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)

St. Petersburg: Day 1

If I wanted to right now, I could probably quote Journey, but that is a little too cliché, even for me.  I will start off by saying “Yay for vacation!”  Our train left Yaroslavl for St. Petersburg at 11:55pm and we arrived at 12:40 in the afternoon today.  Let me be the first to say that twelve hours on a train is a really, really long time!  If it hadn’t been an overnight train and we didn’t need to sleep, it probably would have been one of those situations where I slept anyways, just because there was nothing else to do.

But in all honesty, the train wasn’t that bad.  I always forget how much I love traveling by train until I’m on one.  The compartments were pretty small, but it really wasn’t that bad.  There were two sets of bunk like beds on both side, and a small table in between.  We were lucky enough to not have to share the compartment with anyone else, although I’m sure that would have made our journey a little bit more interesting.  (It was cramped with just the two of us, so I can’t imagine what it would have been like with two more people!)  The scenery was pretty, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary – simply the country side, so we saw many dachas, forests, and fields.  And when we arrived in St. Petersburg, it was such a great feeling to walk off of the stuffy train and into cool fresh(ish) air.

First things first, we found our way out of the station and onto the street, where we found a cab to take us to our hotel.  We dropped our stuff of in our room and then were off again.  (Funny side story: Before we left, we went to the front desk and got maps of the city.  The girl who gave them to us asked where we were from, and we said America, but that we were currently studying in Yaroslavl.  It turned out that that girl was from Yaroslavl, and went to the Pedagogical University, as well.  We ended up just standing and talking with her for a while.  Is it strange that we have to go about 450 miles away to make friends from Yaroslavl?)

Our first destination was St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which we discovered was practically right around the corner from where we are staying on.  This was a pleasant surprise!  The cathedral is amazing and huge!  There are columns and gargoyle-like statues (except they weren’t gargoyles, they were angels) and it was simply a fantastic sight to behold.  The cathedral was commissioned by Tsar Alexander I and was finished in 1858, some forty years later.  (Fun fact: During World War II, the big gold dome was painted black in hopes that it wouldn’t attract the attention of the enemy and become a target.)  The inside of the church is covered with paintings, murals, and icons.  There are big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and smaller replicas of the cathedral placed throughout.  

We also made our way up many many steps to the Colonnade, and it was there that we could see the entire city – the numerous churches and squares, the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, the river, everything.  It was such an incredible view!  I think Sasha and I walked around the circle four or five times and we still didn’t want to leave!

This afternoon we also went to Decembrist Square (actually, it is now officially named the Senate Square) and saw the Bronze Horseman, a statue commissioned by Catherine the Great in honor of Peter the Great.  On the base of the statue is inscribed “Catherine the Second to Peter the First, 1782”, in Russian on one side and in Latin on the other.  It is arguably one of the most important symbols of the city of St. Petersburg.  It was fascinating to be in the presence of something so simple, yet important, but I think that it would have held more power if there hadn’t been bird poop on his head.

Bird poop on Peter I's head.....kind of takes away from the power of the statue?

Halfway there.

I realize that it’s been a while since my last post.  (Well, I guess if you consider a week a long time.  I do, since there was a time where I was posting a couple of times a week.)  But in all honesty, life has just been going on.  Nothing too out of the ordinary or spectacular has occurred, which might seem kind of boring, and that is understandable.  Sometimes I do think that, but at the same time, I think it is the perfect sign that I have finally adjusted to life in Russia.  You may have heard me mention how I was told that one day you just wake up and everything clicks and you understand everything and everything becomes great.  Well, I can’t say that everything has clicked for me, but as of late, things have certainly been looking in the right direction.  I know and am at peace with the fact that there will never be a time (at least during this trip to Russia) that I will understand everything.  But I have realized that my problem is not grammar related anymore (although there are times when it certainly is a problem, as well!), but simply that I don’t have a broad enough vocabulary.  Let’s just say that I’m working on it, but it’s a very slow process.

Now, after that slightly deep and pensive little bit, let’s move on to the good stuff. 

First off, “road beer”.  It is not uncommon to see people walking down the street drinking a bottle of beer.  Last Thursday after our extra-long culture class, we were those people.  And I must say, it was kind of strange, but still awesome.  First of all, the drinking age is eighteen here, so we were legally allowed to buy alcohol.  Also, there is no such thing as “open container laws” here.  We were walking down the street with our open bottles of beer, happily drinking them all of the way.  We passed an old man walking with his own bottle of beer, and I was so tempted to clink bottles with him as we passed, but I figured that wasn’t such a good idea and I refrained from doing so.  I kind of wish I had, though, because that would have been awesome, but maybe slightly unacceptable.

On Friday, we went to a Balalaika concert and it was fantastic!  The Balalaika is a Russian instrument that is kind of like a guitar.  The video that I posted below is the guy that we saw.  He was a fantastic performer and quite entertaining.  And he was playing so fast!!  His fingers were flying across the strings! (If you go to about 2:05 in the video, you can see this.)

Final order of business: vacation.  Thursday night, my friends Sasha and I are leaving for St. Petersburg for our mid-semester vacation.  We are spending the first five days there, seeing all of the sights and then we will spend the last three days in Moscow doing all of the touristy things that we didn’t have the time to do when we were there for orientation in September.  I am beyond excited for St. Petersburg.  It is such a beautiful city.  And with my student ID, I will be able to get into most museums and other places for free, which is actually awesome.

So, if you have any suggestions of places for me to see or things for me to do while I’m traveling, send me an email or leave me a comment.  My next post will [hopefully] be a travel update from Petersburg!

First Snow!!!

I checked the weather yesterday, as I do every few days, in an attempt to win the game of dressing for the weather and guess what I saw in the forecast.  Snow.  (Just so you know, I didn’t lose the game, but I most certainly didn’t win it. Haha)  Honestly, I didn’t believe the forecast.  I mean, it’s only just the middle of October, how could it possibly snow yet!  Well, guess what it’s doing outside right now.  That’s right, it’s snowing.  Big flakes, too, not those little flakes where you can barely tell that it’s snowing.  It’s not sticking to anything yet, either.  I imagine that the ground is still a little bit too warm, but soon I’m sure it will.

I seriously feel like a little kid right now, but I suppose that always happens with the first snow.  (And it was funny, because when I went downstairs today and saw that it was snowing, I got all happy and excited, and Tanya was just like, "oh, it's snowing".)  The first few snows, in my opinion, are the best snows.  But this early snow is doing nothing for my perception of time.  The weather these past few days has made me feel that it is already November, almost Thanksgiving time, which is odd, because it’s only October.  Oh well, we’ll see how I feel about snow at the end of these next two months, but for now, I’m thoroughly content.

Kaliningrad

Last week we took our big group trip to Kaliningrad.  For those that may be unsure, Kaliningrad Oblast’ is the little part of Russia that sits away from the entire rest of the country.  It shares land boarders with Poland and Lithuania, as well as a sea boarder with the Baltic Sea.  It actually was German territory for a very long time up until it was taken by the Russians in World War II.  Russia needed water ports in the west because it only had ports in the east and Kaliningrad was perfect for the job.  (Fun fact: Kaliningrad is the only Russian sea port on the Baltic Sea that does not freeze during the winter time and remains free of ice, even in the winter time.)  So Stalin exiled all of the Germans residing in the area and replaced them with Russian citizens.

Now, we knew for about a week that we were going to Kaliningrad, but we weren’t quite sure when.  That is until Anya, our coordinator said “Hey, we’re flying to Kaliningrad tomorrow!”  Now, I can’t really say that we were thrilled about the flying aspect of our trip.  Domestic flights in Russia have not had the best reputation, and given the recent tragedy involving Yaroslavl Lokomotiv, we were even less willing to board a Russian plane.  (Obviously, we survived our trip, or I would not be writing this.  And, I have decided that I like to fly.)  The van picked me up at my apartment at midnight, and after picking up the other students, we were off to Moscow.  We arrived at about 5am for our 9am flight, so we had a little time to just wait around in the Airport.  We had breakfast (I ate some of the picnic(yay!!!) that Tanya made for me) and we were off.  The flight was actually not that bad, either.  It was rainy when we left, as well as when we landed a little more than two hours later, but when we were above the clouds, it was sunny and nice.

Upon our arrival in Kaliningrad, we were immediately off on our first excursion, which happened to be a tour of Fort № 1, one of the old German forts from World War II.  (Most of us were thoroughly exhausted and were dragging.  It was not easy (or comfortable) to sleep in the van or on the plane.)  We were supplied with gas lanterns to light our way through the dark hallways and rooms because, while it was bright outside, as soon as we ventured away from the windows and doors and went deeper into the fort, it became pitch black.  The rooms were filled with artifacts from when the fort was in use during the war: old uniforms, helmets, guns and ammunition, bottles, newspaper clippings on the walls, a sewing machine(?), and so on.  It was really quite interesting.

Kaliningrad and the other cities that we visited in Kaliningrad Oblast’ look more like European cities or German cities than Russian cities, and I realized this as we began to walk around a little bit.  If everything hadn’t been written in Russian, then it may have been a lot harder to tell.  And actually, some of the signs were written in German, as well.  The cities are sometimes referred to by both their old German names and their Russian names, too.  (Kaliningrad’s German name was Königsberg.)  It’s actually kind of funny how little the Russians have contributed to the culture of Kaliningrad.  I mean, they did give it the language and the people, but that’s about it.  It looks very Germanic.  Especially the churches (because apparently they are the first things that I notice now).  There were maybe two churches that we saw resembling the Orthodox Churches of Yaroslavl, and they were fairly new.  The rest looked Protestant in architecture, if that makes sense.

Two words describe our second day in Kalingrad – amber and beach.  We first went to a town about half an hour from the city of Kaliningrad to see one of the largest amber pits in the world.  It supplies about 90% of the world’s amber and the town was conveniently named “Amber”.  We couldn’t actually go into the amber pit (it was really just a big hole in the ground, but they did have a little sand box where they put some amber and we were allowed to dig for our own.  I felt like I was seven years old again (I think we all did) but I don’t really know what they would have done if we had started making sand castles and rivers. 

After this, we went to what is now one of my favorite places – the Baltic Sea.  The beach was just amazing.  The weather was perfect, the water wasn’t too too cold, and we were the only ones there.  It was just great.  I like to think of myself as having a little way with words, but I actually don’t really know how to effectively describe it.  The pictures will have to explain for me.  The town in which we went to the beach was really quite quaint.  It looked to me like a little German town (see a pattern here?).  (I feel like I should stop comparing everything to Europe and Germany….I don’t have any qualifications for this, as I have never actually be there.)  The sidewalks were lined with little stands, almost all of which were selling the same touristy things, but there were a few cute little Babushkas selling fruit and vegetables, as well, and it was all pretty neat.

Day three took us away from the city and into nature.  Aaaaaahhh fresh air!  We went to the forest, to the sand dunes, and again to the beach.  Walking through the forest was kind of like walking through the story of Hansel and Gretel.  It was really peaceful and still and I was trying to breathe in as much of the air as possible just because it was so nice and clean. 

The sand dunes were pretty much just sand.  It was apparently the highest sand dune in Europe, and it was a great landscape, but, like I said, it was just a lot of sand.  I don’t really know what else to say.  It was really, really windy, too.

Lithuania

And then, again, the beach.  It was a different beach than the day before, but it was equally as amazing.

I like this...where else can you find a pine cone on the beach?

On our way back to Yaroslavl, it took us over two hours of stop and go traffic just to leave the city, and then almost another hour to get out of the Oblast’.  A trip that should have taken approximately four hours give or take ended up taking over six hours.  And at some points, the roads were so uneven and the driver was going so fast that it felt like a roller coaster!  It was interesting to watch some of the traffic and the other people sitting in it, though.  I saw some choice words exchanged a couple of times, and although I couldn’t understand exactly what they said, I had no doubt of their intentions.  And sitting in the traffic was also a perfect way to see some of the city and just how amazingly beautiful the countryside and smaller towns are in the fall time.

Random fun fact: Mars and Mars, the candy company, is celebrating 20 years in Russia this year, which means it has been 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union….crazy how time flies, huh?

McDonalds

Well, it finally happened….we, the Americans, found ourselves in McDonalds.  At home in the US, there is nothing about McDonalds that is appealing to me.  Except for the ice cream.  And occasionally the coffee.  But after being in Russia for just over a month, my friends and I found ourselves in this very same place.

My friend really wanted French fries, and I found myself with a slight craving for ice cream (which I found kind of odd because I was quite cold at the time) and we decided to do the one thing that, in the beginning of September at orientation when they told us that going to McDonalds might help curb some of the culture shock stress, we swore we would never do.

McDonalds here is really really popular, which I found kind of funny.  It was completely packed when we went around lunch time.  Like you pushed past people and there were no open tables packed.  And this was a pretty big place, too.  It’s different from McDonalds at home.  It had a separate area like a fancy McDonalds coffee shop where it appeared that people were having business meetings.  And there was even a McDonalds security guard, which definitely made me laugh when I realized this!  (I was tempted to take a picture, but I was slightly afraid of what he would do….he was that legit.)

The ice cream ended up being ok.  Not as good as ice cream from home, but definitely better than no ice cream at all!  The French fries, on the other hand, tasted almost exactly the same.

Well, that’s about it for now.  We’re headed off to Kaliningrad on a group trip for a few days.  Actually, we’ll be leaving in about 45 minutes (which, for those of you keeping track, will be about 12:30 in the am.  After having an early class this morning, I’m barely awake right now!)  So, I’ll be back next week with a post and hopefully some amazing pictures from that random little part of Russia that’s separated from the whole big country by those little Baltic States.