Countdown

Yes, a countdown has begun. One week left! I’m getting restless (kind of like the feeling I got during freshman orientation at Conn. We’re all going through the formality of these days, but in reality, everyone just wants to get on their merry ways so they can see what they’re classes are like and find the friends they’re meant to be with). Now that everything in terms of work is done (so long, Vladimir Nabokov!), everybody is just spending these last few days in anticipation of the big return trip home, or in some cases, their big trips to other places in Europe. Adam is traveling to Bergen, Norway for a week, Beryl is meeting her mom in Dubrovnik, Croatia (King’s Landing!), and Jacob is traveling all over Europe for the next month. As much as I would love to travel back to Paris and see family friends there, my wallet is practically empty, and I’m in the mindset to go home. Although, on the other hand, I’m pretty confident that if I was staying here over the summer, or if I had another semester here, I’d be fully committed and happy to stay. 

These past few days have been slow, but fun. It rained and temperatures dropped for most of the week, but towards the end the skies began to open up again and the sun came out. On Friday ten of us met outside the Dostoevsky metro station at 11 am to go to the banya. Because there were so many of us, we decided to rent a private bath house room. We all ended up paying 300 rubles a person ($10) for two hours, and what we got was SO WORTH IT. The owner of the bath house led us into a back room, through a bunch of unlit sketchy corridors, and finally up a narrow staircase which opened up into our own private banya, and what we got was something else.

Our private little banya room turned out to be multiple rooms. There was a large living room/entertainment area that had changing rooms, a massage room, couches, a pool table, and wait for it... a stripper pole and platform. Apparently there was karaoke too, but we just played music. There were even disco lights around the stripper pole. If you walked past the stripper pole and walked through the closest door, you found yourself facing another door which opened into the sauna. Next to the little sauna house was a cold water pool (not ice water like the last time we went) the size of a small dorm room (in length and width). There were shower heads on the wall across from the pool, and there was also a bucket that automatically filled with ice cold water to the left of the shower heads. It had a little rope dangling from it, and all you had to do was tug it downwards a little bit before you were greeted with a serious shock to your system with freezing water. 

For the next two hours, we all got into routines of sweating in the sauna, dousing ourselves with ice water or showering, jumping and lounging in the pool, and then doing it all over again. Since a few of us went earlier in the semester, I had a better idea about what to expect (so I left my necklace and rings at home), but I still found myself melting and needing to switch between the sauna and the pool quite often.  

By the end, I felt great. I was thoroughly drained of energy, but my skin was silky smooth and my body just felt incredibly relaxed. Later that day I met up with Jackie to check out a craft fair, which ended up being disappointing, but I bought a few souvenirs at some other stores and headed home afterwards. 

Yesterday, oh my god, you’ll never believe what I ran into on my way back home from the gym. On the 7th line of Vasilievsky ostrov, there was a dachshund fashion show. I kid you not, there was a wiener dog extravagant festival yesterday, and it was one of the greatest, weirdest events I have bore witness to over these four months in Russia. Never have I ever seen so many dachshunds in my entire life. On my way to the gym I noticed a bunch of them with their owners walking around, and I wondered what in the world was going on. On my way back, I heard the announcer before I got close to the crowd. There were hundreds of people surrounding an elevated runway, where owners walked (sometimes dragged) their dachshunds, who were wearing some of the silliest costumes a dog has ever been embarrassed to wear. At this point, I was cracking up to myself and muttering under my breath, “oh my god. Oh my god!” I’m at a wiener dog fashion show! I saw a dachshund dressed up as Cleopatra. I saw Sochi dachshunds, bumble bee dachshunds, Rusland and Lyudmila dachshunds, Victorian age dachshunds, Mexican dachshunds, a dragon dachshund, princess dachshunds, butterfly dachshunds, and the list goes on and on! By the time I got there, the #110 contestant was walking their dachshund down the runway, and I left around contestant #170. It was the cutest, most bizarre thing I could have stumbled upon, but it made my day. It was a little sad at times, because some of the dachshunds were clearly not having it. I wiggled my way through the crowd to the stage at the very end, where the stairs leading down the runway were, and some of the poor dogs were shaking and really scared to a) simply be on the runway with music and the announcer blasting and/or b) to walk down the makeshift wooden stairs. Luckily, dachshunds are quite the lapdog, and their owners came to their rescue by scooping them up with one quick motion. 

But like, what in the world? I kept thinking as I was watching the show how I could literally be in a Buzzfeed article that will show up tomorrow about “St. Petersburg’s Wiener Dog Fashion Show.” It’s just one of those things. Man, this world is a silly place. 

Adam is spending the week in Budapest and Prague, and because he lives in the dorms across from Smolny and has constant access to wifi while, as of a few days ago I no longer have, he was nice enough to give me his key. As a result, I spent yesterday afternoon sprawled out in Adams room catching up on emails and Facebook messages. I’ll definitely head that way after I get done writing this. 

I left his place around 6 yesterday, ate dinner and then took the metro to Primorskaya, where I met up with a bunch of people to play some late night soccer again. We went back to where we played last time, in that turf filled ice hockey rink, and we played for a little while before, unfortunately, one of the Wills fell down wrong and twisted his knee. What ensued was a whole lot of ridiculously unnecessary drama (not from Will though). Will, thank heavens, stayed calm and didn’t scream, because if he was screaming bloody murder, chances are, I would have joined right in there with him (I cannot handle panicky, stressful situations AT ALL. I cannot stay calm). Someone ended up calling Mike, who called a taxi. Eventually a taxi showed up, but because of the weird payment method (I don’t know how it worked), we couldn’t load Will into this taxi because it was the wrong one. We had to wait another half an hour before Clarissa, bless her soul, found the correct taxi which was waiting the whole time however many blocks away from the ice rink. We slowly got Will into the taxi, where he and Beryl took it to the American hospital. Will was definitely in pain, but from the looks of it, it seems like he will be okay and that no serious damage was inflicted. 

But what if Will was in serious pain? What if bones had broken through the skin?? Would the taxi still have refused to take him the first time? Hopefully we would have had the sense to call an ambulance if this were the case, but still. I remember reading in Alice Brock's Russian history course senior year how some people died waiting for ambulances to come because the traffic in Moscow was so bad. Common, Russia. Get your shit together! 

Getting back to soccer, as much as we should have probably quit playing soccer out of respect for Will’s injury, we didn’t. Beryl and Clarissa took care of him, which makes me feel like a dick because I clearly didn’t go out of my way to do anything for him, but ahh... I didn’t know what to do. What was there for me to do anyway? Go get him ice? (Beryl went to a produkty and bought him frozen veggies). Call Mike? (Beryl did that). Hoist him onto the bench? (the boys took care of that). Wait with him for over an hour?

Ugh.

Anyways, we kept on playing after Will and Beryl left. We played some loose scrimmaging  ( = Dylan dominating everyone) before we moved onto a few rounds of World Cup ( = Dylan dominating everyone). Although the flow of the game was definitely shaken due to all the drama with Will’s injury, everything was still a whole lot of fun after. I left the courts, with the boys still playing, at 11:20 pm in order to catch the metro home, but alas, it wasn’t dark out by the time I got home around midnight. I had gone to the gym in the morning, and I was so exhausted when I got home that after a quick shower and a midnight snack, my body melted into mush under the covers of my bed. I slept until 11:30 am this morning, and I felt so well rested. I can’t remember the last time that I slept that late!  

Glorious.