Peter

This past weekend the group of us went to St. Petersburg.  I got there and the song, “Memories” from Cats started playing in my head, right?  I don’t like that musical, but man was it weird being in Peter.  I still have a pretty decent sense of where things are located, which was nice. 

Break: My host mom just brought me an apple.  Love her. 

As I was saying, I was already familiar with Petersburg, having briefly lived there a couple summers ago.  Most of the group had never been, and wanted to do and see the normal things (i.e. Hermitage, Peter and Paul Fortress, Church on Spilt Blood, Russian Museum, apartments of posthumous literary figures, etc.).  I wasn’t so interested in doing anything.  I just wanted to be in Peter – simple request since we were already there. 

On Friday, I walked through Victory Park (oh my gosh I hate writing names of Russian places and people in English, they sound ridiculous; I hope you know I do it just for you Cassandra, because otherwise you wouldn’t understand and you are the one who asked me to blog in the first place) with Chelsea and we tried to figure out how exactly one became a Soviet hero, as busts of Soviet heroes are pretty much the only thing in that park.  While wandering around the area near our hotel, we found the State University of Firefighting.  Elena Vladimirovna wasn’t lying; they really do have a university for everything in Petersburg.  After lunch, which Chelsea and I couldn’t seem to locate in the hotel (it even got to the point that Tom called to ask if I was coming because Reese wanted to eat my food, he loves that I don’t eat much, because he always gets to eat it), Chelsea, Luke and I took the metro to the center of town. 

Break: By the way, I am loving the obscene amount of parentheses I’m utilizing, as well as the quantity of run on senses. 

We walked the majority of Nevsky (the main street in Peter).  Chelsea and I bought some overpriced shampoo in Lush because we don’t have such luxuries in Vlad.  We went into a few bookstores, in one of which Luke finally found some kind of book he was looking for, at least I think he did.  My memory is basically nonexistent.  I have to write down everything I do down in a little moleskin notebook so that I can even write this blog.  Speaking of which, I wrote down that we found a double headed corn shaped dildo in a sex shop that I had to strongly resist buying for Chelsea because she is from Iowa and I always bust on her for it, we saw a homeless lady getting her groove on on a street corner, and ate at Carl’s Jr, where, get this, they have free refills and free ketchup, which is always what I say I miss when someone asks me what I miss most about America.  Then the snow-rain started to fall.  It didn’t stop us.  We walked to the winter palace, and then “ice-skated,” as the park was covered in wet, slick ice, through the park to the Peter the Great statue.  I have a video of Chelsea and Luke skating, which is how I remember that it happened.  I looked up the street at the building my apartment was in last time I was in Peter, which made that stupid song play in my head again.  It also made me think of how much I’ve changed since then, and how much I loved living with Amanda, Kristina, and Aynsley.  By the end of the evening I was soaking wet from the snow-rain, and my eye makeup was all over my face.  Fun times.

I did manage to do a few things I’ve never done before in Peter.  After a long search, I found Akhmatova’s (is that really how it’s spelled in the Roman alphabet? I don’t actually know, I’ve only read her poems in Russian) apartment, thanks to a map that I told me “you am here.”  I went to the Aleksandrovsky Theater, in which I had never seen a performance.  We saw the Nutcracker.  It was pretty incredible.  They actually perform the original story in Russia (go figure), which is, in my opinion, less interesting than the American, more Christmasy version.  However, the technique of the dancers was so fabulous, that I didn’t care what ballet it was, I just enjoyed that I was there watching it.  After the ballet, most of us went out for Alec’s twenty-first.  Most of our group is turning or has turned twenty-one in Russia, where, you know, it doesn’t really matter.  It was a blast being out with everyone.  We have a great group of people in Vladimir (not quite as great without Laurie).  We’re awesome.  Be jealous.

Random thought - Karen or Jess or Raven (if you read this), remember that time when we didn’t want to do something so we always said, “oh really, I’m sorry, but I can’t, I’m giving birth that day,” or just simply, “I’ve got to go give birth.” Ridic. 

One of my favorite parts of this trip to Peter, was being in a cathedral while a service (Eastern Orthodox of course) was taking place.  I couldn’t really see, but the sound was so beautiful.  I even lit a candle beneath an icon.  I can’t believe that’s something I’ve never experienced before.  I’ll have to check out the cathedrals in Vladimir.  We don’t have much here, but we certainly don’t have a shortage of cathedrals.  The weather on Sunday was beautiful.  I walked along the Neva, which was especially lovely due to the sunshine, shadows, and partly ice, partly water composition of the river.  Ultimately, I ended up at Smolny institute and cathedral.  And of course, the song “Memories,” started to play again since that is where I studied last time I was in Russia.  This time I swear it was aloud.  I also discovered that Smolny is a Catholic cathedral.  Who knew?

On the train back from Peter, I didn’t sleep much at all.  BUT, I did get my phonetics corrected by a six year old.  I asked his younger, maybe 3 year old brother his name, and the older one responded, “Камиль (Kamil)”.  When I repeated it back he shook his head and said, “Камиль (Kamil)” with an emphasis on the soft Л (L).  So then I said it with the soft Л (L) and he was like, yea that’s his name.  AHAHAHHA.  I love it when I make mistakes that I know how to not make.  Thanks for the lesson in phonetics, Kostya (I didn’t have any problems with his name). 

When we finally arrived in Vladimir on Monday at 5AM (yes we had to go to class just a few hours later), some of us ran across the train tracks to get to the exit, rather than using the bridge above the tracks because it involved walking up stairs.  A train almost hit us.  I’m pretty glad it didn’t.  It was a relatively slow moving train so it’s unlikely that it would have killed us immediately on contact and frankly, I think it would have been quite a slow and painful death.  However, being hit by a train is on my list of approved ways to die – it’s somewhere between death by icicle and being murdered by a taxi cab driver in a foreign country - it just needs to be a fast train.  As we walked out of the train station Chelsea observed, “ Oh Vladimir, it’s a balmy negative ten degrees.”  She’s always making me laugh. 

Same day, several hours later in phonetics class, I amused my teacher with the story about the six year old.  Then we read a poem about, surprise-surprise, love.  She asked Sarah whether she thought love was like smoke or like a shadow/the shade.  Then she asked Kelsey the same question.  Then she looked at me and said, “Маделина, я боюсь даже спрашивать тебя (I’m afraid to even ask you).”  She knows me too well ;)

Like cheese on butter J