So, Reading Public, I watched some TV this evening, and I am now able to answer several of the questions that have been plaguing us all.
Q: From what country is the world’s most productive individual milk cow? What other major world power is also very proud of ITS milk cows, thank you very much? What determines how much milk a cow gives?
A: The big list of the top 16 world milk cows came out recently, it seems. Somewhere in Russia, there is a wall covered with large portraits of these bovine beauties, with their names written beneath. At the moment of coverage by some Russian news agency, many Russian “cow collective” administrators stood about cow-covered wall and discussed with pride the milk-producing prowess of ... some Russian cow whose name I did not note but who made the list and who was later extensively filmed in her natural huge-metal-filled-cow-barn environment. But this cow did not occupy first place. The most milk-producing of all cows, in all the world, is a resident of... The United State of America. How about that. Oh, and as for the last part of the question, according to some Russian dairy worker interviewed, milk-productivity is determined by “attitude.”
Q: What is more annoying that rap music as performed by Whoopi Goldberg?
A: Russian dubbing of said rap.
Q: What is much more entertaining that American informericals?
A: American infomercials dubbed into Russian. They have to sound cheery and enthusiastic and stuff, and it sounds incredibly unnatural and forced. I know a lot about the 9-Minute Marinade now, though. It uses the power of the vacuum to get marinade deep down to the inside of the meats and vegetables- everyone will think you soaked the food for several days, but really it all just took nine minutes. They even throw in some handy plastic cutting boards, free.
Q: What is the cause of Russia’s recent demographic crisis, according to the solemn, serious expert on the news show “News”?
A: The population was in a bad mood. You’ll be glad to hear that the situation is improving.
Q: What is totally awesome?
A: The United States has a hockey-with-a-ball team! And they are, even as we speak, playing against Canada in some round of the world championship!
And here is the answer to another question, posed by one of you gentle readers, the answer to which I gleaned not from television sources but from Valentina Petrovna.
Q: In the Russian translation of My Fair Lady, how does Eliza sing about ‘Enry ‘Iggins?
A: In the Russian translation, Elisa has not a colorful accent but a speech defect. Is this sort of lame? I think so. Anyway, I received an account of the sounds that Eliza so amusingly mispronounces, but I don’t remember what they are.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
more ice
I went to a game of Baikal Energia, the Irkutsk hockey team, today. It was pretty dang cool- we got our own, Siberia hockey here, and it does not much resemble the NHL. It reminded me a lot of indoor field hockey, actually, or a cross between that and soccer. The rink is huge, as it is actually just the soccer field with water poured over it; each team plays with 8 players and a goalie; there are no lines painted on the rink to create all those hockey rules I still don’t understand; the goal is big, almost the size of a soccer goal; the sticks are the size of field hockey ones; they play with a ball rather than a puck. What else? There are no walls, just 3-inch barriers around the boundaries that the ball can bounce off of but players obviously cannot; you can’t skate behind the goal; they play out corners like in field hockey, and also corners like in soccer (I actually forgot what those are called in field hockey, when the ball is passed in from the corner of the pitch); I don’t think you can check; the ball was in the air a lot and could be played in the air, which was cool looking; the flow of the game and even the stick-handling just reminded me a lot of indoor field hockey. EXCEPT: IT WAS NOT INDOORS. Seriously, whose idea was it to have a hockey league in SIBERIA IN JANUARY that would play in outdoor stadiums, hours after the sun has gone down? My toes and fingers are still sore. There were a lot of people there though: they’re a tough bunch, these Siberians. There were also a very large number of police officers, maybe one for every 10 people. I didn’t know Irkutsk had so many police officers. They had bullet-proof vests. That is some hardcore hockey. Ok, I can feel Abby’s scorn for this hockey-with-a-ball coming in waves from across the Atlantic, especially after I compared it to field hockey. But... we have a skating nerpa! His costume is just a white tube over his head with a face painted on, but he’s so cute! You can’t hate us, when our mascot has those big melting eyes and is in need of protection from global warming and poaching!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Not very interesting post, but very cheery and stuff
I think I now take my life in Irkutsk pretty much for granted. I rarely have an urge to rush home and write up blog posts for you people about the hilarious thing I saw on the marshrutka. It all seems pretty normal. This should not be misinterpreted as “comfortable” or “a social system in which I have a place, or can even communicate with people on more than a basic level, due more to cultural than linguistic divides.” Still, though, it’s not only that I am accustomed to my Irkustk life; I do rather love my adopted “historic if vaguely seedy Irktusk,” as Lonely Planet says. Actually I think it’s the seediness that makes affection possible. In any case, as Mary Chapin Carpenter teaches us: you can shoot straight in the dark, but you can’t take love for granted. So instead of complaining about the everyday annoyances of my recent life, as is my wont, I will try to wrest especially beloved aspects of Irkutsk from the realm of the taken-for-granted and list them here.
1) The interior of the Philormonia (Philharmonic hall?)
2) The little colorful plastic ice-sleds of small children, just little flat circle of brightly-colored plastic, and how they carry them about the city and just sled down the ice-covered cement every time there’s an incline
3) When parents pull their children around in more substantial sleds
4) The caramelized evaporated milk that is now sitting in a can in the kitchen, and of which I ate vast quantities at both lunch and dinner
5) When drivers and passengers of marshrutkas engage in yelling arguments about whether the passengers yelled loud enough for the driver to stop
6) 7 ruble ice cream, especially the kind that doesn’t come in a plastic wrapper but just arrives at the kiosk or tiny magazine in a big crate of already-filled cones; especially the brand Angaria
7) people selling plastic bags on the street
8) The occasional person on the street who gives you directions to where you want to go in a pleasant tone, instead of pretending not to know where that place is located and rushing off. Particularly this one woman with gold teeth and fur coat who told me where the post office I was looking for was last week.
9) Fur hats, in all their variety
10) How the Chinese venders sometimes don’t know I’m not a Russian
11) Riding shotgun in marshrutkas
12) The hats, and also the long, green wool coats, of the students in the police academy
13) Handsome wooden houses, especially the ones on Marat street
14) The view behind Everything Will Be OK hypermarket; this view consists largely of high-rises, so I’m not sure why it’s so pretty, but it is, especially combined with:
15) Fog in the morning from the Angara
16) Tapochki (slippers) and their place in culture
17) Seeing eminently-respectable, fur-coated middle-aged women emerging from hideous, aging cement apartment buildings that we would consider ghettos
18) Babushkas sprinting after marshrutkas; well not after them in the sense that they are leaving: the marshrutkas are slowing to a stop, and the babushkas (along with everyone else) want to get to them first and get a seat
19) The little woman who distributes our mail and cleans the blackboards in our classrooms and the rest of the day sits at a desk in the department office looking very stern and being very nice. Mainly it’s her supercilious nod that I like. Maybe one day I will learn her name.
20) Pozi and their juice; pilmyeni; 12 ruble loaves of fresh black bread from bread kiosks; Cartons of fresh, drinkable yoghurt; Tea with whole milk; Mayonnaise made in the “Irkutsk oil-fat factor”- best mayonnaise in Russia, I’ve been told several times; ginger pryaniki (large soft cookie-things); pine nuts; raspberry preserves; in general every food item is a bigger deal, since there is such a small number of them, in terms of variety.
21) the path from my apartment to the university building, which runs alongside a grove of birch and always has picturesquely-frozen or snow-covered reeds and things
22) The reading room of the University Library, with windows looking out over the river, even if its use is rather limited by that fact that the library has practically no books
23) The fact that people buy underwear from street peddlers. Also the very odd male-unitard undergarments that I saw being sold today. Ok, maybe that’s not really on my list of things I love about Irkutsk, it’s just funny.
24) Ice slides and ice sculptures
25) The very seedy-looking Hotel Angara and its dominance of the main square
26) The city/ oblast flag, depicting the non-existent animal the ‘babr’ with a dead sable in its mouth
27) Cement apartment buildings at night, with the windows lit. Clean, modern-looking buildings would not have the same charm.
28) How you can get on an electric train and travel hours away from the city, into the taiga, for less than a dollar
29) glossy mink jackets on men; I’m not sure why I find this more acceptable than fur coats on women
30) The maritime-themed cafe at the marshrutka stop: the horribleness of this establishment, from the rudeness of the waitresses, to the slowness of the service, to the badness of the food, to the cheesiness of the decorations, to the awful music blaring from the wall reaches such an amazing level that it is impossible not to return, weekly, just to make sure it’s just as horrible as it was
31) singing songs from My Fair Lady with Valentina Petrovna
32) the fact that there are buckets of frozen shredded cabbage and carrot on our sitting on our balcony; mainly due to my memory of the shredding process
33) The white, square radio with round speaker in the middle hanging on the kitchen wall; how it only gets one station and has no on/off switch
34) The big salmon-colored building with the round turret on the corner of Karl Marx and Lenin streets; there was a picture of this building in one of our Siberian History textbooks, but I never figured out why it was important. Also the two odd, hermaphroditic-looking neoclassical statues sticking off of one of its walls. Incidentally, I wonder if I will remember, when I get back to America, that English sentences should have verbs.
1) The interior of the Philormonia (Philharmonic hall?)
2) The little colorful plastic ice-sleds of small children, just little flat circle of brightly-colored plastic, and how they carry them about the city and just sled down the ice-covered cement every time there’s an incline
3) When parents pull their children around in more substantial sleds
4) The caramelized evaporated milk that is now sitting in a can in the kitchen, and of which I ate vast quantities at both lunch and dinner
5) When drivers and passengers of marshrutkas engage in yelling arguments about whether the passengers yelled loud enough for the driver to stop
6) 7 ruble ice cream, especially the kind that doesn’t come in a plastic wrapper but just arrives at the kiosk or tiny magazine in a big crate of already-filled cones; especially the brand Angaria
7) people selling plastic bags on the street
8) The occasional person on the street who gives you directions to where you want to go in a pleasant tone, instead of pretending not to know where that place is located and rushing off. Particularly this one woman with gold teeth and fur coat who told me where the post office I was looking for was last week.
9) Fur hats, in all their variety
10) How the Chinese venders sometimes don’t know I’m not a Russian
11) Riding shotgun in marshrutkas
12) The hats, and also the long, green wool coats, of the students in the police academy
13) Handsome wooden houses, especially the ones on Marat street
14) The view behind Everything Will Be OK hypermarket; this view consists largely of high-rises, so I’m not sure why it’s so pretty, but it is, especially combined with:
15) Fog in the morning from the Angara
16) Tapochki (slippers) and their place in culture
17) Seeing eminently-respectable, fur-coated middle-aged women emerging from hideous, aging cement apartment buildings that we would consider ghettos
18) Babushkas sprinting after marshrutkas; well not after them in the sense that they are leaving: the marshrutkas are slowing to a stop, and the babushkas (along with everyone else) want to get to them first and get a seat
19) The little woman who distributes our mail and cleans the blackboards in our classrooms and the rest of the day sits at a desk in the department office looking very stern and being very nice. Mainly it’s her supercilious nod that I like. Maybe one day I will learn her name.
20) Pozi and their juice; pilmyeni; 12 ruble loaves of fresh black bread from bread kiosks; Cartons of fresh, drinkable yoghurt; Tea with whole milk; Mayonnaise made in the “Irkutsk oil-fat factor”- best mayonnaise in Russia, I’ve been told several times; ginger pryaniki (large soft cookie-things); pine nuts; raspberry preserves; in general every food item is a bigger deal, since there is such a small number of them, in terms of variety.
21) the path from my apartment to the university building, which runs alongside a grove of birch and always has picturesquely-frozen or snow-covered reeds and things
22) The reading room of the University Library, with windows looking out over the river, even if its use is rather limited by that fact that the library has practically no books
23) The fact that people buy underwear from street peddlers. Also the very odd male-unitard undergarments that I saw being sold today. Ok, maybe that’s not really on my list of things I love about Irkutsk, it’s just funny.
24) Ice slides and ice sculptures
25) The very seedy-looking Hotel Angara and its dominance of the main square
26) The city/ oblast flag, depicting the non-existent animal the ‘babr’ with a dead sable in its mouth
27) Cement apartment buildings at night, with the windows lit. Clean, modern-looking buildings would not have the same charm.
28) How you can get on an electric train and travel hours away from the city, into the taiga, for less than a dollar
29) glossy mink jackets on men; I’m not sure why I find this more acceptable than fur coats on women
30) The maritime-themed cafe at the marshrutka stop: the horribleness of this establishment, from the rudeness of the waitresses, to the slowness of the service, to the badness of the food, to the cheesiness of the decorations, to the awful music blaring from the wall reaches such an amazing level that it is impossible not to return, weekly, just to make sure it’s just as horrible as it was
31) singing songs from My Fair Lady with Valentina Petrovna
32) the fact that there are buckets of frozen shredded cabbage and carrot on our sitting on our balcony; mainly due to my memory of the shredding process
33) The white, square radio with round speaker in the middle hanging on the kitchen wall; how it only gets one station and has no on/off switch
34) The big salmon-colored building with the round turret on the corner of Karl Marx and Lenin streets; there was a picture of this building in one of our Siberian History textbooks, but I never figured out why it was important. Also the two odd, hermaphroditic-looking neoclassical statues sticking off of one of its walls. Incidentally, I wonder if I will remember, when I get back to America, that English sentences should have verbs.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Лед
I usually hate it when Irkutsk-ites (Irkutskians? Irkutskers?) act like Baikal is the same as the ocean. Because it’s not. It doesn’t have the same feeling of endlessness at all, where you are seeing the same body of water in Maine and in Florida and for that matter in Africa, should one be there. And it doesn’t smell like salt. But maybe it is more like the ocean than I indignantly internally protest, or I think of it as like the ocean more than I think I do. Because my shock at it being turned into a huge expanse of ice was sort of close to what I imagine it would be like to go out the door of one’s Outer Banks beach rental and find that the ocean had totally frozen. And if people were driving large motor vehicles on top of it. And if you could just go walk around on top of it, and if people who had never seen the Atlantic didn’t quite believe you that the big snow-covered plain they were looking at was not just land. Man, it was so crazy.
Abby and I were at Olkhon a few days ago. You faithful readers may remember that I was there in the fall. At that point it was surrounded by a liquid lake, and there were sandy beaches with waves breaking on them, and there were yellow larch forests. Not so now.
I would subject you all to rapturous accounts of the surrounding beauty, but I think I’ll just wait till I can post pictures. But I won’t be posting the pictures taken of me on the first afternoon on the island, as I bear a disturbing resemblance to an escaped inmate of a psychiatric prison. The chief factors in the creation of this resemblance are 1) the feathers flying out of the sleeve of my sleeping-bag-like coat, torn open by a crazy dog named Foox; 2) The frozen blood on my coat and face, from a bloody nose caused by the extreme cold and having resisted the hasty scarf-clean-up-efforts of myself and Abby; 3) the general look of frantic concern of my face and the hunted haunch of my shoulders, left over from the frantic efforts of the past ten minutes to hide my blood-covered self from the fast-approaching hip young Muscovite professionals, the owners of Foox, who were staying with us in our hotel. Plus my hands were very freezing from being covered in frozen blood. And I had the unsettling knowledge of my blood-covered scarf hidden within my coat. Man, this paragraph is gross. But it was very hilarious at the time. If you pay me $10 I’ll show you a picture sometime.
We could hear the ice forming, sometimes. It was sometimes like sound-effects in arcade games. And sometimes like we were just hearing the upper register of some deep, slow, mournful complaint voiced far below the earth. One night, especially, we stood on big blocks of ice by a previously-sandy beach and listened to the ice forming almost beneath us. It was sort of scary.
The next morning I went for a walk by myself. I climbed as far as I could on the Shaman Rocks (one of the five global energy points for the Buryats, which, as Ivan said the first time we were there, isn’t saying that much considering the rather limited geographical range of that particular ethnic group, but they attract a lot of shamanistic/new-age religious activity anyway), saw a fox run out from a nook in the rocks below, watched the morning light coming over the island and making it to the western shore, where I was. The light hit the sandy beach of the night before very attractively, and I decided to walk there over the ice, saving a lot of trouble from the fault-and-rock-covered shoreline. Far out from the shore, the ice was as smooth as a mirror, and I could see far down into the thickness of it, which was cool. But, as it was after all Baikal, I could see farther than that, all the way down to the bottom of the lake. And that was very, very far down. At that point I got really scared, but I couldn’t get back on shore for a long time, as the banks were just the tall red cliffs that seemed so pretty when I was on top of them rather than beneath them.
Abby and I were at Olkhon a few days ago. You faithful readers may remember that I was there in the fall. At that point it was surrounded by a liquid lake, and there were sandy beaches with waves breaking on them, and there were yellow larch forests. Not so now.
I would subject you all to rapturous accounts of the surrounding beauty, but I think I’ll just wait till I can post pictures. But I won’t be posting the pictures taken of me on the first afternoon on the island, as I bear a disturbing resemblance to an escaped inmate of a psychiatric prison. The chief factors in the creation of this resemblance are 1) the feathers flying out of the sleeve of my sleeping-bag-like coat, torn open by a crazy dog named Foox; 2) The frozen blood on my coat and face, from a bloody nose caused by the extreme cold and having resisted the hasty scarf-clean-up-efforts of myself and Abby; 3) the general look of frantic concern of my face and the hunted haunch of my shoulders, left over from the frantic efforts of the past ten minutes to hide my blood-covered self from the fast-approaching hip young Muscovite professionals, the owners of Foox, who were staying with us in our hotel. Plus my hands were very freezing from being covered in frozen blood. And I had the unsettling knowledge of my blood-covered scarf hidden within my coat. Man, this paragraph is gross. But it was very hilarious at the time. If you pay me $10 I’ll show you a picture sometime.
We could hear the ice forming, sometimes. It was sometimes like sound-effects in arcade games. And sometimes like we were just hearing the upper register of some deep, slow, mournful complaint voiced far below the earth. One night, especially, we stood on big blocks of ice by a previously-sandy beach and listened to the ice forming almost beneath us. It was sort of scary.
The next morning I went for a walk by myself. I climbed as far as I could on the Shaman Rocks (one of the five global energy points for the Buryats, which, as Ivan said the first time we were there, isn’t saying that much considering the rather limited geographical range of that particular ethnic group, but they attract a lot of shamanistic/new-age religious activity anyway), saw a fox run out from a nook in the rocks below, watched the morning light coming over the island and making it to the western shore, where I was. The light hit the sandy beach of the night before very attractively, and I decided to walk there over the ice, saving a lot of trouble from the fault-and-rock-covered shoreline. Far out from the shore, the ice was as smooth as a mirror, and I could see far down into the thickness of it, which was cool. But, as it was after all Baikal, I could see farther than that, all the way down to the bottom of the lake. And that was very, very far down. At that point I got really scared, but I couldn’t get back on shore for a long time, as the banks were just the tall red cliffs that seemed so pretty when I was on top of them rather than beneath them.
Monday, January 14, 2008
And a blog from Irkutsk, where it is sunny and 39 below, Celcius
Trying again with this blog business. Don’t know how to go about it. I think a mere recounting of principle events, arrivals and departures and tourist sights seen and so on, will give very little sense of the experience of the past week. I am convinced that even the pen/keyboard of the most skilled novelist, endowed with all the strength and dexterity and fineness of syntax accumulated by the English language over the centuries, could not explain why the Tea Spoon Blini Cafe at the Moscow Train station in St. Petersburg was such a very, very miserable place at 9:00 Tuesday, Jan. 8, or why the train on which I wrote my last attempt at blogging was such a wonderful one. But if an attempt at literary representation of the week were to be attempted, perhaps it would center around the ever-popular “light and darkness” theme. It would begin, I would say, with Epiphany, the holiday of Light celebrated 8 days ago. I, on this day, was in Helsinki. For a better literary tone, I would have celebrated Epiphany in some more liturgical, high church setting than the Rock Church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. There would be a lot more deep theological insight and more candle carrying and such, and the complete looniness of the skinny little Scottish-accented pastor, crazy African preacher, bizarre congregation of non-native English speakers at an English service, church architecture like a UFO built in 1970s Protestant Church-retreat-center style, all brown and uncut stone and meant to be cozy but actually just sort of dirty looking, loony “praise songs” sung led by swaying loons at microphones, etc., would be passed over. Ecclesiastical looniness or no, the service, in which the theme of light was discussed, including much discussion of the fact that in Finland in winter there is not much light at all, would play a key role. This lack of sunlight in the north of the world will play an important role in the coming narrative.
Abby and I are now trading off in blog writing. And I see that she is doing a very fine job of writing a detailed and entertaining account of our journey, so I feel free to continue talking about nothing. You can all just skip this and click on the link “former compoundmate” or whatever I called that link.
So. Finland was indeed cold, and there were indeed few hours of sunlight, but I remember the sun that there was generally being bright and fully, cheerfully illuminating of the Nordic Walking Amazingness that was occuring. Open Scene 2. Time: 6:30 am Monday morning, Helsinki time. Place: neat, attractive park with paths along lakes. Temperature: fairly crisp, at the time described as freezing cold. Mood: expectant beginning-of-journey feeling, mixed with regret of parting friends. Light: none. Okay no actual scene will be written, just the stage-direction-y bit.
Train ride. Dark for many hours. Finally sort of light, but on crowded bus, little feeling of sunlight. Arrival in Petersburg. About an hour of week light, I think. By 6:00 pm, when our wandering about waiting for our train the next morning was in full swing, Stygian Darkness in full reign. This is very important. It means that by 7:00, as it had been dark pretty much since 4:00, we felt like it was about midnight, and we had been out much of the night already. Long night, impossible to describe. Perhaps the fireworks we saw with Vanya play a symbolic role of some kind. They were nice. Some light shone forth even in the freezing darkness. Petersburg is pretty. Mainly dark and cold though. The main moment, I think, is when we emerged from the metro at about... I don’t know, some hour of the morning at which it should have been light, at which we felt that night should have ended and we should be getting on with the “waiting around in the morning for our train” segment of our lives and finished with the “wandering around St. Petersburg all night” segment. But it was still pitch black. This experience of St. Petersburg, I now realize, was very literarily appropriate. It was just as unpleasant as I imagined from Dostoveyski. Anyway, if the literary development to this point was effective, the horror of this darkness, after our night of life in the shadows, would be clear to you. As we trudged along the dark, icy streets, somewhere around Palace Square, in an alley of souvenir stalls, I slipped on the icy and as my legs shot out from under me they brought Abby down with me. We untangled ourselves, retreated into even darker shadows and laughed rather humorlessly for a few minutes. Then we ventured forth again. Soon after this was our miserable visit to the Teaspoon establishment. We slept through most of the sunlight that day, in seats at the back of our long-awaited train to Moscow. We slept sporadically, the door next to us slamming shut often and letting in cold air and dirty water. We got to Moscow in the dark, crossed the street in an underground walkway to another train station, and set about waiting for our next train, scheduled for departure at 2 am or something, I don’t really remember. There was a lot of cold and damp and sleazy pelmeni restaurant and tea from thin plastic cups and observing the drawn-out-over-several-hours spectacle of one bum being fleeced by another. It was dark. We thought our train didn’t exist. It did. I have already described the amazingness of that train. Also, the daylight portion of our train ride included the sun streaming over snowy fields for a few hours. The boys who played Marble Blast Gold with us later gave us chocolate, and when we got to Kazan they came back to proudly point out the spires of the Kremlin and such. It was very sweet.
So. Back to the light and dark. Such a treatment would perhaps make use of the drastic white of the ancient Kremlin walls. We got to Kazan at 3, and the sun was already setting. Soon these white walls were rising dramatically from a dark, very cold city. And I mean cold. It was 24 below, Celsius, I think. I’m not sure how many times in my life I’ve been more cold than coming down the huge hill from that Kremlin, looking for any open building to go inside. The odd Mordor-like night club with smokestack and underground chambers with glass pyramidical roofs sticking up from the ground would make the cut in the description of the landscape. I spent a lot of our time in Kazan slipping on the ice. At this point in our travels there was a certain abandonment of economy. We ate in a real restaurant- one in which my entree, for which I felt guilty for ordering when more economic options were available, was 4 dollars. Also when we went grocery shopping we bought cheese. Yeah. I don’t know what that has to do with light and darkness. The warmth and light of the “trakter” in which we ate? Our need for material comfort after wandering in the cold, dark world?
At the end of our stay in Kazan occurred a most amazing adventure involving our luggage, a locked train suburban train station, insights into the world of homelessness in southwestern Russia... I don’t really know what to say about it, so I’ll leave it in the realm of the hypothetical author about whose description we are speculating. There were a lot of hours of dark. Then we met Elizabeth and her friends on the platform, we entered the train, and we headed to Siberia at last.
The train was cold. A woman in our compartment bought some dog hair one of the crazy merchants who sneak on the train and sprint down the aisles selling odd things. I have nothing else to say about it. It was very, very cold.
I’m tired of this entry. We were in Novosibirsk. Even colder there, but we weren’t on the street as long. Mainly we hung out in this boring museum, because it was warm there. There was a crazy floral arranging competition. As we were with Elizabeth, there was a lot more order and less craziness occurring. We slept in a hotel and ate in very reputable restaurants. Left Novosibirsk in the middle of the night, on a much warmer train. Spent the morning watching the very, very pretty landscape near Krasnoyarsk. I love Siberia. Then that night was Old New Year and there were obnoxious drunk men and it was awful. Giving the computer to Abby now.
Abby and I are now trading off in blog writing. And I see that she is doing a very fine job of writing a detailed and entertaining account of our journey, so I feel free to continue talking about nothing. You can all just skip this and click on the link “former compoundmate” or whatever I called that link.
So. Finland was indeed cold, and there were indeed few hours of sunlight, but I remember the sun that there was generally being bright and fully, cheerfully illuminating of the Nordic Walking Amazingness that was occuring. Open Scene 2. Time: 6:30 am Monday morning, Helsinki time. Place: neat, attractive park with paths along lakes. Temperature: fairly crisp, at the time described as freezing cold. Mood: expectant beginning-of-journey feeling, mixed with regret of parting friends. Light: none. Okay no actual scene will be written, just the stage-direction-y bit.
Train ride. Dark for many hours. Finally sort of light, but on crowded bus, little feeling of sunlight. Arrival in Petersburg. About an hour of week light, I think. By 6:00 pm, when our wandering about waiting for our train the next morning was in full swing, Stygian Darkness in full reign. This is very important. It means that by 7:00, as it had been dark pretty much since 4:00, we felt like it was about midnight, and we had been out much of the night already. Long night, impossible to describe. Perhaps the fireworks we saw with Vanya play a symbolic role of some kind. They were nice. Some light shone forth even in the freezing darkness. Petersburg is pretty. Mainly dark and cold though. The main moment, I think, is when we emerged from the metro at about... I don’t know, some hour of the morning at which it should have been light, at which we felt that night should have ended and we should be getting on with the “waiting around in the morning for our train” segment of our lives and finished with the “wandering around St. Petersburg all night” segment. But it was still pitch black. This experience of St. Petersburg, I now realize, was very literarily appropriate. It was just as unpleasant as I imagined from Dostoveyski. Anyway, if the literary development to this point was effective, the horror of this darkness, after our night of life in the shadows, would be clear to you. As we trudged along the dark, icy streets, somewhere around Palace Square, in an alley of souvenir stalls, I slipped on the icy and as my legs shot out from under me they brought Abby down with me. We untangled ourselves, retreated into even darker shadows and laughed rather humorlessly for a few minutes. Then we ventured forth again. Soon after this was our miserable visit to the Teaspoon establishment. We slept through most of the sunlight that day, in seats at the back of our long-awaited train to Moscow. We slept sporadically, the door next to us slamming shut often and letting in cold air and dirty water. We got to Moscow in the dark, crossed the street in an underground walkway to another train station, and set about waiting for our next train, scheduled for departure at 2 am or something, I don’t really remember. There was a lot of cold and damp and sleazy pelmeni restaurant and tea from thin plastic cups and observing the drawn-out-over-several-hours spectacle of one bum being fleeced by another. It was dark. We thought our train didn’t exist. It did. I have already described the amazingness of that train. Also, the daylight portion of our train ride included the sun streaming over snowy fields for a few hours. The boys who played Marble Blast Gold with us later gave us chocolate, and when we got to Kazan they came back to proudly point out the spires of the Kremlin and such. It was very sweet.
So. Back to the light and dark. Such a treatment would perhaps make use of the drastic white of the ancient Kremlin walls. We got to Kazan at 3, and the sun was already setting. Soon these white walls were rising dramatically from a dark, very cold city. And I mean cold. It was 24 below, Celsius, I think. I’m not sure how many times in my life I’ve been more cold than coming down the huge hill from that Kremlin, looking for any open building to go inside. The odd Mordor-like night club with smokestack and underground chambers with glass pyramidical roofs sticking up from the ground would make the cut in the description of the landscape. I spent a lot of our time in Kazan slipping on the ice. At this point in our travels there was a certain abandonment of economy. We ate in a real restaurant- one in which my entree, for which I felt guilty for ordering when more economic options were available, was 4 dollars. Also when we went grocery shopping we bought cheese. Yeah. I don’t know what that has to do with light and darkness. The warmth and light of the “trakter” in which we ate? Our need for material comfort after wandering in the cold, dark world?
At the end of our stay in Kazan occurred a most amazing adventure involving our luggage, a locked train suburban train station, insights into the world of homelessness in southwestern Russia... I don’t really know what to say about it, so I’ll leave it in the realm of the hypothetical author about whose description we are speculating. There were a lot of hours of dark. Then we met Elizabeth and her friends on the platform, we entered the train, and we headed to Siberia at last.
The train was cold. A woman in our compartment bought some dog hair one of the crazy merchants who sneak on the train and sprint down the aisles selling odd things. I have nothing else to say about it. It was very, very cold.
I’m tired of this entry. We were in Novosibirsk. Even colder there, but we weren’t on the street as long. Mainly we hung out in this boring museum, because it was warm there. There was a crazy floral arranging competition. As we were with Elizabeth, there was a lot more order and less craziness occurring. We slept in a hotel and ate in very reputable restaurants. Left Novosibirsk in the middle of the night, on a much warmer train. Spent the morning watching the very, very pretty landscape near Krasnoyarsk. I love Siberia. Then that night was Old New Year and there were obnoxious drunk men and it was awful. Giving the computer to Abby now.
a blog from the road
Do you want to really, really, really love a bunk on a train? Do you want to feel that getting to spend the night, or even from 1:00 am on, in the crisp, white sheets and thick blanket in platscart, with the train moving under you and the heating system in full operation, is that best thing that ever happened to you? And that a eating a plastic cup of just-add-water soup with a fork is the ideal meal? I have some suggestions as to how this level of appreciation can be brought about. This just seems like a set-up for a long post of whining. But that’s not how I meant it; I am really so insanely happy to be sitting in this train right now, the sun shining on snowy forests and plains out the window, having slept until almost 11:00 in a warm bed, that all discomfort of the past few days seem relevant only as contrast to the excellence of this train.
We left Helsinki Monday morning, Abby informs me; I have very little sense of time, so I would have no idea if asked. So, yes, got up at some very early hour Monday morning, dragged our belongings through the National Finn Fitness Park or whatever it is that lies between the Hostel Stadion and the Helsinki train station, had our last look at the frigid lakes and well-ordered paths along which we have seen so many a hardy Finn striding hardily about walking his or her dog, or engaging in “Nordic Walking” in a purple jogging suit. Sadly said goodbye to Laurel in the clean, well-ordered train station. At this point I’m not entirely sure what happened. We rode on a train for a long time, but there are a lot of trains in this story, and I don’t remember anything about this one. There were a lot of Russians in snow pants. There seem to be set occasions in which Russians wear snow pants, but I haven’t really figured out what they are. Oh, a very cute little boy named Zhenya sat in front of us and he was very awesome and Russian and shot everyone on the train with a toy gun. For a while an almost-equally-cute little girl named Katya sat next to him and they colored together and it was like a ridiculous juice-box commercial or something their conversation was so cute. My favorite part of the train ride was when we crossed the Russian border and Katya’s father, this strapping man with a blond Russian-style almost-mullet, looked out the window at the snow-covered pines and such and said “А, Родина, Вот она такая!» (Oh, the homeland, what a one she is!). I'm not sure why I found this so amusing.
Got to St. Petersburg in the afternoon sometime. Depostited our heavier luggage in a very complex locker in a very crouded lockerroom in the train station. Set our for a night of homelessness, as we hadn't been motivated enough to book a hostel. Hopefully Abby will write a list of the actual things we did, because I don't really remember. We ate a lot of chocolate bars, walked through a lot of shopping centers, etc. Met Ivan around 9:00, I think, in a fasttfood blini restaurant, stayed there until it closed sometime after 10:00. I had always wanted to be one of those people who sits about leisurely in an establishment even as it is clear that it is closing.
Earlier in the evening, Abby had had the brilliant idea of taking a «Night-time Petersburg» bus tour. When we asked at the «expeditions» kiosk how long the tour lasted, and learned that it was from 11:00 to 6:00 am it seemed not only brilliant but genius. So we headed to that expedition kiosk area. Saw some very nice fireworks and laser show on Nevsky Prospect, I think in front of the Russian Museum, on the way. Went to grocery store. bought ice-cream. Got on bus. Very long bus-ride began. Oh man, I don't know how to describe this bus tour. The guide was this little woman in a gray bun. She talked very, very fast. My favorite was at the very beginning, on Nevsky Prospect, when she had to say what every single building was as we passed it, as they are all important. It was like a very enthusiastic radio sports broadcast, I guess. «And, on-the-right the Someone-important-Palace! Minister of Catherine the Great! And on the left Pushkin once ate lunch! And on the right something-or-other-no-one-understands-because-I'm-speaking-very-fast-and-everyone-on-this-bus-is-a-beer-drinking-hooligan-anyway!» You could get whiplash, if you didn't watch out. Every once in a while we would stop so we could go take pictures. Except that is was the middle of the night, so it was sort of pointlesss. But there was a lot of enthusiastic picture-taking anyway. The guide really liked throwing dramatic quotations of Lermantov and Ahmatova into the lecture. I would know a lot about every activity of those persons, as well as of Blok and especially Pushkin, if I had been able to listen to the woman for 6 hours straight. She especially relished describing the deaths of the famous people whose old apartments or schools we drove by. Like of this one poor man who was discribed as having «caught his last tramvai.» There was a lot of half-sleeping in the back of the bus, where the cool kids (me and Abby, of course) were hanging out. It would have been full-sleeping, but there was a crazy babushka yelling about scultures of sphinxes and hooligans poking their girlfriends and trying to wake them up, and stopping of the bus to look at dark churches, interrupting our slumber. And poor Abby was sick and just freezing cold the whole time, and it was very sad. At 2 am we stopped at a cafe and all got out and bought tea. Then back in the bus for more babushka-tour. Agh, it was so out of control. But in many ways more in-control than at 5:45 am when we were set down in the dark streets with no where to go. There was much darkness and coldness and tiredness involved. And cafes with drunk people being chased out of them. And 24-hour bookstores. 24-hour bookstores don't seem like such a good economic venture to me, but we appreciated them anyway. Eventually we just got on the metro and rode it for a long ...
This entry was inturrupted by 100 3rd grade boys swarming the compartment and asking what games I had on my computer. Actually only about 5. Much Marble Blast Gold was played. Gettng into Kazan. Will be there 11 hours. No hotel again. But Abby and I are now pros at this.
We left Helsinki Monday morning, Abby informs me; I have very little sense of time, so I would have no idea if asked. So, yes, got up at some very early hour Monday morning, dragged our belongings through the National Finn Fitness Park or whatever it is that lies between the Hostel Stadion and the Helsinki train station, had our last look at the frigid lakes and well-ordered paths along which we have seen so many a hardy Finn striding hardily about walking his or her dog, or engaging in “Nordic Walking” in a purple jogging suit. Sadly said goodbye to Laurel in the clean, well-ordered train station. At this point I’m not entirely sure what happened. We rode on a train for a long time, but there are a lot of trains in this story, and I don’t remember anything about this one. There were a lot of Russians in snow pants. There seem to be set occasions in which Russians wear snow pants, but I haven’t really figured out what they are. Oh, a very cute little boy named Zhenya sat in front of us and he was very awesome and Russian and shot everyone on the train with a toy gun. For a while an almost-equally-cute little girl named Katya sat next to him and they colored together and it was like a ridiculous juice-box commercial or something their conversation was so cute. My favorite part of the train ride was when we crossed the Russian border and Katya’s father, this strapping man with a blond Russian-style almost-mullet, looked out the window at the snow-covered pines and such and said “А, Родина, Вот она такая!» (Oh, the homeland, what a one she is!). I'm not sure why I found this so amusing.
Got to St. Petersburg in the afternoon sometime. Depostited our heavier luggage in a very complex locker in a very crouded lockerroom in the train station. Set our for a night of homelessness, as we hadn't been motivated enough to book a hostel. Hopefully Abby will write a list of the actual things we did, because I don't really remember. We ate a lot of chocolate bars, walked through a lot of shopping centers, etc. Met Ivan around 9:00, I think, in a fasttfood blini restaurant, stayed there until it closed sometime after 10:00. I had always wanted to be one of those people who sits about leisurely in an establishment even as it is clear that it is closing.
Earlier in the evening, Abby had had the brilliant idea of taking a «Night-time Petersburg» bus tour. When we asked at the «expeditions» kiosk how long the tour lasted, and learned that it was from 11:00 to 6:00 am it seemed not only brilliant but genius. So we headed to that expedition kiosk area. Saw some very nice fireworks and laser show on Nevsky Prospect, I think in front of the Russian Museum, on the way. Went to grocery store. bought ice-cream. Got on bus. Very long bus-ride began. Oh man, I don't know how to describe this bus tour. The guide was this little woman in a gray bun. She talked very, very fast. My favorite was at the very beginning, on Nevsky Prospect, when she had to say what every single building was as we passed it, as they are all important. It was like a very enthusiastic radio sports broadcast, I guess. «And, on-the-right the Someone-important-Palace! Minister of Catherine the Great! And on the left Pushkin once ate lunch! And on the right something-or-other-no-one-understands-because-I'm-speaking-very-fast-and-everyone-on-this-bus-is-a-beer-drinking-hooligan-anyway!» You could get whiplash, if you didn't watch out. Every once in a while we would stop so we could go take pictures. Except that is was the middle of the night, so it was sort of pointlesss. But there was a lot of enthusiastic picture-taking anyway. The guide really liked throwing dramatic quotations of Lermantov and Ahmatova into the lecture. I would know a lot about every activity of those persons, as well as of Blok and especially Pushkin, if I had been able to listen to the woman for 6 hours straight. She especially relished describing the deaths of the famous people whose old apartments or schools we drove by. Like of this one poor man who was discribed as having «caught his last tramvai.» There was a lot of half-sleeping in the back of the bus, where the cool kids (me and Abby, of course) were hanging out. It would have been full-sleeping, but there was a crazy babushka yelling about scultures of sphinxes and hooligans poking their girlfriends and trying to wake them up, and stopping of the bus to look at dark churches, interrupting our slumber. And poor Abby was sick and just freezing cold the whole time, and it was very sad. At 2 am we stopped at a cafe and all got out and bought tea. Then back in the bus for more babushka-tour. Agh, it was so out of control. But in many ways more in-control than at 5:45 am when we were set down in the dark streets with no where to go. There was much darkness and coldness and tiredness involved. And cafes with drunk people being chased out of them. And 24-hour bookstores. 24-hour bookstores don't seem like such a good economic venture to me, but we appreciated them anyway. Eventually we just got on the metro and rode it for a long ...
This entry was inturrupted by 100 3rd grade boys swarming the compartment and asking what games I had on my computer. Actually only about 5. Much Marble Blast Gold was played. Gettng into Kazan. Will be there 11 hours. No hotel again. But Abby and I are now pros at this.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Man..........
I look to my left and see that Abby is beating me in blog posting, so my news will all be old when it's finally posted. Oh well. It was going to be too much work to record anyway.
Filler Blog
Well, this week has so far been about the most eventful of my life, so you can't expect me to describe it in the mere 40 minutes I have remaining at the Whatever this Novosibirsk Internet Cafe is Called. Just briefly noting that I am alive and safe and such. Leaving tonight for the 30 hour ride to Irkutsk. Also I would like all of you, esp. those of you frequently e-mailing me about the balmy climes of my native land, to know that it is 28 below, Celcius, here. At least it was this morning. I think it's climbed to 24 below or something now.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Dragon Evacuation
I'm moving to Earl Grey, Saskatchewan.
http://www.earl-grey.ca/
I don't have anything else to say.
http://www.earl-grey.ca/
I don't have anything else to say.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Craziness, yo.
Craziness
I am currently sitting on a sofa outside our room in the Stadion Hostel in Helsinki, looking at a neon green sign with the helpful instruction “ASIAKASKEITTIÖ JA TV-HOUNE ALAKERRASSA.” If you think this is funny looking, wait until you hear someone actually speaking this craziness. This morning I went for a walk/scramble over boulders in some naturey-are by the stadium (our hostel really is an Olympic stadium, not just built in the shape of one as for some reason it seemed to me last night. There are the silly spinning metal gate-things running along the outside, and bleachers beyond the inner walls of the hostel, and everything. Also this place is huge; over a thousand beds I think.) and when I jumped down from some large rock onto the bike path, some elderly Finn in a brightly-colored windbreaker laughed and said “Hi-da-hooh-he-hlip-hip!!” or something to that effect. It was so awesome. I smiled and also laughed. I hope that was the correct response. Then I went looking for signs to read and laugh at. Signs are written first in Finnish and then in Swedish, so there’s double the fun.
Saw the sun rise over Helsinki. I like places much better after seeing the sun rise there. Especially if there’s a spectral sliver moon still high in the sky. My feeling of last night, which can basically be summed up as “I can’t believe we are expected to find our way from the train station to our hostel in this ridiculous country, and what will happen when they review the security film from the tram and find out that Abby and I didn’t pay?” was mostly dissipated.
I almost tried to find a book to trade for one in the hostel book exchange for a crazy Finnish one, but I decided that wouldn’t be all that useful.
I am currently sitting on a sofa outside our room in the Stadion Hostel in Helsinki, looking at a neon green sign with the helpful instruction “ASIAKASKEITTIÖ JA TV-HOUNE ALAKERRASSA.” If you think this is funny looking, wait until you hear someone actually speaking this craziness. This morning I went for a walk/scramble over boulders in some naturey-are by the stadium (our hostel really is an Olympic stadium, not just built in the shape of one as for some reason it seemed to me last night. There are the silly spinning metal gate-things running along the outside, and bleachers beyond the inner walls of the hostel, and everything. Also this place is huge; over a thousand beds I think.) and when I jumped down from some large rock onto the bike path, some elderly Finn in a brightly-colored windbreaker laughed and said “Hi-da-hooh-he-hlip-hip!!” or something to that effect. It was so awesome. I smiled and also laughed. I hope that was the correct response. Then I went looking for signs to read and laugh at. Signs are written first in Finnish and then in Swedish, so there’s double the fun.
Saw the sun rise over Helsinki. I like places much better after seeing the sun rise there. Especially if there’s a spectral sliver moon still high in the sky. My feeling of last night, which can basically be summed up as “I can’t believe we are expected to find our way from the train station to our hostel in this ridiculous country, and what will happen when they review the security film from the tram and find out that Abby and I didn’t pay?” was mostly dissipated.
I almost tried to find a book to trade for one in the hostel book exchange for a crazy Finnish one, but I decided that wouldn’t be all that useful.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
today
I had quite the ecclesiastical tour of Nevsky Prospect today. First, not on Nevsky Prospect at all actually but near Peter and Paul Fortress, I saw a very cool blue-tile-decorated mosque.
Then, directly upon emerging from the Nevsky Prospect metro station, I went to Kazan Cathedral. Kazan Cathedral is ugly enough to have avoided being a museum rather than a church, which was a very nice change. It’s sort of gray and neoclassical and strangly shaped, and it was built after the Napoleonic Wars I think. There were actual people praying in it rather than tourists taking pictures, and the icons were uninteresting, and it was generally pleasant. There was a very long line of people waiting to kiss the icon of the Virgin of Kazan; other than that is was fairly quiet. I don’t know how I feel about churches being used to house the keys of defeated French fortresses... well, yes I do. It’s awesome. These were some sweet keys, and there were plenty to be had of them. There were also captured military banners.
Next went into a rather nondescript Catholic Church. I was the only one in it. I forgot what bare church walls looked like. It was nice.
Further along the street I found a very sweet little blue-and-white Armenian Church. Armenian script is apparently very, very cool. Also the Armenians apparently believe in pews, unlike the Russians. It was a very nice place to sit.
Leaving for Helsinki soon.
Um. I am in Helsinki now. This cannot be a real language that they are speaking here.
Then, directly upon emerging from the Nevsky Prospect metro station, I went to Kazan Cathedral. Kazan Cathedral is ugly enough to have avoided being a museum rather than a church, which was a very nice change. It’s sort of gray and neoclassical and strangly shaped, and it was built after the Napoleonic Wars I think. There were actual people praying in it rather than tourists taking pictures, and the icons were uninteresting, and it was generally pleasant. There was a very long line of people waiting to kiss the icon of the Virgin of Kazan; other than that is was fairly quiet. I don’t know how I feel about churches being used to house the keys of defeated French fortresses... well, yes I do. It’s awesome. These were some sweet keys, and there were plenty to be had of them. There were also captured military banners.
Next went into a rather nondescript Catholic Church. I was the only one in it. I forgot what bare church walls looked like. It was nice.
Further along the street I found a very sweet little blue-and-white Armenian Church. Armenian script is apparently very, very cool. Also the Armenians apparently believe in pews, unlike the Russians. It was a very nice place to sit.
Leaving for Helsinki soon.
Um. I am in Helsinki now. This cannot be a real language that they are speaking here.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
State Hermitage Museum
I was already in sort of a bad mood when we got to the Hermitage this morning, due to having a stuffy nose and maybe living in hostel too long. I think a visit to the Hermitage requires a head unmuddled by stormy thoughts and enthusiasm for planning; it has over 1000 rooms, and there’s no clear path through them, as it’s a palace, after all, not built as a museum. But I was too impatient (and possessed of a realistic estimation of my ability to follow maps) to do anything but walk off randomly into the museum and pretend that whatever part I found first was what I had been planning to see there all along. Unfortunately what I found first was the Rubens collection, and I couldn’t pretend for very long to like Rubens. But I couldn’t find my way out of the “Netherlandish” section, and I was lost in a maze of fat cupids and infants and group portraits of shooting societies... and my annoyance spread from Rubens to Dutch painting to large oil paintings... this was not a good track to be on, in the world’s largest art museum. You can’t just decide half an hour into it that you are annoyed by paintings, in general. Every once in a while I would find a room of not-Dutch painting, and it was always a very cheerful moment- this room of English watercolors (with a bunch of illustrations by William Blake, which I liked muchly), some welcomely ascetic Spanish art... but mainly I just looked at sculpture and old pottery and wood cuttings and things. It was fairly ridiculous. And then every once in a while I would have to sneeze, which would require rushing to the center of the room, as far as possible from works of art, and burying my head in my elbow. But the guard babushkas glared at me anyway.
Eventually I gave up and went downstairs to the “antiquities” section and looked at Roman statuary and cuniform tablets and such. After a long break from painting, I finally got over myself and decided to reenter the fray. I found a map and decided that I would go find the third floor. On my way, I discovered that the second floor was far larger than I had ever imagined, and included a lot more than fat Dutch children. But no number of masterpieces of world art could distract me from my quest for the stairway to the third floor (I did stop for a while to look at the Italian section, as I think you’re required to see to da Vinci paintings). How did the Romanovs ever find anything in that place? I would get lost every day on my way downstairs to dinner.
With the help of directions from a guard babushka, I eventually found the stairs. And the third floor was so cool! I may have thought so even if I hadn’t worked so hard to find it! It was French impressionists, if I am correctly employing that term, and junx. I really like Cezanne, and there was a lot of Cezanne. And Renoir. I should mention that my artistic tastes are almost entirely based on who I read an article about one time. Except for disliking Rubens. And I don’t remember ever having read an article about Matisse but he’s my new favorite.
Very few of the people in the Hermitage were speaking Russian. I really liked it when the language being spoken by the tour groups matched up with the country of origin of the art in the room.
Now I want to watch that movie Russian Ark again. I liked it a lot the first time, but now I know the set firsthand.
Eventually I gave up and went downstairs to the “antiquities” section and looked at Roman statuary and cuniform tablets and such. After a long break from painting, I finally got over myself and decided to reenter the fray. I found a map and decided that I would go find the third floor. On my way, I discovered that the second floor was far larger than I had ever imagined, and included a lot more than fat Dutch children. But no number of masterpieces of world art could distract me from my quest for the stairway to the third floor (I did stop for a while to look at the Italian section, as I think you’re required to see to da Vinci paintings). How did the Romanovs ever find anything in that place? I would get lost every day on my way downstairs to dinner.
With the help of directions from a guard babushka, I eventually found the stairs. And the third floor was so cool! I may have thought so even if I hadn’t worked so hard to find it! It was French impressionists, if I am correctly employing that term, and junx. I really like Cezanne, and there was a lot of Cezanne. And Renoir. I should mention that my artistic tastes are almost entirely based on who I read an article about one time. Except for disliking Rubens. And I don’t remember ever having read an article about Matisse but he’s my new favorite.
Very few of the people in the Hermitage were speaking Russian. I really liked it when the language being spoken by the tour groups matched up with the country of origin of the art in the room.
Now I want to watch that movie Russian Ark again. I liked it a lot the first time, but now I know the set firsthand.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Years Eve in Petersburg
The Crazy Duck Hostel was the place to be New Years eve, let me tell you. You should read Abby’s blog for some idea of the people staying here. But it doesn’t convey the full bizarreness of this apartment full of drunken crazy people who don’t know each other, speaking in a very confusing variety of languages and accents. The Australians were definitely running the show. They are absolutely insane. They are also at least 30 years old, and I can’t really figure out why they’re just roaming about Eurasia getting drunk every night and engaging in unwelcome displays of PDA, but they were good people to have around to create a festive atmosphere I guess. The Ukrainians are much more quiet, and I think they were sort of intimidated by the Austrailians. They really are very exhausting to converse with though. Do you like Whitney Houston? How much does public transportation cost? Did you know that everything is better in Kiev? What about the Simpsons? Oh, how about basketball? I was relieved when they discovered the Brazilians and started plying them with questions instead.
You know in elementary school when you learn about peer pressure? They need to add a unit on Nationalistic Ukrainians Pressure. Because that’s much harder to resist. “But this is special Ukrainian red champagne! It is the best in the world! And this is Ukrainian beer! It is no mere Russian beer!” And they were very sweet and serious.
At 11:30 we all headed out on the street, to Nevsky Prospect. It was the most awesome thing ever, except Chizhik Pizhik. The metro was packed with this united mass of celebrators, and every once in a while everyone would just start yelling and cheering on the escalators, and everyone was so cheerful it was hard to believe they were Russians. And then on Nevsky Prospect there was a big tv screen and Putin gave an address that I didn’t really listen to but it was awesome that we were all listening to an address by Putin. And then the bells rang midnight and everyone drank champagne on the street and yelling Happy New Year to everyone. And then just roamed around yelling happy new year to random people and dancing about. There was a parade of some kind, and the Ukrainians made us all jump on the back of one of the floats. Abby and Natasha and I only did this for a few seconds and then ran away; I don’t know how long the Ukrainians resisted the dancing girls yelling at them to get off. Anyway, I’ve never seen so many people.
Today we went out walking on Nevsky, and I’ve never seen it quiet and peaceful before. The whole time we’ve been here it has been packed with last-minute holiday shoppers and tourists taking pictures and such. Today everything was closed and it was very strange.
You know in elementary school when you learn about peer pressure? They need to add a unit on Nationalistic Ukrainians Pressure. Because that’s much harder to resist. “But this is special Ukrainian red champagne! It is the best in the world! And this is Ukrainian beer! It is no mere Russian beer!” And they were very sweet and serious.
At 11:30 we all headed out on the street, to Nevsky Prospect. It was the most awesome thing ever, except Chizhik Pizhik. The metro was packed with this united mass of celebrators, and every once in a while everyone would just start yelling and cheering on the escalators, and everyone was so cheerful it was hard to believe they were Russians. And then on Nevsky Prospect there was a big tv screen and Putin gave an address that I didn’t really listen to but it was awesome that we were all listening to an address by Putin. And then the bells rang midnight and everyone drank champagne on the street and yelling Happy New Year to everyone. And then just roamed around yelling happy new year to random people and dancing about. There was a parade of some kind, and the Ukrainians made us all jump on the back of one of the floats. Abby and Natasha and I only did this for a few seconds and then ran away; I don’t know how long the Ukrainians resisted the dancing girls yelling at them to get off. Anyway, I’ve never seen so many people.
Today we went out walking on Nevsky, and I’ve never seen it quiet and peaceful before. The whole time we’ve been here it has been packed with last-minute holiday shoppers and tourists taking pictures and such. Today everything was closed and it was very strange.
чижик пыжик
This news is not going to be chronological. But I have to start with the most important.
ABBY AND NATASHA AND I FOUND THE CHIZHIK PIZHIK STATUE! It’s too difficult to explain the deep significance of this event. I estimate that about 1 person understands how awesome it is. But there’s more. People drop coins on the statue, from the bridge. And if the coin lands on the statue, instead of falling in the river, you have good luck. And who should land a coin on Chizhik, on New Years Day no less? ME. BECAUSE I AM THE САМАЯ КЛАСНАЯ ДЕВЧЕНКА. This is going to be the best year ever.
ABBY AND NATASHA AND I FOUND THE CHIZHIK PIZHIK STATUE! It’s too difficult to explain the deep significance of this event. I estimate that about 1 person understands how awesome it is. But there’s more. People drop coins on the statue, from the bridge. And if the coin lands on the statue, instead of falling in the river, you have good luck. And who should land a coin on Chizhik, on New Years Day no less? ME. BECAUSE I AM THE САМАЯ КЛАСНАЯ ДЕВЧЕНКА. This is going to be the best year ever.
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