“Holidays!” Today was our last day of classes before “spring break” (the word spring is used loosely in this country). Tonight I’m heading to Moscow on an overnight train. Then on Sunday I’m flying out of Moscow to Warsaw, Poland with a couple friends, and from there we’ll be visiting Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I’m really excited for the trip, and I’ll be coming back to St. Petersburg on April 4. “Proshchajte!”
“What a nightmare!” That’s what you instinctively say when you exit your apartment and walk on the streets of Petersburg in this transition between winter and spring. All the snow that collected over the past couple months has to melt somewhere, and all the icicles that formed on rooftops have to drip and fall somewhere… hopefully not on your head.
The weather is starting to get to be above freezing point so the rain’s coming down and the streets are becoming a nightmare. You can’t walk too close to the road otherwise you get splashed and you can’t walk too close to the buildings otherwise you get dripped on and risk getting impaled by an icicle.
“Dvorniki,” street cleaners, go up onto rooftops and pick icicles off buildings, letting them fall onto the sidewalks. The only problem is, they don’t really clean it up, I guess that’s not their job…
Snow plows run through the streets pretty often and on the sidewalks of the “prospekty,” main avenues, of the city, but on the smaller streets it’s usually safer to walk in the middle of the street than on the sidewalk.
I’m proud to say I’ve only slipped once on this terrible black ice, though. I was turning into my driveway from the street, looked to my left, and saw this fierce looking man sticking his head out his apartment window smoking a cigarette, about one foot away from my face. Apparently it surprised me enough to forget what I was doing and fall on my butt on the ice.
And here’s one more photo to prove that Petersburg isn’t all lovely cathedrals – the further you go from the center the more industrial (and, in some cases, Soviet) it gets:
It seems as though the weather forgot that it’s March. My host mom never says that Spring is coming soon, only that the calendar says it’s coming. I’m actually enjoying the snow though, I prefer it over the hail and rain that’s going to come when it warms up – the snow is just so much calmer! I thought I’d share some photos I took the past couple days:
My attempt at an artsy photograph of the monument to Aleksandr Pushkin, one of Russia’s most famous poets and the one who brought colloquial language to Russian literature, in Ploshchad iskusstv (Square of the Arts). On Saturday I’ll be going to the city of Pushkin, also known as Tsarskoe selo, where he lived and studied for a good portion of his life (which was short because he died in a duel, like all respectable 19th-century Russians):
Some photos of the pouring snow we got yesterday on my street, Krasnoarmeyskaya:
The icon of my neighborhood, just five blocks up the road, Izmaylovskiy sobor:
(Happy International Women’s Day!) Russians love holidays, I think they’ll make a holiday out of anything just to get out of work. A couple weeks ago we had “Men’s Day” and today was Women’s Day (these are not replacements for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day by the way, those are different holidays). I’m not complaining – I get to skip out on school because of them!
The tradition is to get a gift for women that you know (which can get pricey so I think being selective about the women is fine), so last Friday I took some flowers to school for the cloak room lady and my conversation teacher (we had a test that day). Today I went out and got some flowers for my host mom as well, which are now gracing the living room.
Like on Men’s Day, my host parents’ son, his wife, and his daughter all came to the apartment for dinner to celebrate the holiday. It was interesting to pin a face and personality to all the science fiction books, Formula 1 magazines, and Communist emblems decorating my room.
Their son Kostya speaks pretty good English, and his wife Lena likes to practice so I was a good outlet for that. Their daughter Sofia is about one and a half years old, and her main words are mama, papa, and MEOW. I think she uses “meow” to mean “cat” rather than the sound the cat makes. I secretly love it when the baby is around – I’m like a baby in respect to Russian language because when my host mom is showing her pictures and saying what each thing is, I learn so much! On Men’s Day my host dad read me and explained one of her books – all I needed after that was to be tucked into bed.
Last week I took on a job, internship, gig, whatever you want to call it for The State Hermitage Volunteer Service, which is a group that does volunteer work at The Hermitage. I’m redesigning their website (even they know it badly needs help). Besides that I have two Russian conversation partners now, with whom I’m supposed to meet once a week and discuss things half in English, half in Russian so that we can both get practice. The next couple weeks will be pretty routine, but on March 20 we’re going on an excursion to the city of Pushkin and on March 25 to Moscow, which I’m really excited about!