2010: A Russian Odyssey

“Hey look, it’s the sun”

Yesterday we went to Pavlovsk on our first excursion outside the St. Petersburg city limits. We caught the train in the morning at a station within ten minutes walking distance from my apartment, and the ride took about 30 minutes. The ticket was impressively cheap – only 39 rubles (a little over a dollar) for students.

The best way to describe Pavlovsk in the winter is to say it looks like the December page of a calendar. A forest full of Christmas trees (or whatever they’re actually called) leads you to a massive imperial palace on the hill:

After the palace tour a friend decided that as a child born and raised in Southern California I never got to fully experience the joys of sledding down a snowy mountain. It made me remember the time my sister and I rode down Mt. Baldy on my dad’s car mats, but besides that she was pretty much right so we rented two “vatrushki” (inner-tubes… and apparently a student ID and 600 rubles is not a good enough deposit for a plastic tube because the lady yelled at me for quite some time) and joined the crowds. In LA, kids have Disneyland, here they have the slopes of Pavlovsk – there were so many little Russian kids out and about! A lot of the slopes were safe for kids, but there was one pretty intense drop that all the adults were doing, so we eventually joined there. Connecting the two inner-tubes together and going off the huge jump there was probably not the best idea, but it was pretty fun getting several feet of air and coming in for a crash landing.

Back in Petersburg, I decided to go to my new-found Mexican restaurant (Latin American, rather) for the second night in the row. I think the waitress recognized me, maybe I can become a regular. It obviously doesn’t compare with Mexican food in California, but for Russia it is pretty impressive. They even had dancers and a live band playing Gypsy Kings in the restaurant.

After dinner we headed to a “kinoteatr” (movie theater) behind Nevskiy prospekt and watched “Voobrazharium Doktora Parnasa” (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus). It was a really good movie and insanely visual, but at the same time very confusing… I feel like it wouldn’t have made much more sense if watched in English.

Today there are no excursions planned so it’s errands time for me. My top quests for today are to buy new headphones and to somehow watch LOST!!

Ermitazh

Today after classes we got our St. Petersburg State University student IDs and went to The Hermitage to use them – students get in free, as many times as they want! Although I was there for about an hour and probably only saw less than 5% of the collections, I got a general feel for the museum. As you probably know I’m not too big on art, let alone all this classical artwork, so it wasn’t really THAT amazing for me. I liked the ancient and medieval artifacts from Siberian tribes more than the European paintings. I’ll probably be back again soon anyway, seeing as it’s free. I can see how it appeals to art buffs though, the collections are enormous.

I prefer the building from the outside and its surroundings, so I decided to make these panoramic views of The Hermitage area (Top: courtyard outside facing away from the Winter Palace entrance, Bottom: frozen over river Neva and Vasiliyevskiy Island taken from behind the Winter Palace):

“It’s a beautiful walk… in summer”

Classes started today, and I actually feel like I’m a student again! My Tuesdays start at 11:30am, so I was able to take my time in the morning and I also got to miss rush hour on the metro. When I went to campus Monday at 8:30am, I felt like I was in March of the Penguins or something. I was crammed tightly in the train car then stepped out at the stop near Smolny cathedral (Chernyshevskaya) and shuffled with the massive crowd from the platform to the escalator. I hope there aren’t any claustrophobics in Russia.

My first day made a good impression, I think I’m going to be enjoying my courses here. Today I had grammar, conversation, and ethnic studies. Grammar is probably going to be more like the courses I took at USC. Conversation was more challenging right off the bat, so that should be an interesting class. The rest of my classes, including ethnic studies, are taught in English and are not supposed to be academically challenging but instead informational/engaging. I’m looking forward to ethnic studies, which is going to be about the different ethnic groups in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union and how conflicts between them shaped Russian history. Here’s my schedule:

Oh yeah did I also mention that my classes are in the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?

Kolombo

After watching about two hours of “Kolombo” (Columbo) with my host father Andrey, I now have a greater appreciation for the series. I always just passed by it whenever I saw it on KDOC (really there’s rarely anything worthwhile on KDOC), but it’s actually a really great detective show. Andrey really likes the actor Peter Falk and how he puts together all the pieces of the puzzle throughout the show (“Look! They are staging this to trick the police, but they won’t trick Columbo!”)

It was during Columbo that I was first unable to convey my point in Russian. The first episode we watched was from the 1990s and the second was from the 1970s – in the second episode Columbo ALWAYS had a cigar in his mouth or a glass of alcohol in his hand. I was trying to point this out and comment on how smoking and drinking has been phased out on American television, but it just didn’t work. I probably sounded something like “It’s interesting how Columbo to smoke and to drink in the seven but right now no smoke.”

My other observation made while watching Columbo was that people watching American television shows in Russian get a very unfortunately poor experience. There is one man dubbing all the male voices and one woman dubbing all the female voices in the show, and they rarely use emotion or inflection in dialogue. Although this is probably good for the Russian economy, I don’t really think it’s a better viewing experiencing than watching with subtitles. At least with subtitles you know how the dialogue is originally being spoken. All the grittiness of Columbo’s voice is lost with the Russian voice-over. Movies are a little more professional though, they seem to use multiple voice actors.

As a side note, I’ve been playing a lot of charades with my host family (not literally playing, but we often act out what we’re trying to say). Some of my favorite words/phrases to act out or have acted out to me so far have been: pipe (sophisticated expression with your hand like you’re holding a wine glass), icicle (grab some ice from the freezer and make a dropping motion from it), electric chair (point to the chair and shake), lethal injection (give yourself a shot), evidence (act like you’re scattering papers across a table), and gallows (motion like you’re hanging yourself, of course). Electric chair is actually a really straightforward translation, but for some reason I thought they were asking about those massage chairs you find in Brookstone.

Also here’s a photo of the queen of the apartment:

“Picture with monkey: 100 ruble”

After some more orientation meetings on Friday, we finally got to head to our host families. The ride from the hotel to the apartment was quite an experience… it’s pretty obvious why CIEE tells students not to rent their own car, the streets are a warzone. I don’t know if it’s because the slush covers any paint on the road or if it’s always like this, but nobody really keeps inside a lane.

I was dropped off first from our group because the apartment I’m staying in is further south in the city than most others. I’m now living on 6th Krasnoarmeyskaya ul in a third-floor apartment with death traps looming above:

My host mother Svetlana Borisevna and her “koshka” (kitty) Yassa (who will undoubtedly serve for some great lolcat photos) greeted me when I arrived at the apartment. I’m staying in her son Kostya’s old room, which is really well decorated! Fantasy books, photos, and a silver sculpture of Vladimir Lenin line one side and more Russian books, a CPU heat sink, a TCP/IP poster, and a hanging hard drive the other – I think we’d get along. Here’s my bed area and the view outside the window:

My first home-cooked Russian dinner started without a moment to waste! Potato soup, rice, chicken, and salad olivie was on the menu. Svetlana and I talked about both our hometowns and families (“Moyu sestru zovut Taleen, kak stolitsa Estonii – My sister’s name is Taleen, like the capital of Estonia”)… she first guessed that I’m Greek, and if my name were Alec Ananopilosis I might have played along. Communicating is… interesting. I think I understand about 75% of what she says, the other 25% either gets a smile and nod if no response is required otherwise it’s “Ya ne ponimayu” (I don’t understand). Svetlana can read English but doesn’t know too much vocabulary, so she has a handy dictionary to help me understand once in a while. My dialogue on the other hand is pretty simple for now, she says I’ll be a pro by May though.

Friday morning I watched the Rugrats movie in Russian with my “kasha” (porridge) breakfast (I need to watch more children’s cartoons, they’re way easier to understand). At 10:30 we headed out to meet the CIEE group for a city tour. The walk to the metro station was my first real look at the surrounding area because it was already dark when I arrived the night before. The metro station (Tekhnologicheskaya stantsia) is VERY close by, so that’s going to be a big convenience. We took the metro (full of blank-faced people in fuzzy hats) to Petersburg’s hub, Nevskiy prospekt, and met everyone at “Kazanskiy sobor” (Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan) to board the tour bus. We drove to most of the major sites of the city – palace after palace, church after church! St. Petersburg is a very beautiful city… there is only one modern-looking building, everything else looks like it came from the 19th century (and it pretty much did). The main river flowing through Petersburg, the Neva, is frozen over and covered in snow right now, so it makes things look even nicer. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camer, but I’ve got plenty of time left to take photos. We also got to see the university where we’ll be studying, which is the political science department behind the Smolny cathedral (not at Smolny College like I said before). The cathedral is amazing, and the building I’ll be studying in is just as ornate.

That night at dinner I met Svetlana’s husband Andrey. We had dinner together and watched the Nigeria vs. Algeria soccer game then “Perevozchik” (Transporter… Jason Statham is surprisingly less badass when dubbed in Russian). Unlike what some of the other students in the program reported about their host fathers, Andrey is really friendly and talkative. We mostly talked about the sports teams in Petersburg and Los Angeles (and how I’m supposed to hate on the Moscow soccer team and its crazy fans).

Here are some more photos from a walking tour (Nevskiy prospekt, The Hermitage, …aaaand monkeys dressed as babies)

Dobro pozhalovat v Sankt-Peterburg!

(Welcome to Saint-Petersburg!) After a long journey of three flights, I’ve finally made it to St. Petersburg! The flight to Dulles was fine, but for some reason the eight hour flight from Dulles to Vienna was just killing me. Then the three hour flight from Vienna to St. Petersburg got me a little scared – whatever countries I was passing over, they were all completely covered with snow. Flashes of “What have I got myself into?” went in and out of my head.

Stepping onto the tarmac at Pulkovo airport was like an epiphany, I didn’t know such levels of cold existed. But now that I’ve bared the single digit and negative degrees, I know what to expect and it’s definitely manageable. I don’t think I’ll be going for long hikes in this weather, but it’s really not all that bad when dressed properly. I need to invest in a balaclava, that’s all I’m missing to feel comfortable outside right now.

I’m staying at the Hotel Pulkovskaya Park Inn, which is pretty far from the Petersburg city center, until Friday when we go to our homestays. The area outside our hotel is the Ploshad Pobedy (Victory Square) and there’s a massive monument in the center dedicated to those that survived and fought against the Nazi blockade of Leningrad for 900 days between 1941 and 1945. Here’s the view from my hotel:

Pretty much the whole day Thursday was dedicated to orientation and getting an introduction to “practical activities” like how to use the metro. We’ve been eating all our meals inside the hotel restaurant so far – mainly potatoes, rice, beef stroganoff, and today, borshch.

Tomorrow is our academic orientation in the morning and in the afternoon we’re moving in with our “Petersburg families.” I’m excited to see who I’ll be staying with, and how far I’ll actually be from the CIEE study centers. Internet is a bit expensive (or if free, then scarce) so I may not be around to answer emails or texts until Monday. Hopefully my homestay is near a McDonald’s, I hear they all have free WiFi. Also I added a little flickr feed on the right side of the page to show my latest photos!

Twelve hours until lift-off

In about twelve hours I’ll be on my way to St. Petersburg, Russia for the Spring 2010 semester at Smolny College. I plan on keeping this blog as up to date as possible during my four months there, and this is serving as my introductory post so I don’t give people links to a blank page! I’ve also added some contact information on the right column of the site so you know how to get in touch with me while I’m there.

Tomorrow I’m leaving LAX at 8:45AM and from there heading to Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. (flight about five hours) then Vienna, Austria (about eight hours) and then off to St. Petersburg (about three hours), planning to arrive on January 27 at 3:00PM (4:00AM in Los Angeles).

Wednesday’s high in St. Petersburg is 2ºF. I have no idea what that means or feels like, so this should be interesting…