Or, you know, not so much. Now that I'm rapidly approaching the halfway point of this semester, it's getting harder to find things to post about, because it's all so routine now. The most productive thing I've done in the past week is go to the grocery store/make a metric [swear word]-ton of vinigret, and that was today. This should change soon enough, though; a week from Thursday, Corinne, the Elizabeths and I leave for Estonia, and then I will have nine days' worth of thrill-a-minute adventures (if the four of us can ever get around to doing some dang research and deciding what we want to do in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius).
In my last post, I talked about visiting with Tamara, and said I was eager to go back. The second visit was even better than the first; this time she fed us, setting out chocolates, fruit, and little cakes as well as giving us tea. We all ate far too much (as is customary) and spent a solid three hours just listening to Tamara talk about Russian history as she experienced it. I love this woman so much. I just want to bring her home with me. She is the sweetest lady in the world, and tomorrow night when we go back over there, she said she'd make us dinner. The sweets were delicious, but we all kind of waddled back to the metro station afterward. It wasn't too cold that night, anyway, and we decided we all could use the exercise after gorging ourselves at Tamara's apartment. Among the spread were these candies that consisted of a walnut stuffed inside a prune, coated in dark chocolate. Probably shouldn't eat too many of those, given the prune, but they were just so good and not in the least bit difficult to make, according to Brenda.
I'm not exactly proud to admit that, as I'm typing this, 6 PM on Tuesday, I have not yet been to my language class this week. I've managed to oversleep two days in a row. Yesterday, I woke up about three minutes before my class started and decided the weather was just too crappy to endure the 40-minute commute to the faculty. Today, I forgot my Tuesday class was shifted up about an hour and a half...and just didn't want to go. I needed to go to the grocery, anyway, which is how I justified skipping again to myself. I know it's not good, and I'm gonna make it there every day until next Thursday to make up for it. Not to excuse my behavior, but most of my roommates haven't made it to class, either. Jorge has also skipped this week, and so has Corinne; their excuses aren't any better than mine. Liz hasn't gone, but she's got a more legitimate reason because she's not feeling well. This atmosphere of lethargy is just permeating the apartment and killing everyone's productivity. Maybe we all partied too hard over the weekend, who knows.
We did go out for St. Patrick's Day. First, Corinne, Brenda, Liz and I went to this Frida Kahlo-themed flamenco show, which was neat. I fell asleep for about ten minutes, but that happens to me in auditoriums. I don't know why, but I blame high school. What I could see of it was really cool; I was behind tall people so I couldn't really see the dancers' feet, but it certainly sounded impressive. Flamenco is like extreme Spanish tapdancing, equal parts performance and percussion. There were two dancers, about four musicians and a singer who sang in Spanish. One dancer portrayed Frida, the other various other people (husband Diego Rivera, the personification of Death); the show was based around Frida Kahlo's life, and her paintings were projected on a screen behind the dancers as they moved through vignettes. I thought the medium to be rather ironic; why tell this particular woman's story through flamenco dance, of all media? See, Frida Kahlo's art career began after she was involved in a serious tram accident that crippled her, so of all distinctly Spanish art forms, this is one that she would never have been able to do. But, okay. That may have been the point. It was staged at a very avant-garde sort of theater, so that irony/disconnect probably was the point.
After the flamenco show, we (minus Brenda) went back to our apartment, where a few of Jorge's friends had come over, and they decided to wait for us before hitting the clubs. Dasha and Maksim were there, as was Holly (finally! she couldn't find our apartment last time we invited her over, and her host family is a bit leery of her going out anywhere very often, because the metro closes at midnight). Those were the only guests I knew. There was also an Italian woman whose name escapes me right now, and another Maxim, this one Danish (we'll call him Max for simplicity). They were all pregaming (i.e., drinking before going out to a bar or club) when we arrived, and Alex decided we would leave for the clubs in an hour. So we chilled, made introductions, started planning the evening's activities, and generally were just killing time for a while. The smokers in the group went out to smoke, and we prepared to leave; with so many people in attendance, it should come as no surprise that we split into two groups.
Alexandra, Holly, Max, and I left together, with the others leaving and going somewhere else later. We tried to go to RadioBaby, a place I blogged about waaaay back in February. Apparently the bouncer thought Max was too drunk to be let into the club (not surprising, as by the time we left the apartment he had nearly polished off a 2-liter of Oxota, which is a brand of beer with 8% abv, all by himself), and the fact that he proceeded to argue with said bouncer (and then stumble down the stairs) didn't help. Alexandra thought the bouncer was just giving us a hard time and pulled me and Holly inside, then went back for Max, at which point he pushed her out. So, Holly went and tracked down another friend of ours, Kurt, and tried to get everything sorted. We ended up leaving and going somewhere else, because I wasn't sure I knew how to get home from RadioBaby. We went to another club a few blocks away; Kurt actually had to go back to RadioBaby to meet a friend who was running late, but he caught up with us later. I can't seem to remember the name of this club no matter how hard I try, but it's not important.
The Nameless Club is more like three clubs in one; it's got 4 stories, with the coat check on the top floor (such a cruel design, because the stairs are steep and tall, and also concrete). On each of the lower floors is a bar and a dance area; on the first floor, the dancefloor is replaced by bathrooms. And every floor of the place was absolutely packed with fellow young adults looking for a good time on a Saturday night.
The layout of the club actually turned out to be a boon. See, Max has a crush on Holly and was hitting on her relentlessly all night. The problem is that Max is also an asshole. Normally I'd censor myself, but there really is no polite term for him. He's European, and believes that this makes him somehow special, and his idea of courtship involves making fun of America and trying to jam his tongue down Holly's throat. She turned away quickly enough that he only managed to kiss her cheek, but he kept trying. Not only does Holly have a guy back home waiting for her, Max also smokes, and Holly doesn't like that. So even if she didn't have someone in mind already, she still wouldn't be interested in him. I had to rescue Holly a couple of times, with the old "come to the bathroom with me" line. We hid in the stairwell until a bouncer told us to pick a floor or get out.
After another hour or so of dealing with Max (and another "bathroom run"), we decided to just leave and go somewhere else. We found Alexandra and told her, and she tried to unload Max onto us. No, the point was to get Holly away from him because he's being rude and creepy. So, the five of us (at some point one of their classmates joined us) just all left together. We stopped for burgers at this restaurant I'll probably never manage to find again, then went home because everyone was getting tired and no one wanted to deal with Max anymore. Alexandra didn't want to keep dragging him around, we didn't want him to come with us, so we just decided we were done for the night. The original plan had been to stay out all night, i.e. until the public transportation system reopens at 6:30, but we called it quits around 3:30.
On the way home we actually ran into Jorge, Maksim and Liz; Dasha and the Italian girl had gone home because they had work in the morning, and Corinne wasn't feeling well so she didn't come out at all. Liz came with us because she never really wanted to go out anyway; she was convinced by promises of shawarma, and we caught them just as they were leaving the shawarma place, so she just walked home with us.
Annoying boys aside, it was actually a pretty fun night. I got to hang out with Holly, which was cool. I don't get to see her as often as I'd like because she's in a different class, lives way far away from us, and doesn't find out about plans far enough in advance to let her host mom know. We bonded, and that was nice, because as different as we are, I feel like I have more in common with her than I do with most of the SRAS people here. Holly is my age, a junior in college, in her university's honors program, unlike the others here through the SRAS. All my roommates are older than me; some are looking at grad schools, others are non-traditional students, and the others (Brenda and Elizabeth) aren't students at all. We're going to try to get together over the summer; she lives in North Carolina, but her family's going to Disney near the end of July. I'm pretty sure she said it was around the 21st, which is before Otakon, so we should be able to figure something out.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Chapter the Fifth: Don't You Lecture Me!
*dusts off cobwebs*
Alright, alright, I know it's been like a week since I last posted. Nothing exciting has happened in that time! And as much as I know you're all hanging on my every word, I'm sure you'd get bored quickly if I filled this blog with posts about how I stayed inside on my computer for the entire three-day holiday weekend, then overslept and missed the make-up class on Sunday. Liz and I went out, along with Elizabeth, for a little while Friday night. We got some tasty Chinese food and later attempted to go to a gay club with Jorge and his friend Max; they wouldn't let the girls in, so we left, grabbed some snackies at a produkty and hung out in the apartment for a while. Oh, and I got my passport back, complete with shiny new multi-entry visa, from the university. They didn't lose my documents again, yay! The fact that the multi-entry visa is both larger than and not attached to the passport does kind of bother me, though. I suppose if it all stays in its pouch it'll be fine.
This evening, Brenda and Corinne and I met with a friend of Sergei's by the name of Tamara. She's the sweetest old lady, brimming with knowledge about Russian culture. We're meeting with her Friday evening, and next week on Wednesday and Friday as well. This is the kind of thing I was expecting to do for the entire Russian Psyche class, so it's cool that we're finally getting to it. I mean, I've enjoyed the other stuff we've done (making syrniki, watching movies), but this is what I was interested in in the first place. We're squeezing 8 lectures on Russian history and culture into 4 lengthy visits to this woman's apartment, and I'm already looking forward to going back.
Tonight's lectures were just a sort of overview to gauge our familiarity with the subject matter and get to know each other a little bit. Tamara has been a teacher and professor of many topics of Russian culture, as well as Russian and English language courses. She taught in the US for 12 years during the Soviet era, and was alive even during Stalin's reign, although she was just a child (she said she was 7 or 8 when he died). She basically told us about her life, things she's observed in her years of experience and travel, the disparity between common stereotypes and what she (and we) have observed, and the general features of the Russian character. According to Tamara, the main feature of the Russian psyche (hey! that's the title of this course) is a theme of duality: Russians are both atheistic and pious, both Christian and pagan, both European and Asian.
Even during the Soviet era, when everyone was nominally atheist, people would still observe religious rites (e.g., baptizing an infant), simply because that's what you were supposed to do. Baptizing an infant had little to do with anyone's personal faith; it was just part and parcel of the whole song-and-dance that accompanies a baby's entrance into this world. From what Tamara said and what I've read in the book I bought for this class, Christianity's influence on Russian culture was really more of a structural effect than anything else; it recontextualized and gave new names to many facets of the old pagan beliefs. The decision to adopt Christianity, as opposed to any other religion, came about after the Tsar sent people all over the world to learn about other cultures; upon attending a Greek Orthodox service in Byzantium, the emissaries were so taken by the beauty of it all that they "were certain they were in heaven, for nothing so beautiful could exist on earth." Yes, sometimes crucial decisions like the theology upon which a country will be governed is based on frivolous things like "who has the prettiest churches?" You do have to hand it to them, though; Russian cathedrals are gorgeous.
Evidence of Russian piety (regardless of the affiliation of their particular God or gods) is found all over the place in the language. There are a lot of words referring to successful people or people with particular attributes (being very strong, etc) that contain the root "Bog," which is the Russian (actually etymologically Ukrainian, but who's counting) word for "God." For instance, in Russian, the name by which the Virgin Mary is referred to translates literally to "mother of God." No one here calls her Mary, Saint Mary, or the Virgin; they call her the Holy Mother. In icons, she is typically pictured cradling the baby Jesus in a very maternal fashion; as opposed to many Western depictions of the Madonna and Child, where said Madonna functions more like a human-shaped chair for said Child. Whereas in Western Christian tradition, the emphasis is on Mary's spiritual (or physical) purity and the Immaculate Conception, Russian Orthodoxy places huge emphasis on the fact that she gave birth to a child, nevermind the details of the child's or her own conception. In many ways, this echoes the idea of "Mother Earth," and by extension "Mother Russia." Motherhood is huge in Russian culture; as an interesting aside, a lot of Russian profanity is centered around the womb (contrast American profanity, which is mostly sexual, or French profanity, which is mostly religious).
Russians are also incredibly superstitious. I could write an entire blog post on Russian superstitions, but I think I'd have to spend the rest of my time here researching it first. For instance, no Russian will shake your hand over a threshold--one of you must pass through the door first, or it's bad luck. An unmarried girl should not sit at the corner of a table, or else she won't be married for a certain number of years (I think it was 7); if the seating arrangement is such that someone must sit at the corner, a married woman will take that seat. A lot of the superstition comes from the influence of East and Central Asian cultures, which provides me a convenient segue into addressing the third aspect of the dual nature of the Russian psyche.
Russians attribute their love of beautiful things and refinement to their European heritage. At the same time, however, they acknowledge that they are a brutal people. Which is understandable; Russia is a brutal place. But still. Russian men, as an example, swear a lot, drink a lot, are violent, etc. These unsavory attributes are usually blamed on the influence of Asian cultures (chiefly the Tatars). Russia exists in a strange place between Europe and Asia proper; the citizens' appearance is largely European, but they are living in what is, geographically speaking, Asia. There is also a lot of prejudice against people who look Asian (or otherwise ethnic, but particularly Asians); I can't imagine what life is like here for the Chinese and Japanese students enrolled at my faculty. Presumably, they're treated with at least a modicum of respect by academics and those in the university's employ, but when venturing out into the city, I can't help but wonder what they experience.
The chat with Tamara was kind of a massive information-dump, but it was certainly informative. I'm super excited to go back. She's also got a pupil that she tutors in English by the name of Olga, who is going to talk to us (to practice her English) on Friday over tea and cakes. She likes the Beatles and old movies, and she's leaving Sunday for Prague, and that is all I know about her. Maybe we'll end up practicing our Russian, too, I don't know. But it certainly promises to be an enjoyable evening.
The rest of this week is also jam-packed with stuff. Tomorrow night we're going to see a play (performed in English by American students, because it's free and Sergei and his other Russian students are also coming), then Friday we're going back to Tamara's, then Saturday we're touring the Peter and Paul Fortress and attending some kind of Frida Kahlo-themed flamenco dance show. Maybe if I get a minute to rest on Sunday I'll post about it all. Things calm down a bit after Saturday; next week the only thing besides regular class is going back to Tamara's on Wednesday and Friday evening. We have another lecture with Sergei on the following Tuesday, and then Corinne and I leave with the Elizabeths for Estonia on the 29th, and that about does it for March.
Alright, alright, I know it's been like a week since I last posted. Nothing exciting has happened in that time! And as much as I know you're all hanging on my every word, I'm sure you'd get bored quickly if I filled this blog with posts about how I stayed inside on my computer for the entire three-day holiday weekend, then overslept and missed the make-up class on Sunday. Liz and I went out, along with Elizabeth, for a little while Friday night. We got some tasty Chinese food and later attempted to go to a gay club with Jorge and his friend Max; they wouldn't let the girls in, so we left, grabbed some snackies at a produkty and hung out in the apartment for a while. Oh, and I got my passport back, complete with shiny new multi-entry visa, from the university. They didn't lose my documents again, yay! The fact that the multi-entry visa is both larger than and not attached to the passport does kind of bother me, though. I suppose if it all stays in its pouch it'll be fine.
This evening, Brenda and Corinne and I met with a friend of Sergei's by the name of Tamara. She's the sweetest old lady, brimming with knowledge about Russian culture. We're meeting with her Friday evening, and next week on Wednesday and Friday as well. This is the kind of thing I was expecting to do for the entire Russian Psyche class, so it's cool that we're finally getting to it. I mean, I've enjoyed the other stuff we've done (making syrniki, watching movies), but this is what I was interested in in the first place. We're squeezing 8 lectures on Russian history and culture into 4 lengthy visits to this woman's apartment, and I'm already looking forward to going back.
Tonight's lectures were just a sort of overview to gauge our familiarity with the subject matter and get to know each other a little bit. Tamara has been a teacher and professor of many topics of Russian culture, as well as Russian and English language courses. She taught in the US for 12 years during the Soviet era, and was alive even during Stalin's reign, although she was just a child (she said she was 7 or 8 when he died). She basically told us about her life, things she's observed in her years of experience and travel, the disparity between common stereotypes and what she (and we) have observed, and the general features of the Russian character. According to Tamara, the main feature of the Russian psyche (
Even during the Soviet era, when everyone was nominally atheist, people would still observe religious rites (e.g., baptizing an infant), simply because that's what you were supposed to do. Baptizing an infant had little to do with anyone's personal faith; it was just part and parcel of the whole song-and-dance that accompanies a baby's entrance into this world. From what Tamara said and what I've read in the book I bought for this class, Christianity's influence on Russian culture was really more of a structural effect than anything else; it recontextualized and gave new names to many facets of the old pagan beliefs. The decision to adopt Christianity, as opposed to any other religion, came about after the Tsar sent people all over the world to learn about other cultures; upon attending a Greek Orthodox service in Byzantium, the emissaries were so taken by the beauty of it all that they "were certain they were in heaven, for nothing so beautiful could exist on earth." Yes, sometimes crucial decisions like the theology upon which a country will be governed is based on frivolous things like "who has the prettiest churches?" You do have to hand it to them, though; Russian cathedrals are gorgeous.
Evidence of Russian piety (regardless of the affiliation of their particular God or gods) is found all over the place in the language. There are a lot of words referring to successful people or people with particular attributes (being very strong, etc) that contain the root "Bog," which is the Russian (actually etymologically Ukrainian, but who's counting) word for "God." For instance, in Russian, the name by which the Virgin Mary is referred to translates literally to "mother of God." No one here calls her Mary, Saint Mary, or the Virgin; they call her the Holy Mother. In icons, she is typically pictured cradling the baby Jesus in a very maternal fashion; as opposed to many Western depictions of the Madonna and Child, where said Madonna functions more like a human-shaped chair for said Child. Whereas in Western Christian tradition, the emphasis is on Mary's spiritual (or physical) purity and the Immaculate Conception, Russian Orthodoxy places huge emphasis on the fact that she gave birth to a child, nevermind the details of the child's or her own conception. In many ways, this echoes the idea of "Mother Earth," and by extension "Mother Russia." Motherhood is huge in Russian culture; as an interesting aside, a lot of Russian profanity is centered around the womb (contrast American profanity, which is mostly sexual, or French profanity, which is mostly religious).
Russians are also incredibly superstitious. I could write an entire blog post on Russian superstitions, but I think I'd have to spend the rest of my time here researching it first. For instance, no Russian will shake your hand over a threshold--one of you must pass through the door first, or it's bad luck. An unmarried girl should not sit at the corner of a table, or else she won't be married for a certain number of years (I think it was 7); if the seating arrangement is such that someone must sit at the corner, a married woman will take that seat. A lot of the superstition comes from the influence of East and Central Asian cultures, which provides me a convenient segue into addressing the third aspect of the dual nature of the Russian psyche.
Russians attribute their love of beautiful things and refinement to their European heritage. At the same time, however, they acknowledge that they are a brutal people. Which is understandable; Russia is a brutal place. But still. Russian men, as an example, swear a lot, drink a lot, are violent, etc. These unsavory attributes are usually blamed on the influence of Asian cultures (chiefly the Tatars). Russia exists in a strange place between Europe and Asia proper; the citizens' appearance is largely European, but they are living in what is, geographically speaking, Asia. There is also a lot of prejudice against people who look Asian (or otherwise ethnic, but particularly Asians); I can't imagine what life is like here for the Chinese and Japanese students enrolled at my faculty. Presumably, they're treated with at least a modicum of respect by academics and those in the university's employ, but when venturing out into the city, I can't help but wonder what they experience.
The chat with Tamara was kind of a massive information-dump, but it was certainly informative. I'm super excited to go back. She's also got a pupil that she tutors in English by the name of Olga, who is going to talk to us (to practice her English) on Friday over tea and cakes. She likes the Beatles and old movies, and she's leaving Sunday for Prague, and that is all I know about her. Maybe we'll end up practicing our Russian, too, I don't know. But it certainly promises to be an enjoyable evening.
The rest of this week is also jam-packed with stuff. Tomorrow night we're going to see a play (performed in English by American students, because it's free and Sergei and his other Russian students are also coming), then Friday we're going back to Tamara's, then Saturday we're touring the Peter and Paul Fortress and attending some kind of Frida Kahlo-themed flamenco dance show. Maybe if I get a minute to rest on Sunday I'll post about it all. Things calm down a bit after Saturday; next week the only thing besides regular class is going back to Tamara's on Wednesday and Friday evening. We have another lecture with Sergei on the following Tuesday, and then Corinne and I leave with the Elizabeths for Estonia on the 29th, and that about does it for March.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Chapter the Fourth: Hermitages
So, I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that my language class starts at 10:40, rather than 12:20, on Tuesdays, to allow time for my culture class to meet without making the cleaning staff at the university stay too late. This morning, like every most Tuesday mornings, I headed over to Vasilievsky Island (running about 10-15 minutes late for class, I admit)...and upon finishing the grueling climb to the fourth floor of the faculty, I found five of my classmates chillin' in the hallway. Apparently, Valentina Semyonovna forgot she had a class this morning, or something. I put down my bags and took my coat off, just in case she showed up soon. I sat in the hall with my classmates for about 15-20 minutes...with no sign of the professor. Most of the people who passed by us seemed to ignore us, actually, which was kind of weird. One young woman kept going back and forth between the hall where our classroom was (among others) and...somewhere, casually stepping over coats and legs like we weren't even there. I know if there was a cluster of students sitting and chatting in the hallway in, say, Sampson Hall (because it's the foreign-language building! hurr i am comedy) for 40 minutes, someone would either ask who they were waiting for or tell them to get lost.
Anyway, by about 11:30, I decided that even if Valentina Semyonovna did show up eventually, I wouldn't be there long enough to make coming to class worthwhile. So, I put my coat and bags back on and left. See, this afternoon, Sergei had a friend of his take us--Corinne, Brenda, Holly and me--on a tour of the Hermitage, and I would've had to leave class early to have time to get back home, collect Corinne (she wasn't feeling well that morning, so she didn't come with me to the faculty), and figure out how to get to the Hermitage from my apartment. We stopped in the Palace Square courtyard on the walking tour with Sergei, but I wasn't paying a ton of attention to how we actually got there; my attention was fixed more on how cold it was, not slipping on the ice, and trying to hear what Sergei was saying because he's very soft-spoken.
Corinne and I checked the trolley routes and learned that trolleybus number 10 or 11 would take us where we needed to go. So we waited at the trolley stop, crammed ourselves into the first number 11 that showed up (along with what seemed like a hundred other people), paid our 21p and held on for dear life because this driver's got a schedule to keep, people! Shut up and hold on! Eventually Corinne grabbed a seat and, as soon as another one near her opened up, she helped me squeeze through the crowd to take it. I still feel weird about moving through crowds like that. I feel like I'm being rude, but I'm not. It's perfectly acceptable to brush against someone moving past them, without so much as an "excuse me, please." The only time anyone will say something to you is if there isn't enough room on either side of you to squeeze past. I mean, I'm sure there are probably some people I've encountered--especially at rush hour on the metro--who are being rude, perhaps pushing past others too brusquely, but for the most part navigating in crowds here does not require nearly the level of song and dance that it does in America.
Anyway, the Hermitage! My God, it's massive. It actually consists of several buildings connected to one another, and they are all beautiful. Most of the information we received from Yulia, Sergei's friend, was about the palace itself. The building that you will see photos of if you Google Image Search "Hermitage" or "Эрмитажа" used to be the Winter Palace, commissioned by Peter the Great. It's a striking shade of teal with white details and a whole bunch of columns. One entrance's columns consist of about a dozen huge granite Atlas-like men holding the roof over their heads. Corinne took a number of photos; if I can get them from her later, I'll post a few. Or link to her blog, if she uploads the photos there. (Aside: Speaking of Corinne's blog, she posted a photo tour of our apartment there and gave me permission to link to it so my friends and family could see where I live. Here's the link.)
Right now, the Hermitage has an exhibition called "Lomonosov in the time of Elizabeth," referring of course to the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Mikhail Lomonosov was a polymath and writer alive during Elizabeth's reign, so the exhibit is a delightful mix of drawings and portraits of the Empress and 18th-century scientific equipment. As I said, though, most of the things Yulia told us about had to do with the histories of the buildings themselves and not the art housed within them. There were a couple of reception halls; the main reception hall was all gilded with an impressive gold colonnade, and the throne room or St. George room was nearly identical, except it had very stately white marble instead of so much gold. The design on the ceiling mirrored the floor inlay, made of something like 25 different types of wood, except for one key detail: where, in the ceiling decoration, there appeared a two-headed eagle, no such symbol was to be found on the floor, because that would be stepping on the Russian empire.
Attached to the Winter Palace was a smaller building that Catherine the Great had built so that she could invite her friends over and have a more private, more personal alternative to the play-acting necessary in her court. She had a list of rules engraved on a plaque (e.g., visitors must speak only Russian, no swearing, no drunkenness, etc), and any guest who broke a rule would have to immediately drink a glass of water and recite part of a very long, very complex poem, the title of which eludes me at the moment. I thought the story was funny, but then, I haven't seen this ultra-complex poem.
There is a corridor connecting the Small Hermitage (the building I mentioned in the previous paragraph) to the New Hermitage (commissioned by Catherine specifically as a public museum, unlike the rest of the complex). This corridor is full of art. The walls are covered in little pictures of people doing things, animals being silly, etc, and the pattern never repeats itself. It looks like it does, but in fact each image is unique. It's a series of arches, and on the ceiling between each arch are four panels depicting scenes from the Bible. One end of the hall begins with creation, and it progresses from there. There is so much going on in this corridor that it would take years to see everything. It's like a microcosm of the entire Hermitage, because the whole thing is like that. Catherine was a voracious art collector, and she bought entire collections as opposed to individual paintings. Knowing that, and seeing the sheer quantity of stuff that the Hermitage houses, makes it all the more impressive to know that the palace burnt down in the late 1837. A fire started somewhere and spread throughout the house between the walls, which were very thick and had spaces between them. While working on an expansion, at one point they decided to break down the wrong wall, and by then the fire had spread so far that the building couldn't be saved. Most of the things in it, however, could be. Paintings and heavy furniture were carted out and deposited in the snow in Palace Square, and it's said that the fire could be seen for miles. The inside of the building was completely redone, although the facade remained the same.
The tour was very fast, but also very informative; I was really more interested in the history more than the paintings housed within the building, anyway, so I'm glad it wasn't an interminable slog through a hundred rooms while Yulia talked at us about people we had never heard of and didn't care about. We stopped in the cafe afterward to sit and get coffee, and ended up staying so long that they actually had to kick us out because the cafe was closing. So we retrieved our coats and left.
I actually ended up writing this post over two days, because I forgot I was working on it yesterday. xD But nothing much more happened last night. I ate too many of these frozen pelmeni that I bought and cooked, but that discomfort was temporary and the story is not at all exciting. Tomorrow is National Women's Day; Corinne wants to go explore in town and see the festivities. I don't know if I'm gonna go with. Probably, but at the same time, I have a lot of important sleeping to do. And work. I do have work to do.
Anyway, by about 11:30, I decided that even if Valentina Semyonovna did show up eventually, I wouldn't be there long enough to make coming to class worthwhile. So, I put my coat and bags back on and left. See, this afternoon, Sergei had a friend of his take us--Corinne, Brenda, Holly and me--on a tour of the Hermitage, and I would've had to leave class early to have time to get back home, collect Corinne (she wasn't feeling well that morning, so she didn't come with me to the faculty), and figure out how to get to the Hermitage from my apartment. We stopped in the Palace Square courtyard on the walking tour with Sergei, but I wasn't paying a ton of attention to how we actually got there; my attention was fixed more on how cold it was, not slipping on the ice, and trying to hear what Sergei was saying because he's very soft-spoken.
Corinne and I checked the trolley routes and learned that trolleybus number 10 or 11 would take us where we needed to go. So we waited at the trolley stop, crammed ourselves into the first number 11 that showed up (along with what seemed like a hundred other people), paid our 21p and held on for dear life because this driver's got a schedule to keep, people! Shut up and hold on! Eventually Corinne grabbed a seat and, as soon as another one near her opened up, she helped me squeeze through the crowd to take it. I still feel weird about moving through crowds like that. I feel like I'm being rude, but I'm not. It's perfectly acceptable to brush against someone moving past them, without so much as an "excuse me, please." The only time anyone will say something to you is if there isn't enough room on either side of you to squeeze past. I mean, I'm sure there are probably some people I've encountered--especially at rush hour on the metro--who are being rude, perhaps pushing past others too brusquely, but for the most part navigating in crowds here does not require nearly the level of song and dance that it does in America.
Anyway, the Hermitage! My God, it's massive. It actually consists of several buildings connected to one another, and they are all beautiful. Most of the information we received from Yulia, Sergei's friend, was about the palace itself. The building that you will see photos of if you Google Image Search "Hermitage" or "Эрмитажа" used to be the Winter Palace, commissioned by Peter the Great. It's a striking shade of teal with white details and a whole bunch of columns. One entrance's columns consist of about a dozen huge granite Atlas-like men holding the roof over their heads. Corinne took a number of photos; if I can get them from her later, I'll post a few. Or link to her blog, if she uploads the photos there. (Aside: Speaking of Corinne's blog, she posted a photo tour of our apartment there and gave me permission to link to it so my friends and family could see where I live. Here's the link.)
Right now, the Hermitage has an exhibition called "Lomonosov in the time of Elizabeth," referring of course to the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Mikhail Lomonosov was a polymath and writer alive during Elizabeth's reign, so the exhibit is a delightful mix of drawings and portraits of the Empress and 18th-century scientific equipment. As I said, though, most of the things Yulia told us about had to do with the histories of the buildings themselves and not the art housed within them. There were a couple of reception halls; the main reception hall was all gilded with an impressive gold colonnade, and the throne room or St. George room was nearly identical, except it had very stately white marble instead of so much gold. The design on the ceiling mirrored the floor inlay, made of something like 25 different types of wood, except for one key detail: where, in the ceiling decoration, there appeared a two-headed eagle, no such symbol was to be found on the floor, because that would be stepping on the Russian empire.
Attached to the Winter Palace was a smaller building that Catherine the Great had built so that she could invite her friends over and have a more private, more personal alternative to the play-acting necessary in her court. She had a list of rules engraved on a plaque (e.g., visitors must speak only Russian, no swearing, no drunkenness, etc), and any guest who broke a rule would have to immediately drink a glass of water and recite part of a very long, very complex poem, the title of which eludes me at the moment. I thought the story was funny, but then, I haven't seen this ultra-complex poem.
There is a corridor connecting the Small Hermitage (the building I mentioned in the previous paragraph) to the New Hermitage (commissioned by Catherine specifically as a public museum, unlike the rest of the complex). This corridor is full of art. The walls are covered in little pictures of people doing things, animals being silly, etc, and the pattern never repeats itself. It looks like it does, but in fact each image is unique. It's a series of arches, and on the ceiling between each arch are four panels depicting scenes from the Bible. One end of the hall begins with creation, and it progresses from there. There is so much going on in this corridor that it would take years to see everything. It's like a microcosm of the entire Hermitage, because the whole thing is like that. Catherine was a voracious art collector, and she bought entire collections as opposed to individual paintings. Knowing that, and seeing the sheer quantity of stuff that the Hermitage houses, makes it all the more impressive to know that the palace burnt down in the late 1837. A fire started somewhere and spread throughout the house between the walls, which were very thick and had spaces between them. While working on an expansion, at one point they decided to break down the wrong wall, and by then the fire had spread so far that the building couldn't be saved. Most of the things in it, however, could be. Paintings and heavy furniture were carted out and deposited in the snow in Palace Square, and it's said that the fire could be seen for miles. The inside of the building was completely redone, although the facade remained the same.
The tour was very fast, but also very informative; I was really more interested in the history more than the paintings housed within the building, anyway, so I'm glad it wasn't an interminable slog through a hundred rooms while Yulia talked at us about people we had never heard of and didn't care about. We stopped in the cafe afterward to sit and get coffee, and ended up staying so long that they actually had to kick us out because the cafe was closing. So we retrieved our coats and left.
I actually ended up writing this post over two days, because I forgot I was working on it yesterday. xD But nothing much more happened last night. I ate too many of these frozen pelmeni that I bought and cooked, but that discomfort was temporary and the story is not at all exciting. Tomorrow is National Women's Day; Corinne wants to go explore in town and see the festivities. I don't know if I'm gonna go with. Probably, but at the same time, I have a lot of important sleeping to do. And work. I do have work to do.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Chapter the Fourth: Spring? Spring!
Following last Sunday's ironic Maslenitsa snow, the weather calmed down considerably. Friday morning, for instance, it was raining, and I was excited. That meant that the temperature was finally above zero outside, or, because Fahrenheit sounds less cold: the temperature was probably like, 35! Maybe even 36! Warm enough that the snow was melting into rain well above street level, anyway. The day was uneventful; that afternoon, Corinne and I decided to go shopping, because we both were in need of some new footwear if the temperature was going to continue to climb.
We went to the Galleria, about three blocks from the apartment, because Corinne knew of a shoe store called Centro Обувь. They had some really nice, relatively cheap boots, but I fell in love with a pair that came out to just under US$45. Light tan ankle boots with some adorable little buckle details. I figured they were worth it, because I'll be able to wear them back home when it cools off some in October and November. They fit quite nicely over my ingenious double-sock setup (one pair of the fuzzy green socks I got for Christmas--thanks Bill!--over one pair of regular socks), but they aren't too loose when my feet are less padded. They're super-cute, too! At some point I'll ask Corinne to take some pictures and upload them. I could have spent days in Centro, though, as anyone who has seen me within 100 feet of a shoe store can attest. If putting on shoes weren't such a production here, what with the double layers of socks all being carefully tucked between layers of thermal leggings to keep everything in place, I would have been trying on shoes left and right (pun definitely intended).
We stopped in a few other clothing stores, including one called Be Free, where Corinne bought this adorable brown sweater dress, and saw a dress she'd bought at the same store in Irkutsk, on sale for less than half of what she paid at the time. :( Aww. Well, you win some, you lose some. We also saw some sweaters that Alex and Liz had bought; they're the strangest things, just solid-color knitted wool sweaters with random words on them in a variety of colors. If I recall correctly, the selections were "Black" (black sweater, white letters), "White" (white with black), "Blonde" (light blue with white), "Smart" (salmon-pink with white), "Perfect" (blue with light yellow), and "Cactus" (green with black). Alex has a Black sweater and Liz got a Cactus one. They were like 100p each; we'll just have to go back and see if they're on sale, because I want a Smart sweater.
I like seeing merchandise with English writing on it; in one store, they were selling pillows with strange designs on them that incorporated some English words. One pillow had a weird, Adventure-Time-esque happy face and a speech bubble with the words "Am I trendy?" in it; another said something like "Give to me please money on the beer." To be fair, that's basically a direct translation of the same statement in Russian, but that doesn't make it any less funny. I almost wanted to buy it. Almost.
A couple hours after we got home, our roommates arrived, with Elizabeth in tow; apparently they'd already gone out someplace for dinner, and also stopped at a produkty for snacks and booze. Elizabeth's dinner had consisted of a couple of drinks, so she was already rather drunk by the time the group reached our apartment...which is why she thought it was a good idea to buy a one-liter can of beer at the produkty along with her sandwich ingredients. I didn't even know they made one-liter cans of anything before I came here. They are comically large: about 12 inches tall and 4-5 inches across. Elizabeth shared her liter of beer because she really didn't need that much to herself, and it made the ensuing game a lot more interesting.
I Googled around a bit but I couldn't find a name for that game where everyone writes down a famous person's name on a card and sticks it to someone else's forehead, and then you have to guess who you are. Head Bands? Celebrity Heads? Whatever, that game, you know it. They played it in Inglourious Basterds. And we played it in our kitchen, with Elizabeth (and one of Jorge's friends, but he came later). It was only a drinking game in the sense that most of the players happened to be imbibing alcohol at the time; we didn't institute formal rules like "drink if you guess wrong" or whatever. We played three rounds; I was Anna Karenina, Amelia Pond and Sleeping Beauty (although that one was revealed by accident when Corinne blurted it out, so I didn't guess it). The names I wrote down were Batman (for Corinne), Jack Daniels (for Liz) and Salvador Dali (also Liz). I don't remember who wrote them or whose heads they were on, but some of the other names we had were Spiderman, Harriet Tubman, Dracula, Pinocchio, Henry VIII and Beowulf. So, yeah, it was an interesting game, especially watching the more intoxicated players try to keep track of the clues they'd received. Many laughs were had by all, and afterward everyone else went out somewhere. I went to bed; they all came back at around 4:30, and Elizabeth spent the night with us because the metros were closed and she was too drunk to walk home alone.
This afternoon, when everyone woke up, Liz and Corinne spent some time planning and booking things for this Baltic spring break trip they'd been talking about for a while. Elizabeth and I are also going. :) I'm excited; we're going to a music festival in Estonia for 2-3 days, then kicking around Latvia and Lithuania for the next week-ish, bringing our total trip to about 9 days. We'll all have our passports and shiny new extended multi-entry visas by the week after next, and the trip is at the end of March; I think it's the 28th/29th through April 7th-ish. We're traveling by bus and staying in some really nice-looking hostels. I haven't decided if I'm going to bring my laptop; probably not, though, because most of the hostels have computers available for general use. And it's not like the apartment will be empty for those nine days; Jorge and Alex aren't coming with us, so they'll be there. The only problem I'll potentially run into then is keeping my iPod charged, because all I have is a USB cord, but even then, Corinne's iPod charge cord might fit my iPod (I dunno how old her iPod is).
The total cost for this trip looks like it's gonna be probably close to US$550, including bus/music festival tickets ($121/$45), hostel fees ($300 total), and food (~$90). With any luck, my Stetson refund check will be processed soon and I'll have a considerable chunk of change dropped into my account. I've already set aside $466 in my savings account, so I know that I'll at least be able to pay Liz for the bus tickets/hostel booking fees, Corinne for the festival tickets and the hostel for my bed. I'm not hurting for money right now, or anything, but with a $5 non-Wells Fargo ATM fee on top of however much I withdraw, each time I withdraw some cash (usually around $70, but the exact amount fluctuates with the exchange rate), I know I need to stay on top of my spending. $5 adds up over time.
We went to the Galleria, about three blocks from the apartment, because Corinne knew of a shoe store called Centro Обувь. They had some really nice, relatively cheap boots, but I fell in love with a pair that came out to just under US$45. Light tan ankle boots with some adorable little buckle details. I figured they were worth it, because I'll be able to wear them back home when it cools off some in October and November. They fit quite nicely over my ingenious double-sock setup (one pair of the fuzzy green socks I got for Christmas--thanks Bill!--over one pair of regular socks), but they aren't too loose when my feet are less padded. They're super-cute, too! At some point I'll ask Corinne to take some pictures and upload them. I could have spent days in Centro, though, as anyone who has seen me within 100 feet of a shoe store can attest. If putting on shoes weren't such a production here, what with the double layers of socks all being carefully tucked between layers of thermal leggings to keep everything in place, I would have been trying on shoes left and right (pun definitely intended).
We stopped in a few other clothing stores, including one called Be Free, where Corinne bought this adorable brown sweater dress, and saw a dress she'd bought at the same store in Irkutsk, on sale for less than half of what she paid at the time. :( Aww. Well, you win some, you lose some. We also saw some sweaters that Alex and Liz had bought; they're the strangest things, just solid-color knitted wool sweaters with random words on them in a variety of colors. If I recall correctly, the selections were "Black" (black sweater, white letters), "White" (white with black), "Blonde" (light blue with white), "Smart" (salmon-pink with white), "Perfect" (blue with light yellow), and "Cactus" (green with black). Alex has a Black sweater and Liz got a Cactus one. They were like 100p each; we'll just have to go back and see if they're on sale, because I want a Smart sweater.
I like seeing merchandise with English writing on it; in one store, they were selling pillows with strange designs on them that incorporated some English words. One pillow had a weird, Adventure-Time-esque happy face and a speech bubble with the words "Am I trendy?" in it; another said something like "Give to me please money on the beer." To be fair, that's basically a direct translation of the same statement in Russian, but that doesn't make it any less funny. I almost wanted to buy it. Almost.
A couple hours after we got home, our roommates arrived, with Elizabeth in tow; apparently they'd already gone out someplace for dinner, and also stopped at a produkty for snacks and booze. Elizabeth's dinner had consisted of a couple of drinks, so she was already rather drunk by the time the group reached our apartment...which is why she thought it was a good idea to buy a one-liter can of beer at the produkty along with her sandwich ingredients. I didn't even know they made one-liter cans of anything before I came here. They are comically large: about 12 inches tall and 4-5 inches across. Elizabeth shared her liter of beer because she really didn't need that much to herself, and it made the ensuing game a lot more interesting.
I Googled around a bit but I couldn't find a name for that game where everyone writes down a famous person's name on a card and sticks it to someone else's forehead, and then you have to guess who you are. Head Bands? Celebrity Heads? Whatever, that game, you know it. They played it in Inglourious Basterds. And we played it in our kitchen, with Elizabeth (and one of Jorge's friends, but he came later). It was only a drinking game in the sense that most of the players happened to be imbibing alcohol at the time; we didn't institute formal rules like "drink if you guess wrong" or whatever. We played three rounds; I was Anna Karenina, Amelia Pond and Sleeping Beauty (although that one was revealed by accident when Corinne blurted it out, so I didn't guess it). The names I wrote down were Batman (for Corinne), Jack Daniels (for Liz) and Salvador Dali (also Liz). I don't remember who wrote them or whose heads they were on, but some of the other names we had were Spiderman, Harriet Tubman, Dracula, Pinocchio, Henry VIII and Beowulf. So, yeah, it was an interesting game, especially watching the more intoxicated players try to keep track of the clues they'd received. Many laughs were had by all, and afterward everyone else went out somewhere. I went to bed; they all came back at around 4:30, and Elizabeth spent the night with us because the metros were closed and she was too drunk to walk home alone.
This afternoon, when everyone woke up, Liz and Corinne spent some time planning and booking things for this Baltic spring break trip they'd been talking about for a while. Elizabeth and I are also going. :) I'm excited; we're going to a music festival in Estonia for 2-3 days, then kicking around Latvia and Lithuania for the next week-ish, bringing our total trip to about 9 days. We'll all have our passports and shiny new extended multi-entry visas by the week after next, and the trip is at the end of March; I think it's the 28th/29th through April 7th-ish. We're traveling by bus and staying in some really nice-looking hostels. I haven't decided if I'm going to bring my laptop; probably not, though, because most of the hostels have computers available for general use. And it's not like the apartment will be empty for those nine days; Jorge and Alex aren't coming with us, so they'll be there. The only problem I'll potentially run into then is keeping my iPod charged, because all I have is a USB cord, but even then, Corinne's iPod charge cord might fit my iPod (I dunno how old her iPod is).
The total cost for this trip looks like it's gonna be probably close to US$550, including bus/music festival tickets ($121/$45), hostel fees ($300 total), and food (~$90). With any luck, my Stetson refund check will be processed soon and I'll have a considerable chunk of change dropped into my account. I've already set aside $466 in my savings account, so I know that I'll at least be able to pay Liz for the bus tickets/hostel booking fees, Corinne for the festival tickets and the hostel for my bed. I'm not hurting for money right now, or anything, but with a $5 non-Wells Fargo ATM fee on top of however much I withdraw, each time I withdraw some cash (usually around $70, but the exact amount fluctuates with the exchange rate), I know I need to stay on top of my spending. $5 adds up over time.
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