Mariinsky Theater, Pickled Cabbage and the Abandoned Building.

While the title is slightly out of order it pretty much (exactly) describes what I will be talking about in this post.

I will start with the most delicious, which is of course pickled cabbage.  Last Thursday I ventured into one of the пыноки, which are big markets that sell everything from fur hats to anything and everything pickled.  After watching bizarre foods (the Saint Petersburg special) the night before leaving for Russia with Samira (another Syracuse student) we were inspired to try the different pickled vegetables at the markets.  The sellers sit high above their produce making the walk through the market slightly intimidating as they holler down at you “девушка” (meaning girl) to try to get you to come to their stand.  Luckily, the women selling the pickled goods looked slightly less intimidating.  As soon as we got close enough to the pickle produce all kinds of pickled foods were being shoved in our faces and hands.  I was skeptical to try some of the different things but had it not been for the force-feeding I probably would have never tried pickled cabbage.  While it may not sound great, it is actually one of the greatest things I have ever had.  Typically (unless you are eating a sweet pickle) you expect pickled goods to be sourer but pickled cabbage is fairly sweet and has a faint taste of a cooked sweet onion.  After reading my description of pickled cabbage I don’t think I have convinced anyone to go out of their way and try it, but if you ever have the opportunity just go for it and hopefully you will like it as much as I did.

Before I talk about the abandoned building I need to give you some background information.  First, I go to school very close to the center of Saint Petersburg and I live on the main island off of the Gulf of Finland.  Both places, as you can probably imagine, have more of an intercity feel to them/are not solely residential areas.  With that being said, as I stepped out of the metro station on Saturday into a more residential/commercial area of Saint Petersburg I felt like I was stepping into an entirely different country.  Instead of traffic jams, museums and monuments there were malls, apartment buildings and parks.  While where I live there is some of this, especially apartment buildings, it still has an entirely different feel to it.  Where I was headed was to the park, one of the biggest parks I have ever seen.  There were a lot of kids sledding and adults cross-country skiing, but I was surprised by how many people were just out walking (since it is still fairly cold).  After walking father into the park we came across the abandoned palace of someone way back when (I don’t actually know who/if that is even true).  What is special about this building is that the basement floor is about 3 feet of solid ice.  Some of the furniture is sticking out of the ice but other than that it is pretty much an ice rink.  Even though it isn’t a monument or museum it seemed like it was preserving the past in its own unique way.  After going to this place I have been inspired to go to some of the farther suburbs and small towns on the outskirts of Petersburg to see “The Real Russia”.

Lastly, this past Sunday we had an excursion to Mariinsky Theater.  Mariinsky is the most famous theater in Saint Petersburg and is home to (formally know as) the Kirov ballet (one of the greatest ballet companies in the world).  Having danced basically all my life, to say I was excited does not even describe how I felt when the curtains opened.  The ballet we were going to see was Romeo and Juliette.  Although not one of my favorite ballets the dancers were absolutely incredible and made it worth it.  Going to the ballet at Mariinsky is an all day event.  You have to arrive early to drop off your coat at the coat check and if you are not in your seat by the chime of the third bell you will not be let in.  There were three intermissions that make the ballet seem especially long.  In total we were there about five hours.  If you’re not a fan of ballet this probably sounds like your worst nightmare but most people on my program seemed to have had a good time regardless.  Although the ballet was good, I definitely want to go again and see a ballet I like more.  

Here are just a few random pictures:

My room (left)

Icon on my wall (Right)

Church on Spilled Blood 

Smolny Cathedral (not where I go to school)

Smolny University (Where I go to school)

View from the top of Saint Isaacs Cathedral (Left)

Inside Saint Isaacs Cathedral (Right)

River View (on my way to school)

The Bronze Horseman 

Inside Mariinsky Theater 

Caviar and Банья

This past weekend I tried two very Russian creations.  First, Friday we had an excursion with some of the Russian students at Smonly University to a restaurant where we ate very Russian dishes.  The first course was some kind of mushroom potato salad.  The second was caviar and блини (blini- thin pancakes similar to crepes).  I started out by trying the caviar by itself and found it very fishy.  We tried an orange caviar which is supposed to be fairly salty so I think next time I would get the black instead. After trying the caviar by itself I tried it the Russian way where you put a sauce on the blini and then the caviar on top of that.  It definitely tasted better that way but I was still not the biggest fan.  The main course was salmon and rice, which I have had a few times now and is one of my favorite dishes.  Lastly, you ALWAYS have tea or coffee after a meal and dessert if your not completely full. 

The second Russian adventure this weekend was to the банья.  The banya is the Russian version of a sauna.  First you go into a boiling hot room and sweat (I mean really sweat) for about 10 minutes.  Then you leave the room and either go into a pool or dump cold water on yourself.  The next time you go into the room you traditionally have someone whip you with dried birch branches.  You can repeat the process as long as you can handle the heat.  It might sound strange but it is actually one of the best things I have ever done.  The best part (besides having incredibly smooth skin afterwards) is going out into freezing Russia and having the weather be perfect for a change.  I will definitely be going back to the banya at some point.  

Night and Day Curtains

I had a hard time deciding what to make this post about and so there are a variety of topics. 

First, I am going to try to attempt to erase or maybe just better explain some of the stereotypes associated with Russia.  After watching the Russian movie Брат 2 I think the best way to explain how I viewed Russia/Russians is with a quote from the movie; an American woman asks a Russian couple “Are you guys gangsters?” and the Russian responds “No, we are Russians”.  To some degree I think most Americans think of Russia as a 3^rd world country where bribery and pick pocketing are the social norms.  While to some extent this does exist it is not as prevalent as you would expect it to be.  In addition, I think a lot of Americans think that Russians are cold and rude people.  The behavior that may make you feel this way is in fact due to them trying to be polite.  For example, if you accidently hit someone with your bag it is rude to apologize or say “excuse me”, instead you are supposed to pretend like it didn’t happen to truly show that it was a mistake.  On the other hand, Russians can be very blunt about their opinions.  If you’re having dinner at someone’s house and whatever you are eating is too salty you are supposed to tell him or her that it is too salty, hiding what you really feel is considered rude.  It may not make sense but that is how it is done here.  It would be the same way if a Russian was coming to the states, they would not understand some of the things we do like wearing what we wore outside inside but that’s what you have to do when you go to a foreign country; accept it and move on. 

On a different note, I have now been to three cathedrals and all three have been completely different.  The first, Church on Spilled Blood, has the Russian revival turnip roof tops and while as an American this is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Russia but for Petersburg this is not normal.  The church was built as a memorial to Alexander II and has a shrine that marks the exact spot where he was assassinated.  The second was Kazan Cathedral.  This church is filled with hundreds of Icons including the most famous one that has a line to the other side of the church of people waiting to kiss it.  Icons are a huge part of the orthodox religion.  In fact there is one in my room.

The last, and probably my favorite was St. Isaacs Cathedral.  It’s the biggest cathedral in Petersburg and makes you feel microscopic when inside.  The walls are covered with mosaics and all I could think about was how long it must have taken to make even just a square foot of one mosaic.  Impressive does not even begin to explain how extraordinary these mosaics were.  On top of that the doors are gigantic made of cast iron that have 3-D biblical images from top to bottom.  Of course there isn’t just one door there are 3 of these gigantic pieces of metal.  The tour guide explained that over 30 people died while building the cathedral and I’m starting to wonder if I understood her correctly because the vast amounts of granite everywhere must have killed more than just 30 people.  The last part of the tour was a trip up the colonnade.  200 and something steps later and the best view of the city lies before you. 

In my last post I complained about the lack of normal or good coffee.  I am pleased to write that I have finally found good coffee.  The answer to this problem is anti-cafes.  For those of you who don’t know what that is I will do my best to explain.  An anti-café is a café where you pay for how long you are there, not how much you drink or eat.  For example, an anti- café may cost something like 2 rubles a minute for the first hour and 1 rubble per minute after the first hour.  Depending on the café it would only cost you about 150-200 rubbles for 2 hours, which is about 6 dollars.  What is great about anti-cafes is that the coffee is French pressed and you can add milk and sugar to your liking as opposed to buying a crappy 6-dollar latte that tastes like milk with watered down coffee.  In addition, there are usually cookies or some kind of snack, free wifi, games, and Russians who are willing to suffer through your horrible speaking skills.  They are officially my new favorite thing in Russia. 

My Russian language intensive officially ended on Thursday and Monday I begin real school.  It should be interesting.

Oh, you may be wondering about the title.  There are two different words in Russian for curtains depending on if you are talking about day curtains or night curtains.  Day curtains let light in and night curtains keep light out.  It is a strange concept since it is pretty much the same amount of darkness right now during the day as it is at night but that’s Russia for you.

Ill try to post pictures later today...

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Добрый день!

I have decided to make a blog as to better communicate my experiences this semester in St. Petersburg. I have only been here one week and there is already so much to talk about.  If I were to include everything then this post would take way too long to read so I will just go over the highlights.  If there is something specific you want me to post about send me a message and I will do my best.

I will start with the GOOD.  The best thing about going to russia when you are studying russian is that it's not like most european countries where when someone doesn't understand you they just start talking to you in english.  In fact my host family does not speak a word of english.  While before I came to russia this was a frightening fact it has turned out to be the best thing I could have asked for.  My vocabulary, grammar and just overall confidence in speaking russian has developed so much in just a week.  Next, transportation here is incredible! There are metros (subways), busses, martrushkas (a cross between a bus and a taxi) and you can walk pretty much anywhere.  So far I mostly take the metro and walk the rest of the way to where I need to go.  Once I get my russian down a little bit more I want to try to take a martrushka.  A martrushka is a van that goes on a certain route but you have to hail down similar to a cab.  The tricky part about taking a martrushka is getting off.  You have to yell at the driver to stop when you want to get off and then push you way to the front.  As someone still learning russian this is an intimidating concept.  On a different note, St. Petersburg is a beautiful city and you feel more cultured just being in it.  Everything from the buildings, the language and the way people dress just seems like a piece of art.  On top of that there are so many museums, cathedrals and other historical monuments that makes the entire city feel like an interactive historical museum.  Also, people are always reading here.  To get down to the metro you have to go down a HUGE escalator (I capitalize this in hopes that it will portray how long this escalator actually is) and many people use this time to read, I have also began reading on the metro and find that it actually is a great use of this time.  Aside from that, everything that russians do has some kind of meaning or cultural aspect.  For example, if you forget something you have to stare at yourself in the mirror to avoid having bad luck during the day.  Or you give someone garlic to keep the demons away.  Additionally, when you drink you are supposed to make 3 toasts; generally to your health, to your family's health and to your future, and of course you drink vodka.  I will end the good part of this blog by saying the food is actually really good, maybe some things are a little weird like tongue or mayonnaise on salad but for the most part I haven't had anything that I didn't like.

Now on to the BAD.  While cafes are a great source for warmth and wifi they are not for coffee.  You CANNOT find a normal cup of coffee.  Everything is some kind of latte or latte with a different name.  Coffee is also very expensive which is why most people probably drink tea (all the time).  Money is also a very frustrating aspect of russian living.  No one has change so if you don't have the right amount they wont sell it to you.  You find yourself having to pay with someone else in order to use a larger bill but even that doesn't always work.  Hopefully I'll start to find places that can give me change.  The last thing that comes to mind when I think of bad things is that no one drinks water here, probably because you can only drink bottled water and that gets expensive, but since Im walking around so much I am constantly thirsty.

You might be wondering what could possibly be UGLY in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  I will tell you. The roads are a mess, I honestly don't think they have heard of a snow plow or salt for that matter.  I have probably fell more times than I can count.

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