Another Saturday Night and I ain't got nobody

Despite the whininess of the title, I didn’t have such a bad Saturday. After a couple of days of extreme... I don’t know, sitting around being depressed about being in Irkutsk with no purpose in life and not doing anything... I was determined to go find good things to do despite being “tired of these dirty old sidewalks.” It was rather a stretch, but it worked out pretty well.
I ran in the morning, through these interesting woods I found yesterday, with trails leading by the creepiest cemeteries (not sure about the plural- probably all the same one- but in groups with considerable tree-age between them) known to man. I don’t know how to impart the creepiness of these grave plots; there’s nothing at all calm or stately about them. It’s partly being in the woods instead of on a sun-drenched hill, or wherever it is that we seek cemetery real estate on the East Coast, it’s partially the lack of orderly rows, it’s partly the replacement of the two-barred Orthodox cross on many of the gravestones with red Soviet stars, but it’s mainly, I think, the use of iron: most plots have falling down, unattractively-painted iron fences around them, for some reason, which gives the whole thing the look of a rusting carnival. And then many of the gravestones themselves are not stones, but iron pyramid-things, with photos at the top. In a few instances, there are normal-looking stone markers that have been stuck on iron posts, so as to allow them to fall over at the correct jaunty angle. Some of the fenced-off plots have little benches inside them, and most of them have mounds where the body is. When these woods are free of creepy graves, though, they are very nice, and the path interestingly leads to the hideous Catholic church that is very far away by the marshrutka on which I pass it twice a day. I’m very curious about the interior of this church, so I’ll have to make use of this path to visit it sometime. This is a seriously ugly church. It’s cement, and very huge, and rounded- I guess it’s in a general cut-off cone shape, one of the ones that yields one of those geometrical shapes I briefly knew the names of when I did a report of Hypatia in forth grade, but this shape is more suggested than fully developed by the architecture. At the top there is this odd suspended bishop-hat thing, also cement, and above that a big metal cross that looks like it’s being shot up there in a fire-works display, with the other metal bars connecting it to the roof.
Then I lifted weights and generally pretended to be busy in Alex’s Gym for an amazingly long amount of time. The skinny boys with funny shoes were there again, spinning their arms about in their odd calisthenics. One of them was wearing argyle socks today. A very hip young woman in expensive, matching exercise/ runway clothes was being given what was clearly her first training session by an equally hip Alex’s Gym employee. The poor trainee had a hard time with the treadmill of death.
I got back to the apartment slightly after noon, and found to my delight that Katya had made blini. Katya and Nastya left just as I was entering, leaving me alone with a very huge stack of flat pancake things, that I ate with apricot jam.
After blini-gorging and showering, I headed out to purchase a cell phone to replace the one I lost on our group trip. Unfortunately, however, the ATM near us was out of service, so I was unable to complete this mission. I did decide to investigate this jutting-out addition to our apartment building with pictures of Russians in traditional dress in the windows. I still don’t know what it is, actually, but it had a reading room, and I sat in it and read for Siberian History. Oh, I left out the part of the morning before my run where I actually did my homework for conversation class. Being motivated enough to do my homework is fairly unusual. Anyway, I’m still rather curious about where exactly I was. Some sort of cultural library? It had lots of rooms and hallways and newspapers and official-looking desks with official-looking people. And I was sort of embarrassed every time someone saw that I was reading a 7th grade history book. Especially considering I gave up trying very hard to understand it after about 2 pages; apparently the vocabulary used by seventh-graders to discuss Cossacks making perilous sea-voyages through ice-and-walrus rich waters and is not that with which I am most familiar. There are apparently a lot of ways to say “some icy land-formation you’ve never heard of,” “skirmish with fierce natives averse to having all their walrus hunted,” “obsolete term for tsarist functionary” and “bad thing to happen to your boat.”
Then I went downtown, and spent what seemed to me to be huge amounts of time pretending to be really interested in the two old churches I decided to visit. They’re the most oft-visited, I believe, being very old and very downtown and on all the PR material of the city. So there were lots of other tourists there, though I think all Russian. I didn’t really like either as much as I like the little Holy Trinity church near the history department, and over half the interiors were taken up by tables selling paper icons, and I didn’t really know what I was looking at anyway. I bought a Bible; I figure it’s a pretty good way to practice reading since, you know, I already know what happens and all.
After leaving the church district I found an ATM and then bought a cell phone, the cheapest possible and very annoying to use, it now turns out. If any of you are desirous of my new number for any reason it is: 8 914 955 6871. Unless you aren’t in Russia- then I think it’s +7 instead of 8 at the beginning. Oh before this I walked around a random grocery store for a while.
Soon after leaving the site of my cheapo phone purchase, a most amazing thing happened- I saw a bunch of folding tables set out on the sidewalk, and what should be on them but used books! I had never seen used books being sold in Russia, and I was nearly run over by a bus in enthusiasm crossing the street to examine them. The old guys selling the books were very nice, and they tried to speak English to me, and I tried to speak Russian to them, and no one really understood each other but I bought a lot of pretty, old books of poetry that I was assured everyone who speaks Russian has to read. And a book of Vampilov plays, because I often walk by a monument to him. I am never going to read these books, because all my reading energy is devoted to 7th grade history textbooks, but it’s nice to own them.
As I wished to know the phone numbers of the other Americans, my next stop was the Cafe Fiesta, where one is almost guaranteed to find one of us at all times, and sure enough there was Adriane, who had magically received 3 HOURS of internet time on her receipt, a new record. So I copied lots of numbers from her phone, and talked briefly to this Russian guy I had met one time before in the good ol’ Cafe Fiesta, then went to the internet cafe, as I had not brought my computer, which was a good thing because by this time I was carrying around 8 tons of books.
Found Ivan in the internet cafe, and he told me that we can’t go to Listvianka tomorrow because apparently our turning-in-travel-forms-every-time-we-go-somewhere requirement now extends even to when we aren’t spending the night outside of Irkutsk, and we have to turn in forms two days ahead of time or something. So I look travel forms for me and Ivan to Elizabeth’s apartment for Monday and began to dread the morrow.
Stood around in the cold and dark waiting for a marshrutka for a very long time, but it wasn’t cold enough to be painful, just enough to be invigorating, and I was concerned that I was going home too early anyway. Eventually, however, I gave up on the correct marshrutka ever coming and just got on one that was going to the correct region of the city, which meant I had to figure out where to get off, which I did rather badly. After I walked to where I should have gotten off, this babushka asked me where Universitetski was, and I was very proud to be able to direct her. I told her I was walking there right now, but then I felt sort of bad when she and her grandson decided to walk with me, as it was sort of far away and non-cheap people would have taken another marshrutka, but I was glad enough of their company anyway, though they didn’t talk to me; the grandmother spent the whole time trying to convince her small grandson that she knew where she was going the whole time. He was having none of it.
I don’t really understand how Cossacks ever had children. They seem to go on 10-year expeditions all the time. It seems like this would cause a demographic problem. But then, maybe their numbers were considerably supplemented by runaway peasants and things. I know if I had a choice between being a peasant and being a bold Cossack I would go for the bold Cossack. They have cool stripes on their pants and know no master.

If you live or study in the northeast United States, you should start looking out for opportunities to see performances of the Dartmouth Aires, the oldest and probably coolest Dartmouth a cappella group, now better than ever with the addition of the one and only John Thomas Mayfield Merrill.

And if you are a person who wishes to hear the stirring tale of a feral child’s encounter with the founder’s staff at Middlebury convocation, as written by Greg Fulchino and Adam Irish, you should either listen to the Middlebury College Radio Theater(re?) of Chills and Suspense, or get the podcast of that episode, or something, I gave a very fuzzy notion of time as regard the other side of the Atlantic. Anyway, Ronny Lieb stars as himself.

And if you are a person who knows Aiko Weverka, you should start making plans to bake her a cake. I think you have less than a week. And do not let her blow out the candles under smoke detectors, as piteously as she might beg, because Officer Sandy is impervious to bribes no matter how delicious the cake, and she is also very bad at turning off fire alarms.

Okay, I have to go to bed before anyone comes home and I have to have an awkward social interaction. It’s after midnight, so maybe no one will come home. They often don’t. Actually I was sort of disappointed no one was here to witness my late arrival home- I felt like I had spent lots of time in the dark and cold for nothing.

Man, this is long. But I haven’t written in a while.