomorrow to finish off the week!!

St. Petersburg: Days 3 & 4

So, compared to the first two days, it feels like we didn’t do very much yesterday and today.  We actually did, but I think it feels that way because we weren’t taking so many pictures.  I think I took as many pictures today and yesterday combined as I took on Saturday.  But that is a good thing, because I was taking everything in with my own two eyes, rather than through the lens of my camera.

The Yesterday, we made our way to Peterhof Palace, one of the many palaces in St. Petersburg.  It wasn’t in the center of the city like many of the palaces, so it was about a thirty minute trip by bus after we took the metro.  The St. Petersburg metro is pretty amazing.  The each station is beautiful and other than the subway trains and tracks, it doesn’t really feel like a metro.  The stop that we got off on had chandeliers hanging above the tracks.  

Peterhof, as I mentioned earlier, is a series of palaces and gardens together on the Gulf of Finland.  It reminded me of Versailles.   Some of the main attractions are the fountains that surround the buildings and are dispersed throughout the grounds which, during the summer months, work and are absolutely stunning.  We however, were there not during the summer months, and unfortunately, the fountains had already been drained of their water and some boarded up in preparation for the Russian winter.  Fountains without water are kind of depressing, but, never the less, it was still beautiful.  Had the fountains been in working order, though, it would have been a marvelous sight to see.  Also, we were not allowed to take photos in the palace museum, which consisted of a tour of rooms set up just as they were when the palace was in use, or the church, the inside of which was practically all in gold, so I will have to tell you about them upon my return.

What Peterhof would look like if we were there at the right time of year.

In Peterhof, we also saw an amazing church.  It was huge (like they all are), but this one looked like a huge gingerbread house.

Sunday night we went out walking around and taking pictures at night and the city was just as amazing as during the daytime.  This city is beautiful all of the time, no matter the weather or the time of day!

The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood

Today was a difficult day because many places are closed on Mondays.  But luckily we were able to find another palace that was open.  We were also lucky enough to stumble upon an English speaking tour while we were wandering around and we followed them for a little bit, which was fantastic.  After this, we made our way to the apartment-turned-museum where Alexander Pushkin, the famous Russian writer, lived and wandered around there for a little while.

Statue of Pushkin

I like to think of yesterday and today as decompression days.  The first day and a half that we were here, we saw a lot and it was slightly overwhelming.  And tomorrow we are going to the Hermitage, which I predict will also be slightly overwhelming, so I hope, we are mentally prepared!! haha

Tomorrow's adventure - the State Hermitage Museum

St. Petersburg: Day 2

Today was our first full day exploring St. Petersburg, and if it is any pre-cursor for what is to come, we are in for an incredible vacation!  I can’t say enough how beautiful a city St. Petersburg is.  I have found myself photographing the same things over and over again, just so that I can catch every little detail and every aspect.

We started the day off by walking to the Strelka, which is a little park on the eastern end of Vasilevsky Island.  From here, we had an amazing panoramic view.  From this one place, we could see Peter and Paul Fortress, the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, as well as a few bridges and, of course, the Neva River.  The Naval Museum and Zoological Museum are also located near the Strelka, but today we were on a mission, and that was to explore Peter and Paul Fortress.

Peter and Paul Fortress (or Petropavloskaya Krepost’ as it is in Russian, which I think is more fun to say than in English) was commissioned by Peter the Great in the early 1700s.  Inside the fortress stands Peter and Paul Cathedral, and inside this cathedral are the tombs of the Russian tsars.  It was pretty impressive to see them all in one place.  And, of course, like every other church that I’ve been to in Russia, the inside was beautiful.  There were many museums that we went through, as well, including the building that used to house the prison.  It was all so interesting, but I am very happy that a lot of the information was in English, as well as Russian.  I fear that if it was only in Russian, I would have lost interest quickly because I wouldn’t have been able to understand what I was looking at or what the significance was.  The fortress, like the Strelka, offered an amazing view of everything, and Sasha and I found ourselves stopping every few steps to take another picture.

Peter and Paul Cathedral

Tomb of Catherine the Great

Finally, we found ourselves at the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood.  We may have been a little snap crazy with our cameras here, but it was just so remarkable.  It is one of the classic scenes that you see in pictures or on postcards of Russia.  I am not even going to make an attempt at describing it or saying how I feel about it.  It isn’t worth it because I wouldn’t be able to do it justice.   But let me just say that we were there during the daytime, with the sun shining on it, and we were there in the nighttime, when the domes were lit up, and both times were just as marvelous.  And the inside is brilliant, as well.  It is decorated in mosaics, so every portrait or depiction is made up of a bunch of little pieces.  I didn’t realize it at first, but then I looked closer.  It is unbelievable.

Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood

On a little side note, near the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, there was a little market.  Let me just say that I have never seen so many different Matryoshka in one place at one time.  Anything you could think of, they probably had a matryoshka depicting it.  Anything from traditionally painted dolls to more modern twists on the traditional dolls, sports teams, famous people, historical figures, you name it, it was most likely there!

(Also, remember all of those stairs to get to the Colonnade of St. Isaac’s?  Yeah, I was really feeling those when I jumped out of bed this morning! Haha)