Белые Ночи

Last night our group took a "White Nights tour", where we were taken to significant parts of town from 11pm-2am. Kerry, our director, is on the left. On the right is Joelle, a woman from France who joined us on our tour and was really fun to talk to. I told her I took French for 2 years a long time ago, and she tried to speak with me in French...thaaat was interesting. In the pink pants and striped shirt is Sara, our roommate from Finland who stayed with us for a month. She left this morning after a long night out, and our new roommate from Switzerland just arrived about an hour ago.

An incredibly fun college-aged girl named Olga led our tour, and also helped me with my Russian - she was great! She gave me her email, and I think we might go out for tea sometime. My camera died halfway through the tour, so some of the cooler pictures are on my disposable red-flash camera. Can't wait to get those developed!

I like the way this one accidentally turned out...

And here's our old & new theme again... stretch Hummers are everywhere, and the Church on Spilled Blood is no exception!

night-time canal, approx. 1-2 am?

from our kitchen window at 3am

this is my city

from the colonnade atop St. Isaac's Cathedral, the best view of St. Petersburg

The trees are in the way, but this is the square where the Bronze Horseman stands, right next to the Neva on the left:

Эрмитаж

This city is constantly juxtaposed with old and new. The beautiful pieces of the past right next to the booming development industry is a most common sight.

love the wire mesh signs

I'm still mastering the phrase 'would you please take a photo of me', so this is my temporary solution.... :)

between rests

Getting a little exhausted after all of the constant travelling every day. I've been spending a bit more time taking it easy instead of trying to see each and every street corner. However, a couple nights ago Joel and I went out on the longest night of the year to watch the sun not set.

This was at about 12:30 am.

This is the Peter & Paul Fortress from across the Neva, at the same time.

This entire week has been 70-80 degrees F, cloudless, beautiful. You'd think it would be the perfect time to run around the city as much as possible, but it's actually been even better for finding little nooks to people-watch and rest my feet.

I've fallen in love with the Vasiliostrovskaya metro station, which is the only other one on our island. Right outside is a pedestrian-only street with good cafes and shopping, and a generally chill attitude. It doesn't feel as hectic as Nevsky or the other busy metro stations, and it's a bit more welcoming. I found a cafe with good coffee (!) and perfect outside seating for people-watching. I really believe Russia has some of the most entertaining people for this activity.

I also bought a copy of The Master and Margarita (in English) and spent some time here reading.

across the water

the Gulf of Finland from Peterhof - Peter's summer playground with fountains galore. This is a huge public park now on the other side of the Gulf from St. Petersburg, about 45 minutes away.

The whole place was swarming with tourists, which wasn't ideal. Whenever I'm at a historical residence or place of personal importance to somebody, I always like to wander around it as if I live there. (The Russian Museum was particularly good for that, because there weren't as many people and many of the rooms were still furnished and decorated like it was when it was lived in.) I couldn't picture this place as private grounds though because (besides Nevsky Prospect) it was easily the most crowded place I've been.

I did find a few areas on the edges that were lovely and less occupied, and enjoyed the gorgeous weather.

This is my favorite wall I've found. The color is so rich, and so time worn in the best way possible.

ohh look at those colors. mmm.

don kixot

A couple weeks ago I saw Don Quixote at the Mariinsky Theater - breathtaking!!!

They were a GREAT leading couple - she had so much energy and made the stage shine

And this guy stole my heart - he was one of the most charismatic dancers I've seen. He could also leap like 6 feet straight into the air.

In the main lobby they had this miniature version of the theater. Even the ceiling was painted like the real one!

It was incredible to see a ballet in a city that's known for it. I was supposed to see Sleeping Beauty this coming Sunday, but we scheduled a trip to Novgorod (first city in Russia) instead. I guess it's an okay trade-off, but the ballet here is absolutely magical.

peter the green

For such a rapidly growing metropolis of a city, St. Petersburg really retains its charm with extensive green space scattered liberally between the exhaust-filled streets.

This weekend I went with Joel and his friend Jordan (who's been studying/working here since March) to the "Central Park of Culture and Relaxation" which is a separate island accessible only to pedestrians. We spent a great afternoon walking between the many rollerbladers and baby strollers, feeling as if were were miles away from the city. Really only a short metro ride.

The next day I continued my outdoor theme (you simply cannot spend a sunny day here inside, as they're so rare) and headed to the State Botanical Gardens. It's really just a huuuge overgrown park with great paths for wandering and purposely getting lost. This little path leads up to a hidden gazebo which overlooks a quiet pond.

I wrote my postcards (I hope you all get them) on a bench which I shared with this couple. They must have spent over an hour here, chatting some, enjoying each other's company, eating lunch, and with plenty of liquor for them both...

I'd like to be this content when I'm their age.

My favorite part of the Gardens:

Some run-down building which only held fallen walls and rubble open to the sky. The paths around it hadn't been used in ages, and I felt as if I had stepped back in time. The color painted on the stone had aged beautifully. Wish I could have stayed for much longer.

I can see why this city is home to nearly 5 million people. Even if the majority of the population lives in extremely small apartments (by American standards), there are plenty of ways to keep your fresh air quota at a reasonable level.

detail-oriented.

on the walk home from the Botanical Gardens, happened upon this great clock! Have seen a few around the city since, I love them.

At the Borey Gallery. Great basement space a block off of Nevsky with the most intriguing art & architecture book shop - my main reason for visiting. Will go back again when I have the willpower to tote a bag of books home on the metro...

in the entrance hallway to the gallery

let's eat. maybe.

Food is definitely proving to be the biggest adventure and challenge for me in Russia (as I expected). Meat and milk are the biggest part of any diet or menu here, and vegetables are rarely seen as more than a "garnish". Fortunately, I've found some luck here and there with good restaurants and I've tried to get creative with my grocery shopping - where there are entire aisles devoted to crackers, bread, alcohol, chocolate, and tea. Not exactly the easiest to build a good meal from.

For our first group dinner last week we went to a Dagestani restaurant, which is in South Russia - I think someone said it was near the Chechen border? Close to Georgia and those countries. We were going for Georgian food but the metro stop was closed near the restaurant we had planned on.

I got a carrot/garlic salad which was literally a bowl full of carrots, dressing, and garlic. But it was easily one of my favorite dishes so far. delicious!

I ordered chubu (I don't know how to spell it in english?) for my main dish, which is a specialty of the area. It's a huge flat piece of thin dough stuffed with different fillings - their options were meat, pumpkin, and potato with tvorog. Tvorog is this cottage cheese/cream cheese sort of creation that's popular in many foods. As a meal though, the chubu was pretty unsatisfying. I felt like I had eaten a bunch of greasy, cheesy bread. Which I did. I wouldn't recommend it.

I found this cafe (Zerno Istiny) which had free wi-fi and a pretty good veggie menu, but it's too far away to become a regular there. I had some great miso soup and a veggie roll - Japanese cuisine is so incredibly popular here, that many restaurants have added a separate Japanese menu to the back of theirs. Kind of weird when you're in a Russian cafe, Italian restaurant, etc. But it's totally the norm. You can get sushi ANYWHERE.

Also fun: canned cocktails. I've have gin&tonic in a can, which is surprisingly good. Just stay away from the fruity ones, you can feel the headache with just a whiff of it. I'm still looking for canned champagne, which I hear you can get anywhere...

ahhh, hummus. can't go wrong.

And the biggest success in my Russian cuisine thus far (and probably will remain the most important discovery): BOTANICA.

A completely vegetarian restaurant with such a huge menu (which is also available in English, for when my brain is too tired) I wanted to cry I was so happy. Not to mention they have a deck in the cutest little square, and they provide you with blankets when it's chilly. (!)

Asian stir-fry! A dish with tofu that DOESN'T have meat! (At a Chinese restaurant we tried, I found a tofu dish but it also had pork?)

It was a little heavy on the sauce, but was honestly the best meal I can remember. fresh, flavorful, and a combination of ingredients that is so unbeatable. and so impossible to find here.

Joel had ratatouille - all vegetables, only vegetables, as a MAIN DISH! unthinkable.

Today I went to the huge Russian version of Wal-Mart or Costco, called O'Kei (how they spell OK) because my conversation teacher told me I could find peanut butter and soy milk there. Found peanut butter, but still no soy milk. There are 3 other locations of O'Kei, and I will scour all of them until I find it! This is such a mission now, I just can't give up.

We have a 3-day weekend because tomorrow is Den Rossii - Russia Day! No one is really sure how people celebrate it. It's still a pretty young holiday, and I don't think it's become full of tradition or any specific form of celebration. But we don't have class, and I hope it's as beautiful as today. The sun finally showed up! I'm planning on the Hermitage on Saturday (yeeeessssss!!!) and Hannah and I have tickets for Don Quixote at the Mariinksi Theater on Sunday evening. I can't wait to see the ballet, I haven't been in years - and what better place to attend than in St. Petersburg???

some observations

soy milk is impossible to find

(although my newspaper teacher told me that it IS around...you just have to hunt. and he doesn't know where it is or how long my hunt will take. but the hunt is on.)

nobody smiles

(extremely difficult to deal with having grown up in the midwest)

women wear 4-inch heels ALL the time. no exceptions.

parking in Russia is more a state of mind than a rule-abiding activity

(look for a photo post about this soon...)

it rains more than I think it does in London

it is required to walk at least 2 hours per day

peanut butter is in the same family as soy milk: unpopular and practically nonexistent

restaurant service is averagely awful

coffee from crystals is terribly popular

food is cheap but anything else is ridiculously overpriced

most storefronts always look closed, and windows are covered 90% of the time

people drive fast and pedestrians are disposable

there aren't nearly as many obviously drunk people as one might assume

...but there ARE plenty of stray dogs, and a few cats. On the way to our metro I've seen a pack of 6 stray dogs a couple times.

Kazan kittens! A whole family of kitties next to the Kazan Cathedral. Their mom was hanging out a few feet away while they played.

All in all, I've been pleasantly surprised by some things and disappointed with others. A typical experience in a new country. One week down, five to go - it can only go up! once the sun comes out and I find some soy milk...

пушкинская 10

click the title to see where I went today :)

First I spent the afternoon in the Russian Museum, wandering through the palace of some noble of time past, and marveling at the ceilings as well as the renowned Russian art.

I ate lunch in a fabulous Indonesian restaurant behind the Kazan Cathedral.

But then I went to a place that was almost more incredible than the both of those. Pushinskaya 10 (which is both the address and the name of the building) is like a mecca for contemporary art in Russia, and has become an amazing gallery/studio/club space. I went exploring and the building is basically like the Crossroads District in KC, but more dynamic and MUCH more student artist/less commercial. All of the art was so approachable. Here's the entrance to the stairs which take you up to 6 floors of galleries and studios.

My favorite gallery held an exhibit by a single artist. All of his paintings were on cardboard, and most were so beautifully rich and detailed, but there was still such a sense of street life and roughness to them. On the floor was a masking-tape map which had corresponding numbers for each painting, showing where the location of each was. love it.

I was afraid to use flash and mark myself as a total tourist, so my photos of the work didn't come out so well. Luckily, I found one of my favorites on the website.

The galleries were pretty quiet (I think I was on the 4th floor?) but I could hear more people upstairs on the 6th. I went up and found the Art-Liga gallery, one of the better-known galleries of the building. Happened to walk into the opening of the exhibit, with the artist there and plenty of champagne and gin to go around. Lovely! Wish I could have spoken to the artist, but I seriously don't have the vocab to discuss art...

The pieces were all simple black/white/red collages made from treated newspaper confetti. The first image above is a detail shot. They were so minimal, but intriguing.

I still can't believe I found myself at an art opening by accident. I looked at the program and there's another one on the 27th, I can't wait :)

getting my feet wet

The past two days have been horribly cold, windy, and rainy. I realized too late that 4 pairs of shoes is just not enough - especially when none of them are waterproof. The children's uniform throughout the city today has been raincoat, rainpants, and wellies. I have not seen one kid without it. On the walk back from the metro, one little tyke was running through the neighborhood pathway jumping in puddles and yelling whatever it is that russian kids yell. An older boy started to puddlejump with him, but his mother called him back. Even though I was uncomfortably windblown and cold and not sure how to spend my time in this weather, it made me feel more at home to see such an adorable, everyday scene.

Today at the institute we had two back-to-back "grammatika" classes. We have three classes a day (two on Wed & Fri), 1.5 hours each. So I had 3 hours straight of Russian grammar. I definitely did not realize what I was getting myself into with this program! Every Thursday we'll have 2 grammar classes - which consists of endless worksheets, providing answers out loud, and occasionally some entertaining antecdotes from Marina Oleevna. She's really a great teacher, and speaks English very well - so when needed, she can give us the meaning of words we don't know. Today she commented that we were all very tired (true, it was the first night I stayed up past 11pm) and went on to explain why SHE was tired as well. She spent a good ten minutes telling us in the most entertaining Russian/English-mixed way that she took a sleeping pill last night but didn't take it early enough, and she was struggling to stay awake this morning. The only reason she didn't fall asleep on the metro is because a girl with very curly hair stood in front of her, so if she began to nod off and let her head fall forward, the girl's hair would wake her up! It makes class a lot more fun when your teacher is a good story teller.

Our other classes should be rather painless as well - we have phonetics, which is a lot of repeating words until we get the awkward vowels right. Reading/literature is with a fun young teacher who gauges our comprehension level well. We haven't had gazeta (newspaper) class yet, but I assume it's reading the newspaper and talking about current events. Conversation is the most practical, which addresses everyday language problems we might have throughout the city in the metro, at restaurants, in shops, etc. And finally we have a Russian film class, which is a nice break. Right now we're watching Piter FM, which I spent all last semester studying in my Russian class, so I've got a bit of a head start.

All in all, it's going to be an excellent summer. I haven't even been here a full week yet, but there's so much to do and to think about and to see that it feels like I've been here for much longer. I've pretty much settled in and figured out how to spend my time, and I cannot wait for this weekend! We get out early on Fridays (1 instead of 3) which gives us much more time to get around the city. We're going as a group to a Georgian restaurant Friday night, which is supposed to be amazing cuisine. We don't have Georgian anywhere near home. After that I hope to check out a show or a club, there are lots of things going on on a Friday night. Then I'm going to see either Romeo and Juliet or Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theater! I hope to begin my exploration of the Hermitage Saturday afternoon.

But for now, I'm headed off to the Dvortsovaya Ploshad (Palace Square) to see a free Duran Duran show right outside of the Hermitage. I don't care how cold it is, who could give up the opportunity to see Duran Duran in the same proximity as one of the greatest art museums in the world??

университет - Смольный Институт

here is my school life.

oh you know, this is just the walk to the metro after class. through Tavrisheski park.

hallway of my classroom

THIS IS WHERE I GO TO SCHOOL. pause.

and here's my lovely little classroom. a little old fashioned perhaps, but it has its charm...especially the grated window.