Saint Petersburg has been awesome. There hasn't been very much unstructured time at all here though, so obviously I haven't written anything for a few days, which now puts me in the challenging position of trying to catch up, but the bus is just pulling away from the station for our trip back into Estonia, so there should be some time to do it.
On the 4th of January we piled into the bus early in the morning for a 40 minute trip out of the city to Pushkin Town, so named for being the location of famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's lyceum education as a boy and young man. The main attraction of Pushkin Town was the Summer Palace of Catherine the Great, which like the Winter Palace we visited the day before, has now been converted into an art museum. While the art contained by the palace was very impressive (particularly they are known for their collection of 2nd and 3rd century Greek sculptures) it's really the palace itself and the grounds it sits on that takes one's breath away. The Summer Palace has endured worse hardship than the Winter Palace in the years since its use by the Romanof family, particularly since it fell into NAZI hands during «The Great Patriotic War» whereas the Winter Palace remained just beyond the occupied region; but nonetheless it was simply stunning. One really has to see it for themselves to understand just how magnificent these spaces are. We also visited Paul's Palace (the unloved son of Catherine the Great) which was also marvelous, but there's only so many times that I can say these palaces are stunning, so I'll leave it at that.
I should mention some other people who have been part of our trip: first of all Svetlana our tour guide in Saint Petersburg. She has been so incredibly friendly, useful, and so amazingly knowledgable about the city and its history. In Saint Petersburg, each museum and major cultural site has very difficult exams that they offer, which must be passed in order to become a certified tour guide for that institution- and Svetlana has been certified in aproximately 20 different museums around the city. Everywhere we go, every room we go in when we get there, Svetlana knows every imaginable detail about the original artifact or artwork, and the story of how it came to be presented in the museum. It's incredible. But as I mentioned, she's also just very friendly and helpful. I grew up in a town with many Russian speaking immigrants, and there's a lot about Svetlana's looks, voice, and mannerisms that remind me of the older Russian women from my neighborhood as a kid, which is fun.
Then there's also Dr. Greb's wife, Nina, who I've heard so much about over the last couple years, but have finally had the opportunity to meet. Nina is a resident Moscovite, and since Dr. Greb obviously teaches and advises my academic program in San Diego, their main opportunities to visit with each other currently is when Dr. Greb is leading a study abroad program, and then Nina will travel to spend time with him and his students during the program. As such, she came up to Saint Petersburg with her high school aged niece, Katya, and they've been doing all the tours with us too. Nina speaks a fair bit of English, though perhaps not quite comfortably, while Katya speaks almost none. Nina's certainly done quite a bit to help us out communicating with locals and has a fun sense of humor, though I felt a little bad for Katya- kinda being dragged along to spend time with older, total strangers that she can't even really talk to at all. There's really only one guy in our group, Dale Bullington, who speaks Russian with any degree of confidence at all and so he's tried to do a fair amount of mediating conversations from the rest of our group to her, but he can't be expected to be her personal translator all day, so since I'm comfortable trying to speak languages that I really don't speak at all by just looking up words as necessary and gesturing, I've tried to help her feel less like an outsider too as she spends all day listening to these Americans constantly yabbering in a foreign language. It seems like she's got an artistic streak, and it seemed like she did the best job out of everyone of documenting by photograph all of the museums we've visited, so that was another more selfish reason to befriend her too.
Then lastly there's been a whole family of Estonians travelling with us: Mari-Anne is our program director for Saint Petersburg and Tallinn, similar to what Margot did for us in Tartu, but with the assistance of Svetlana as our dedicated tour guide for Saint Petersburg. She's a lovely lady, very friendly and practical. She's joined on our trip by her husband Mart, who is a human rights lawyer; and their two children: 9 year old Alexander, and college aged Astra (pronounced more like Austra or Ohstra). Alexander is just the cutest kid ever- he doesn't speak much English, but makes up for it with energy and playfulness. My roommate Diego has become Alexander's best friend apparently, and basically wherever Diego goes, Alexander goes. We joke that Alexander is Diego's kid, and so sometimes if Alexander is running around crazy or being loud someplace, we jokingly yell at Diego to «control his child.» Astra was a little bit reserved around the group for the first day or so, but by the time we finished our tour of the Summer Palace on the 4th, she and I were having a great conversations and she has been the life of the party since. She's stunningly pretty and very interesting (she's an aspiring classical music composer, for example) and so now that she's opened up to everyone, she's often found holding court, surrounded by the guys from our group- which I think she's enjoyed very much.
When we returned from our tours on the 4th I asked Svetlana and Nina for help arranging some plans for the next day, which I'll come back to shortly, and then Nick and I sat down to fight with the horrible wi-fi in the hotel to make our travel plans for after the study abroad program ends. We're on the bus to Tallinn, Estonia right now which is where the program will conclude on the 10th, whereupon almost all of the students will return to the United States. Nick and I however, will continue on- traveling first to Warsaw, Poland; then to Vienna, Austria; and then to Prague, Czech Republic. We'll part ways in Prague, where he'll go to Amsterdam briefly and then fly back to LAX; while I'll go on to Kiev, Ukraine; and then fly back to the U.S. but to Washington D.C. where I'll be testifying at an important hearing for a close friend of mine. After spending a few days in D.C. I'll then finally return to San Diego, where my classes for the spring semester will have already been in session for a week- and then almost immediately go on a ski trip in California that a good friend of mine and I planned a couple months ago… meaning I'll have a good bit to get caught up on when I finally settle in.
Figuring out our plans, and then actually purchasing the tickets was significantly more difficult than we had hoped, and took much longer than we had wanted to, so we were starving and had missed out going out for dinner and drinks with the group. We managed to get some information about what restaurant the group was at in the city, and tried to find them, but it turns out there was some miscommunication and we were never able to find the rest of the group so we found an interesting looking Irish pub that was underground, and had some great Russian food with excellent Irish beer. It was funny though- we had a cute waitress to whom we were trying to order food and ask questions in Russian, but despite not speaking much English she clearly spoke more English than we did Russian, and almost every single time before we could even begin to sound out a word to her she would cut us off with exactly whatever we were about to ask her for, in English. It got to a point of feeling almost like mind reading- we would just start to open our mouth and she would suddenly say exactly whatever it was we wanted to know about, in English. Maybe she just didn't want us to butcher her language, but in any case we all thought it was pretty funny- her included. Oh, there was also a group of pretty friendly Russians sitting in the booth behind Nick who got into a playful little war of pranks with him; stealing Christmas decorations from each other, back and forth, which was fun. We were glad that they were friendly though, because the USA-Russia hockey game was on, and we were winning.
Walking along the city streets both to and from the pub was certainly an interesting experience- first off, Saint Petersburg is COLD. It's gotten progressively colder as the week has gone on, starting around -10 celsius, and now hovering around -20 degrees. There's also a fair amount of wind, and humidity in the air, meaning that after just a few seconds of being outside you start thinking of ways to get yourself back inside. Or at least that's what Nick and I thought. Apparently St. Peterburgians don't mind having their face exposed to the air as they walk along, and the women don't think twice about wearing stiletto heels on the icy sidewalks. Of course, this is just early January. I mean, I've certainly experienced this kind of cold before; every winter growing up in Boston. The difference is, this is the coldest it would get in Boston, at the worst part of the winter. This is the semi-mild part of the Saint Petersburg winter, I don't want to think about what the temperature will be in early February. Boston does get quite a bit more snow than Saint Petersburg though, I suppose.
It's not just the cold that's interesting though- it's how busy the city is. Even as Nick and I returned to the hotel around 1am the streets were completely busy with cars, lights were on everywhere, and the city sidewalks were completely packed with people busily walking to and from places. Many of the bars, restaurants, grocery stores, and more operate 24 hours a day. Saint Petersburg is a city of five million people, and so it has a distinctly big city feel to it, especially in comparrison to our previous stop of Tartu.
Yesterday morning, the 5th of January, we went to the National Ethnographic Museum which was another stunning building. It could easily be confused as another converted Romanof palace, but in fact it's actually a modern building built expressly to house the museum. The Ethnographic Museum is essentially a museum of the cultural artifacts and traditions of the different nations within the Russian borders and former Soviet territories (Russia being a multinational state, like the U.S., after all). Our guide for the tour wasn't Svetlana this time (though she still provided interesting commentary throughout) but did show us a lot of interesting traditions from various folk styles, and in particular taught us a lot of fun children's games. We played games that were like «Simon Says» «Duck, Duck, Goose» and «Ring Around the Rosy» but each was distinctly its own game. I also wandered around a bit to find the exhibit they had on Uzbek culture since one of my best friends is Uzbek; and then I tried to watch this incredible dance performance being put on by children and youth in the main hall, but unfortunately I was totally out of time and couldn't even discover which national culture the dance was from. They actually sent in Alexander to duck and dive between the legs of the crowd to find me and pull on my shirt to tell me it was time to go.
We returned to the hotel around lunch time, but didn't take lunch. Instead, everyone learned about the plans that I had been arranging with Svetlana and Nina the day before. We were scheduled to attend a ballet at the Saint Petersburg Ballet later that night, but since most of us travelled without any formal clothing (the Trio traveled with just a single backpack each, for example) I had worked with Svetlana and Nina to find places where men could either rent tuxedos or buy suits, and the ladies could likewise find evening gowns or dresses. Nina had made a great number of phone calls on my behalf calling various places to find what would work, and ultimately took the larger portion of our group who wanted to purchase suits or dresses, while Svetlana helped the smaller number of us who were interested in renting tuxes figure out the complicated logistics of how that would work. Once the options were communicated to the group, we split off to go actually acquire our choices. Oh, I should mention that as we made our goodbyes to Svetlana who we wouldn't see again, Nick gave her a hug, to which she proudly remarked that she was excited to get a hug from «the hottest American guy!» in her words. We all got a pretty good chuckle out of that- apparently Nick is the type for older Russian women!
Myself, Nick, Patrick, and Chase were the only ones who opted for the tuxedo route, so the four of us (which I soon after dubbed «The Four Horsemen») hopped in a taxi and found the shop. It was a small shop on the third floor of an indoor mall, but the tuxedos and trappings on display were very nice indeed. They even offered top hats! Valentina, the proprietor, was expecting us after the phone calls from Svetlana and Nina, and so she immediately began pulling out jackets for us to try on for size. It quickly became clear that she spoke just about zero English- in fact I probably speak more Russian than she speaks English- which made this quite the experience. Getting fitted for tuxedos is already a bit of an adventure, domestically- doing it with a nearly complete language barrier was one hell of a challenge, but an exciting one!
I can't remember if I've already mentioned in this blog that Nick has done three semesters of Russian in university so far, but he still doesn't feel very confident with it. However, between him occasionally recognizing a word that Valentina had said in the middle of a whole paragraph of her talking to us, my own limited Russian skills but willingness to try them out and a natural facility at picking languages up, and Patrick's good «caveman skills» of pointing at different objects and gesturing, the four of us managed to get everything sorted out well. In the end things were a bit more expensive than we had originally understood them to be, but as we found the right ensemble of clothing pieces we each felt so sharp and Valentina called each of us «Superman».
We took the tuxedos in garment bags and headed out to the street level, where I managed to have enough Russian skill to badger a cab driver who didn't really want to let us in the car, into taking us back to our hotel. He was a giant of a man, and almost a poster of what Americans might think of when it comes to a Russian taxi driver. Once the vehicle started moving he asked us, «Your country, which one?» to which I replied, «America, U.S.A». He grunted and made a face, clearly indicating that he was now regretting letting me convince him to open the doors. Nick sarcastically chimed in with perfect timing, «Americans? GET OUT.» To which we all laughed, and even the driver got a pretty good chuckle. Patrick or Chase then asked if America meant bad, to which the driver just shrugged his sholders without saying anything. After a minute of silence, he quitely said «Trump, bump, bump» to indicate what he thought of America. We didn't really understand what he was implying at the time, whether he liked Trump or not (as it's absolutely possible that people in Russia might like Trump), but in retrospect we've determined that he didn't think much of Trump, and was indicating that he wasn't impressed by a country whose people elected someone like Trump. Of course, that's a little rich from a place that continues to show massive popular support for someone like Putin, but it doesn't invalidate his opinion either. Once he was convinced that we were neither Trump supporters nor dastardly Americans in general he started trying to act a bit of a tour guide as we passed various sites, saying things quite simply like, «children's theater» while pointing out the window at something.
We arrived at the hotel and after giving him a generous fare we went up to our rooms to pack for the next morning's departure, and to get ready for our night out on the town. We agreed to meet up for a drink at 1740h in the hotel's top floor bar which has impressive views of both the orthodox cathedral across the street, and the seven floor indoor shopping center directly behind the hotel. The four of us arrived in our tuxedos, perfectly coiffed and ready for the evening, each of us drawing eyes from everyone we passed, especially all the ladies. Nick had a White Russian, Patrick a Black Russian, Chase some kind of whiskey; and I ordered a Killer Instict as it sounded both appropriate to the James Bond vibe we were not only feeling but hearing (Chase had 007 soundtracks playing from his phone in his jacket pocket), but also the ingredients sounded right up my alley: vodka, tequila, cherry juice, grenadine, shaken over two ice cubes. It's a strong, blood red drink they served to me in a high-ball glass. I had return something to my room quickly, and we were out of time as we were instructed to meet everyone in the hotel lobby at 1800h sharp, so I just took my drink with me through the halls, eventually sauntering out of the elevator to the rest of the waiting group- dressed to the nines, drink in hand. It was fun to get so many gasps of «wow» like that!
Our bus zipped through the icy St. Petersburg streets until we arrived at the Saint Petersburg Ballet for our viewing of «The Bronze Horseman», the story of which focuses on the life of two residents of the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg, and the changes the city went through. We actually visited the real Bronze Horseman on the 3rd of January- a gigantic and impressive statue of Peter the Great (founder of Saint Petersburg) atop a rampant horse. Some of the group dropped their heavy coats off at the coat check, and then we milled about for a while enjoying the architecture of the theater and people watching. Certainly there were lots of people who were people watching us, as the Four Horsemen strode around together, glasses of champagne in hand. A lot of photos were taken, including a number of strangers who thought it would be awesome to get a photo with this dapper young Americans. In one instance, Nick was in such a rush to accept a pretty young lady's request for a photo that his tuxedo shoes slipped on the marble floors and he nearly went bowling into her. Thankfully no harm was done, and everyone thought it was hilarious.
The ballet itself was fantastic- the Saint Petersburg Ballet company demonstrated to us that they truly are world class, if somehow their reputation hasn't already preceded my review to you. Everything, lighting, costumes, stage effects, sound, and of course: the dancing, were all truly excellent. I will say that while there were songs that I found quite good, in general I found the music of The Bronze Horseman to be less interesting than other ballets I've listened to, but the story was quite interesting.
A young man and woman who live in St. Petersburg right at the time of its founding fall in love, but then the Neva River floods and other disasters strike (it was a little unclear to me if the war campaigns of Peter the Great are supposed to be among these disasters) separates the man and woman, and the woman dies during the cataclypse. The man meanwhile is shipwrecked in a deserted place and slowly goes mad with loneliness, dreaming of his lost love. Eventually the city enters a period of peace and rapid growth which catches up to the madman, who now lives as a beggar in its streets. He sees the statue of The Bronze Horseman which has been erected in Peter the Great's honor after his death, and eventually becomes convinced that all his woes are Peter's fault- and even begins to blame The Bronze Horseman itself as the personification of Peter, for his lost life. The statue torments him in his frenzied dreams, and eventually he dreams himself trampled to death by the bronze horse- and dies in real life. Then the city continues to grow and expand in a period of Pax Russia and ends on a «happy note».
Of course it's only a happy note because audiences desperately need something to clap for at the end of the show, and to end on a fully sad note would make the author's criticism of Russian culture too obvious, so the author kills two birds with one stone: making the ballet palatable to the masses, and obscuring his critique that as long as Russians are fed and safe they're too willing to forget history and ignore tragedy.
My only complaints with the experience were that it was far too warm inside the theater, making it difficult to stay awake despite how engaging the performance was; and that the man sitting next to me was on his phone all the way through the first and second acts, until I finally hissed at him in Russian in the third act to knock it off. He was the only one in the entire audience that I could see doing something like that, and somehow he thought the bright light of his phone wouldn't distract the people around him in the dark hall? Fortunately he did put his phone away, and even apologized, which is something I hadn't seen any Russians do the whole trip.
After the ballet we all returned to the top floor bar at the Hotel Doestevsky for food and drinks, late into the night. Early on it was decided that we would toast with a shot of vodka, to which Dr. Greb asked me to provide the speach for, having done this kind of thing well at past events. I was caught a little off guard, and struggled to find the words for a minute while everyone looked at me waiting for me to say something, and then finally I toasted us to, «New friends in far away places, and close friends in close places». We had a grand time, and overall it was fantastic to end our trip to Saint Petersburg in such style.
Diego still had some packing to do after the party ended, so we didn't get to sleep until about 0400h, but not before discovering a crisis. The day before we had both put our passports inside the hotel room safe, and I had locked the safe with a code of Diego's choosing. Just before 0400h though, Diego tried to open the safe and it wouldn't open. He tried several times, and nothing happened. We were a little too tired to worry about it then, so we decided to just go to sleep, but it certainly laid heavy on our minds. When we woke up at 0800h, he tried again, and still nothing. I had him try a code that I might've thought of- I was pretty sure that I had locked it with his code, but maybe I hadn't? That didn't work either. I told him to try permutations of his code, nothing was working. Now maybe, it was time to panic- we were leaving Russia at 0945h, sharp. Diego started just pushing random numbers into the key pad, nothing nothing nothing CLICK! The safe door swung open, and our passports were there for the taking! Considering it's Christmas Eve in Russia (they don't do Christmas on Dec 25th, instead it's after New Years) this fully qualifies as a Christmas Miracle.
Well, we've crossed the border back into Estonia, where we'll continue on to Tallinn to finish off the program. It's snowing here in the countryside, very picturesque. I'm pretty tired though, so I might try to get some sleep as we still have a couple hours until we arrive- I'll try to post this entry when we get to the hotel there. New adventures await!