Clocks

I cannot believe I’m 21. While at first I was pretty bummed that I was going to spend my 21st birthday in Russia where the drinking age is practically nonexistent, I am so excited that this is how it all worked out. 

The day itself went by super fast. When I woke up yesterday morning I remembered dreaming the night before that my host parents were fluent in English and that they have just been hiding it this whole time... How bizarre (would one call that an anxiety dream?). My host parents were expecting a new couch to be delivered to their apartment yesterday, so Nina Vasilievna stayed home from work. When she heard me scurrying about in the kitchen while I prepared breakfast, she came in, wished me a happy birthday, gave me a box of chocolates, and then, bless this woman’s heart, she gave me a hug! She’s so kind. 

I was supposed to meet Adam at the gym after breakfast, but he changed his mind, so I went by myself. I left the apartment and immediately turned left on the 8th line of Vasilievsky Island. I live really close to the metro station, so my area is always pretty busy. I walked through and around puddles, weaving through all kinds of people, passing by the gastronom, the honey store, the fur store, the Tolstoi Fraer bar, the electronic store, the bakery, and a bunch of other apparently-less-noticeable stores before I took a left onto Credny prospekt. There, I am forced to find the gaps in crowds and walk through even more hurried people as I walk past the metro station on my right. I always see a lot of babushkas when I walk this way, and I’m still intrigued by the mere sight of them. First of all, they look straight out of a National Geographic article. You see so many pictures of these women without teeth, hunched over, sometimes with head coverings, shuffling around places, and it’s a little surreal to see them around everywhere. Oh! You actually do exist! You’re not just out of fairy tales... (it’s kind of like when I first arrived in Ireland and heard everybody speak with accents; you ACTUALLY all talk like that!). But seriously, something drastic must happen to the women here once they hit a certain age. Younger Russian women aren’t particularly short; in fact, they all seem to be fairly tall. But then something happens, and then the next thing you know you have a babushka that looks like they lived during Tsarist times (am I being offensive?). I TOWER over these women,  but part of me sincerely believes that they could take me down with their canes. I would NOT want to mess with these fragile, but-most-likely-extremely-fierce women. Shrinking happens to a certain extent in the older men here, but it’s definitely not as salient.   

My body was still waking up by the time I got to the gym, so I didn’t do much, but I was happy that I made it nonetheless. The gym has become less and less sketchy every time I go, and I look forward to saying hello to the owner of the gym if he’s there. I mustered up the courage to ask him what his name was the other day, and he told me his name was Pavel. As expected, he was there when I walked through the door, and he gave me an informal privyet. 

So, Pavel is a bit scary. He could totally crush me with his arms in seconds, but he’s not big to the extent that you worry he might pop some vein at any given second. He is probably in his early 30s, and you can tell right off the bat that he still feels and acts very young. He has tattoos on both of his arms (they’re not sleeves though), he has strawberry blond hair that almost looks shaved on his head its so short, a slight beard, and very light eyes. I understand that by that description alone he probably comes off as someone I would want to avoid, but you have to trust me when I say that you know within seconds of meeting him that he has a huge heart and just seems like a genuinely nice guy. He always smiles and says hi. He also knows a select few phrases in English, and sometimes when he sees me come into the gym he says hey and “whaaaaatsss up!” On the one hand I want to describe him as a big teddy bear, but on the other hand I want to call him a pirate. Have you ever seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? There’s a chapter of that movie, towards the beginning, where we follow Benjamin Button to his first job on a boat. If so (or not), Benjamin Button’s crazy ass boss, the captain of the boat, reminds me of Pavel, but again, I think my host mom reminds me of an owl. Anyways, I just really get a good vibe from this guy (would I call him... jolly?), and I feel like if there wasn’t such a language barrier, we could be buds. In any case, when I left and he handed me back my gym card I said “thank you, Pavel,” and he replied, “you’re welcome/to your health, Olivia.” Then, when I started to put my boots back on at the entrance (we have to take our shoes off before we enter the "gym"), he asked me if I liked Petersburg. 

Me: Yes! What a beautiful city. I’m obsessed with Russian history so... yeah. Are you from St. Petersburg? 

Pavel: No, Siberia actually, but .?.?.? came here to work.?.?.? Are you from New York? 

Me: No. I’m from around Boston, in Maine. A lot of woods there. 

Pavel: Are you studying here? 

Me: Da!

And then a bunch of other little comments that involved me taking good 5 second chunks (AT LEAST, and that feels like hours when someone is waiting for you to respond to a question) before I could form coherent thoughts and express them. I apologized for my lack of Russian comprehension, and he said that I spoke well. I laughed, and basically said hell no, and actually said that I understand nothing. I asked him if he was watching the Olympics, and I got a reply that suggested no. "There’s no snow in Sochi!" he exclaimed. Yeah Pavel, crazy stuff, but thanks a bunch, I’m going to go now. До свидания! Bye! He said back. 

D’aww. 

When I got back to the apartment I hopped in the shower and managed to break their shower. It’s fixed right now thank goodness, but nobody brought it up to me so I think I’m in the clear. Basically, my host parents’ shower has a dispensable shower head with a long cord that is attached to the long faucet head at the top of the bath which also functions as the bathroom sink. Anyways, the shower head cord got hooked underneath the long, metal sink faucet. The sink faucet is screwed on very loosely because I guess my host parents like to swivel it around. I tried to get the cord out from underneath the faucet, but instead of taking the literal three seconds to remove the shower head from it’s holder above my head and swing the cord around the faucet with ease, I decide to leave the shower head where it was, and lift the sink faucet up, just a little bit, so I could manage to get the cord, which had minimal slack, around the sink faucet (I can just hear my dad shaking his head). Of course I can see this all happening, but my best guess is that this makes no sense to you? I apologize. Sometimes when I talk, and probably when I write too, my thoughts move so much faster than my mouth that I think I’ve already said some of my thoughts and continue with my point without actually having said everything I want to. As a result, people get gaps in my story, and they say things like, “wait, is your brother’s name Forest? Is that why you were throwing rocks at him at his xc race and yelling ‘run Forest run!’? You forgot the most important part of the story” Back to the shower problem, you can probably guess that I broke the sink faucet. Pretty much correct. I heard a snap of sorts (oooooohhhh NOO!), and the next minute I was holding the sink faucet in my hands, completely separated from it’s place. I screwed it back in as best as I could, and by the time I finished, water came out MOSTLY from where it was supposed to. I called it good, and left the shower hoping that my host parents would think it was just an old sink set up to which something like this would happen, or that this has happened before and that they didn’t think it was me. And that is the story about the time I managed to detach the sink facet from the shower. 

Moving on, after lunch I met up with Jackie outside my apartment, and we took a bus all the way to the end of Bolshoi prospekt. We were looking for the Lenexpo, which currently has a Romanov exhibit open to the public, for completely free, going on until March 2nd. The bus ride was short, and after getting turned around with directions for a few minutes, we found the expo and the correct pavilion. We were at the very east of Vasilievsky island, and I felt like it might as well have been the end of the earth. There was only grey and white fog beyond the water towards the Finnish Gulf, and if you looked back towards Vasilievsky Island you saw power plants and smoke stacks drawing lines in the gloomy sky. 

This exhibit consists of one giant room sectioned off into 22 or so half rooms that were all open and that which clearly led into one another. This Romanov exhibit was originally shown in Moscow last year, in honor of the 400th year anniversary of the first Romanov coming to power in Russia, and it opened in St. Petersburg on Sunday. When you first walk into the exhibit, you start with Mikhail Romanov and you go through/past each Tsar in chronological order until you reach Nicholas II. The exhibit features light-box like structures around most pictures and boards that have iPad screens that you could enlarge and scroll down to read more information about the board you are looking at. There were pictures, banners with quotes, maps outlining which territories of the Russian empire were acquired or lost during the reign of whichever Tsar you were at in the exhibit, short, 2-3 minute films, and hologram-like moving pictures that oftentimes took up most wall spaces. As you can imagine, the technology was pretty awesome. We started the exhibit at 2:30, and the time just flew. Jackie soon surged ahead of me, for I spent unnecessary amounts of time trying to read banners and boards that were filled with vocabulary that meant almost nothing to me. That was a bit frustrating. I loved the exhibit and I am so happy that I got to spend part of my birthday there (how PERFECT), but I think I would have appreciated it a whole lot more if I knew what the hell I was reading. Ohh well. 

I strolled through the rooms, passing through Tsar Alexei, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, all the Alexanders, all the Ivans, etc... (all the Romanovs after Peter the Great until Catherine the Great all blend together to me) noting all their accomplishments and trying to keep up with where I was in the Romanov family tree (a daunting task). My energy was starting to drain around Nicholas I, but that’s when, in my opinion, the Romanovs become most interesting to me, so I found that reserve tank (as my high school soccer coach would put it) and pushed on. I had just finished up with Alexander III when Jackie found me, all done. We agreed that she would go home to get some homework done before we met up for dinner; I was going to take my sweet time with the last Tsar, and I would prefer to do that by myself. There was no offense there; I would have rather gone by myself to see the last part of the exhibit than go with Patrick Dempsey. 

Okay, that might be a lie, but you get my point. 

When I got to Nicholas II’s section, I felt some kind of pride. There were so many people of all ages looking at his dairy, at pictures of his kids, or watching the short video about his reign. I read a quote from Alexei that hung on a banner which said something like, “When I become Tsar, I want everybody to happy. I want to get rid of all the bad things and make everybody happy.” I smiled and laughed. I waited for some girls my age to get done looking at scanned pictures of Nicholas’s diary on one of the iPad screens, and when I got my chance I tried to read his handwriting, which, for the record, is quite girly but fancy looking. Some of his journal entries were super short, only consisting of a few lines of his journal. It was really hard for me to read his handwriting, especially in Russian, but I could recognize the word for weather and the names of his family members. 

I read different blurbs (“read” is a stretch) on different boards of the accomplishments (well, more like a lack there of) and tragedies that occurred under Bloody Nicholas while squeezing past Russians to get up close to look at all the best known pictures of the royal family (and Raspy, of course) that I have seen about a thousand times on Google Images. After that I walked past a poster depicting Nicholas and his family’s canonization in the Russian Orthodox Church. Facing directly opposite that, however, oh my god was a hologram-thingamabob of the Ipatiev house. The Romanovs, along with 4 (?) others were murdered in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg, and the hologram transitioned pictures of Nicholas and Alexandra’s children in and out, one after the other, all on top of the background which was the only picture of the basement of the Ipatiev house AFTER the murder. The picture obviously doesn’t have the best quality since it was taken in 1918, but you can still see the striped wall paper and the giant gash in it from all the bullet holes and other such... scuffling...

When I finished looking at that picture I followed through the rest of Nicholas’ section. On my right there was a big board with a picture of Nicholas in a train cart window. To the right of that was a short movie playing. The first half was about how Russia developed economically and socially during the final years leading up to the Revolution (this is what I gathered more from the images, less than from what they were actually saying), but the second half of the film, on the contrary, was the opposite. The second half was about the murder of the Romanovs, and I could understand about 70% about what the narrator was saying. They had a reader narrate parts of Yakov Yurovsky’s memoirs (he was the head of the execution squad), which were quoted frequently in Massie’s book. I’ve read the story about their death in that basement so many times that I could recognize specific details and pick up what they were saying. Maybe it’s kind of cheating because I was anticipating what they were about to say, but whatever! I’m going to give myself that. 

I finally wrapped up with the exhibit and took a bus back home. I crammed some homework in during the hour I had to spend before I needed to get to the metro to meet Beryl and Jackie so we could walk to a restaurant for dinner. When I finally got to the metro station, I was greeted with the sight of a large mob surrounding the entrance to the metro, and this mob was quite terrifying. I was literally squished in between Russians like sardines, and at some points I kept getting pushed in the crowd from one direction to the other that I thought I might fall over until I realized that I had no room to fall anywhere. There were other times when I thought my feet were literally going to be picked up off the crowd. There was way too much contact with random strangers in that 10 minute shuffle into the metro, and it tapped into my claustrophobia enough to make me remember never to try and get into the metro around 6 again. 

When I finally got into the metro, we went all the way to Sportivnaya, which is slightly annoying to get to with all the little transfers here and there. From there we walked a few minutes to a restaurant Beryl picked called “Na zdhoroveye,” or, “be healthy.” Beryl said she picked this place because it seemed like a traditional Russian restaurant without the tourists, and besides the fact that the three of us were there, she was so right. You walk into the place and you’re immediately met with all sorts of colors and patterns on the walls, tables and chairs. There are Russian matryoshku everywhere, and there was also a glass wall with different colored grains behind it. There were souvenirs, wooden spoons, a bearskin hanging from a wall, a wood stove, a guy playing the accordion, painted pictures, icons, etc... Basically, you felt like you walked into a Russian fairytale. 

We’ve all wanted to try caviar, so we split an order to start. We definitely ate it the wrong way, but whatever! We first opened up a blini, spread out some sour cream, then chopped onion, then some egg, and then the orange halibut caviar. We also ordered horseradish vodka shots to go with it (no, that was not our first choice; we wanted some other homemade, fruitier vodka but they were all out, so Beryl just pointed to the horseradish shots above). Somehow, that was the first Russian vodka I’ve had since coming here, and it didn’t make me want to gag, so I think that’s saying something! I “chased” the shot with a bite of my caviar blini wrap, and all the onion, sour cream, and saltiness of the caviar (to which I can’t really assign a distinct taste) helped the taste dull much faster than any lemonade concoction from Harris dining hall. Would I do it again? Yes, I would. I’ll bring Meghan when she comes to visit at the end of March. 

I had chicken Kiev for my main course (oh my god KIEV RIGHT NOW!), and by the time the waiter remembered us we had to get the check to go. Our next stop was a bar by Vasilievsky metro station, where we first met up with Fabi, Adam, Alicia, Jacob and Jenna who were all waiting for us when we got to the metro station 10 minutes late. We walked less than five minutes to SPB bar where we stayed until midnight. We took a round of shots, and my friends gave me a hilariously wonderful toast. I told them that I always thought I would spend my 21st birthday with my friends whom I’d known for a really long time, but that I was so happy to be spending it with you guys, which was 100% true. These guys are such fun company, and I laughed my way through two more beers. We were those loud foreigners in the corner, but it didn’t matter. We were just getting silly and having a good time, and by the time we all needed to head back, it took me a few more seconds to register why the words "February 18th" looked and sounded weird to me; as if “February 18th” was a word you said over and over again until it sounded strange on your tongue. 

I came back home, and instead of going straight to sleep, finished some homework with the sloppiest handwriting I’ve ever seen. I didn’t last very long after that though, so I set my alarm for 7:30 so I could wake up and finish it. With that said, I’ve been falling asleep all day today and I need to hit the hay. Please excuse all my errors in this post - I don’t have the time to edit right now but I will the next time I write!

Goodnight :)