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sabotabbyThe Russia saga continues, this time in Leningrad St. Petersburg.
Sunday, April 23
...We got on a train to go to St. Petersburg. The train was holyshitawesome. We had a private car, with beds, blankets, pillows, little bags of toiletries, and boxes of food. I've never been on a train like that before. I didn't get to admire it for long, though, because we dropped some Ambien and slept the whole eight hours to St. Petersburg.
We had a couple of minutes to collect ourselves and our bags before Vova, Anya's uncle, popped his head into the car. His friend drove us up to a suburb of St. Petersburg where Vova, his wife, Natasha, and their daughter, Masha, live. Natasha doesn't speak any English, but Masha speaks a fair bit. She's 19, and studying Swedish at the university. They have the cutest little black cat, who is making me miss my kitties.
Alas, the cute is only a veneer. This is the most foul-tempered kitty in the entire universe. She hates all of humanity and wants to kill you. I compared her rather unfavourably to Behemoth in The Master and Margarita.
They warned me about speaking English—at least audibly—in the city. Apparently, there are gangs that prey on foreigners. It's funny, because overall, my impression is that people here are much nicer than in Moscow—everyone seems polite, you don't get pushed around in the subways [this was an erroneous impression, as I found out when it wasn't a weekend], and the whole pace of the city is much more relaxed. It seems less Americanized, too. There are these minibus things that drive you from the suburbs, and as we rode in one, over potholes and past shabby low-rises and forests, Anya commented that this seemed was much more like the Soviet Union she remembered. There are still a lot of beggars and a few sandwich-board people downtown, but the glaring billboards are conspicuously absent.
We spent three hours in the Hermitage today, which was a full-on art overdose. It's as incredible as they say, but completely exhausting.
Me in the White Ballroom, where the Kerensky Provisional Government was arrested.
Here's another view of it.
Since we're also masochists, we went to the Pushkin museum in the house where he died. Very morbid. [Seriously...the entire museum is about his last days and death. The clock in the study where he died is stopped at the exact minute he died. Creeeepy.]
Vova is an interesting character. He was apparently some sort of career officer in the Red Army and got drafted into the secret service, fought in Chechnya, and got very disillusioned. He seems like he's out of another century—chivalrous to an extreme I've never seen in my life. He's the sort of guy who not only opens doors for women, but also helps us out of buses and into coats and carries baby carriages down the stairs.
I'm wiped and a bit sloshed from a few rounds of vodka. By the way, despite my limited vocabulary, my Russian accent is really good. Who knew?
Picspam:
The 1917 Pravda office.
Teh pretty.
Monday, April 24
Today we walked around and saw a lot.
[Probably the most brilliant sentence I've ever written. Exhaustion decreases my IQ or something.]
The Summer Garden was "closed for drying," whatever that means:
...and the Aurora was closed, but we took pictures:
We tried to go to the Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was killed—or not—but it turns out that there are actually two Yuposov Palaces and we had the wrong one.
P.S. Because of his work in the secret service, Vova wasn't allowed to travel to the U.S. until this year. [Hardcore!] Apparently he and Natasha aren't as much fun as I think in translation. Oh well.
Some other stuff:
Monument to the Revolutionary Dead.
Apparently this plaque says something very distasteful, to the effect of "you should be glad that you're dead."
Long live the Revolution!
The ice was just breaking up. It's really a lovely city.
Sunday, April 23
...We got on a train to go to St. Petersburg. The train was holyshitawesome. We had a private car, with beds, blankets, pillows, little bags of toiletries, and boxes of food. I've never been on a train like that before. I didn't get to admire it for long, though, because we dropped some Ambien and slept the whole eight hours to St. Petersburg.
We had a couple of minutes to collect ourselves and our bags before Vova, Anya's uncle, popped his head into the car. His friend drove us up to a suburb of St. Petersburg where Vova, his wife, Natasha, and their daughter, Masha, live. Natasha doesn't speak any English, but Masha speaks a fair bit. She's 19, and studying Swedish at the university. They have the cutest little black cat, who is making me miss my kitties.
Alas, the cute is only a veneer. This is the most foul-tempered kitty in the entire universe. She hates all of humanity and wants to kill you. I compared her rather unfavourably to Behemoth in The Master and Margarita.
They warned me about speaking English—at least audibly—in the city. Apparently, there are gangs that prey on foreigners. It's funny, because overall, my impression is that people here are much nicer than in Moscow—everyone seems polite, you don't get pushed around in the subways [this was an erroneous impression, as I found out when it wasn't a weekend], and the whole pace of the city is much more relaxed. It seems less Americanized, too. There are these minibus things that drive you from the suburbs, and as we rode in one, over potholes and past shabby low-rises and forests, Anya commented that this seemed was much more like the Soviet Union she remembered. There are still a lot of beggars and a few sandwich-board people downtown, but the glaring billboards are conspicuously absent.
We spent three hours in the Hermitage today, which was a full-on art overdose. It's as incredible as they say, but completely exhausting.
Me in the White Ballroom, where the Kerensky Provisional Government was arrested.
Here's another view of it.
Since we're also masochists, we went to the Pushkin museum in the house where he died. Very morbid. [Seriously...the entire museum is about his last days and death. The clock in the study where he died is stopped at the exact minute he died. Creeeepy.]
Vova is an interesting character. He was apparently some sort of career officer in the Red Army and got drafted into the secret service, fought in Chechnya, and got very disillusioned. He seems like he's out of another century—chivalrous to an extreme I've never seen in my life. He's the sort of guy who not only opens doors for women, but also helps us out of buses and into coats and carries baby carriages down the stairs.
I'm wiped and a bit sloshed from a few rounds of vodka. By the way, despite my limited vocabulary, my Russian accent is really good. Who knew?
Picspam:
The 1917 Pravda office.
Teh pretty.
Monday, April 24
Today we walked around and saw a lot.
[Probably the most brilliant sentence I've ever written. Exhaustion decreases my IQ or something.]
The Summer Garden was "closed for drying," whatever that means:
...and the Aurora was closed, but we took pictures:
We tried to go to the Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was killed—or not—but it turns out that there are actually two Yuposov Palaces and we had the wrong one.
P.S. Because of his work in the secret service, Vova wasn't allowed to travel to the U.S. until this year. [Hardcore!] Apparently he and Natasha aren't as much fun as I think in translation. Oh well.
Some other stuff:
Monument to the Revolutionary Dead.
Apparently this plaque says something very distasteful, to the effect of "you should be glad that you're dead."
Long live the Revolution!
The ice was just breaking up. It's really a lovely city.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 06:06 am (UTC)Again with the Pushkin!
Date: 2006-05-09 01:53 am (UTC)I like that train story. Sounds a lot better than Amtrak!
Re: Again with the Pushkin!
Date: 2006-05-09 01:57 am (UTC)Munich is cool. Berlin blows Munich away. I mean, it depends on what you're looking for, but Berlin has to be one of the best cities I've ever visited. I can go on at great length about how wonderful Berlin is, especially because it has my favourite art gallery ever. Not so much for the palaces, though.
The train we took back to Moscow wasn't nearly as cool, but it was named after the Aurora, so points for that.
props
Date: 2006-05-09 04:58 am (UTC)Re: props
Date: 2006-05-09 01:33 pm (UTC)Re: props
Date: 2006-05-10 02:49 am (UTC)Re: props
Date: 2006-05-10 07:21 pm (UTC)Re: props
Date: 2006-05-10 10:25 pm (UTC)straight to the cat stuff
Date: 2006-05-09 05:41 am (UTC)In other news, Russia sure has lots of teh pretty.
Re: straight to the cat stuff
Date: 2006-05-09 01:34 pm (UTC):(
Re: straight to the cat stuff
Date: 2006-05-09 02:03 pm (UTC)Re: straight to the cat stuff
Date: 2006-05-09 04:02 pm (UTC)Re: straight to the cat stuff
Date: 2006-05-09 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 01:14 pm (UTC)A Russian language instructor of my former acquaintance once claimed that back in his college days, before the drinking age in the U.S. had been raised to 21, his Russian teachers would hold class in the campus bar around a bottle of vodka. Apparently, getting drunk helps English speakers relax their mouths around Russian's mushy consonants and plastic vowels.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 01:38 pm (UTC)I mean, the other factor was that I was picking up Russian words by listening to people around me talk. It's just funny because my French accent is awful.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 04:49 pm (UTC)