Thursday 6 November 2008

the saga continues

So, on to the continued adventures of me and various other characters...

Pulled my first all nighter in Moscow a couple of weekends ago.. having arranged to meet up to go to a bar with some australians, the brazillian, a slovakian girl and another swiss guy, verena got hopelessly lost on the metro and gave up and went home (one of the less attractive features of the metro is that the same station can have a different name depending on what line youre on, even though technically youre in the same place, its considered a different station, this isnt even a rule thats universally applied, some stations have the same name on both lines... also unhelpful is that there are a number of completely different stations with the same name from various metro line expansions and station closures and reopenings. naturally noone has seen fit to remove the duplicates) but i stayed and ended up at a random bar, but on the way back to the metro though, already running quite late for the last train, thomas, one of the ozzies started talking to a random drunk russian who spoke german, which meant we missed the train...so rather than pay an extortionate amount for a taxi back, me and the two ozzie guys decided to go back to the bar and ended up drinking and playing 20 questions until 6am when i sheepishly stumbled home on the first metro to the amusement of my host mother...

then on saturday went to this amazingly cool museum (photos on facebook) in the former apartment of Mayakovsky, a soviet writer/propagandist/poet... i was kinda expecting it to be the usual possessions in glass cases with russian signs that i couldnt read, but it turned out to be this amazing construction of steel and glass and random furniture with his possessions and writings sort of crammed into the gaps with random sculptures and stuff all at crazy angles...its located just off the square where the former KGB offices are, where people were tortured in the basements etc (now the FSB HQ) and immediately opposite the offices is russias biggest toy shop (without a hint of irony)

in other exciting news, a starbucks has opened just round the corner from school so the americans are all happy... its only marginally more extortionate than in england, which makes it a bargain by moscow coffee standards so have been spending a fair bit of time getting my caffeine fix there..

Obviously the main recent adventure was the trip to St Petersburg.. the train was really nice, although me and verena were completely lacking in train ettiquette and knowledge so struggled to figure out how to climb up to our top bunks before the russian men were sharing a compartment with took pity on us and showed us the hidden ladders.. we also rather amusingly missed the window of opportunity to get changed while they went outside to wait, and coped with all this by giggling like teenagers the entire way through the ordeal..fortunately for me, sharing rooms in english boarding school equipped me with the knowledge of how to undress through arm holes without actually having to take anything off in front of anyone. Verena was entirely lacking in this knowledge though and managed to take her top off at the exact moment that the russian guys came back into the room, cue more hysterical giggles from us...didnt sleep very well though due to general noisyness of the train and the fact that the russian aversion to curtains meant that every time we went past a town all the lights shone into the carriage..

arrived without anything going wrong though, and got to the hostel which was incredibly nice including a flat screen in the dorm room as well as a private bathroom rather than comunal showers, entirely living up to its slogan of 'probably the best hostel at st petersburg'..after a nap and many cups of coffee we braved the freezing cold wind (cambridge has nothing on st petersburg and my god am i glad that i ignored everyone who told me i should study there instead of moscow) and went for a wander... the winter palace was a massive anticlimax being entirely covered in green netting as they repaint the front, so i guess ill have to go back in a couple years time to see what it actually looks like from the front..
after that we went to the anthropology and ethnography museum, me to see what this concept was like in russia and verena because the guidebook said that there was a room full of deformed foetuses and mutant babies in jars that some doctor had collected in the 19th century (despite being a vegetarian, she has a bizarre fascination with dead/stuffed/mutated humans and animals) which was fun... the museum was full of tragically ethnocentric (for all my fellow soc a adherents) explanations such as 'even before the europeans came they knew how to make fabric in africa' etc...

after that we braved the cold for another 10 minutes before having to stop for hot chocolate of the vilnius opera house variety where you need a spoon to eat it, and then ran next door to an 'egyptian' restaurant, where we had spinach blinis before heading over to the other side of town on the metro to the erotic museum to see what was supposedly the preserved penis of rasputin.. this museum prompted another round of teenage giggling due to its sheer bizarreness... rather than being an actual museum, it was more like a corridor of random chachkis ranging from phallic toothbrushes and clothes hangers, to a carved dildo made from the bone of a walrus penis. Rasputins purported member obviously took pride of place in the middle of all this... the weirdest part though, was that off this corridor were actual medical examination rooms because the 'museum' turned out to be housed in the prostate and venereal disease research centre, so despite being greeted by a receptionist in a dodgy pvc nurses uniform, she made us put on plastic booties over our shoes so we didnt pose a hygeine hazard and there were guys going in and out for appointments while we stood gawping and giggling in the corridor outside.. im not sure if this is supposed to be an attempt to destigmatise sexual health for russian men or if the guy who ran the place was just completely unhinged, either way it was quite an experience...

after that we headed back to the hostel for another power nap before going to see the raising of the bridges over the neva. this was pretty cool and seemed to be quite an event in st petersburg despite the fact that it happens every night... there were fireworks and a massive crowd of people on both sides of the river

next day we went to stockmans (of finnish sofa buying fame for those of you who've known me that long) for brunch and then headed to the hermitage where we got in free as students which was a nice surprise since id been expecting to pay through the nose for the biggest tourist attraction in russia. it was a pretty impressive museum, though way too big to fully appreciate, and my enjoyment was slightly spoiled by the fact that me and verena have massively different tastes in art and that she hated the ornateness of the palace itself..but oh well, i enjoyed it...
generally speaking though, i wasnt massively enamoured with st petersburg.. it was very pretty in an imperial viennese way, but it felt a bit lifeless compared with moscow, and seemed to exist only for the tourists..sort of how i felt about cambridge, add in the wind and it was difficult not to draw comparisons with the two....
Verena loved it though and is already talking about living there next time she comes back to study in russia so i guess its just a personal thing, overall i definitely made the right choice to be in moscow..

in other news, individual classes are going well.. my teacher is really funny and is busy teaching me lots of russian idioms and finding amusing ways to explain russian grammer: eg, every russian verb has two forms, one perfect, for when youre interested in the result of an action, and one imperfect for when youre more concerned with the process... she explained this to me in the form that shopping as a process without a result is only possible for women, whereas men are only capable of speaking about shopping as leading to a quantifiable result...probably not that funny to read about after, but it was definitely the most amusing grammar lesson ive had here yet...she also told me a really nice story about why georgia is so beautiful: when god made the world he handed out different lands to all the different peoples of the world, but the man representing the georgians showed up late. god told him that he had run out of countries and had nothing left for the georgians. the georgian looked so downcast that god relented and told the georgian that he did have one country left, that he had made for himself, but that as he felt sorry for the georgians he would give them his own country, which is why georgia is supposed to be a paradise on earth :)

conversations with my host mother have continued to get more advanced as well, though when i say advanced i mean she witters on about something and i understand maybe one word in 5 and say a couple of sentences back and then she goes off again, but we've so far managed to have discussions about: muslim headscarf wearing, how all the independent republics want to be a part of russia again (i stayed mostly quiet during that one), Timashenka acting like a queen (with her hair as a crown), how crap the yeltsin era was, and also in a variety of conversations on how georgians are all illegal immigrants who dont work and are horribly corrupt, but also how she really loves georgians because theyre all artists and have good food and are a friendly loving people...but yeah, shes always got something to say and im doing pretty well at understanding it all so thats encouraging..

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