Wait Till You See My Smile

I just found out that I got an internship at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard for the summer! The administrative director and I have been emailing back and forth since December, and we were finally able to have an interview this evening via Skype, along with two other members of the center, and she got back to me within a few hours saying that they would be happy to have me. My Russian professor Andrea was accepted into their very prestigious and competitive Fellows Program at the Davis Center for the 2013-14 academic year, and I don’t know exactly what she said to whom, but just like my fortune last summer with the UC Berkeley program, I owe another shred of my soul to this woman. Needless to say, I AM SO. HAPPY. There is such a relief that comes with knowing that I no longer have to figure out what to do with my summer. 

In other Russian news, I went to the Institution of Russian Literature (Pushkin’s House) on Tuesday with Jackie. The museum really only consists of 3 large rooms (a fourth was under renovation), and we were the only ones there. The rooms contained a nice combination of historical furniture, paintings, photographs, drafts/manuscripts, some sculptures, and a bunch of cool personal items from Russia’s most famous writers. For example, I saw Turgenev’s pen (and a lock of his hair), Dostoevsky’s coin pouch, Tolstoy’s boots and shirt, and there were even death masks of Pushkin and Tolstoy... Crazy! We also saw some drafts of War and Peace and Anna Karenina with Tolstoy’s markings in the margins. How unreal. 

Yesterday, on the walk to Smolny (the days are getting longer; the sun didn’t set until past 7 today I want to say...) I heard a helicopter fly over my head. No big deal, right? I’ve seen a few here before, but after watching it for a while, I noticed that the helicopter started to descend and eventually land on the English embankment right in front of the Bronze Horseman statue (I had a clear view from the bridge). I was beyond curious as to what the helicopter’s purpose for being there was, but by the time I crossed the English embankment myself, the helicopter took off again. I continued on my way to classes, perplexed and intrigued. 

Even though we have been advised to avoid any sort of crowd or protest here, my first reaction when I saw the helicopter land was whether or not I should walk to it and be late to class. You know how the Discovery, National Geographic, or Weather channels always show videos of freak storms? Usually tornados and hurricanes? And how there are always a few idiots who completely ignore all the evacuation warnings and decide to film what it’s like inside the eye of the storm? Well, that’s sort of how I feel about watching any form of political unrest here in Russia. Of course, I have no doubt in my mind that if I saw any form of trouble I would take off in the other direction, possibly screaming, as fast as I could, but what I REALLY want to do is get in the middle of it and take pictures. Let’s just hope I never have to be presented with such a situation... 

Kalinka

So, Maselnitsa. I don’t know too much about this traditional holiday, but what I do know is that it has pagan roots and that it's supposed to mark the end of winter. Maselnitsa, or Butter Week, also involves the mass consumption of blini, and during the weekend, there are carnival, fair-like celebrations all over the country. 

My host mom had been making blini all week, and I’ve been eating said blini all week, so I guess I’d technically been celebrating it even before we went to the carnival on Sunday.  We heard that there were some festivities going on at the Peter and Paul Fortress, so we met up there after lunch. After we left the metro station Gorkovskaya, we were met with crowds of people walking through the park, both on their way and heading back from the carnival. We passed by people of all ages, but there were a ton of kids. Once we got into the fortress, which is more or less filled with open courtyards, we could see different touristy booths and blini stands. But besides that though, there wasn’t a whole lot actually, which was disappointing. People crowded the lines from blini enough to dissuade me from wanting any, and the touristy booths had cheaper looking souvenirs. There were a few puppet shows going on, and a bunch of weird clowns on stilts walking around. There was also a small band of men and women dressed in traditional clothing, and they appeared to be providing the music for some old folk dance going on in the center of a crowd on a makeshift stage. I took a few pictures and watched the various families and people with what looked like caramelized fruit on a stick walk past me. 

We continued to stroll along the fortress, and not before long I found myself in a crowd in front of a big stage where 6-7 women, dressed in bright yellow and orange colors and caked in bad makeup, danced and sang traditional Russian songs. The beat was catchy, so I found a spot in the concert and watched. People all around me were clearly having a ball. When the group of women got done they were replaced by another group of men and women dressed in more traditional Russian clothing. The men wore tall, black fur hats and bouncy Aladin-looking pants with funky shoes, and the women wore dresses. They squated down to a level that made my knees ache and did some of those classic Russian kicking moves. At this point, my friends had fallen behind (or forward, I had lost them a while ago), and it was just me in the crowd. To my left a few groups of women had linked hands and started dancing. There was another random man bouncing up and down next to them with the jolliest look on his face. More people had linked hands and formed a dancing circle, and everybody was laughing and having a good time. I took pictures, enjoyed the music, and couldn’t help but laugh myself. Am I really in Russia? How did I get here? This is going to sound cheesy, but while I watched the concert and observed the people around me, I had one of those, how do I put this, “they’re-just-like-us!” moments. They have their silly dances. They have their traditional folk songs. They all celebrate things and they are raised knowing that grabbing some stranger’s hand to make a random dance circle is the thing to do on Maselnitsa. I couldn’t help but think about everything that is going on in Ukraine right know as I watched these people; the potential for a civil war is brewing not too far away from here and meanwhile, Russians are dancing and singing and celebrating their culture. It was all so... innocent, and as twisted as it was, it made me happy too. It made me wonder how we could hate or discriminate against a group of people, or declare war on them or treat Russia as the west has done over the centuries (it was all probably mostly deserved though, I will say), after you see these people in their element. I don’t know. Do I sound like John Smith from Pocahontas? Or Jake Sully from Avatar? I don’t mean to sound so naive or wise or whatever it is that I’m coming off as. I just, in as few words as possible, felt overwhelmed by how simple, in a way, people are and that war is stupid. That people who don’t consider people’s culture when they go to war are stupid. That there are so many obvious reasons why we should NOT be fighting each other. My god. 

That was beyond cheesy, I’m so sorry (but not really).

After watching the concert for a while, I found my friends. We all watched the concert for a little bit longer, and before we knew it, the people on stage worked their way through the crowd and started skipping around the crowd, grabbing random people’s hands to join in on the dance circle. Somehow, I got swept up into it all, and I found myself hand in hand with some random Russian women dressed as if she were straight out of a fairytale. The circle broke and another began, and this time I had a little girl with pink gloves hold my hand. She was blond, blue eyed, and she looked radiant. At one point I asked myself what in the world I was doing here. How did I end up here? At the beginning of March dancing in a circle with a bunch of Russians to celebrate some pagan holiday? It was mind boggling, but at many points during that dance I turned to my friends and said, “I’m so into this!” 

Okay, I gotta go. I’m off to a Pushkin museum, and I need to leave soonish, so I don’t have time to really edit this. Forgive my typos! 

A Lack of Colour

This is going to sound spoiled, but I hadn’t been to a museum or something along those lines in a while (at least it felt like it), so I decided that I wanted to try to go to Peterhof on Saturday. My week was stressful, and the idea of leaving the city, even if it was just to the suburbs of Petersburg, became increasingly more appealing as the week neared its end. Three guys from my program wanted to come too, so we all met around 10 am on Saturday at the metro to begin our journey to Peterhof. 

We took the metro down the red line, almost to the bottom, and from there we took a marshrutka, or minibus, to Peterhof. The drive took 50 minutes, but it went surprisingly well. Marshrutka drivers don’t have the best reputations for their smooth style, and after getting really car sick the day before, I freaked out more than I would have normally when I realized I left my dramamine in my other backpack. The marshrutka wasn’t that packed, however, and the seats faced forward this time, so thankfully I didn’t get nauseous at all. 

Unfortunately I don’t know that much about Peterhof, so you are spared 3 lengthy paragraphs filled with probably-pretty-boring information from me. What I do know is that it was a summer residence of the Tsars (the earlier ones in particular I believe), and it was built during Peter the Great’s time. A bunch of my other friends wanted to go to Peterhof too, but they wanted to wait until later in the spring when the trees were all in bloom and the famous fountains were working. I thought about how that would probably be the better option, but I really just wanted an excursion right then and there. 

The drive to Peterhof was nice and... eye opening. Smolny is located pretty much in the city center, and I’m lucky to live right on the Neva at a diagonal from Winter Palace. My point is that most of the time I’ve spent here in Petersburg has been mainly in the really nice areas. It’s not to say that the areas outside the city aren’t nice, but you could definitely tell, even once we left the metro, that less attention has been paid to the surrounding areas of the city. I will mention that Saturday was cloudy and grey, so that definitely added to the whole gloom of it all, but lets just say I felt relieved to make it back home, to familiar places with all the lights and palaces and cobblestone streets and cafes and bars everywhere. 

There were houses spread out throughout the drive, but the buildings we passed on the way there along the highways were usually giant apartment buildings. Some buildings looked random and out of place next to each other (an attempt by some architect or engineer to spice up the edge of the city perhaps?), but I still appreciated seeing what other parts of Russia looked like. There were also lots of Lenin/other communist related statues/monuments (hammer and sickles galore). 

One last thing I will say about the suburbs - at one point during the drive I wondered what all this looked like before communism in Russia. Was it all forest? The occasional wooden house in the middle of the field? These apartment complexes don’t look THAT old... I don’t know, it amazes me to think about how much was accomplished during the Soviet Union (ohhh it hurts to commend “communism”). Oh communism, you may have starved and murdered millions of people, but you weren’t messing around. You have a lot to show for it! 

Enough of that madness. When we first walked onto the Peterhof grounds, it felt like a ghost town. The naked trees were all planted in symmetrical, geometric patterns on the sides, and the fountains looked lifeless and sad without any water, but boards and tubing instead twisting about in the pools. The palace, a long, light yellow rectangle, stood straight ahead with white church like towers on either end. There were golden onion domes, of course, with golden double headed eagles to complete them. We walked up to the fountains and past the rows of trees before we ended up at the back of the palace. 

The back of the palace, which faces out to the Gulf of Finland, is actually more like the front of the palace. The back of the palace is still grand and impressive, but the back is so much more Tsar-like. You realize once you get behind the palace that it is located at the top of a hill. You walk along the back patio and overlook a forest with a long canal running right up through the middle. There are so many stairs and steps you have to walk down to get to the woods, but it doesn’t take long. It kind of made me feel like I was walking down the steps of a Greek amphitheater, but the view of the trees and of the gardens are still really pretty, despite it being only the beginning of March. We saw more people as the day went on, but for the most part it was not busy at Peterhof. We walked past the fountains and took pictures of the golden statues, which stand out and shine brightly, for the contrast between the gold and the grey winter colors everywhere else is striking. 

We continued to walk along the canal, through the trees and over the small bridges, until we reached the ocean. We walked off the path and onto the “beach” there, where we walked onto the ice and skidded and slid around in our boots for a little bit. The view out onto the Finnish Gulf is vast and sort of uninteresting, seeing that it was just one giant eye-full of grey fog. It made me a little claustraphobic, in a way, to look out into the Gulf. There was nothing but a big cargo ship out in the distance; you couldn’t see anything else. It felt like the world might as well have ended at that point. Looking out into the distance was yet another reminder that I’m a LONG way away from home, and at this point, that realization still makes a strong impression. 

We all started to get cold shortly after, so we headed back towards the palace. We walked along some paths, took more pictures of random fountains and garden structures, and then had a fun run-in with a squirrel that had really large, tall, cone-like ears. I have never seen a squirrel like that before, and boy did this little guy have a personality. He came right up to us, and he definitely knew that we were enjoying him. He started climbing up a nearby tree, showing off, and at one point I swore he was going to jump onto my friend Will’s jacket when Will walked up to the branch the squirrel was on with his hand extended. 

Ohh, nature. It was really nice to walk through trees and see grass, even though it was pretty brown and lackluster. When we walked back up the stairs to the palace, we bought tickets to go inside. Just like all the other palaces I’ve been to here, this one was covered in gold. More naked statues. More religious depictions on the ceilings. But it was still very cool. This palace was a lot smaller than the other one’s I’ve visited thus far, but there were some unique rooms. There was one full of mirrors, and because the room was a little smaller in size and the lights were slightly dimmed, the reflections of the gold totally electrified the room. 

There was room where the walls were made up of identically-sized portraits. They were of both men and women, and they kind of all looked the same. They looked like they were painted by Johannes Vermeer, the guy who did the Girl with the Pearl Earring. And then there was another room that had the comfiest looking, light blue L-shaped bed. Needless to say, I WANT ONE. 

We continued to walk past more rooms filled with fancy china, a few rooms with Chinese themes, a Tsar’s study with a german-made alarm clock from the 18th century, and more bedrooms and other empty rooms that make you wonder what they’re function was when people actually lived in the palace for real. When we had seen it all, we said that we’d probably come back here during the spring, and decided to head back home. I was back at the apartment (my host parents were at the dacha) eating my lunch by 3:45 pm. 

Because I had a good chunk of the afternoon left, I decided to go to the gym. And then my food coma set in, so then I decided to take a nap instead. And then instead of taking a nap, I decided to watch some House of Cards, and so on and so forth. Before I knew it, it was time to go out. A few of us went to a bar not too far from Smolny and played the card game called “President.” It was fun and relaxing, but I was dog tired from everything going on in these past few days that I made it home before midnight. 

Speaking of fatigue, I need to try and go to bed early tonight. I didn’t even get to write about what I did today for Maselnitsa, but I will write about that soon! Until next time. 

Lost!

Yup, it was really only a matter of time before I got royally lost in this city. I was on my way back from a job interview for an English teaching position in the southern part of the city (I am not going to accept the job; it requires that I travel too far and I know I sound like an unmotivated slug but this whole thing has caused me TOO much stress already, believe me) when I decided to get off at Sadovaya, which I thought is a shared metro stop with Gostiny dvor, which is on Nevsky Prospekt. Today has been the third day in a row that the sun has been out, and I thought it would be a good idea to get off at Nevsky prospekt and to walk around the Winter Palace and Palace square by myself. So I got off at Sadovaya, but I underestimated how far you can walk from one metro station exit to the other underground, and I exited the metro to a part of the city that I have never seen before. No matter, I thought. Sadovaya is connected to Gostiny Dvor; Nevsky Prospekt has got to be right around the corner... 

So I thought. 

Well, if I wasn’t already 95% sure that I had a horrible sense of direction, today most definitely bumped it up to 100%. Before I knew it, I had zero idea of where I was. My immediate thoughts were to look up past the tall buildings to try and see if I could find any recognizable monument, like the column in the middle of Palace square, so I could orient myself. I should have known that this was going to happen. Just last weekend I told my mom  that it was practically impossible to get lost in Petersburg. Oh yeah! There are so many monuments and canals throughout the city that all you have to do is look up or follow a canal and you’ll know where you are instantly! For the most part, I want to say that’s still true, but I’m no Pochahontas. In retrospect, I’m astounded that I never found Nevsky Prospekt. I literally have a map of the city on my bed to my left right now, and where I got out of the metro should have been wicked close to the city center, but somehow I managed to go in the most unhelpful direction you could have possibly chosen. 

I didn’t fret at first though. It was so nice out, and I walked along the Griboyedova canal for quite some time completely content. I plugged my iPod in, and I felt confident and secure as I walked through these streets by myself, but after a while when I still didn’t see any monument I recognized, I started to wonder where I was. I had only been walking for ten minutes at that point though, so I decided to keep walking. I was bound to end up somewhere familiar, right? Right. 

WRONG. 

I basically walked in a HUGE circle on the left side of Nevsky Prospekt. It took me an hour of walking before I remembered that I had a map in my backpack that I could have pulled out (I should have), but by that time I saw a blue onion dome with white stars on it in the distance, and I thought I knew exactly where I was. I originally thought it was the Mosque, but I had my doubts because the Mosque I was thinking of is on the other side of the Neva by the Peter and Paul Fortress, and I didn’t think I was anywhere near that. I must be wrong, I thought; how many blue onion domes with small white stars can there be in this city? It turns out that I was walking to the Holy Cathedral Cathedral, which is even farther south of the city. Thankfully, on my way there, I turned a street and just like that, St. Isaac Cathedral’s golden onion dome came into view... in the other direction. It had been hiding behind all these buildings all this time, and when I saw it I swore aloud. How I managed to miss it I had no idea, but thank god I found it or else I would have found myself walking in the direction of Sochi. 

By the time I saw the golden onion dome, my legs were cranky. I dragged my boots the whole way home, and I metaphorically hit the back of my head when I walked past so many places that, oh, if only I took that left instead of a right, I would have known exactly where I was. I’m bummed I never got to walk around Palace square, but hey, at least I got a better view of the city! I did walk past St. Nicholas Cathedral, which is a beautiful robin’s egg blue. I didn’t go to the gym today, but I think I certainly made up for it. 

On another, completely different note, my host mom made a comment about how terrible the situation is in Kiev right now at dinner, and I jumped all over it. I told her that I was really happy she made that comment; I wasn’t sure if I could ask her about politics, I told her. She seemed okay with it though, so I asked her what she thought about Kiev, and if she knew what the general public thought. She said she thought it was all awful, and that she thinks everybody else does too, but that she couldn’t speak for everyone officially. And then I asked her what she thought about Ukraine “going to Europe.” “How can Ukraine go to Europe when it’s located right where it is? Hm? You tell me.” By this point I had a huge grin on my face. Yesss YEEESSS muhaha YES tell me everything!! And then, oh ho ho, I had the guts to flat out ask her if she loved her president. “I LOVE our president,” she said. JUICY, but not surprising, was my reaction. She went on to say how, before Putin, Russia was in shambles. Something something about Gorbachev (“the west loves Gorbachev though” - me; “of course the west loves Gorbachev!” said she). Everything is stable under Putin, she continued. We are not fighting with the United States anymore. We can have conversation and eat dinner as we are now, and there is peace. Everything is good when there is no war. You can’t be sad, she said, when the sun is out and the birds are singing. There is no war right now, and for that we have to be grateful. Well said, Nina Vasilievna, but “a lot of people do not understand that” I said. I mean, I’m definitely guilty as charged. I honestly don’t appreciate a peaceful world like someone who has lived through something like the Cold War does, but I appreciated what she had to say nonetheless. 

I need to appreciate the sun and singing birds more. 

I Hear Noises

I find myself missing the woods. I’m not homesick, nor do I want to come home, but I noticed the other day that I was craving something, and I think it’s trees. Petersburg does a pretty decent job at having parks spread out and planted trees everywhere, but it’s not the same. I definitely love being in this city, but I wish I could go for a walk in the woods, or run around baxter boulevard, or drive along route 77 (to Meghan's house, of course). Okay, that makes it sound like I miss home, but I will just say that I miss nature. There. That’s that. I miss seeing thick pine trees and the ocean, despite the fact that I live on the water here. I loved Maine when I lived there all the time, but my god, what an awesome place. I know I’m going to be so comforted to drive my car around the familiar streets when I visit home this summer. Man, I hope that I always make it back to Vacationland in the future. 

Okay, this is going to be an entry full of more random anecdotes. I should really be catching up on Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, of which I am currently 200 pages behind on (it's a 450 page Nabokov novel - super dense), or doing something to benefit my Russian like reading children’s stories (I found a book of bedtime stories/fairytales for kids in the bookshelf in my room [unfortunately still above my language level]) but WHATEVAH. 

I would honestly rather be watching my new favorite tv obsession: House of Cards. Oh. My. God. Have you seen it?! If you haven’t, I would highly recommend it (I know I do that a lot, but you have to give this one a chance; the episodes are all on Netflix Watch Instantly). In short, the show is basically about how Congressman Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) manipulates his way through the White House with his equally merciless and power hungry wife (Robin Wright) right by his side. The characters definitely make this show. Kevin Spacey’s character often turns to the camera to rant about whatever he wants to share (usually he lets us in on his cruel opinions of others or arguments to support his latest scheme), and his soliloquies are actually hilarious sometimes. Other times they are not, but you’re hooked nonetheless. In more crude terms, Francis Underwood is a slimy son of a bitch, but he’s BRILLIANT and you have to admit that you like him. His wife Claire is pretty cut throat too, but I admire so many of her attributes (is that worrisome? Perhaps...). Anyways, I just found out that my favorite power couple has an agreement to do whatever they want with whoever they want as long as it is advantageous to whatever mastermind plan they are up to next. Oh so sexy. However, if you are afraid that watching this show might make you hate American politics even more, then you’re absolutely right. Don’t watch it.

On another, funnier note, the other day the cat Emelya was crying during dinner, and my host mom apparently knew exactly what the cat wanted. Nina Vasilievna proceeded to usher the cat into the bathroom, talking to the cat as if it were a baby (I am so guilty of it as well). A few minutes later, Nina Vasilievna tells me that Emelya wanted his face washed. Did I know that? Why, no, Nina Vasilievna. I did not know that Emelya’s cry was about his gunky saucer eyes not being clean. Nina Vasilievna told me to go look, and when I walked into the doorway of the bathroom I was greeted with the sight of Emelya, sitting on the toilet seat, cheerfully meowing with a wet, clean face. I started laughing, and began to laugh even harder when my host mom reminded me to always put the toilet lid down because Emelya would fall in the toilet. Oh, the things people do for their pets. 

Equally as random, but a few weeks ago a bunch of us were walking around Smolny on the way back from a bar when, all of a sudden, we see two giant green army tanks roll through the street. There were people on the top of the tanks, but it wasn’t making any alarm sounds or anything. It seemed like a perfectly routine drill. My friends and I were all like, “yup, only in Russia will you see tanks casually strolling through the streets.” Only in Russia. 

Okay, more thoughts. The winter olympics are over, and I unfortunately did not achieve my goal of watching more of the games than I normally do. I don’t use the TV in my apartment, and I haven’t been checking the scores online. I’m disappointed, but can I blame myself? So many people from home have asked me what it’s like to be in Russia during the olympics, and I have sadly replied that, in all honesty, I feel like you could walk down the streets of Petersburg and have NO idea that this country was hosting the olympics. How can that be true? I know I’m a foreigner and I can’t understand much of what is said on the radio or on TV, but should I need to understand everything that’s being said? I have seen nobody dress up in Russia’s colors. I have encountered no hooligans shouting in the streets for their teams. There are no funny signs or billboards to cheer their athletes on (with the exception of a few, but you could walk past them without knowing). There’s a chance I’m just being my usual, oblivious self, but I refuse to believe that entirely. It seems like people are more excited about the olympics back home than they are here. Why so apathetic, Russia?

Speaking of apathy, I seriously need to rant about Kiev. My friend Leland asked me the other day what people in Russia are saying about the political situation in Ukraine right now, and I got so frustrated when, after wracking my brain trying to remember anything I’ve heard on the radio or amongst friends about the situation, I said that I haven’t heard anything. And then I got kind of mad, because I know for a fact that if I were at Conn right now every single one of my classes would be talking about Kiev. I’M the one in Russia right now. I’M the one who should have all the juicy information! I’M the one who should be able to make comments that people haven’t heard in the states, but I can’t! I’ve been reading articles as much as I can about the unfolding events next door, but - okay, maybe this is my problem - they’re all from American or British sources. I hear them talk about Kiev on the radio, but again, just like with the olympics, I can’t understand all the details. I should probably start reading the Russian newspapers here (either in Russian or in English) because I honest to God have no idea what the average Russia, or even IF the average Russian, thinks about current events. I want to ask my host parents what they think, but we were advised to avoid discussing politics entirely. I want to ask Russians my age, but I have no Russian friends! There are Russians in my classes, but can you imagine what kind of “what the hell?” look I’d get in return if I just leaned over in my seat and asked my neighbor, “hey! You’re a Russian my age. What do you think about what’s going on in Kiev right now?” They’d probably think I was gearing up to dissect them like a frog. I mean, common. Isn’t that why I’m here? To ask people directly what they think about Putin? What they think about the "West"? About gay rights? About the Olympics? About Zac Efron? Aside from that last one, it’s not really appropriate for me to do so. There’s a part of me that is furious, but accepting towards this fact. Yeah, it sucks, but I don’t wanna get locked up abroad for my big mouth. But then there’s another part of me that says, well fuck that! I’m going to ask people whatever I want. I’m only here for a while. Why not?! 

We’ll see how that goes for me.

The Method

Ugh, I think I’m getting a cold. I haven’t been going to bed until late these past couple days, and I’ve been pretty active. So much for all that vitamin C I’ve been taking. I don’t have any particular event to report today - I just feel like there have been a few little things I want to get down. 

I forgot to mention something about the Nicholas II section of the Romanov exhibit the other day. The very last board of the room was dedicated to the 1917 Revolution, and there was a lot of information about the Bolsheviks. What caught my attention was the huge picture of Lenin on the board, but that moreover, it was cast in reds and other dark, menacing colors. It was undeniably depicting Lenin as the villain, and that really surprised me. It’s weird, after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a lot of nostalgia for communism. It still exists among the older generation, and I’d say that a ton people here still revere Lenin. On the other hand, however, since the collapse of the Soviet Union we’ve learned a lot about the last Romanovs. We’ve since acquired the technology and the political liberty to fully investigate what happened to them, and there has been a resurge of interest in them (in my opinion). As a result, I thought it was very interesting to see Lenin cast as the bad guy in the Romanov exhibit when obviously everybody thought Nicholas II was the bad guy when he was in power (for good reason). Although I didn’t understand a lot of the writing in the exhibit, from what I did get and from simply being there I would definitely say that the exhibit was extremely sympathetic to Nicholas II and his family, while almost making Lenin look bad. What a little switcharoo that is!

Does that topic interest you at all? What happened to the Romanovs after they died and perhaps looking at how the Russian public feels about them today? I’m toying with that idea for an honors thesis/dissertation that could quite possibly involve the next decade of my life, but if the answer is no and that doesn’t interest you, I swear my idea is more articulate than the three lines I just typed (annnnnd I would disregard your dismissive opinion anyway... Just kidding, I consider myself extremely responsive to other people’s advice). 

On a similar note though, in my Cold War class last night my professor said something about Lenin and Nicholas II that I had never thought of before (I’m ashamed to say). When trying to answer the question, “why did Lenin order the execution of the Romanovs when they posed no threat after Nicholas abdicated?” my answer was always that which we discussed in my Russian history class in high school: that it was to prove a point that there would be no chances of any revival of the monarchy in Russia; we are done with the Romanov dynasty once and for all. While that’s definitely still true, my professor brought up the fact that Lenin gave the order to kill the Romanovs because his own brother was hanged for his revolutionary activities. How did I not put two and two together and come to that conclusion myself? Revenge as the motive - such a simple point, but it was just one of those ohh! DUH, moments. 

Completely changing subjects, I LOVE the food here. My host mom is such a good cook, and I told her the other day that I love everything that she makes. This came after I had just gorged myself for dinner. That night I had a noodle soup and a plate filled with a few potatoes, a piece of chicken, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, some type of caramelized cabbage and buckwheat. Very simple, but so incredibly tasty! I can already tell that I’m going to have some serious cravings when I get home. I think that’s one of the best parts about traveling - the food. It’s hard for me to describe what typical Russian cuisine is like, but I like to say that it has a lot of root vegetables. There is a ton of soup, and I’ve reached the point where when there is soup in front of me my first reaction is something like, “yo, where’s my slice of bread and raw garlic clove to chomp on?!” I’ve gotten snobbishly accustomed to the raw garlic and bread thing... 

There is a lot of bread, which is fine but I definitely want to start avoiding it if I can. Russians love dill (its on EVERYTHING), salads that lack lettuce or spinach (it’s mostly chopped cucumber, pickle, tomato, some meat and mayo), cabbage (in all shapes and sizes), beets (what a pretty color), mushrooms (I want to go on a mushroom hunt), sour cream (so much better than the sour cream in the states), and this type of oatmeal called kasha. I don’t know- it’s not ALL incredibly foreign, in fact, most of it is quite simple, but they do it really well here and I don’t hesitate to try whatever is put in front of me (my 6 year old self would be astounded by how less-picky I’ve become). Additionally, my host parents are really into their dacha, and they grow a lot of their food there which I so appreciate. I don’t know if it came from their dacha, but the honey I ate the other day, which had some sort of small nuts in it, was the best honey I have ever eaten in my entire life. It is a pale yellow, and deliciously thick. I just spread it over a slice of bread for dessert. Hell, I would spread that honey over a tree branch and eat it. 

Bouncing around to another subject, I think I’m REALLY going to enjoy my Nabokov class. I did have to email my professor this afternoon though asking him what in the world he means by “you have a presentation on Russian America on wednesday” in the latest message posted to the class website. Valerii Germanovich is smart and sometimes funny (his mannerisms are slightly Rowan Atkinsonesque, especially the way he moves his eyebrows), but that man is really frickin’ vague. You’re telling me I have a presentation on Russian America and that’s it? That’s all you’re giving me? Screw that. In any sense, I’m not that peeved, and the material is going to keep me in the class if all else fails. 

Ohhh my god Nabokov is an evil genius. For the past two classes we’ve simply gone over the first 4 pages of his longest novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, and with incredible patience, we basically analyzed the crap out of each word. Sounds tedious? You’d think so, but I actually found it so amazingly cool. When I first started the book, I read through the first few pages noticing funny things, but never actually taking the time to pinpoint why that name or word sounded funny. First of all, I’m an idiot for not having picked up on 80% of what was hidden in the text. Second of all, Nabokov thinks I’m an idiot too. But actually! My professor told us that a lot of what Nabokov wrote was a joke with himself because he was so confident none of his readers would pick up on all of his puns, references, and innuendos. Well, he got that right. I am Nabokov’s perfect guinea pig to read his books. I read without an English major’s mind, and as a result, I didn’t pick up on why “the tender and wayward age of fifteen” sounded odd. “It sounds strange in English,” my professor told us. “Nabokov’s adding the word 'wayward' makes the sentence sound foreign. You would not say that in Russian either. It’s added and artificial sounding; Nabokov is making the text sound strange to both the American and Russian reader.”

Psssh, OBVIOUSLY.

Is that not enlightening enough for ya? How about the fact that Estoty (a combination of “estate” and “Estonia"), Canady (a combination of “Canada” and “candy"), and Lagoda, Mayne (REPRESENT) are all mentioned on the first page? Furthermore, the first sentence features a quote from the novel “Anna Arkadievitch Karenina [which was] transfigured into English by R. G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor, Ltd.” Sounds pretty legit, right? WRONG. Everything about that sentence I just quoted is infused with some little joke Nabokov came up with. I won’t bore you with all the details, but some of my notes from the past two days of class include: “we are supposed to pay attention to the art of creation;” “Nabokov knows things about naively realistic things;” “Mount Tabor → Greek story about unnecessary labor → everything is in vain;” “Nabokov to the readers: PAY ATTENTION!!” “author is setting some rules → but we may not be acquainted with these rules → switch the reader’s reflection on ↑,” and so on and so forth. In sum, this class, or maybe just Nabokov, is going to blow my mind (and make me feel incredibly stupid all the time). I may love politics and history, but I also have a huge crush on English. I thoroughly enjoy talking to English majors at Conn, and I wish I had more time to take English classes. I get so into analysis (neeeerd), and I think poets and authors are the smartest people when hidden/double meanings are revealed to me in class. IT’S MAGICAL. 

Okay, it’s 5:39 but I’m getting tired. Tootles!

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 :)