02 July 2008: Hermitage, again

I believe the technical term for the size of the Hermitage is “gi-normous.” Today I took trip number two, this time with Daniel, Henry, and Claudiu. It was a much nicer day, and the line was much shorter. The two, I suppose, have something to do with each other. Sadly, I was caught with my camera this time and was asked to put it in storage or pay the extra hundred rubles. So, no pictures for you today . . . except for the one at right. Remember how there used to be a different entrance to the museum when part of it was still a palace? This is that entrance. It's called the Portico of the Atlantes.

It is nearly impossible to keep together when everyone has their own interests and starts wandering off on their own, so we agreed on a meet-up time and dispersed. Henry and Claudiu headed off in the direction of the exhibition hall (featuring palatial tents) while Daniel and I went to go find the impressionists and modernists. The last time I was here, I had only found these as it was time to be going. It was great to be able to spend more time with Monet, Gauguin, Cezanne, Pissarro, Picasso, Renoir, Degas, and the rest. I really love that period. After that, it was down to the basement to see ancient artifacts from the Golden Hordes, Babylon, and Byzantium. Time flies when you’re in a gigantic museum, so that’s really all we had time for.

On our way out, we found the entirety of the Hermitage surrounded by militia. We were only allowed to leave through a small pathway leading out along the building. I stopped to ask one of the guards what was going on. He looked kind of surprised that I was talking to him and, after a pause in which he seemed to consider whether he should respond, muttered something incomprehensible. I’m still not sure what was going on there.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the evening where we went to a piano concert. The pianist (who’s name I will have to look up when I get home) played arrangements of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” the Nutcracker Suite, and quite a few Rachmaninoff pieces. The Nutcracker Suite was particularly phenomenal. And, as always, tickets were super cheap. Four dollars for this one.

01 July 2008: Ogress in the Grocery Store

Happy July!

So, today Daniel, Karis, Henry, Claudiu, and I were on our way somewhere or other (my paper brain fails me) and we decided to get some lunch supplies. I think this was the day we ended up in the Yusopov Gardens, actually. The rest of the gang went off to there various locales for foodstuffs, and I went to get laundry detergent.

Here I must interject a small story. Irina came into my room and asked me if I knew I was supposed to buy laundry detergent. This was actually part of the housing agreement we had with our host families: they were to do our laundry once per week and we were supposed to provide the laundry soap. This was something I had sort of spaced out on. I told her that I would be happy to go get some soap if she wanted, but I would need to know where to go and what kind to get. For some strange reason she seemed reluctant to tell me. I repeated that I didn’t know where to find something like that, and that I couldn’t get any if I didn’t know where to go. She got a bit huffy and finally told me to go to “Dixie” and get some. And that was that. While it was part of the contract, I was still kind of put out I guess. It hadn’t been a problem until that point, and it just didn’t seem like a convivial, “hey, welcome to the family” sort of thing to say, bringing up the contract and all. I felt like she was being a little cold during it, but, like I said, it was my job and I screwed up, so I went looking for soap. (As an aside, I learned later that not another person in the Brown crew ever was asked, or did, buy any laundry detergent.)

I found the soap Irina had suggested and found my way to the cash registers. A woman behind me asked whether I was in line. My sarcastic side thought, “No, I’m just standing here with a box of laundry detergent for fun.” But that’s not a good way to make friends, so I just said yes.
“Which line are you in?”
“This one, for cash register number 5.”
“You’re not Russian.” Yeah, it was more of a statement than a question.
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, what are you then?”
“American.”
“Oh, I thought you were Polish.”
“Why did you think I was Polish?”
“Because all Americans are idiots.”
“Oh. I hope I’m not an idiot.”
“Why do you think you’re not an idiot.”
“I didn’t say I thought I wasn’t an idiot. I said I hoped I wasn’t an idiot.” This made her smile a sardonic little grin and she proceeded to ask me what I was studying and where and why I was in St. Petersburg. When I got in line, the woman at the register asked me that infuriating question all Russian clerks ask: “Do you have a (fill in the blank with a denomination of currency)?” No! For goodness’ sake, people, I do not have fifteen rubles! People like you keep demanding all my small change! The woman scowled as I said I didn’t have any smaller denominations. The ogress behind me made a point of informing our disgruntled friend that I was an American.

While there was no open confrontation involved, the situation was a little rattling, so I was glad to join up with Daniel, Karis, Henry, and Claudiu to be on our merry way.

I told this story to Irina later that night, and she said that woman was sick. Comforting, I thought.

30 June 2008: Ukrainian Folk Remedies

30 June 2008

By two days after my [un]eventful night out, the four o’clock chill, the cigarette smoke, and the ashes I inhaled overwhelmed my immune system. I came down with a pretty sore throat and a headache, really nothing some rest wouldn’t have taken care of. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling Irina that I had a sore throat. After admonishing me for not wearing enough clothes that night, she began administering her ancient Ukrainian folk remedies.

Medicine number one was chamomile tea. Definitely harmless, though I’ve never been a huge fan of chamomile. Medicine number two was some sort of herbal infusion that I was supposed to steep for half an hour. This produced a lime-green liquid that I was supposed to gargle and not swallow. Irina was very insistent that I not swallow it . . . It didn’t taste bad, more like a combination of all the more moderate spices you might have in your cupboards. I thought the two of these would do the trick, inasmuch as anything would do the trick more than just sleeping. I was woefully mistaken.

Folk remedy number three involved submerging my feet in steaming hot water until they turned red. Like lobsters. I didn’t know feet could turn that color, actually. And what boiling my feet did to fix my throat, I’m not sure. Maybe the steam from the water? If that’s the case, then I think it was a rather roundabout way of doing it . . .

I was then instructed to don thick socks immediately after concluding my foot bath. After I was safely tucked in bed, Irina came back with a tablespoon and a bottle of vodka. In Russia, vodka fixes everything. “It’s to kill the microbes,” I was told. After swigging down the tablespoon (which is a lot bigger than American tablespoons, I’ll have you know) I had no doubt that vodka could kill just about anything given the right amount. Thus was my first encounter with vodka, and I have to say I wasn’t too impressed. It was like NyQuil, without the cherry flavor.

I was on my way to sleep when Irina popped back in with a tea saucer of crushed garlic which she placed on the top shelf of the bookcase. “It’s to kill the microbes.” I’m not sure about microbes, but I guess it kept the vampires away.

One last time before I was allowed to go to sleep, Irina came back in again, this time to show me what amounted to something like a bed of nails. It was a rubber mat covered in sinister-looking spikes. She apologized that I wouldn’t be using that tonight, since she was also ill and needed it, but she had been using the vacuum-tube therapy all night and was sure to be better by tomorrow, so I should feel free to use it then. Then she toddled off. What, you might ask, is the vacuum-tube therapy? I’m assuming that’s what the mini rubber bell jars affixed to Irina’s chest like the apparatus of a science experiment gone wrong were for.

29 June 2008: European Cup

According to my journal, I worked all day today. Tonight was the night of the European Cup Final between Germany and Spain. Of course I was rooting for Germany, with a shout out to all my German friends. I was a little disappointed when Spain won, but it was a well-played game. Most interesting was seeing the King of Spain and Angela Merkel shake the hands of all the players at the end. Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, was in the background. I always wondered what he did in the in-between years.

I had a nice time following this tournament. Apparently I don't scream enough, according to Irina. I'm too reserved and need to let out my emotions. Sorry, I didn't know I had emotions about soccer that needed to be let out. Considering all the screaming Irina did (oh, wow is that ironic, just you wait!) I think she has enough emotion for the both of us.

28 June 2008: Шашлик

[Okay, sorry the Hermitage thing got all messed up. I tried to fix it twice, but Blogger wouldn't let me. Argh. This website is impossible to deal with sometimes.]

St. Petersburg lies on the 60th parallel, so the sun displays some insomniac tendencies in the summer. The White Nights are an opportunity to spend all night out on the town. One highlight of this adventure is to watch the famous bridges go up to allow shipping to pass along the Neva. The bridges go up around 2:00 AM, and go back down around 4:00 AM. You’re out of luck if you’re trapped on the wrong side of the river: the metro closes at midnight. Besides the bridges, there are often street performers along the banks of the river, and the buildings are all lit up very nicely. It is during this time that the more romantic side of St. Petersburg really shines through.

This is kind of a huge cultural part of St. Petersburg life, so it was a big to-do for the Brown crew. Karis and I had missed the boat on a few occasions and were anxious to experience this nighttime extravaganza. You can imagine our excitement when Irina told me today that Maxim and his friends were planning a night out on the town and wondered whether we would want to go with. How perfect to have native Russians with us as we brave the city throughout the night.

When I mentioned to Irina that Karis would be stopping over, she asked me if I planned to invite a girl over with my room in the state it was in. What state this was, I could only guess, since it’s generally universal knowledge that I’m no slob. I said it was no trouble. She asked where Karis was planning on staying, since she wouldn’t be able to get

I picked Karis up at the nearest metro stop around ten o’clock. I introduced her to Irina, who offered Karis something to drink. Karis said no thanks, which was clearly the wrong answer as a glass of water was thrust into her hands moments later. Irina asked us why we were hanging out in the kitchen, and why we didn’t go into my bedroom. We said we were comfortable in the kitchen, but Irina insisted. We said it was really okay, but she told us “not to be shy” and giggled a bit as she shooed us off to camp out behind closed doors in my apparently abysmal living quarters. This turned out to be yet another of a long list of instances where Irina exhibited her firm belief that Karis and I were dating.

For reasons I never figured out, Karis and I ended up watching Russian pool and Mongolian war videos until midnight when Maxim’s cohorts finally decided to show up. First stop on our tour of the town was a little grocery store where the Russians bought ten litres of beer for the six of them, plus a bottle of “martini” as they called it. This was the first hint that we were in for a bit more than we bargained.

After an awkward encounter with Maxim’s dad on a bridge in the company of six Russian teens carrying gallons of beer, we headed toward Krestovsky Island, which is in the complete opposite direction of the center of the city. Krestovsky Island is basically a big park on the Gulf of Finland; we’ve been here before. Our crew found a welcoming log, copped a squat, and proceeded to build a fire using old newspapers and whatever bits of twig came handy. Clearly none of the guys were boy scouts, oh, sorry, I meant пиониры. This log we found became my butt’s home until around 5:30 the following morning.

One of the main purposes of this urban camping experience was the making of шашлик (pronounced “shashlik”), or kabobs. The pork (?) had been “marinating” in some unidentifiable liquid in a plastic container which was floating in a plastic bag in the Gulf of Finland. The chef, either Sam or Maxim, prepped by washing his hands in Gulf of Finland water, whose sanitation is more than questionable-- highly doubtful is more like it. He would then grab fistfuls of the sodden meat, squeeze them, and skewer them on metal spikes, also “cleansed” in the Gulf of Finland. The Russian maxim that “fire kills the microbes” seems to have held true as neither Karis nor I became violently ill after consuming this surprisingly tasty snack. It helped to douse it with ketchup, mayonnaise, and some willful ignorance. We were offered beer with our шашлик, which we politely refused, only to be handed some “martini” instead. Karis took a sip, looked like she was going to die, and whispered that it tasted like poison. I took just a drop and yes, it tasted like some abominable mixture of gasoline and bug spray. Throughout the night, our companions noticed that we weren’t drinking it, and admonished me for being “un-Russian.” Well folks, guess what. I’m not Russian.

The night was unfortunately pretty dull. Sam was the most pleasant of the bunch, but you can only talk for so long about why you’ve come to Russia, what you study back home, how long you’ve been taking Russian and so on. We didn’t know enough about Sam, or enough Russian, to ask him too much about himself so conversation died a slow death, leaving us once more with the log.

Maxim was not particularly pleasant that night. He didn’t speak to us at all, and only referenced us as “the Americans.” When he noticed the fire getting low, he decided the best way to re-ignite it was to fan it violently with a paper plate, which accomplished nothing but blowing ash and smoke on everyone. I finally had to ask him to stop, which I don’t imagine he appreciated. By the end of the night, he was pretty wasted. It was kind of disappointing that he was so unfriendly, but only because at that point I was still under the mistaken impression that he was a decent person.

There were a couple of things that livened up the night. Aleg got in an argument with his girlfriend, disappeared into the woods with her, and must have gotten it resolved because they were a great deal friendlier with each other after that. Karis and I took a little walk for something to do, and to get away from the smoke, but were a little uneasy about the feral dogs wandering around. By far the most exciting part of this adventure, though, was when an inebriated Sam decided that the axe was a fun toy, and sliced his finger open. Good thing Karis came prepared with an assortment of bandages.

At the end of the night, we pried our stiff behinds off our chilled log and tossed our unfinished martinis into what remained of the fire. The small explosion made me glad I didn’t drink it.

The crew. From left to right: Maxim (oh, choice words to be said about him in the future. I want to punch him when I see this picture, but anyway, there you go); Nikita's girlfriend, I forgot her name, but she never said anything all night so you can't really blame me; Nikita, all he said was "That's not Russian"; Svetlana, Aleg's girlfriend (also didn't speak that night); Aleg.





The rest of the crew. Left to right: Sam, Aleg, Karis, Svetlana. You know, I'm not really sure her name was Svetlana, but so many girls are, so she might be too.







Lights on the Gulf of Finland.

The fire that saved me from salmonella.

25 June 2008: Hermitage

[Disclaimer: I’m actually in France now, so this blog is behind by two months and then some. Sorry. When I was frantically packing at the last minute for being in France for the year (I still don’t know why I can’t plan a bit more in advance for this sort of thing) I neglected to pack my journals. Thus, I have only my pictures to guide me and the narratives will become shorter for the moment. I plan to come back and flesh this out after I’ve returned home. So, things may look a little different in a year, though I doubt anyone will come back to notice.]

With our student IDs, we had the opportunity to go to the State Hermitage Museum (a.k.a. the Winter Palace plus adjacent buildings) for free. Ranking art museums can go two ways: physical space occupied by the museum in terms of square footage, or the number of works contained in the museum. By one of these counts, the Hermitage is the second largest art museum in the world, after the Louvre in Paris. By the other count, it surpasses the Louvre. I’m not sure which is which, but there you go.

Daniel and I planned to swing by after classes today, and we were joined by another student from Brown, Nat. We were unpleasantly surprised to found a considerably long line, but I assume that had something to do with the weather. Considering that it was bitterly cold, even by my standards, and windy enough to cause a spectacle of popping umbrellas (it was raining, too), I guess most tourists decided to go inside.

We tried to keep up a cheery mood, but later turned our thoughts to conserving energy. We had the chance to chat with a pleasant woman from Exeter, England, in front of us. She was a bit put out by the weather, but we assured her that it could change on a dime so she shouldn’t worry. She told us that she was in Russia for her husband’s wedding to a Russian woman. I didn’t want to probe, but she seemed a bit less than thrilled at this news.

Once we finally got into the building, our wait wasn’t over. In good Russian fashion, there were four cash registers, but only two with people in them. Once we reached the window, we proudly flashed our student IDs and were on our merry way. Yes, although having student IDs will get you in free, you still have to wait. Lucky for me, no one checked my bag as I brought it through security, so this became the only one of three visits to the Hermitage when I was able to take pictures with reckless abandon.





This is the inner courtyard of the Hermitage. Feeling chilly?










This is a relatively small room by Hermitage standards. It is the Peter the Great memorial chamber. If I remember correctly, this particular room was designed by the same individual who dreamt up St. Isaac’s Cathedral.









If the bountiful artistic masterpieces on the walls and the gilding on the ceilings aren’t enough for you, look down. The parquet floors are stunning.






The Armory Hall, I believe. Very nice.
















The imperial throne, last occupied by Nicholas II.












I was so proud of myself at this point. This is a statue of Cupid and Psyche done by Antonio Canova. I thought this piece looked kind of familiar. A quick bit of research reveals that this is the second time Canova sculpted this piece. The first version is housed in the Louvre, where I had a chance to go five years ago.

The Hermitage is so named because Catherine the Great liked to hole herself up in her palace, and built an extra wing so she could secret herself away further. Various tsars and tsarinas after followed her example, adding more wings to the original palace. Nicholas I was the first to convert the Hermitage into a public art museum. The trick was that he was still living in part of the palace, so things were arranged so the palace and the museum were separate. This is a picture of the interior of what used to be the main entrance to the museum.







This is an exact replica of a corridor in the Vatican. It’s nice, but I still think I’d like to go to Rome someday.









Madonna Litta, by Leonardo da Vinci.







Looking out the windows of the palace, one can get a great view of Palace Square, the General Staff Building, and the Alexander Column.




The impressionists and modernists are located on the third floor. Here’s some Picasso for your viewing pleasure.











The Dance, by Henri Matisse.