Russia

Welcome to Siberia

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I just arrived in Tomsk, a university town just off the Trans-Siberian railway line. After a one wet, cold night in Yekaterinburg (aka Sverdlovsk) between trains, Tomsk is sunny but markedly colder than the other side of the Urals.

The train has been interesting so far. I’ve spent days in silent reading, with all my compartment-mates ignoring each other. I’ve had raucous, communal compartments where my phrasebook gets hard use and where it’s impossible to refuse offers of food and drink. And then, on yesterday’s train, I’ve had a remarkably unfriendly babushka, who deliberately placed her luggage on the bench where she had slept (bottom bunk) but which we were supposed to share as seats during the day (I had top bunk). When I offered to move her luggage to the storage bins so I could sit down, she growled at me and pointed to my cramped bunk. Feh.

Anyway, afterward on the train I met about 10 students on linguistics heading to Tomsk for a conference on “inter-cultural communication.” They’re all women, about 22 years old I’d say. They *all* want to practice their English with me, so I’ve agreed to meet them for coffee today.

Also here in Tomsk, I will be well taken care of by a Olga, a director of some sort at the Polytechnic University, who I was introduced to by a man I met through Esther in Moscow. (Confused yet?) Anyway, she sent her employee, Natalia, to pick me up at the train and has instructed her to show me all the sights.

In short, I’m glad to be here. I hope it lives up to my expectations.

Now I’m going to run and get my first real, non-cup-o-soup meal for three days.

Kazan, Kazan.

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Kazan, Kazan. I’m not sure about this place. I came here because it’s the capital of Tartarstan, one of many semi-autonomous republics of the new Russia. Its history is complicated – I’ve read about it a few times, and I’m still confused. The originals, I think, are Bulgars (kin in name, at least, to modern Bulgarians, who were absorbed into the native Slavic people after migrating to the western shores of the Black Sea). The area was converted to Sunni Islam by an ambassador from Baghdad in the 10th century. Then there are the descendants of the Mongol Golden Horde, which sacked the city in the 13th century. In the middle they mixed it up with some Finno-Ugric people – the same people who settled Finland and Hungary. Ivan the Terrible burned everything down and started Kazan over as a Russian settlement in the 16h century. And finally, both Leo Tolstoy and Vlad Lenin famously got kicked out of the local university due to their political activities.

The modern architecture is as big a mish-mosh as its history. Half-burned wooden houses, severe Soviet concrete megaliths, 19th-century brick buildings crumbling into karst sinkholes – a result of the limestone earth and the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers, I’m told. And now, it seems, each new building boasts whatever architectural style suits the project architect.

In my short walk around the original Tatar settlement and current “muslim area”, separated from the town center by a small canal, I saw remarkable extremes. On the one hand, the area is dilapidated, strewn with buildings with collapsed roofs and piled high with trash. At rush hour, the rutted roads are clogged with Ladas, Volgas, trams and new buses, all kicking up dirt from the streets and spewing greasy exhaust. But among all this ruin sparkle crisp new structures – mosques, hotels, office buildings. This part of town feels like a Third World city that has recently come into some serious cash.

The people also consist of an inscrutable jumble of ethnic groups and opinions. Along with the inevitable Russian Orthodox (and atheists), there is a large Muslim population who practice an easygoing brand of the religion. I haven’t heard a single call to prayer, and few women cover their heads. Every third building, it seems, is a ministry or government office of the “Tartarstan Republic” or of “Kazan.” Souvenir shops sell green, white and red flags of the Tartarstan republic. Adding to my own confusion, street signs are in both Tartar language and Russian.

All this ethnic pride, however, doesn’t seem to translate into a desire for independence from Russia. Shakirova Dilyara, the president of a private business school I met with yesterday, talked about Russia’s future. Tatiana Kamaletdinova, the director of the Junior Achievement program here, spoke proudly about Tartarstan’s great wealth of natural resources and industry…in the context of its place within Russia.

Beyond these cultural insights, I haven’t found much of interest here in Kazan. Sure, the Kremlin is lovely and the town is good for a wander. But honestly, it’s kinda boring.

I have yet to be delighted by any particular place in Russia. I don’t know if it’s my expectations, or what. I have high hopes for Tomsk, which by all accounts boasts a vibrant cultural scene fed by the dozens of local universities and institutes of learning. Off the main Trans-Siberian route, it maintained its culture through Soviet times, while escaping the fate of most other non-Trans-Siberian towns, which have faded into ghost towns.

We’ll see if Asian Russia appeals more than European Russia has so far. Tonight I leave Kazan by overnight train, passing the arbitrary border between Europe and Asia on my way to Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg, on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, is famous for many things. Most noteworthy, I think is that it the city where Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks and tossed into an old mine. I’ll only stay there for about 12 hours – a layover between the Kazan train, which arrives at 14:00, and the train to Tomsk, which leaves at 3 am and arrives in Tomsk 36 hours later.

It’s going to be quite a three days:
May 16 at 20:00, leave Kazan. Arrive Yekaterinburg May 17 at 14:14.
Hang around Y-burg.
May 18 at 02:57, leave Yekaterinburg. Arrive Tomsk May 19 at 05:56.

In other words, don’t expect to hear much from me before Tuesday, unless I find an internet cafe in Y-burg (which I will try to do).

Moscow…..a haze

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[I just added links to this post, but then had the effing internet run out on me mid-post. so the whole effing things was lost. so now I’m reposting sans links. I’m annoyed.]

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I’m sitting in a student cafeteria in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Tartarstan Republic and the so-called Istanbul of Russia. I arrived here yesterday morning by overnight train from Moscow. I spent yesterday wandering about in a daze, not quite recovered from the whirlwind that was Moscow.

In the end, I liked Moscow more than I thought I would, but still not enough to love it. It is much more of a city that St. Pete, which in hindsight (and in comparison) felt more like a very large town than a city. You could feel the NYC-like buzz on the streets of Moscow. Important things were happening right now, whereas St. Pete was more about important things that had happened in the past.

It’s hard to write about it now that I’ve left, but somehow I couldn’t find a spot to write while I was there. The hostel where I stayed, Home From Home, was decent – better than Cuba – but still cramped, noisy and a bit dirty. Anyway, let me try to write about Moscow.

I arrived the day before May 9, the day Russians celebrate their victory in WWII. Any Muscovites with any sense and a dacha left the city, leaving it…well, as quiet as Manhattan on July 4th weekend. Though I missed the parade itself – tanks rolling through Red Square – the city was littered with WWII vets in full regalia, chests dripping with badges and medals, receiving gifts of flowers and posing for photographs with passersby.

That night (Saturday May 9) I went to a dive bar/club with Nikki and Russell, two Brits I met at the hostel. We didn’t know what to expect – the listing fro Djao Da, the bar, only said “live Russian music.” It was…fantastic. Mind-blowing. The most pure fun I’ve had in quite a while. The show consisted of three-piece band – drums, guitar and bass – who quickly faded into the background as a parade of wild, outrageously dressed singers took the stage. They sang 50’s and 60’s style songs in at least four different languages (I recognized Russian, English, French and Spanish). The singers – all women except for one Canavan-like man – rotated on and off the stage, changing outfits between each song – poodle skirts, gold catsuits with silver “rockets” on their back, Mod micro-minis, Liberace lace and rings, and more. Holding it all together was a tiny, frenetic Janis Joplin-like figure, in Lennon shades and a fake sheepskin coat, who sprang around the stage and small dance floor shouting and cheering and getting the crowd to dance.

We had a wonderful time drinking vodka and beer, dancing, and marveling at the spectacle. We took a taxi home around 2:30, sweaty, happy and reeking of cigarette smoke.

The following day was my Kremlin/Red Square day. The weather was perfect – sunny but not hot, the trees vibrant green, the flowers in full bloom. The Kremlin was indeed impressive – the churches, the old Soviet buildings, the impossibly young guards ensuring no one got too close to the Senate buildings (and in one case, kicking a troop of Japanese tourists out of a garden of tulips, where they had been tramping about posing for photos). I’ll upload pics as soon as I get the chance.

Esther arrived that night. We met for about a minute at her hotel – she hadn’t gotten much sleep on the plane – and made plans to meet up again in the morning. Thus began my race-around-Moscow-with-Esther-and-meeting-amazing-people portion of my time in Moscow. Monday morning I watched her get interviewed by Evgeny Savin, who is filming a documentary series on Russian entrepreneurship and venture capital. We had lunch with Bas Godska, a Ukranian-Dutch man who is the deputy-CEO (possibly the silliest title ever) of Ozon.ru, Russia’s Amazon.com. Bas is a great guy – easygoing, full of energy, very clever. After lunch he kindly agreed to meet with me again the following day, to further discuss Ozon, Russia, and other things.

After lunch Esther and I took the subway/bus to Star City, the cosmonaut training facility outside Moscow where Esther had spent about 6 months training to be a space tourist as Charles Simonyi’s backup. Esther thought of it more as being “embedded” – in the practice of science, and in a vestige of the old Soviet system. She approached it, she says, as a learning experience and a challenge. Esther is maniacally protective of her time. Over the years she has learned how to squeeze productivity out of every spare minute of the day. Pretty much anyone who has met her more than once has experienced “Esther is done with you now” – the moment at which her eyes lose focus and wander over your shoulder, or at which she impatienly starts to cut you off to end the conversation. (I say this with love, of course.) To her credit, Esther realizes her impatience and obsession with pure time efficiency. It was this force that would go up against a Soviet-style system, one in which, she says, “They didn’t take anyone’s time seriously. Not even their own.” I’ll write more about her experience separately.

As for us, we couldn’t go into the training area, because Esther no longer has a pass. So we toured the living area, including Esther’s old room. We climbed the bell tower of the new Orthodox church, being built by Muslim craftsmen from Uzbekistan, and rang the St. Peterburg-made bells. Happily, we ran into Al Drew, NASA’s director of operations in Star City, who invited is to dinner in the NASA cottages. So we had a lovely spaghetti dinner with some gregarious NASA guys, one of whom is going up to the Space Station at the end of May. I must admit, I was pretty psyched to meet real live astronauts. I told them all I expected to retire on the moon, so to get crackin’ making that happen.

The next day Esther gave a speech to a committee meeting at the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow. The co-director, Ron Lewin, is a guy I had met 15 years ago, when I was still Esther’s assistant, during her East-West High-Tech Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia. It was funny seeing him again – now all grown up (so to speak), married with children, etc.

After that meeting we met Andrey Kortunov, the head of the New Eurasia Foundation in Moscow and without a doubt the most impressive person I met during my days with Esther. He spoke eloquently and insightfully about the state of Russian/American relations and Russian politics, education and health care. I just listened and absorbed. I still need to do some research about New Eurasia, but it sounds like they are trying to find some private means to work with and/or get around goverment ministries in order to improve life in Russia.

Incidentally, we had had some trouble finding the office, on the 5th floor of an unmarked modern walk-up building. The rent on the 5th floor was cheap, Andrey explained. What he didn’t explain, but what I was to come to understand, is that the lack of signage was one of many ways that organizations and business try to…well, sort of “hide” from the Russian government – tax police, zoning officials, registration officials of various agencies, all of whom may make the life of an organization miserable, if the appropriate palms aren’t greased or asses kissed. Again, Andrey didn’t say any of this directly. This is just what I picked up as I have listened to businesspeople, educators, travelers, and others.

For lunch we met Sergey Kravchenko, the President of Boeing Russia-CIS. A large man who has known Esther for years, he greeted her warmly and talked about old friends, politics and the price of oil. He also told a great story about meeting Sakashvili, the president of Georgia. Sakashvili had insisted that they have a private meeting. At the end of the meeting, he said, “I want to give you a gift.” Sergey says, “It was the strangest gift I have ever received.” Sakashvili handed Sergey a framed, signed, photograph of himself. Like a soap star meeting a fan.

Though he was clearly an important man who understood his importance, Sergey made sure I was part of the conversation, teasing me about the “danger” of traveling alone to the Russian East. I shrugged, not knowing, but suspecting, that he was teasing. As he left, he shook my hand grinned, saying, “I was just kidding. The Russian people are very friendly and wonderful.”

The next day (Wed) Esther had a board meeting. I checked out of my hostel and met Stephen O’Connor for lunch. Stephen’s an old friend – I met him in Bratislava as well, and then knew him in Budapest, where he was an owner of the Budapest Business Journal (where Andrea DiCastro worked!). Now he’s married with children as well. His family lives in the US and he is back in Moscow, working in commercial real estate development.

After lunch I went to SW Moscow to meet Nina Kuznetsova, the head of Junior Achievement Russia. I had contacted her through a guy from HP who I had met at the AmCham meeting. Jr. Achievement, an international organization, is teaching entrepreneurship to children and young adults – from 6-20 years old. It was interesting to hear about how the program had to be adapted to Russia, where the idea of a free market was only a theory in the early ’90’s. She promised to put me in touch with regional directors as well, so I can see the program in action. As a matter of fact, I’m going to meet the head of the Kazan office in about an hour.

So that’s it – a quick review of what I’ve been doing.

I’m finding it harder here than in SE Asia to find places to write and post on a regular basis. I’ll try to be better about it! The plan at the moment is to stay in Kazan through the weekend and then go to Tomsk, on Monday or so. I have a feeling I’m going to love Tomsk, so I’ll probably stay about 5 days. Then I’m going either straight to Irkutsk, on Lake Baikal, or first down to Kyzyl, in the Tuva Republic, before going to Irkutsk. I’ll spend about 2 weeks in the Bailkal area. I’d like to try to get to Yakutsk, northeast of Baikal, for a summer solstice festival there on June 20th or so. Then the plan is to go to Khabarovsk, (possibly Sakhlin Island) and Vladivostok before heading into China.

Gotta run!

Moscow

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Yes, I know I haven’t posted in a while. But I’ve been busy!

I’m sitting here in the hanging out room of the Home from Home hostel in Moscow. The gargantuan “maid” is sitting in her usual spot, watching the Eurovision competition, being broadcast live from right here in Moscow. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t write too much – the music is too awful to describe.

As a matter of fact, given that she just TURNED UP THE VOLUME, I’m going to post this little hello and move upstairs, where the guitar singalong seems to have broken up.

Oh, privacy and quiet, how I took thee for granted.

Staraya Russa

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ed note: I wrote this a day ago, in SR. I’m actually in Moscow now – just arrived by overnight train. I couldn’t post this from SR because the internet cafe there was disgusting and I didn’t want to spend any time there. and no wifi. anyway…here it is. more about Moscow when I’ve got it.
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Staraya Russa, the little town south of Novgorod where I’ve spent the past few days, is a Russian reinterpretation of the Three Little Pigs. The oldest part of town, where the Dostoevsky family lived until Fyodor died, is filled with lovely wooden houses. Some are kept up beautifully, while others tilt and sag at odd angles for lack of a foundation. Each house sits on a small plot of land, most with a neat garden for tomatoes, potatoes, or what-have-you.

The other end of town, towards the bus and railway stations, is slightly more urban. The buildings are larger and closer together, built of brick beneath painted stucco facades. Between these two, unfortunately at the center of town, sits a decaying, colorless ghetto of unmistakable Soviet blocks, their cheap concrete crumbling into trash-strewn paths.

Originally I wanted to come here to seek some quiet, to try to read and write and clear my head. “A 19th-century village along the river” seemed like the right sort of place. As it turns out, I also needed to clear my sinuses (see previous post). So after a day in my Novgorod sick bed, I took the 2-hour bus ride here to finish getting better. I’m glad I did. Novgorod was too small to be exciting and too big to be peaceful. Like the American suburbs.

I’m staying at the Hotel Polist, a friendly place in the center of town. It also happens to be the only decent place to eat. It seems my arrival – a foreigner! who doesn’t speak Russian! – spread quickly through the staff. During my first trip to the restaurant I was immediately handed an English-language menu (thank god – I was still too sick-headed to try to decipher the menu in Russian). Word of my tea-needs also spread: When I show up with my travel mug and tea bag, the waitress on duty nods and takes it from me, knowing to fill it with hot water and return it to me before I finish my meal. After a day of consomme, sleep, and gallons of tea, I feel like myself again.

Yesterday (May 6) I visited the Dostoevsky Museum. It’s just his old house furnished with his things – his writing desk, photos of his children and wife. But it was peaceful and comforting, somehow, to see how he lived and where he wrote, looking out large windows at weeping willows sagging into the molassas Porusya River.

All around me, since I arrived, spring is doing its thing. When dad and I were in St. Petersburg, the trees were bare, the landscape a thousand shades of nothing. A week later, on my first walk through Staraya Russa, I noticed some early buds, still bashful, at the tips of each tree branch. Overnight the buds became leaves, and from then on, seemingly with each passing hour, the leaves grow larger, changing color from lemon to summer green. I keep doing double-takes: “Is that the tree that had such delicate, tiny leaves this morning?” Perhaps it’s my years in the city, but I’m taken aback by what I’m witnessing here. It’s like watching grass grow, but actually seeing it grow.

As wander the town, my eyes stinging from exhaust fumes and pollution despite the new greenery, I’m transported back to my first year in Hungary. I keep wanting to greet babushkas with “keszi csokolom” (“I kiss your hand” in Hungarian). When I enter a cafe or restaurant, it takes all my control to not ask for the “etlapot” (menu). I can’t shake the feeling that I’m simply traveling in a part of Hungary I’m not familiar with. But then I’m confronted with Russian cold stares, grudging service, and bursts of language I don’t understand, and I know I’m a bit too far east for that. I’ll just have to crack the Russian code.

St. Petersburg seems like a dream, a blur. It was all too much to absorb – the new culture and language, the almost excessive art and architecture – given my frayed state of mind. I will have to go back, with perspective.

Indeed, over the past few days I’ve come to terms with the too-muchness of Russia itself. There is so much history and complexity here, impossible to unravel. What’s the phrase? A riddle wrapped in a mystery in an enigma? Reading my guidebook and other travelogues (Through Siberia By Accident, by Dervla Murphy, and, at the moment, In Siberia by Colin Thubron) I feel like an overexcited puppy yapping at nothing and everything: I’ll go to Murmansk, on the Arctic! I’ll go to Astrakan, to see the Caspian and the land of sturgeon! I’ll go to Kazan, for East-meets-West and the Volga! I’ll go to Suzdal, for ancient Rus! I’ll go to the Altai Mountains, to hike! I’ll go to Elista, to see Russian Buddhists! It goes on and on.

Like my writing, my travels need editing. I only have three months, after all. (Less than that! In 2-1/2 months, on July 22, I’ll be in Wuhan, China, for the eclipse.) And before you scoff at “only three months,” consider that the world’s largest country covers 13% of the globe. A telling opening line from a Lonely Planet chapter: “Just 260 km from Novosibirsk…”

Beyond the physical vastness of the country, there’s the complex political and cultural history of both Russians and the many minorities that form the patchwork of distrcits, autonomous regions, semi-autonomous territories, and so on of the new Russia. (As an aside, I’m a bit mortified and how ignorant I am about this country. While it’s fine that I didn’t know much about, say, the hill tribes of Southeast Asia before I went there, my lack of knowledge about some basics of Russian history is ridiculous. All we learned in school was essentially, “USSR = bad!” And I never filled in the details. Sad.)

Anyway, I remembered last night that I’m seeking the offbeat, the odd Russia. So I’m ditching my half-assed idea to do the Trans-Siberian from Moscow in Vladivostok in one go (I’d miss too much!) and I’m doing it in chunks. At the moment the plan is to take the train to Moscow tonight, spend about 5 days there, and then leave European Russia behind. I’ll go to Kazan (capital of Tartarstan), then Tomsk (in western Siberia) and then…probably all the way to Irkutsk. I’d like to have at least a week – maybe two – in the Lake Baikal region. I want to get up to Yakutsk, especially if I can be there for their summer solstice festival (June 21-22). Other planned highlights would be Kabarovsk and some combo of Sakhalin Island, Magadan and/or Kamchatka (all along the Pacific coast). Then to Vladivostok and China.

Already that’s too much for the 10ish weeks I have left. But it’s only the first round of editing…

Holed up in Novgorod

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I’m lying in bed at the Hotel Akron in Novgorod, carefully sipping tea, stealing WiFi from somewhere. I *should* be 100 km away, in Staraya Russa, the village where Dostoevsky wrote his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. The blinds are drawn against the bright sun outside, and I’ve got the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the doorknob.

You guessed it: I’m sick. It came on suddenly last night. One minute I was fine, the next minute I could barely swallow and my head was all stuffy. So I decided to stay an extra day in my quiet, private room and sleep it off.

I suspect my illness is a strain of swine flu. No, not from proximity to any Mexican porcus maximus, but from the repulsive fellow travelers with whom I lived in close quarters at the Cuba Hostel in St. Petersburg. It was like living in a frat house. They spilled beer on the dorm room floor and didn’t clean it up. They pissed on the bathroom floor. They noisily and with great gusto hocked up loogies. And worst of all, they messily expelled the contents of their noses into the two shared sinks, where we all were meant to brush our teeth and wash our faces.  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

So now, beyond trying to recuperate quickly, I’m stuck with a dilemma. Accommodation in Russia – in cities as well as the far-flung countryside – is more expensive than I suspected. (I had been planning on a total budget of around $50/day.) Accommodation expense can be partially counteracted by staying in hostels instead of the cheapie hotels – a dorm bed costs about $20, whereas it’s hard to find a private room for less than $40. On the whole, I’d much rather spend my money on activities, sampling local cuisine, and other experiences.

But I long ago decided that personally I was beyond the sharing of bathroom facilities with 6 or 8 or 10 strangers. I was willing to pay a bit more per night for a private room with (more importantly) private bath. I don’t need anything at all fancy – no need for AC, TV, fridge, etc. – just a clean place.

And my four nights at the Cuba Hostel confirmed this for me. Either that hostel was full of the rudest, most disgusting travelers, or my standards for what’s acceptible have changed.

(On a personal historical note: I can’t help but remember the look on my sister’s face when she saw the house I shared with three Phish-head fellow students my last semester at Lehigh. Where she saw squalor, I saw a comfortable, yet admittedly grungy, environment. So maybe I have changed.)

Anyway…I’ll still experiment by trying out another hostel or two while I’m here. But I’m also boosting my daily budget and cutting back on restaurant eating (the food’s not much worth it anyway) and other “luxuries.” I figure I can make up any extra dough I spend in SE Asia, where it’s easy to live cheap.

———–

All this brings up a deeper point. What the hell am I doing here? This is the first trip I’ve taken where ostensibly I’m seeking out material to write about. I’m not quite sure how to do this – do I actively seek out stories, or do I just follow my nose, trust my instincts, and let the stories happen? Each option has its merits, but it’s an adjustment. All of a sudden, hiring a guide or taking a guided tour in English – something I never would have spent money on in the past – might have real benefits. I suppose I’ll let curiousity be my guide…

Taking a step back

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After weeks with my brain, body and heart going in different directions, and different paces, I think I’m almost realigned.

During my final few weeks in the US – the fraught, busy days in New York; the harried few days in Mass – I had no choice but to sublimate any deep thought going on. If I stopped to think, I could not possibly have gotten through all the goodbyes, never mind packed my bag properly.

Walking home after having dinner at Zoom Cafe a few days ago, I felt that I had stepped back in time to when I was new in Budapest, trying not to look too American while earnestly trying to learn the language and culture. For the most part, since I moved back to the US from Budapest, I’ve been vacationing in hot and/or tropical climes – the Caribbean, Africa, SE Asia. If I happened to go to Europe, it was to visit friends or family in Budapest, London, Hamburg, Greece. So being here in Europe, as a tourist, embarking on this weird experiment…it’s familiar.

In the two days since my dad left, I’ve been taking meditative wanders through the gritty yet trash-free streets, reacquainting myself with European rhythms. And there’s no question that this is a European city, albeit with unambiguous Russian flavor.

Nearly everyone – the women especially – is impeccably dressed in fashionable tailored coats and high heels. The friezes, gargolyes, mouldings and other detail of the 17th- and 18th-century architecture cause unabashed gawking, my days ending with a stiff neck and sore shutter-button finger. Though the cars have gotten bigger since the teeny Fiats and so on from my first trip to Europe, they are still smaller than American cars, the better to navigate the narrow alleys of the old city…and to triple-park on the sidewalks and the side of the road.

And then there are the Russian elements: the impossible, 5-inch spike heels. The cheap mini-mini skirts and too-tight backless rayon blouses.  And the mullets! Dirt-colored boy mullets. Purple girl mullets. I won’t be surprised to see a poodle dog mullet. And from the people on the street, the well-dressed old ladies (not quite babushkas) guarding the rooms of the museums, the Russian-Asian cashier at the 24-hour shops…nothing but cold stares. These looks – the passive eyes, the set of the mouth – are far from emotionless or bored. They betray some sort of underlying hostility, almost aggression. Before I leave Russia, I hope to be able to find the right words to describe them.

Then again, the smiles and kindness that I have experienced seem all the more delightful for having been hard won.  Though of course, I am naturally suspicious of over-friendliness…those with a smile on their face and a hand in your wallet.

My sauerkraut and sausage is here. More in a bit…

Too busy

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I realize that my posts (and photo uploads) so far have been slap-dash, meandering, and probably boring. The problem, I realize, is that my brain is going at a million miles a minute. On one plane there are logistics: trying to figure out what to do every day – reading as much as possible beforehand to make any experience richer, negotiating options with my dad, then plotting transport, food and tickets. On another plane there is the moment: sharing as much as possible with my dad, absorbing all that this new and fascinating city has to offer, attempting to learn and understand a new culture and language. And finally, there is the personal reality, slowly seeping in, that my little life experiment has begun. I seem to have no room leftover for the sort of reflection required of good, or even decent, writing.(Seriously. You should see my journal.)

After my dad leaves, on Wednesday, I think I’ll take a day and just sit reading and drinking coffee and allowing the reality of the past month or so find a comfortable nook in my psyche.

Uh, I guess that’s the end of my announcement.

St. Petersburg: museums and culture so far

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Hard to believe it’s already three days in. But then again, oh, what I’ve seen!

After taking it relatively easy on Thursday, our first day, dad and I went to the Hermitage on Friday and Saturday. We had bought a two-day, all-access pass over the internet. And even after two full days, angry legs and feet, and hours and hours of gawking, two days didn’t even come close to being enough.

The main Hermitage museum is really a complex of three interconnected buildings: The Large Hermitage, the Small Hermitage, and the ridiculously ornate, mint-colored Winter Palace. It’s definitely bigger than both the British Museum and the Met. I’ve never been inside the Louvre, but I’m told it compares, quantity- and quality-wise. The thing is, the State Hermitage Museum *also* includes a few other buildings: The Menshikov Palace (home of the first governor of St. Pete), Peter I’s Winter Palace (now a theater), and the gargantuan General Staff Building. Oh yeah – and then there’s the storage facility, and a porcelain museum somewhere.

Anyway, we went to the main Hermitage the first day and the Menchikov and Peter’s Winter Palace the second day. (I also went back to the main Hermitage the second day to see…well…I’m not kidding when I say there is one  enormous room each of Picasso, Cezanne, Gaugin, and Matisse. And at least half a room each for Van Gogh and Monet. And of course the first day was the Rembrandt *wing*. Over the top.) I don’t normally go insane and take tons of photos in museums, but I lost it at the Hermitage. I guess by the end I didn’t really believe it was *true*, so I had to take pictures.

Let’s see: I’m trying to figure out how to explain this. You know how in most museums there are throw-away rooms? The ones you walk through rather quickly, and throw a half-assed glance at the walls? Well, there are no such rooms that I saw here. (OK, maybe one or two. Our of hundreds. I mean, who needs to see another goddamned ancient Greek vase?)

So that’s the main Hermitage. In comparison, the Menshikov Palace and Peter’s Winter Palace lacked the scale and grandeur, and therefore were kind of a disappointment.

These lesser two, however, are interesting to compare. Peter was the tsar, the guy who founded the city. Menshikov was his good friend, a victorious general in the Great Northern War (during which the Russians won the land for St. Pete from the Swedes). To thank him for his service, Peter named Menchikov the first governor of St. Petersburg. In other words, Peter was the head dude and Menchikov was his ass-kisser.

While Peter wanted his city to reflect the grandeur and culture of major European cities, personally he seems to have preferred (relatively) more simple things. His palace consisted of simple, small rooms full of lathes and other mechnisms that he liked to tinker with. He didn’t (seem to) care much for gold and other material trappings of royalty. He did, however, *love* his tsarist power. I guess he was an early hacker.

Menshikov, meanwhile, grew up on the streets of Moscow, selling pies to earn money for his family. He used political prowess to rise quickly through the ranks of the army, acquitted himself quite well during the Great Northern War, and used his connections to become a powerful man. His palace, I think, reflects a nouveau-riche obsession with showing off power and wealth. The palace is by far more opulent than Peter’s, and the walls are hung with dozens of paintings depicting decisive battles in the war, and portraits of himself (and his cascading wigs), his family, and (most telling) of Peter and *his* family.

Egads I’m running out of power (my computer’s and my own) so I’m gunna run. More on St. Petersburg the city – mullets, miniskirts and all! – l8r.

Privyet from St. Petersburg

/ ckoukkos / 2 Comments

My dad and I arrived in St. Petersburg, safe sound and sleepy, yesterday afternoon.  There was a bit of excitement at the border, of course: There was an *error* on my visa – the date of entry was for April 23 instead of April 22. Can you believe it? After all the bad craziness around getting the visa, someone along the way effed up.

Anyway, I went to the consul’s office in the airport, wrote a letter explaining the “clerical error,” paid a $25 fee, and received an amended visa. Dad was nervous, to say the least, but it all worked out in the end. In case you’re wondering about the final cost of the visa: $505. I’d cry if I wasn’t laughing so hard.

But that’s over now. Dad and I are all settled in at the Petro Palace Hotel, a reasonably friendly hotel just a 2-minute walk from the Hermitage museum. The weather is perfect – sunny and around 50 degrees – and there’s no rain forecast for the week.

This morning we took a walk up to the Hermitage buildings (there are three) along the Neva River, to get our bearings. The Neva is dotted with ice floes, which I hear are the seasonal attraction in the early spring. The buildings, boulevards and cars here in the so-called “historic heart” remind me of Budapest – mostly 18th and early 19th-century European architecture, Ladas and Mercedes triple-parked on the sidewalk, etc.

St. Petersburg is a relatively new city, founded by tsar Peter the Great in 1703. The story (briefly) goes like this: While Peter was traveling in Europe, trouble-making Muscovites tried to instigate a coup by questioning his claim to the throne. He cut short his trip, sent about a thousand of the plotters into exile, and decided that he would turn Russia westward, embracing European values.

Evidently he was in love with Dutch culture, so he decided Russia needed a great city by the sea – in this case, the Baltic. So he went to war with Sweden to kick them out of the region, started building the city, and moved the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The nobility was pissed, but what could they do? They picked up and moved north to St. Pete, a city built on what was once a swamp. St. Pete remained the Russian capital until Lenin moved it back to Moscow in 1918.

Tomorrow (probably) dad and I head to the Hermitage. We’ve got a two-day ticket, but that probably won’t be enough. There are 120 rooms in three enormous buildings. There’s European art the Middle Ages to the present. There are rooms and rooms of prehistoric, ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts. There’s the Oriental collection from the Middle East to Japan. And possibly more – it’s too overwhelming for me to even consider.

Stay tuned.