September 22, 2009
It feels like I actually live here in Moscow because real life has definitely hit me hard. There is no mistaking my time here for a vacation. Currently, I’m a bit overwhelmed after visiting St. Petersburg this weekend and not getting anything done. I’m applying for the NSF’s research fellowship which is due the end of October, the GRE subject test is in less than three weeks, I have graduate school applications to work on, and homework for my classes here. I am doing the very best I can to keep all this organized and under control so I can make sure I spend quality time exploring Russia and spending time with the people in my group.
Last week consisted mainly of homework and getting ready to go to St. Petersburg. Wednesday night I had dinner at Luke and Anya’s house and got the key to their apartment and my instructions for housesitting. I’m currently in their apartment enjoying the comfortable couch, wireless Internet, and solitude after spending last night trying to sleep in an open compartment train with lots of smelly Europeans.
This week was made shorter (and MUCH more sad) because Nate left the program. He told me of his decision to leave Moscow on Tuesday night and Thursday morning at 6:30 he was gone. This was really hard on me for a number of reasons. From the very beginning Nate epitomized my ideas of the entire MiM program. He gave me all my information on what to expect and was my only concrete example of an MiM student. Once I knew Nate and I were both going to be in Russia, we started to form a friendship. For the (short) time he was in Moscow, he was my closet friend in the program. Nate is very good at asking questions in conversation which reminds me of my best friend Larkin. It was a comfort to have a piece of Larkin living next door to me. Nate is also incredibly intelligent and amazingly has the ability to explain things well without being condescending or making you feel as if you were an annoyance to him. This talent was already coming in handy for me in our classes! Nate also had an amazing sense of adventure and was always inviting people from our group to go on late night walks around the city to take pictures, see Russian plays, or join a cycling group. His initiative will be missed.
Thursday night at 10:30pm our group met at the metro station and at 1:30am we boarded an overnight train to St. Petersburg. We arrived around 9am and immediately got started with a city tour by bus. The weather was beautiful and we were able to leave the bus to take pictures several times. We also toured a castle and then finally dropped our things off at our hostel. After a shower, we headed to dinner as a group and then split up. A group of five or six of us wandered down НИЕВСКИ ПРОСПЕКТ, one of the main streets in St. Petersburg. We enjoyed people watching and exploring on our own.
The rest of the weekend we spent visiting palaces, museums, monuments, souvenir stores, shopping (although St. Petersburg is the 7th most expensive city in the world, its still cheaper than Moscow—the most expensive city in the world), and doing a lot of walking. The highlights included a boat tour on Saturday afternoon. It had been raining and gray all day, but we enjoyed getting to see the city from a new angle and being on a boat as a group was a good excuse to toast with champagne and in the Russian tradition, vodka.
My favorite part of the weekend came Sunday afternoon. We visited the Hermitage which is the third largest art collection in the world (after the Louvre and some museum in England). I got to see original paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and many many others. I was blown away by the architecture of the former Winter Palace of Russian Czars and Czarinas. Intricately designed wooden floors, marble, molding, paintings, sculptures, and gold covered every room. Although I could have easily spent days in this museum, my brain was quickly filled with splendor and I was unable to process any more.
Our overnight train left at 10:20 Sunday night and we arrived in Moscow at 6:00am Monday morning. I bought some food, was delighted to discover a refrigerator had been delivered to my dorm room, and got to work on finishing homework and catching up with Kyle via Skype. Morning classes were cancelled (not that I had one anyway) so I headed to the gym and then to lunch and class at the IUM.
This evening, I attempted to journey across town to the Davis apartment with a duffle bag full of laundry and a loaded backpack with books and laptop in tow. I managed to get on the metro going the wrong direction and did not realize anything was wrong for a couple stops. Then, when I finally got myself turned around and got off the metro, I got lost trying to leave. Their stop is huge and right by a train station so it is difficult to tell where the exit (even though I can read the Cyrillic sign for “exit to city” now) is. I got very mixed up (this has happened every time I’ve tried to come to their apartment) and this time I ended up walking down streets I’d never seen and spent at least an hour wandering with absolutely no luck. As I was about to burst into tears, I decided to try my luck with a taxi. I was somehow able to communicate the street name and house number to him and we decided on a price (taxis in Moscow don’t have meters, you set a price before you get in). I’m pretty sure he got lost for a while too, but he dropped me off safely just across the street from the apartment. A few times he tried to ask me questions that I assumed were about directions (they were not “What is your name?” or “How are you?” which are basically the only questions I can recognize at this point). Mainly I told him I didn’t understand. At the end of the ride he told me he wanted to give me his phone number. I tried to ask him why but the only question word in Russian I could remember was “Kak” which is “how.” He gave me his number and then insisted I call him so he would have mine. I thought he was just giving me his number so I could call for a taxi ride again because although by this point we had exchanged names, there is no way we would be able to communicate. He apparently thought differently because I received no less than six phone calls from him tonight. I’ve ignored everyone and am thankful I do not have voicemail.
My internal clock is very turned around after the overnight trains and the list of things to do running over and over in my head, but I should probably try and get some rest before this week gets away from me as well.
Saturday morning I went to the Bolshoi theatre to see a ballet with Dan and Christina. We learned that if you arrive an hour before the performance there are a limited number of student tickets available for 20-50 rubles (<$2 !!!). We saw Cipollino, the story of a town of vegetables. It was very cute and the dancers were amazing. The Bolshoi main stage is (and has been for 2-3 years) under construction so we saw the ballet on the “new stage.” I’m bummed I will not be able to see the Bolshoi main stage because the new stage was beautiful and I can only imagine what the main stage looks like.
