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This message contains non-ASCII text, which can only be displayed
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T h e G R E E N Y w o r l d D o m i n a t i o n T a s k F o r c e ,
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"A Semester in Russia, Part 1" by Yancey Slide
----- GwD: The American Dream with a Twist -- of Lime ***** Issue #77 -----
----- release date: 05-25-00 ***** ISSN 1523-1585 -----
[Yancey Slide, Head of GwD Undercover Operations, spent the spring semester of
2000 in St. Petersburg, Russia "studying." This is Part 1 of the declassified
version of his account of the trip. Part 2 is gwd78.txt. Part 3 will be
released as soon as it has been cleared by the GwD Council.]
Jan. 22
We just passed through the customs check from Finland into Russia. I should
have been writing here for the past few days, but I've been much too busy.
So while I'm bouncing on the bus I'll try to fill in the last week as much
as I can.
CIEE Semester Abroad - St. Petersburg, Russia
Jan. 20 - May 15 2000
Jan. 17
Left Lubbock by car, drove to Dallas. Dad had a business trip, and thought
it would be safer if I flew out of here rather than relying on Lubbock air
services. Visited Granmarie and Aunt Andy, and stayed with Andy for the
night. A long drive, but it was nice to see some good dry scenery before I
left. Warm for the season.
Jan. 18
Left Andy's early for DFW Airport. Mom and Dad saw me off a little past
noon. Flew to New York for the night, since you can't get from Lubbock to
New York in time for me to make my FinnAir flight if I'd left Lubbock the
same day. The flight was boring, and New York was a letdown. Big and stinky.
Very cold, though; CNN says it was colder than Helsinki or Petersburg.
Jan. 19
Checked out of the hotel and got to JFK for the flight. Had to wait around
for a bit, but met with the rest of the CIEE gang. A pretty mixed group, but
interesting people. Quite a few from Georgetown and George Washington. The
FinnAir flight was long and boring, as I suppose trans-Atlantic flights are
wont to be. The best part was the moving map that showed our position in
real-time. I kept wanting to play with the controls, but stewardesses don't
like that. I watched the movies and listened to music and tried to sleep,
but mostly I just paged through old magazines and talked to the Orthodox
Jewish couple across the aisle from me about computer games.
Jan. 20
Arrived in Helsinki at about eight a.m. local time, about midnight
biological time. Finland is very beautiful, with pine forests covered in a
very recent snowfall. Not nearly as cold as I'd feared; it's actually quite
pleasant outside. Met with Lyudmila as we deplaned, one of the proctors. She
walked us to our bus, and we drove to the hotel. I can't remember the name
of the hotel, but it was nice; a resort in Espoo, about an hour's drive
from downtown Helsinki. I roomed with Alex Greenstein, an interesting guy
from GW.
We had a good lunch at the buffet (smoked fish, pressed fish, fish pate, and
bread) and had liberty until seven. Most of us caught the bus into Helsinki
with Dallas, an affable kind of guy who's on the full year program. He came
into Helsinki with Nathan (the other proctor, and Mila's husband) and Mila
to roll out the welcome wagon. He showed us the right bus and went with us.
We started off at a bookstore, where we left Dallas and struck off on our
own in a group of four or five. We wandered for a while, and blundered into
an enormous art museum featuring an Edvard Munch exhibit. We were too cheap
for the Munch special exhibit, but we sprang for regular student admission
and wandered through a nice gallery of Finnish national treasures that were
pretty obscure to us. About halfway through, an elderly lady approached me
and told me about the painting I was looking at (a scene from a Finnish
folktale about arranged marriages and mermaids). When she realized that we
were all in a group, she walked us through the rest of the museum and
explained each and every painting and sculpture to us. She knew the history
of each and every work and its artist, and which pieces had just returned
from showing abroad and which were about to be sent away. As we left, she
volunteered to take us to the Church in the Rock (not its real name), which
one of the girls with us had wanted to see.
Along the way, she pointed out things like good places to eat, bus stops,
and the train stations and cafes where Finnish ski soldiers were mobilized
during the war "while their young ladies watched and cried." We got the
impression that she had been one of those young ladies. She schlepped across
twenty blocks of snowed-in downtown Helsinki with us, until we came to an
enormous pile of stone blocks roughly in a dome shape in the middle of an
upper-class business district. Inside, the only person other than us was a
lady manning the souvenir stand. The church was indescribably beautiful. I
really hope my photos come out; I wasted most of my film in the museum, and
only had a few shots left for the church. The interior preserved the dome
shape, with stone walls and a brass capped ceiling. The altar and the
sanctuary were surprisingly small and understated, but the austerity was
beautiful in itself. The baptismal font was a pile of shaped rocks to the
right of the altar; there was also a cast-iron rack of votive candles five
meters long and an enormous pipe organ to relieve the severity of the open
space. I still have dreams about how quiet and peaceful the entire building
was, and how beautiful it was with the sunlight filtering through the snow
covering the windows. When we couldn't spare another minute, we said goodbye
to our guide and started walking back to the bus. The last thing I thought
to ask her was her name; as nearly as I could tell, she said that she was
Ms. Haakallah.
Jan. 21
After a hearty breakfast (spiced fish, pureed fish, baked fish and
cornflakes) we had some orientation sessions, which are ostensibly the
reason we started in Finland rather than Russia. Well, that and it's easier
to get through the Russian visa regime through Finland than through Russia.
Orientation took all day, but we didn't do much. Mila explained the way
things are, and Nathan explained the way we would see things. She's Russian
and he's American (although he's one of those rare people so proficient in
his second language that very few Russians realize that he's not a native
speaker), so it was a good introduction to the schismatic way I imagine that
I'll be spending the next few months.
During the long lunch break Michael and Sandra and Liza and Michelle and I
went swimming. An elderly schoolteacher came in while we were goofing off,
and we watched her go from the indoor heated pool to the outside door and
then dive into the lake, which was frozen over except for a ten-foot spot
by the hotel. She came back in, and tried to get us to go with her. I was
the only one who did (although Peter, Nathan and Mila's eight year old son
had done it the night before). As soon as I left the building, my feet
started sticking to the ice on the ground outside. When I dived into the
lake, my entire body went numb. I have never been, and probably never will
be, so incredibly cold in my life. Hitting the water drove the air out of my
lungs, and I could feel skin contract. I only stayed in the lake for a few
seconds, then I followed the lady back inside for a dip in the whirlpool. We
did that a few times, then she had to go. It was lots of fun, but I really
wish I'd had my camera with me. I'll have to try it again sometime.
We finished sessions at about five, and broke for the day. I went with Alex
and Maryanne and Mary to the city, where we thought we'd find some food.
Alex is the GW student; he's in International Studies too. Mary is premed,
she wants to go into an MD/PhD program in immunology or something. Maryanne
is an army brat; she's lived everywhere and speaks great Russian. She has
dual citizenship in the U.S. and in Austria, so she's old hat at beating
jetlag and finding good food abroad. It took us almost an hour to find a
place that served affordable food; Finland is very beautiful, but very
expensive. We kept stumbling into seedy bars, unobtrusively looking around
to see if anyone had food on their plates or if they only served alcohol. We
finally found a place to eat in the basement of a bar, and learned that in
Finland you have to ask for your check, they don't just bring it to you. It
took us almost three hours to learn that. When we finally got our bill, the
single (extremely good; K is a brand to watch out for) beer I had cost more
than the rest of my meal put together. That's a socialist country for you;
cheap pasta, but expensive booze and a twenty-two percent tax on it all.
Afterwards, we hung out in the bus station until it was time to catch our
bus to the hotel. When we got back, we all drank Alex's Greek wine and
talked about Russia. I tucked in early, since I had to repack all my bags
the next morning.
Jan. 22
Got up early for breakfast (rice krispies, no fish) and to repack my bags,
which I'd torn apart looking for film. After loading up, we took the bus on
the road to Petersburg. Passing through Finland was beautiful, but the pine
forests start to wear after a while. We stopped briefly for some sack
lunches packed (I suppose) by the hotel; cheese and butter sandwiches, and
some kind of wretched oily pastries stuffed with rice. My stomach rebels
just thinking about it (although the jouncing bus might have something to do
with it). From there we hit the Finnish border check (one guard who stamped
our passports and flirted with all the girls) and drove on to the Russian
border, which is manned by about twelve eighteen year-old guards packing
automatic weapons and blotched green camo fatigues that make them stand out
like dollar bills against the snow. Not a humorous bunch. Nathan says that
they must all have some friends in high places to have such an easy posting.
It didn't seem all that easy to us, until we realized that the alternative
was Chechnya. We made it through the check without incident, although Megan
almost got busted. In the space on the declaration form for "Narcotic drugs
and appliances for the use thereof" she wrote "Panasonic Discman and one (1)
hair curler" because hey, "They're appliances!" They didn't check our bags,
and the woman stamping our forms didn't speak English. We could have been
smuggling dead bodies stuffed with gold, and even declared it, and they'd
never have known. Note to self: bring thirty (30) kilos of heroin next time.
After crossing the border, we drove along a rough and snowy road for a few
hours. The first non-military building we saw was a church done in the
classic Russian style. It looked like St. Basil's in 1/10th scale; a
relatively small building but replete with gilt onion domes and vivid candy
striping. Not much further on was a much larger cathedral, apparently built
in the "enormous ugly fortress" style of architecture. If it weren't for the
Orthodox cross, I would have thought it was a factory. On our right, we
passed a few dozen of the most ramshackle and dilapidated huts I've ever
seen. They were so amazingly pathetic that you could hear the sound of every
jaw on the bus dropping. Just as someone was about to ask how people could
survive in shacks like that, Nathan told us that they don't. They were just
tool sheds for nearby garden plots that were buried under the snow. Russia
may be poorer than America, but we tend to overestimate its general decline.
After that, we passed through a medium-sized town whose name I didn't catch.
I saw my first frozen-over river, complete with someone towing a sled with a
child in it and a dog running alongside. It was so picturesque I wondered if
it was staged for tourists.
We got into Petersburg fairly late, and unloaded outside the dorm. The dorm
kids went off to their briefings, and we were split into groups for delivery
to our host families. There were five or six of us in a microbus, followed
by a boxy truck with our luggage. One person would be dropped off while they
were settled, and the rest of us would wait in the bus (which was unheated,
as far as I could tell) until we were ready to go on to the next house. I
have never been so tired or hungry in all my life. I was third or fourth,
and was so cold and exhausted and incoherent when we got to my building that
I barely remembered English, much less Russian. I hauled my bags up the
rather dingy staircase into a very tastefully decorated apartment, and after
the minders had left Marina Michaelovna fed me a big bowl of borsch and I
hit the sack. She's the host mother. She used to be a translator for the
technological institute; her bookshelves sag under the weight of Russian-
English dictionaries in electronics, radio transmission, radio reception,
robotics, cellular biology, and other neat stuff. She also translated from
Japanese; now she's just a schoolteacher. That's the decline for you. It was
a good day, overall, but very tiring.
Jan. 23
The first full day. We met early at the caf<61> outside the dorm (Elaine's, or
??????? in Russian) for a big breakfast and we loaded up for a tour of the
city. Maryanne missed it; when they warned us in orientation not to try to
keep up with the locals in drinking contests, she thought it was a dare. She
says she out-drank the Russians she was with, but she also spent the rest of
the night vomiting and missed the "tour." The windows were fogged up and
iced over and we couldn't see a thing. We were so tired we didn't even
really listen to the director, so it was basically bouncing up and down and
staring at the seat in front of us for an hour. We stopped a couple of times
to look at the Admiralty and the Bronze Horseman, and we toured the
battleship Avrora (Aurora). That was neat. Some of the souvenirs the crew
had collected were on display, and they were all great. There were dozens of
statues of Marx and Lenin (Aurora is a twenties-era ship, I think) and
little pins and huge red banners and flags. A portrait of the captain hangs
on the wall below decks, framed in a plate of steel pierced by shot in some
sea battle. I want a portrait of myself framed like that someday. We also
changed money and bought metro cards, and spent the rest of the day
unpacking and sleeping.
Jan. 25
I've settled in at the apartment, and had my first day of classes. Smolnyi
is beautiful. Just beautiful. The outer walls of the compound (there are a
few different buildings, but we're all in just one) are sky blue, with white
and gold trim. The central building is a beautiful cathedral, and the entire
complex looks like it came straight from the 18th century which, of course,
it did. Inside the rooms are comfortable, but the general level of
technology reminds me of the Lodge. Well worn, but also well cared-for. We
were divided into groups for classes, and I was placed in the third, most
basic group. My two years of classes is a little behind what most people on
the trip have had. Most of them have studied the language for several years,
and most have been to Russia before. Also, the placement exam was damned
hard. I'm sure that I knew the grammatical concepts behind a lot of the
questions, but the vocabulary was so hard that I rarely knew what the
question was asking. Very difficult.
I'm in a group with Alex, Michael (a nice enough guy, if overly dramatic),
Mary (whom I only recently found out is engaged), Michelle, Bob (more on
him later) and Mary Jane, a 40-year old woman with two kids who's here as a
prereq for a doctorate program. She's interesting; she's got two bachelor's
degrees and a master's. She has no special interest in the Russian language
as far as I know, but she has to learn another language to fluency level, so
here she is. She and her daughter Claire are staying in the dorm until they
get an apartment, which must be fun. I haven't seen the rooms, but even just
the elevators are depressing as hell. I'd hate to live there, much less be
12 years old and live there with no one to talk to but American college
students who aren't allowed to speak English. Still, she's in a western
school and they're getting an apartment soon, so it's copasetic.
Shto escho. . . oh yes, Bob.
Bob's . . . interesting. A nice guy, I guess, but too friendly. Stands a
little too close and leans a little too far in when he talks. He talks very
softly, like it's all a conspiracy. We all knew that he was living with some
people he knew here rather than in the dorms or in a Council homestay, but,
well . . . One of our profs, the lecturer in the Russian culture series,
grilled us about our home lives and our host families in an attempt to draw
comparisons. In the process, it came out that Bob and Natasha (the girl he's
living with) are gf/bf (or a near approximation). Moreover, I think they met
for the first time this week, as the rest of their "relationship" has
apparently been by correspondence and telephone. Someone told me she
answered an ad on the Internet. Apparently, Bob shows up, Natasha moves in
with him (she's Russian, but not from Petersburg, from somewhere south of
Tashkent), and I guess goes back with him when he leaves. The disturbing
part is that Bob is a few months shy of thirty and divorced and Natasha is
just recently eighteen. When the prof heard that, she got pretty agitated
(although I have to admit that her normal state is pretty agitated). She
made some hurried remarks about how that's "a very unusual situation," but
I'm not proficient enough with the language to have picked up on all the
subtexts. She was definitely unhappy with Bob, though. Maryanne says that
this is his second attempt at a mail-order girlfriend, as it were, his first
Russian wife having split with the cash and the green card as soon as
practical.
Another new person is LT. It's short for Leantine I think, but we call her
"eltee." She's another yearlong kid like Dallas, but even better with the
language. She reminds me of Elizabeth, except a little further out there.
She's a Marxist and a feminist and a labor rights activist and an
environmentalist and she dabbled in anarchy but thought the movement was
lacking intellectual cohesion. She's nuts. Her post-grad school plan is to
find a way to meld labor rights and environmentalism, based on some strike a
few years ago where aluminum workers struck with Earth Firsters. She thinks
it "really has a chance to take off in Russia." I don't know if she'll
starve or be offed by Pinkertons first. She's tons of fun to talk to, highly
intelligent, and she knows the best places in the city. She took us to the
Idiot Caf<61> off of Nevsky Prospekt yesterday. It was great; so
stereotypically Russian intelligentsia that it hurt. Pale, emaciated men
hunched over tables scribbling furiously amidst waitresses in white sweaters
and kerchiefs delivering huge steaming mugs of cappuccino, tiny bowls of
cheap caviar, and a free shot of vodka with every order. The writers just
exuded a great "It was a dark and stormy night. . ." vibe.
Russian authors
Scribbling madly
Drinking wildly
Rhyming badly
I'd love to go back and take pictures, but it would just ruin the
atmosphere. I'd probably be beaten with stale muffins.
Jan. 27
I'm starting to think that I didn't study enough at Trinity. A lot of these
people speak much better Russian than I do. I guess I'll get better with
practice. We got our student ID cards today, and they're pretty neat. Little
blue books with room for six years of university studies. They take them
seriously, here. We're not allowed to take them home as souvenirs;
apparently the institute gets in huge trouble if they don't collect as many
as they distribute. This is the anniversary of the breaking of the Blockade,
so we went out to get dinner and watch the fireworks. Dan, Justin, Meg,
Michelle, Liza, myself and a couple others went to "Se<53>ior Pepe's," a fairly
classy little Mexican place off of Gostinii Dvor (the enormous shopping
mall/metro station on Nevsky Prospekt). Michelle was terribly depressed
because she ripped her brand new leather pants on a corner in the caf<61>. The
crushing injustice of it all made our souls quake. It was pretty good food,
actually, and fairly authentic. Some guy, presumably the manager/owner,
invited us all to a Superbowl party next weekend. Well, next week. The game
starts 2:30 a.m. Monday, local time. I don't know if I'll go or beg off;
that's pretty damned early and the metros will be closed. We missed the
fireworks; everyone got lost trying to find the place (which is actually off
of Lomonsov street, where it's dark and kind of seedy) and by the time we
got out, we heard the last of the fireworks going off. Still, we had lots
of fun. Russians know how to celebrate the ending of nine hundred days of
starvation: eat `till you burst. Happy Siege Day.
Jan. 28
We had our first excursion today, to Peter and Paul Fortress. It was
amazing, but it made me wish they weren't so strict about Russian usage on
excursions. I understand the benefit of immersion, but I would have liked to
have been able to follow more of the tour guide's lecture. The Fortress is
several hundred years old, built to counter the Swedes and the Finns in the
Great Northern War (I don't know what they call it in the West). They date
the founding of St. Petersburg by its construction, I think. The walls are
impressively thick and, being Russian, dripping with elaborate carvings and
beautiful coats of arms. Inside the fortress is the cathedral, which is
possibly the most ornately beautiful building I've ever seen. The outside
was undergoing renovation, so all we could see was the scaffolding, but the
inside was frosted with gold and artwork. Every surface was either gold,
marble, or beautifully painted wood. The panels around the ceiling were
interesting, but I couldn't really see them all that well. The pulpit was
wrapped in a spiral around a central column about six feet off the ground,
and so weighted down with golden trim that it looked about ready to
collapse. There was an enormous dais opposite the pulpit, which I think the
guide said was used for the throne on state visits, but I'm not entirely
sure. The altar was, of course, ornately decorated, but it was also
undergoing renovation. The cathedral floor is dotted with little islands of
coffins. Quite a few princes and princesses of the old line are interred
there, in marble coffins struck with the Orthodox cross and inscribed with
the names of the departed in Old Church Slavonic. It was beautiful, but
personally, I'd rather be buried somewhere private. That didn't stop me from
getting lots of pictures, of course. Afterwards Michael and Garth and I went
to Pizza Hut. Not very Russian of us, but it felt pretty good to know
exactly what we were eating.
Jan. 29
Mary Jane has a new apartment, and invited everyone over for a housewarming
party. It was a lot of fun; the apartment is huge and very, very nice. It's
even in a good location, just behind the Chernashevskaya metro station,
which is the one close to Smolnyi. We all brought something to eat or drink,
as per custom. And, of course, some of the girls forgot that Mary Jane has a
12-year old daughter and brought vodka. Claire was fascinated by the furtive
way they tried to hide it when they realized that she was there. She got
Justin (a scruffily bearded and pleasantly jovial fellow) to start telling
her what it's like to be drunk. When he got to the saw about "Beer then
liquor, never sicker, liquor then beer, in the clear," he suddenly realized
that he was giving drinking instructions to a girl too young to get into
PG-13 movies. He covered pretty well though; "Uhhh, what I mean is, they
both make you sick, and you should never try them. Ever." Then Claire
politely informed us that when she's eventually allowed to get drunk, she's
going to throw up. Justin tried to discourage her, but apparently that's the
part she's looking forward to. After the party, we all went to the City Bar.
Everyone there spoke English, and we actually forgot that we were in Russia
for a while, since we were listening to American music and hanging out with
other expats, as it were. There were two things to remind us of where we
were: the amazingly cheap food and drink (though expensive by local
standards), and the shockingly cold water in the faucet in the bathroom. We
left about two, and it felt good to remember where we were. I really like it
here.
Jan. 31
I didn't make it to the Superbowl party last night; I had too much homework
and I'm too disinterested in football to drag myself out at two a.m. and
stay out until classtime. I met Dan and Molly and Meg at the bus from the
metro this morning, and they looked like they'd been beaten with railroad
ties. Dan was visibly in pain from some kind of uber-hangover precipitated
by Russian beer (three times as alcoholic as the American kind), Molly was
still a little spacey from having flipped end-over-end on a barrier chain
while walking from Pepe's to the Grand Hotel Europe, and Megan spent the bus
ride trying to finish her homework in time for class without falling asleep
with her eyes open. Apparently Pepe's had a mechanical failure, so they went
to the hotel to watch the game. I asked who won; Meg and Molly and Dan
conferred for a few seconds, and told me that it was definitely either
Tennessee or St. Louis. They thought it was St. Louis, but they weren't
sure, because at some point the hotel staff started trying to make them
leave since they'd brought their beer with them and weren't patronizing the
hotel bar. Sounded like a fun night.
We had our first Kinokurse today; at Trinity we watched Petchki Lavotchki,
Utomne na Solntsem, Sibiriada, Malenkaya Vera, and other highbrow stuff.
Today we watched some bizarre 60's Soviet comedy that had an eerie
similarity to Dobie Gillis. If Komrade Krebbs had shown up, I would have
just given up and gone home for the day. Too weird. Later, I talked to
Marina Michaelovna about movies. She agreed that foreign films are a pain to
watch and usually stranger than they should be. She said she gave up on
American movies after "Tram of Desire." I didn't like that move much,
either.
I got Internet access today, but it's a pretty sketchy deal. I'll have to
try to renegotiate; I can't keep just buying ten hour blocks from the
computer place down the street. To log on I have to borrow the phone cord
from the telephone in the study, since the jack in my room is some kind of
antiquated Soviet standard with five asymmetrical prongs. They probably have
my computer monitored by now. Hello, Mr. Cheka. No subversiveness here, I
promise. [Heheheh...]
Feb. 3
Today is Florin's birthday; he's a German student who lives at the
obshezhite with Alex and Maryanne and Mary and the others. The party started
at about nine, which, by complete chance, was when I got there. A few days
ago I was explaining to Mary the Jedi art of getting lost. Don't worry,
don't make plans about when to leave or how to get there, just set out and
have faith that if you don't get there on time, you'll get there right
before the fun starts. So I got off of the Primorskaya metro stop, walked to
the bus stop that I thought might be the right one, got on the first bus
that came by, and paid my two rubles. I rode until I thought that it would
be better to get off and hail a cab, and when I got out, I was right in
front of the dorm. Not very exciting, but very Jedi. I was proud.
When I got there it was just Alex, Mary, Maryanne, Florin, a couple of
Canadians and a weird Japanese guy who just made strange sounds and laughed
all night drinking Baltika 7 (only 17% alcohol) and waiting for "the Irish"
to arrive. Half an hour later, the lounge was full of people; there were
Americans, Russians, Uzbekistanis, Georgians, British, Swedish, Danish,
Canadians, Chinese, the Japanese guy, and assorted other nationalities
casually getting sloshed and listening to hard core west-coast American rap.
We spent the whole night waiting for "the Irish," who, depending on who you
were listening to, were either the two drinkingest fightingest guys to ever
hit Petersburg who were going to drink and fight and fight and drink and
drink and fight and drink and drink and fight and fight all night long, or
the two most amazingly beautiful red-headed green eyed beauties who were
also going to drink and fight and fight and drink until the wee hours. A
couple of Irish did eventually show up, but they were entirely mundane, so I
don't think they were "the" Irish. The guy from Norway looks exactly like
the frontman for the Spin Doctors. I met a cute Swedish girl named Marie
(red sweater in the pictures) and got her email address, but I lost it.
Dallas knows her, he might have it. Regardless, it was a lot of fun.
I got lots of great pictures (I got a 35mm point and shoot of my own last
week from a store off of Nevsky, incredibly cheap and incredibly neat. God
bless the deflated ruble) of a dozen different nationalities trying their
hands at American drinking games. I begged off of the game ("Flip-cup") to
take pictures. Watching Maryanne and Alex try to explain the rules in
English and in Russian and the subsequent renderings in half a dozen other
languages was inspiring. Actually, I begged off of the drinking altogether,
for the most part. Frankly, Russian booze scares the pants off of me. I left
at around midnight since I had class the next morning, but the dorm kids
were still going hard. Alex was starting to mosh by himself, which mostly
entailed slamming into walls and headbanging. The next morning, I don't
think a single person in our class from the dorms showed up for class. After
we left, they spent a few hours drinking and then went to the Christmas bar
to drink some more. Alex swears they had fun, but then, Maryanne swears that
Friday morning he was begging her to kill him.
Feb. 4
It occurs to me that I haven't written anything about my average day, so
here it is:
7:45 - Marina Michaelovna wakes me up by calling, "Yance, will you wake up
please?" in English from the kitchen.
8:00 - Breakfast, usually of rice or grain kasha (porridge), buterbrodi
(bread, sausage and cheese open-faced sandwiches), juice, coffee,
and anything else she thinks she can get me to eat. She thinks I'm
starving to death if I only eat one helping, and she's convinced I'm
fifty grams of sausage away from catching tuberculosis or some
horrible wasting disease.
8:30 - After getting ready, I lace up my boots and try to slip out before
M. M. remembers to offer me the nose cream, which is some kind of
Russian medicine designed to ward off the "gripp" (flu). The fact
that I've had my immunization just makes her laugh. She laughs at me
a lot, actually. She's convinced that I have to apply this cream
inside my nose to protect myself. Maybe it's just me, but I have an
inherent distrust of Russian medicine. After I leave, I walk about a
block to the Vasileostrovskaya ("Basil's Island") metro station,
where I catch the train though Gostinii Dvor to Mayakovskaya, where I
switch trains to Cherneshevskaya (Cherneshevsky wrote "What is to be
Done?," a 19th century revolutionary book).
9:15 - Catch the bus from the metro to Smolnyi. The bus is just for the six
or seven of us to take the metro to school, and the driver has a
complete lack of regard for the lives of anyone on the street other
than us. He'll bull through crowds of pedestrians and intimidate his
way through traffic to get across the street so that we don't have to
cross to get to the bus. He's a great guy. I think the woman who's
sometimes on the bus with us is either his wife, his girlfriend, or
his boss. (post script: We lost the big bus sometime around the
middle of February. Now we get a smaller, mashrutka-sized bus with a
taciturn driver who listens to pulsing disco music. Not as
comfortable as the big zelyoni bus, but the soundtrack is a good way
to get us jazzed for class.)
9:30 - First class. We have Grammatika, Gazeta (newspaper), Razgovor
(conversation), Kinokurse, a culture lecture and a literature
lecture. Gazeta is optional, I could have taken Analitika instead,
which is literature, but I've already read most of what they'll do in
class. Classes are "para," two 45-minute sections of the same class,
which is basically just a 90-minute block. There are two para before
lunch, then lunch, then another para, except for two days a week. One
day we get off at lunch, and the other we get off early for an
excursion or tour (usually).
After classes, I walk back to the metro through an absolutely gorgeous park,
replete with revolutionary monuments to the proletariat and a big statue of
Lenin (across the street there's still a statue of Derzhinsky, the founder
of the Cheka) and scads of old men playing chess on benches and pillars,
even when it's -20. They only go away when it's snowing, raining, or the
children come out. I don't know how they know, but you never see the kids
and the old folks in the park at the same time.
7:00 - After spending the day doing whatever it is I'm doing, M.M. feeds me
dinner. For the first couple of weeks, it was the traditional two-
course Russian meal of soup and main course, but with a Herculean
effort I managed to convince her that that was simply too much food
for me to eat. So now I get just the one course, often with a cup of
broth or boullion to help ward off the gripp, and a healthy side of
chiding about eating more. I do homework or write email or read, and
hit the sack around midnight.
Feb. 5
We left on our first major excursion for Veliki Novgorod today. There are
two: Nizhny Novgorod and Veliki Novgorod. Veliki is small, only around
200,000 people, but very very old and very interesting. The entire town is
practically one huge museum. The bus ride was about three hours, and totally
uneventful other than the fact that Victoria failed to show up. (Nathan and
Mila kept trying to get in touch with her over the weekend, but no one could
find her. Turned out eventually that once she realized that she'd missed the
bus, she crashed in Florin's room for the weekend.) We stayed at Intourist,
the old Soviet institution for foreign visitors. The front of the building
is decorated with a huge and intricate mosaic depiction of Mother Russia,
draped in symbols of agriculture and industry and peace and progress and
such. The rooms were nice, but decorated in a kind of 1920's brothel way,
with red velvet bedspreads and drapes.
We dropped our stuff off and ate, then hit the kremlin. Inside is St.
Sophia's, an amazingly beautiful cathedral. According to our guide, Natasha
(who does all the Novgorod trips for CIEE), V. Novgorod was 80% destroyed in
WWII, 50% by Nazis and 30% by Russian artillery. The cathedral is still
being restored. It used to be a reliquary for three saints, but the Soviets
disinterred and destroyed the remains as part of the campaign of atheism.
The iconography in the cathedral is amazing; every square inch is decorated
with incredibly vivid depictions of Bible stories and hagiography. After the
museum, we traipsed back to the bus. I got some great pictures of an outing
of school kids. They loved mugging for the camera, but I think we kind of
scared their teacher by playing with them and asking them to pose.
When we got back to Intourist, we ate dinner and then Mary and Maryanne and
Alex and some guy who came along for the ride all walked across town to a
theater to watch "Konetz Tsvet" (lit. "End of Colors," I think, but it was
the Schwarzenegger flick "End of Days") dubbed into Russian. The dubber for
Schwarzenegger actually has a better voice than he does, but his dialogue
just lacks without an Austrian accent. By the time we got back to the hotel,
the party was going full-swing in Garth and Michael's room. Almost all twenty
of us were crammed in there, and we had a great time listening to rural
Russian radio and passing around bread and cheese and kvass. I kept having
to run out and get Cokes from the bar, since I was pretty much the only one
not soused on really vile Russian pivo.
By the time I got back from my last soda run, the room was almost empty;
there were just a few people there talking. The conversation eventually
wandered to Bob and Natasha, his girlfriend; just as I was about to make
some comment about how inappropriate the whole thing is, he walked in. He'd
been standing outside listening to the entire conversation, and he was drunk
enough to come in and try to explain everything to us. To his credit, he was
really civil and mature about it, and the whole thing, while still
inappropriate to me, is more aboveboard than we thought. It's too much to
explain here; besides, I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I still
think it's weird. Probably, although Bob is definitely not the guy we
assumed he was.
Feb. 6
We were up by noon and piled onto the bus, which took us to a monastery for
more of the history. I've forgotten the name, so I'll have to check the
guidebook. I think it was St. George's. It was, of course, beautiful. The
iconography and painting in the church was even more amazing than St.
Sophia's. The central cupola is painted with a Christ figure on the inside
looking down on the altar screen. It's an eerie effect, and it must have
been incredibly difficult to paint. I took lots of pictures, but not all of
them came out. It was very dark in the church, and I didn't use the flash
for fear contributing to the damage to the paint. I bought a couple of small
icons, which will make great gifts.
Afterwards, we went to an outdoor museum of wooden architecture that was a
lot of fun. Some of the buildings (mostly homes and churches) were built
without hammers or nails, just axes. Although I'm understanding more of the
commentary as time goes on, I didn't quite catch how that was managed. On
the way out we found a traditional Russian sled merry-go-round and a slide,
and we played in the snow for a while. Michael missed all of this; he found
a gym near the hotel where some Finns and Russians from Nizhny Novgorod were
playing "Ultimate Frisbee," or, as he insists on calling it, just
"Ultimate." He seems to think that that was pretty cool. Personally, I think
he missed out. Besides, I'm a little tired of hearing about how cool the
"ultimate" game was. It's just a little too "Gen-X" pseudo-hip for me.
Posle, we went back to the kremlin for a brief swing through the museum and
lunch. The museum was very interesting, mostly iconographic art and
sculptures with a good Novgorodan culture exhibit in the basement, but we
only spent about half an hour there because everyone had been griping
earlier about how tired they were. It was kind of frustrating for me; I felt
great since I hadn't been plastered the night before, and I wanted to see
more of the museum. There were fragments of letters preserved in the culture
exhibit from early pre-Muscovite settlements. The only one I heard
translated went something like, "My son, I have paid X ingots of silver for
your release. If you don't come home, I will send people to bring you home."
No one knows who wrote it, why the son was a prisoner, or why he wouldn't
have come home, but it was pretty neat.
The restaurant was great. It's built into the wall of the kremlin, and was
nicely cozy and solidly built on the inside with cast-iron spiral staircases
and huge oaken beams. The lunch was huge. We started with a very tasty
salad, then a potato soup, then a chicken soup, then blinis and honey for
desert, and then a huge dish of ice cream to finish. Five courses all told,
with glass after glass of kvass and Turkish coffee. I don't think I've ever
eaten as much in my life. After lunch, we boarded the bus, and we were back
off to Petersburg. It was a lot of fun, but I was pretty pleased to see my
bed again.
Feb. 17
Marie invited me to the City Bar today, which was a lot of fun. Most of the
other guys on the group have disavowed it as "not Russian enough" and moved
on to "Fish Fabrique," which is a lot less Russian but supposedly a little
cheaper. It's true that there aren't many Russians at the CB, though. I
didn't really know anyone there except Marie (other than Dallas and Alex,
who showed up later en route to somewhere else), but I met Stuart and
Finley, a Brit and a Scotsman on English teaching contracts in the city.
They were both a lot of fun to talk to. Finley had another Scottish friend
there, and they argued for about half an hour about rugby, soccer, and
whether Edinburgh is better than Inverness. Afterwards, Stuart and Finley
made fun of each others' accents, and we chatted about rednecks in America
and Russian food, and of cabbages and kings. Finley was pretty distraught.
He said he left Scotland to get away from everything being boiled, and came
to Russia where everything is fried. He swears he was offered a fried Mars
bar at someone's house, and was close to tears when he told me about his
first host family frying pasta for dinner. I had a lot of fun, and it's
good to meet new people, but I need to start meeting more Russians.
Feb. 19
Bit of a lazy slug this weekend. Didn't do much of anything worth noting
today, other than spending most of today at the Hermitage. It's
unbelievable, of course. I spent a couple of hours just in the statuaries,
and almost as much time in just the two or three rooms of the Faberge
exhibit. I couldn't have possibly imagined how enormous this place is until
I tried to see even a small part of it in one day. The guidebook says that
to see every exhibit would take months, and seeing every room would mean
walking ten kilometers not counting backtracking. I didn't believe everyone
when they said it was better than the Louvre until I got here. Even the
building is an unimaginable work of art. My favorite exhibits were the rooms
preserved from the complex's days as the Winter Palace; enormous ballrooms
and beautiful studies and elegant "state chairs" (basically thrones). They
have the rooms where Kerensky's provisional government met and was arrested,
arranged just as they were then, with the clock on the mantle stopped at the
minute they were arrested.
The lack of funds has hit the museum, though. The "state chair" of the
Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta (as in the Maltese Falcon, which
was cool) badly needs to be reupholstered, for example, and many of the
exhibits need preventative renovation for which there simply isn't any
money. It was easy to see why as I left; the last exhibit as you leave is a
display counter full of things confiscated from people leaving the country.
Historians and private collectors have tried to smuggle out Faberge eggs,
Imperial documents, centuries old icons and altar screens, and anything they
could beg, buy, or steal while they were here. It's sad. Someone even tried
to smuggle out the Novgorodian Book of Hours, which is an enormously
important text to Russian history but has no real monetary value. The
selfishness of it is frustrating.
Speaking (in a roundabout way) of conspicuous consumption, we're planning on
going to Egypt for spring break. Flights are really cheap out of Moscow, and
we can get a week in a four star hotel for about four hundred dollars. From
the Baltic Sea and the Neva to the Red Sea and the Nile. I can't wait.
Feb. 18
Saw the opera Evginy Onegin today at the Mussorgsky Theater (saw
Shostakovitch's son conduct Beethoven on Wednesday, and the ballet Romeo and
Juliet yesterday). It was beautiful, but very difficult to follow the
lyrics. The opera was fun, but I preferred the ballet, even though I
normally am more impressed by the human voice than by dance. Romeo and
Juliet both danced very well, but the Signors Capulet, Mercutio, and the
Abbot stole the show. Signor Capulet was especially good. He, Paris, and the
Signora Capulet do a forced dance with Juliet that was simply incredible. It
stole the show. Well, no, Prokofiev stole the show, but he doesn't get to
take a bow. The theaters here are just gorgeous. The theater the ballet was
in is at least seven stories of tiered balconies, and our seats were
perfect; first tier, front row. Mary said that tickets like that to such a
world-class company would cost five or six hundred dollars in New York. They
didn't even cost that much in rubles here; I think the most expensive were
the opera tickets, and they were only about a hundred rubles, around four
dollars. I'll have to be careful - I could easily develop an opera habit
that I can't afford to feed in the states. I still want to see some straight
drama while I'm here. Dr. Holl said that Shakespeare is great in Russian,
and Twelfth Night plays soon. The next show is Mozart's Requiem, but that
isn't for a few weeks. I missed the ticket buying for Gizelle and Swan Lake,
but I'll have plenty of other chances to see them.
Feb. 19-20
Went with Alex and Mary to the Kupchino ruinok (market) today. It was a lot
of fun - you can literally buy a basket of fish entrails and floor-length
Italian-designed leather dusters at the same place. I didn't find anything
to buy (although the fish entrails looked tempting), but Mary found some
clothes and Alex is still carefully debating the merits of buying some
leather pants. When in Rome, I guess. Actually, some of the best shopping
I've found here is at and around the metros stops on the ends of the lines.
CDs with every song and every album compiled from whatever artist you want
and computer stuff that hasn't been released in the states yet are priced at
a flat 60 rubles a disk, a little over two dollars. Pricier than at some of
the ruinoks, I think, but still a steal. Literally. Most of it would be
criminal in the states, but here I'm buying shoulder to shoulder with the
militsia. Truly this is the promised land.
After, we went to Bob's for a housewarming party. His old apartment had
intermittent electricity and no phone service to speak of, so he just got a
new one. Public opinion on Bob has reversed one hundred and eighty degrees.
It's now pretty much agreed that Bob is a great guy, and that maybe the only
problem is that Natasha is using him for his American standard of living.
Maybe. I don't know either of them well enough to say, but Bob's a damned
good host. The party was great. We listened to music and drank vodka and ate
pickles (in the classic Russian pairing) and razgovored late into the night,
until we decided to go skating at a rink that's supposedly only open from 11
p.m. to 5 a.m. So we all bundled up warmly (it's starting to get really cold
again) and headed for the metro, with a small detour to play on the
playground by Bob's building. Ruby and Bethany and I were probably the only
ones not completely trashed by that point. By the time we got to the metro,
everyone else had gotten loud and kind of obnoxiously American. By the time
we got on the metro, a few of us scooted down a bit further in the car so we
wouldn't be swept up in case the militsia nabbed them for public
intoxication, which is technically illegal (although never enforced, so we
needn't have bothered). By the time the metro went one stop, everyone not in
our group left the car. Everyone. A few drunken Americans chased an entire
carload of people from the metro. I was pretty embarrassed.
By the time we got to the Sportivney stop, where the rink was supposed to
be, the group had made a couple of new bosom buddies from some younger
Russians we met along the way. They both swore that there was no such rink
anywhere in the city, as did the flower shop guy and the roadside meat stand
guy and the security guard who ran us down in the construction zone. That
was fun (sarcasm). As we were tramping around trying to see if the enormous
arena right next to the metro stop was the right place, Bethany noticed that
we were going through a construction zone, which definitely didn't seem
right. Bob chose that moment to decide that he absolutely had to relive
himself, and the dark and rubble-strewn alley seemed, I guess, the logical
place. Or maybe not, but he was definitely not thinking clearly at the time.
As he was in the process of stumbling over to the alley, a guy with a
flashlight came up on us and wanted to know why we were there. He wasn't too
pleased that Bob was doing his business on the corner of his building, but
he was actually very pleasant and understanding about it all. He escorted us
to a trailer at the front of the site, while Bob remarked loudly and
frequently from the rear that he didn't trust Russians late at night and the
guy was just taking us somewhere to mug us. I hope to God that the guard
didn't speak English, because he was great. He asked a friend of his about
the rink, and told us that he didn't know exactly where it was, but he knew
where it wasn't, and told us the right general direction to go after
politely but firmly escorting us off the lot. The entire episode was
embarrassing as hell, and I have resolved in the future to tell people that
I'm an Australian. I can fake the accent if I have to. (post script:
Apparently, I have a Finnish accent. I finally asked a cab driver why
Russians keep thinking I'm a Finn, and he said with my beard and glasses I
look like a Finn (which is great, since everyone knows Finns are so damned
handsome) and that I even sound like one. Wonder why?)
We did finally get to the rink at about 11:30, but it was midnight before I
got skates. There were literally only about half a dozen pairs left to rent,
and a line down the corridor to get to them. When I say "line," I mean in
the classic Russian sense, meaning a crowd of people pushing and smoking and
chatting and stepping on toes. The general theme is that if you aren't at
the front of the line, it's because the guy in front of you hasn't pushed
hard enough, and you have to push him harder to get him motivated. I was
lucky and snagged the first pair of skates that came my way; not only were
they just the right size, Nathan said they were the only pair in the entire
rink that would have come close to fitting. I skated for a while, but Megan
stole the show. She wowed everyone; I've never known anyone so completely
comfortable or graceful on skates. She said that she's been figure skating
since she was a child. I was kind of embarrassed at first when she towed me
around the rink because I wasn't keeping up with her, but it was actually a
lot of fun. We were the only inostranetz, and the whole experience was
great. The snack bar actually sold buterbrodi s ikroi (caviar on bread) just
like at the opera or ballet. Barring the fiasco of actually getting to the
rink, we all had a fabulous time.
Feb. 23
It's been an upsetting day all around. We had an excursion to the Usurper's
Palace today, where Rasputin was killed. Like all of the palaces, it was
immaculately preserved and extremely beautiful on the inside, with concert
and dance halls and studies and gorgeous artwork and sculpture everywhere.
In the basement is a wax tableau of Rasputin and the conspirators; the story
of his death is wilder in Russian as it is in English. I was amazed that I
understood so many Russian phrases for how one dies. The interest and
fascination was muted, though; quite a few of the group are from Georgetown,
and a student there died recently. Megan got the call early this morning;
apparently his heart failed after he slipped into a coma. All of the
Georgetown kids knew him, but Megan was apparently pretty close to him and
it hit her hard. It must be hard to grieve when you're so far away.
It was a day for dying; on my way home from the excursion, I found a dead
body literally at the foot of my building. It was a young man lying facedown
on the pavement. No one passing by stopped to help or stay with him. I ran
up the stairs to call the militsia from my apartment, but Marina Michaelovna
wasn't home and I knew that I wouldn't be able to explain over the phone in
Russian. I was going to go to the metro station and get one of the policemen
there, but by the time I got downstairs they had already arrived and were
loading him into an ambulance. The lights were on as the ambulance drove
away, so it's possible that he was just passed out, but I'm not sure. If he
was dead, it wouldn't even be the first body someone on the program has
found. A few weeks ago Megan stumbled across a hit and run victim on her
street. I spent all day in an ancient and beautiful palace, then came home
and found a nameless man cold on the street. There are serious problems
here, and no easy answers. The desensitization is frightening. Most of the
people didn't even look at the man on the ground; they just walked by and
stared straight ahead. I actually caught myself doing the same thing before
I realized that he wasn't moving, and that disturbed me as much as anything.
I love this country, but there are some attitudes that I don't want to take
home with me. I'd like to think that it would have been different in the
states, but I don't know. Definitely an upsetting day.
Feb. 24
A few days ago, the ex-mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak died of a
heart attack. As we were driving to school today, there was a line of people
a mile long waiting outside one of the government palaces - we found out
that they were mourners, waiting to see his body lying in state. At lunch, I
realized that I still had my camera in my bag from the Usurper excursion,
and I found a couple of spare rolls of film in my coat. So I asked our
culture/razgovor teacher if I could go to the funeral instead of to class,
and she offered to drive me there herself. I declined, since it was only a
block away, but I hoofed it over to the service to see what I could see. The
line of mourners was at least a kilometer long, stretching a couple of
blocks, so I took pictures of the crowd while I waited for it to thin out.
There were mostly older ladies and a few younger people, but no one my age.
Lots of spontaneous displays of emotion, like flowers stuck into the pillars
outside the palace. Sobchak's widow officially declared the incumbent mayor
persona non gratis at the service, and blamed him for "hounding" her husband
to death. It was very interesting. Putin was there, though I didn't see him.
The police were concerned that the Chechens might try something as a
statement, so security was theoretically tight, but they weren't very
careful. I wandered around for half an hour with a big funny-looking camera
pointed at soldiers and politicians and generals and went through the
reception line with a big black canvas bookbag, but no one ever stopped me
or asked to see the bag or whether or not I was there to blow up the
building. I wasn't, but it seemed like that's the kind of thing you'd want
to ask. It was a fascinating experience; a little taste of what's really
going on here in local politics and the minds of the people.
Feb. 25
We took the night train from the Baltiskaya Voksal bound for Estonia; we
were all pretty excited. There were thirteen of us, ready and raring to see
Tallinn. When we got to the station, Molly and Meg seemed to be in a pretty
good mood (Molly, another Georgetown girl, has an eerie similarity to Sandy
from home). They and Dan had decided to get some drinking done earlier in
the day, since alcohol wasn't allowed on the train. They overdid it, though,
and an ill wind blew that smelt of doom. And of pickles, since they'd had a
few.
We boarded the train, and I was "lucky" enough to get into the same
compartment as Meg and Molly and Dan. (Actually, despite the ensuing circus,
it was pretty lucky - I'm a lot better friends with these guys after
Tallinn, and this is a big part of the reason. It's like war vets bonding
together, but with less dignity.) The cars were sleepers, with four bunks
and a small folding table to each cabin. Meg promptly passed out on the top
bunk across from me, and didn't really regain consciousness or sanity for
the rest of the night. Molly and Dan were on the bottom, and they talked
quietly for a while until the train pulled out. About ten minutes after
that, the conductor came in to check our passports. Molly seemed pretty
agitated, but I couldn't tell what was happening since I was directly above
her. After the conductor left, she kept muttering to herself; when I asked
her what she was saying, she shouted, "I said I kept . . . ." and lunged for
an empty juice box as a combination of too much drinking and the rocking of
the train made her violently ill (and not for the first time, as she hadn't
been able to control herself in front of the conductor).
A few minutes later, two soldiers showed up at the door of the compartment.
While Dan wasn't too far under the weather, I was the only really sober
person in the room, but my Russian wasn't nearly good enough to understand
two agitated soldiers in full question and answer mode. We were saved by
Tall Dan, the other Dan on the trip, who wandered by just in time to save
Molly's butt by covering for her. The soldiers kept telling us that she'd be
put off the train if she was sick, or if she'd been drinking, both of which
were true. Tall Dan managed to convince them it was just motion sickness,
but they were skeptical. The upshot is that we spent the entire night trying
to cover up Molly's epic capacity for regurgitation, while occasionally
checking to make sure that Megan was still breathing and that our papers
were in order.
They weren't, of course. Half of the people on the trip had forgotten their
customs declaration forms from when we entered Russia, which is sometimes a
big deal and usually at least an excuse for the guards to shake travelers
down for bribes. We managed to get by without getting into trouble, but it
was interesting. We couldn't wake Meg up, so I filled out her customs forms
and negotiated with the guards for her while Dan handled Molly (Dan spent
the entire night nursing Molly, and showed more dedication and tolerance
than any ten normal men. The guy's a trooper.) When you think about it, the
fact that a dozen American students managed to get across an international
border with a comatose girl, her severely ill companion, and no paperwork is
a testament to our Russian skills. I should also mention here that this was
in no way representative of the way we normally spend our weekends; while
this diary may sometimes seem like a list of drunken debauches, I tend to
only write the more amusing experiences down. We are for the most part a
sober and respectable group, and other than our little hospital cabin, the
rest of the group had a peaceful and sober ride undisturbed by anything more
than the occasional dispute at cards.
That and the heat. Whoever designed the cabins apparently forgot about
ventilation, since the windows are sealed and there's no air conditioning.
Even in the Russian winter, four people in a small cabin raise the ambient
temperature pretty drastically, and it bears remembering that even after a
generous application of Michelle's donated perfume our cabin had a uniquely
piquant odor. By two a.m., the cabins were at least ninety degrees. It was
nostalgic at first, recalling fond Texas summers and sweltering heat on all
of those childhood night trains to Sweetwater, but it got pretty unpleasant.
Most of us just laid on our bunks and tried to sleep or listen to music, but
Megan decided to beat the heat by going insane. She'd spent the night
sprawled in on the bunk wrapped in a sweater and overcoat, and hadn't moved
except to ask me to do her declaration for her and sign it across the "For
Official Use Only" and permit stamp box (without ever really waking up or
realizing what was going on. Eventually, though, I think the heat got to
her. Without warning she sat bolt upright, and her eyes darted all around
the cabin. She leaned over the bunk to Molly, and asked, "Where's my
laundry? Will that nice lady give me my laundry?" Molly, ever concerned
about her friend, said, "Yes, dear, of course. It's all OK." As Meg tumbled
from her bunk and lurched down the hall to the back of the car, Dan and I
conferred and concluded there was no nice lady on the train, but that was
OK, because there was no laundry either. We saw Meg exit the car and go to
the next one back, but the conductor escorted her back in a few minutes. We
put her back to bed, and all was in order for our eventual arrival in
Tallinn.
Feb. 26
Tallinn is an amazing city. Estonia is doing the best of all of the former
Soviet bloc nations, having had the foresight to drop the ruble like the
proverbial handful of steaming bear dung right after the collapse. Following
a few tough reforms, the country is doing extremely well for itself.
Estonians, according to a guidebook in the hotel room, are a reserved people
given to common sense and reflection. Obviously I was fated to be an
Estonian, and only the language keeps me from up and moving to Tallinn.
Estonian as a language was devised by crazed medieval monks who feared and
hated the outside world, and it shows. The State Department calls it one of
the hardest languages in the world for Americans to learn (along with the
other languages of the Finno-Ugraic group). The city of Tallinn proper is
basically a smaller but cleaner and friendlier Petersburg, but the real
virtue of the place is the Old City in the center of town. There are lots of
historical cities in the world, even in America (like Colonial
Williamsburg). The difference is that Old Tallinn is a living, breathing,
working medieval city that translates perfectly from the ancient
architecture and winding cobblestone streets inside the towering city wall
to a lovely district of shops, offices, restaurants, and city administration
buildings.
We got in at about eight in the morning, and met a couple of kids from the
hotel who guided us to the bus stop and to the place where we stayed. Dallas
(who spent a week here last semester) had wanted to stay at the Barn, a
hostel located in the middle of Old Tallinn (and in the same building as an
"Erootika Baar") but they had no room for all of us. Still, our hotel was
perfectly serviceable. We slept until about noon, then took the bus to the
center of town and wandered. We saw amazing sights; the wool market, the
oldest town hall in Europe, several cathedrals, the Baltic and the sea wall,
and all the other sights that the city is justly famous for.
Afterwards, we went to Old Hanse for dinner. Dallas was like a kid at
Christmas - he talked about the buckwheat kasha and the steaks and you could
just see his face light up with a big happy smile. It was a great
restaurant. It's a recreation of a sixteenth century merchant's hostel, down
to the candlelight and the menu. Dan ordered the bear, which was pretty
good, and tasted pretty much like you'd expect bear to taste. Afterwards we
watched a movie (Bringing Out the Dead, subtitled in Russian and Estonian)
and went back to the hotel to get some sleep.
Feb. 27
We were up fairly early and got a good start on the city. We bought our
return train tickets and stored our bags at the Barn (and got lots of
amusing pictures since the entrance to the hostel is right under the
"Erootika Baar" sign) and went back into the city to sightsee. We spent all
weekend in Old Town, but it only took us a couple of days to see most, if
not all, of the region. That's because Dallas knew what he was doing, and
got us to walk around the city wall with him. It took a few hours, but the
experience of walking along the bottom of that tall strong gray wall is
something I'll never forget. We walked and gaped and talked and joked and
soaked up all the sights as we wandered over the stairs and battlements; we
spent a good while at a promontory overlooking the rest of the old town, and
cajoled an ancient old man into letting us climb the Nunne tower after
closing time. We saw Fat Margaret and Tall Herman (other towers) and Old
Pete, the weathervane on top of the city hall who's stood, sword in hand,
for centuries. I never did get much in the way of souvenirs, since I could
never decide what could possibly call to mind the whole experience other
than all of the pictures we took. We eventually met back at the town square
in time for dinner, and packed back to the train for an uneventful ride back
home.
[The original of this document can be found at http://chaos.greeny.org/~yance/]
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