First Days

Russia!

We arrived, sleep-deprived, on a plane at about 3pm on Saturday. It rained on and off all day, which apparently Russians call “mushroom rain” because its the sort of weather where they pop up. It was interesting and new after being in dry California all summer, but not appreciated while waiting outside for the bus. We drove from the airport, sounding out the surrounding Cyrillic writing and become extremely excited upon recognizing words. Our university and dorms are NOT where I thought they where, near the center of town, but in fact happen to be quite far north from the center city, in a residential district (there’s a Russian word for it that I can’t recall, but which I think basically means a-place-where-people-only-sleep). Thus, first impressions where not the greatest, although its still old and fascinatingly industrial. The view from my window encompasses a vast amount of power lines and conductors, which are actually stunning. The rest of the night was spent settling in, unpacking etc. My roommate also happens to have a twin, and is from Alaska. She is awesome. We did some walking later, and completely passed for Russians. Or thought we did.

On Sunday, we went to real St. Petersburg which is incredibly stunning, certainly worthy of the name “Venice of the North”. The buildings in the main downtown were all built around the founding of the city, and their facades march elegantly down the Neva and its artificial canals, painted in surprisingly bright colors like gold-yellow, brick and light green. I really can’t describe it at all, but it really is fantastic. I can’t wait to explore all the canals and interconnecting streets, which are surprisingly wide and un Europe-like since St.. Petersburg was planned as the capital.
Our tour included many cathedrals, palaces, and more specific sights like the Aurora, a retired battleship whose shot signaled the beginning of the Revolution back in 1917, and we passed a museum of ethnography which also houses Peter the Great’s collection of mutants (two-headed babies and the like) pickled in brine. St. Petersburg has over a hundred museums. Over ONE HUNDRED. These include such treasures as the museums of bread, chocolate and vodka. And of course, it apparently would take 9 years to get through the Hermitage.
Later we took pictures for our legal papers that we MUST have at all times since the Police always have the right to ask for them. Then our first shopping, where we discovered that the cashiers hate breaking large bills as we were all harassed. Unfortunately, ATMs don’t give change, but we don’t quite know how to explain that yet.

Today, the first day of school, we went to class and were told about all our classes, then took the Russian placement test- its remarkable how much one can forget in a fairly short period of time. Afterwards we had the afternoon free, and I went downtown with a friend on the Metro (about a twenty minute ride). Their Metro is beautiful! Built mainly in the fifties, both the stations and the trains are wide and well decorated, with lovely details like lamps in the trains that look like they’re from somewhere between the twenties and the forties. They are incredibly deep as well- I’ve never ridden such a long elevator. Coming up into St. Petersburg on the surprisingly sunny day was magical, emerging into Nevsky Prospect (the main boulevard) amid rushing Russians (sorry, not funny), and simply walking around in a lazy search for a watch. The problem with having such old buildings, actually, is that they don’t have storefronts, so its quite difficult to tell what they in fact sell. Wandering was really lovely, however, which included buying bread from a lovely vendor who asked us where we were from and told us to come back again. Its so incredibly satisfying to just interact and buy things successfully! We also found a market by lucky chance that is a cross between a farmers’ and flea market, which I am totally going to return to. Fresh fruit and veges, here I come! Although our food that we’ve had is really quite good.

And randomly, it has become evident that Russians love flowers- there are stalls everywhere!