Naomi in Russia!

The end is near!

2011-05-22T16:23:00.001+04:00

So, I have less than two weeks left in Petersburg. I have totally mixed emotions about this, and am slightly worried about the culture shock I'm going to experience upon arriving back in England, but I think I'm looking forward to going home. It feels like the clock is ticking though, so I've been panic-visiting several sights in the city, trying to complete my list of must-see attractions...

The two sights I ticked off first this week were on Sunday, when Katie and I went to Peter the Great's cabin and the Cruiser Aurora (for the second time)... Peter the Great's cabin is supposedly the oldest building in Petersburg, built for Peter I in 1703 when he founded the city, and today it's surrounded by a larger, brick building and is open for visitors. We were fairly glad it was free for students once we'd been there, as it was absolutely tiny and didn't really provide us with any information we didn't know already. Walking around being glared at by hawk-eyed grannies as if we were going to burn the place down at any second wasn't a very comfortable experience, either. Despite this, it's not a completely pointless attraction if you have a strong interest in Peter the Great, and is so close to the Cruiser Aurora it's almost a crime to not visit it. Here are my photos from the cabin, including one crafty shot of the inside I managed to take before I was rudely told off by an aforementioned granny:

(Top Left: Bust of Peter the Great outside his cabin; Top Right: Sign on the building containing the cabin; Middle: The building containing the cabin; Bottom: Part of the cabin itself - not overly impressive)

After we'd exhausted the cabin (this took us all of five minutes), we went off to see the Cruiser Aurora on a sunny day. I'd already been to see it when my mum and her boyfriend Rod were visiting, but it was under a blanket of snow then and looked very grey and miserable, so visiting it again on a sunny day was one of the tasks on my list. One of the downsides about the sun is that there are now hordes of tourists absolutely everywhere, including aboard the Aurora. We battled the crowds and looked around the boat again, but there's not much else to say about it so I'll just post my pictures of the Aurora in the sun:

(Top: The front of the Aurora; Top left: Stone sign outside the Aurora; Top Right: Mast on the Aurora; Middle: Me on deck on the Aurora; Bottom: Back of the Aurora)

The next attraction I planned to tick off my list was the Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was killed. On Monday after school, Marion and I went to find the palace, though on the way accidentally found a cafe called The Idiot (named after the novel of the same name by Dostoevsky). This cafe is famously good for its food, including several vegetarian dishes, and since neither of us had been before we decided to go in for lunch. We got a 250 ruble (£5-ish) 'business lunch' which comprised of salad, bread, soup, a main course and two drinks, so it was pretty good value as well as being rather tasty! The place was really nicely decorated as well. I think I'll try to go back before I go home.

Back to the subject of the Yusupov Palace, where we tried to go after The Idiot. When we arrived, the ticket office was closed, so we took some pictures of the outside whilst waiting for it to open. Once it actually opened, we got really confused by the prices and it seemed really expensive (though I've since been informed that it's not actually too bad and we were reading the wrong bit), and the queue was long, so we decided to leave it for another day. Here's what it looks like from the outside though, in case anyone was wondering:

Still wanting to do something touristy, we realised we were very near the Museum of the History of Religion, which sounded interesting despite the fact it wasn't featured on my list. As always, it was free with our student cards (mine must have saved me so much money here!), and was actually surprisingly good. It's a nice idea for a museum as well, especially in Russia where the Soviet regime tried to destroy religion completely, though oddly this wasn't mentioned anywhere in the museum. There were a lot of exhibits, far more than I was expecting, mostly related to Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. I didn't take any photos inside as you had to pay for it, but everything was really well presented and I definitely recommend a visit if you're interested in religion at all.

After this, still on Monday, we decided to tick off another sight and visit the inside of St Isaac's Cathedral. This is the cathedral I climbed up to get lovely panoramic views of the city a few weeks earlier, but this was the first time I'd been inside. I must say it's the nicest interior of an Orthodox cathedral I've ever seen, and I found it totally stunning. Luckily, taking photos inside was not only allowed but also free, so I took as many as I physically could! There's not a lot else to say other than that the cathedral is absolutely amazing inside, so here is a small selection of the pictures I took:

I had a couple of days rest from sightseeing, before going to the Zoological Museum with Marion after school on Thursday. This was yet another sight to tick off the list, and was rather good, even if it was just a collection of stuffed animals. It was pretty much like the animal section of the Natural History Museum in London, only it felt even bigger and we couldn't understand most of the signs... It was a nice day out though, and I'm glad I went, but it's not really a tourist attraction as such. The building it's housed in is lovely as well, and here are a few of the pictures I took inside:

(Top Middle: A cool-looking zoological diagram on the wall; Top Left: A black swan!; Top Right: Polar bears; Middle: A woolly mammoth skeleton; Bottom Left: The main hall of the museum, with a huge whale skeleton; Bottom Right: An albino penguin; Bottom Middle: Me with Laika, the first dog in space)

After school on Friday, Marion and I went inside Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospect. This isn't as much of a tourist attraction as St Isaac's Cathedral and the Church on Spilled Blood, and is still a proper functioning cathedral which doesn't charge an entry fee to visitors. Because of this, photos weren't allowed, but as it was rather dark and smoky (from the incense) I expect any photos would have come out quite badly anyway. I didn't think it was as impressive as St Isaac's, but it was still quite nice. It didn't take us long to look around either, so it was quite a nice quick sight to tick off the list (as you can see, I'm getting pretty efficient about finishing the list)...

After Kazan Cathedral, we tried to visit the Pushkin Apartment-Museum, but unfortunately most of the museum was closed for some reason, so we decided to go back again another day. I was sure to take a photo of the lovely courtyard in the sun though, just in case it's cloudy when we go back. It's really rather pretty:

(The statue is of Pushkin, if you hadn't guessed)

Following the disappointment of the Pushkin Apartment-Museum being mostly closed, we thought we'd take advantage of the lovely sunny day and visit the Peter & Paul Fortress. This is one of the main tourist attractions in Petersburg, and I'm really not sure why I waited so long to visit it. Amazingly, we managed to get general entry tickets allowing us to visit 5 of the museums for free with our student cards, and our first stop was the cathedral inside the fortress. This is one of the tallest buildings in the whole city, which I'd seen from afar many times, but never close up. It was absolutely beautiful - many of the Russian Tsars are buried inside this cathedral - though unfortunately the main central part inside was being cleaned at the time so was covered in scaffolding. Here are my pictures of the outside and inside of it:

We then walked around the fortress a little, including on to the Neva shore, before finding the Commandants' House museum, which was surprisingly big, and contained lots of interesting objects relating to the history of the fortress and Petersburg itself. Unfortunately time was quite tight as we'd arrived at the fortress relatively late, so we rushed around it quite quickly, but I may go back again before I go home as I'd like to spend more time there. Here are my photos anyway, from our walk around the fortress and our visit to the Commandants' House museum:

(Bottom Middle: Mould of Peter the Great's hand; Bottom Left & Right: An amazingly detailed dolls' house inside the Commandants' House museum)

The next stop on our whistle-stop tour of the Peter and Paul fortress was the prison. Many famous people were held here in the past, including Lenin and Trotsky, who were arrested for anti-Tsarist actions before the revolution. It was interesting seeing inside the prison cells, most of which you could actually go inside, something I imagine would never happen in a similar museum in England. The rooms were actually really big, and the building was quite nice, so it was hard to imagine that it was actually a prison at one point! Though rooms such as the punishment cell, which could be made to be pitch black inside if needed, made it seem more prison-like. We found Trotsky's cell, but couldn't find Lenin's for some reason - I'm not sure if we accidentally walked past it or if it's not actually on display, but if I go back I'll be sure to ask about it. Here are my photos of the prison, I think you'll agree it looks quite nice (for a prison!):

(Bottom Left: Information sign about Trotsky's life and arrest; Bottom Right: Trotsky's prison cell)

As it was starting to get late, we only had time to visit one more museum at the fortress, so we chose the Cosmonaut Museum. I wasn't expecting it to be quite as good as it was, and was really impressed with the amount of real rocket parts they had and the quality of the displays. I think this was the museum I enjoyed the most at the fortress, as I am interested in the space race and the Soviet portrayal of it. I also bought myself a cute little flag with Yuri Gagarin on and a fridge magnet featuring Belka and Strelka, two space dogs. I'm forming quite the collection of Russian fridge magnets - I already have six from places I've visited! I realise they are all just dust-gathering tat, but I'm the sort of person that really loves dust-gathering tat, so never mind. Here are my photos from the Cosmonaut Museum:

I'm really glad I finally visited the Peter & Paul fortress, and I think I'll probably go back again before I go home. It felt sort of like Disneyland or something, with all of the pristine and well-kept pastel-coloured buildings, and the high concentration of tourist attractions. It's a really nice place to spend time, especially when the weather is nice.

Yesterday I finally got around to visiting Tsarskoe Selo at Pushkin, and walked around the grounds of the Catherine Palace. Since this post is already rather long though, and I have a lot of photos of the palace, I will talk about it in another post... It was absolutely stunning and a great day out, so I'm sure I'll write about it very soon!

Victory Day, boat tour, dacha times, Dostoevsky House-Museum and Kronstadt.

2011-05-16T22:56:00.001+04:00

You should be able to tell from the title that this is going to be a long one... So I'll assume you're sitting comfortably and begin.

On the 9th of May every year, the whole of Russia celebrates Victory Day. This recognises the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the allied forces in 1945, marking the end of WWII. In Russia, WWII is known as the 'Great Patriotic War', and it is taken as a given here that the war couldn't have been won without the Soviet Union's help. Even now the Soviet Union has broken up, the day is still a huge event in the Russian calendar, and rivals New Year's Eve with its elaborate celebrations.

Wanting to see the parade of soldiers and tanks as it went down Nevsky Prospect, I got up bright and early to go and find a good place to stand. I reached what appeared to be a good vantage point along Nevsky at about 9.45am, and settled in as the road closed and police cars patrolled. Unfortunately, I was still standing there watching an empty road an hour later - it turned out there was no parade along Nevsky in the morning. I was rather surprised, as were the hundreds of Russians also waiting, as everyone seemed to think there would be a parade at 10am, and Nevsky was closed for quite a while around then. As I was waiting, taking in the beautiful Victory Day weather, I took a few photos of what I assumed were parade preparations (including synchronised street cleaning machines!)... Some of them turned out quite nicely, even though I didn't actually get to see a parade, so here are a few of my pictures:

As you can see it was crazily busy along Nevsky, so when my Russian friend Yaroslav came to meet me he suggested we leave the city centre for somewhere a little quieter. We walked to one of Petersburg's islands (Petrogradskaya) and met up with a couple of his friends, who were going to the Museum of Russian Political History. On the way to this island, I took a few more photos of the general Victory Day decorations and celebrations:

(Top: Air balloons bearing the flags of the Soviet Union and Russia, flying above the Peter and Paul Fortress; Middle: The Rostral Columns on Vasilevsky Island were lit for the occasion; Bottom: Victory Day decorations on the Vasilevsky Island spit)

Though I'd been to the Museum of Russia's Political History already (a couple of weeks earlier), Victory Day is one of very few days a year when the museum is free of charge, so I joined the trip. The museum was good, as it was the first time, and we decided to walk to Finlandsky Vokzal (train station) afterwards. From here we intended to get a water-bus to the Central Park of Culture and Relaxation (a bit of a mouthful), though in the end it turned out to be too early in the year still and we got a land-bus instead. I was happy that we went to Finlandsky Vokzal though, as I had wanted to visit it for a while - it's on a huge square with a big statue of Lenin and lots of pretty fountains. Here are my photos of Finlandsky Vokzal and Ploschad Lenina (Lenin Square):

As I mentioned earlier, after Ploschad Lenina we went to the Central Park of Culture and Relaxation. This is a lovely big park situated on Yelagin Island, where we had a nice Victory Day picnic in the sun. We made friends with a dog that came and sat near us, but in the end it wouldn't go away and got a bit annoying... We even gave it food and it didn't seem to want it, so I'm not sure quite why it got so attached to us! It was quite funny, though. We also got to see Yelagin Palace, which is within the park and is rather pretty. To round off my victory day pictures, here are mine from the ЦКПиО park:

(Top: A lake in the park; Middle Top: Our 'friend' the dog; Middle: Lovely view across a lake as we ate our picnic; Bottom Two: Yelagin Palace, within the park)

Though I didn't get to see any parades on Victory Day, the day was still absolutely lovely, and missing the parades just gives me another excuse to come back to Russia again...

The next day, my friend Katie and I decided to take a boat trip around Petersburg after school. We found a stand selling tickets, and as luck would have it there was an English tour leaving in around half an hour's time. Shockingly for Russia, this was the same price as the Russian tours, so we decided having a guide we could fully understand would be the better choice. The weather was good yet again (last week was definitely the best so far, weather-wise), and we embarked on our hour-long trip along the Fontanka and Neva rivers. Though we didn't really learn anything new from the boat's guide, it was great to see the buildings from the river and was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. I took tons of photos, as always, so here are a few of the better ones:

On Thursday, my flatmates and I missed school in order to visit our landlady Roza's dacha (country house) again. We'd only been once before, way back in November, when it was extremely foggy and rather cold, so we jumped at the chance to see the countryside in the sunshine. Unfortunately later in the day it got quite cloudy, but the morning was very sunny and we managed to have tea and cake out in the garden before the sun disappeared. It was probably a good job that it got cloudy anyway, because I was starting to get sunburnt! Pretty ridiculous considering I'd been battling the snow in Petrozavodsk just a week before... That's Russian weather for you. Anyway, here are my photos from Roza's dacha, this time with considerably less fog:

(Top: Roza, Maddy and Mike eating cake in the garden; Next 3 pictures: Stream & coast right by Roza's dacha; Middle: A crow Roza claims has been visiting the dacha for 15 years, which her and her husband feed and talk to; Bottom: Me eating cake; Very Bottom: Typical Russian cream cake, they sell a lot of these here, and they are delicious)

After school on Friday, Katie, Marion and I visited the Dostoevsky House-Museum - a museum in the flat where the world-famous writer Dostoevsky once lived. The museum comprised of two large modern rooms containing photos, paintings, manuscripts and other personal objects; and Dostoevsky's actual flat. We chose not to pay for the audio guide, which was a bit of a mistake since there was hardly any information around the museum, but you could still tell what most of it was. I found the flat itself more interesting, as it's always nice to think that you're standing in a place where someone so famous lived and worked. I don't have much more to say about the museum, but it was a nice place to visit and if you're a fan of Dostoevsky's work it gives a nice insight into his personal life. I took a few photos during my visit, which you can see here:

The next day, I went on a trip to the nearby naval town of Kronstadt with my friends Katie, Karin and Clara. I didn't really know much about Kronstadt before I went, but it was a beautiful day and the town turned out to be really very nice. It's basically the Russian version of Plymouth (the city I'm from) - lots of sailors, navy ships and a lighthouse - only prettier. It takes around an hour to get to the town from Petersburg, a journey we took on a маршрутка (marshrutka - taxi-bus) for around £1.20. The bus ride was nice, as part of the journey was across the Saint Petersburg dam, a 25km long flood protection measure, which also handily provides drivers with beautiful views across the Gulf of Finland.

Upon arriving in the town, we walked towards the seafront and looked at Kronstadt Lighthouse, several naval ships and the statue of Peter the Great. The main sight in Kronstadt is the Orthodox cathedral, though this was unfortunately under restoration when we visited. It was still possible to see the dome though, which was a very impressive sight. If I return to Petersburg one day I'll be sure to visit the Sea Cathedral in Kronstadt. Here are my photos from our walk around the seafront area:

(Top 4 pictures: An old cannon, View down a canal to the Gulf of Finland, Kronstadt Lighthouse, Me in front of Kronstadt Lighthouse; Top: There were several anchor statues like this, very nautical; Middle Top: Statue of Peter the Great; Middle Left: Statue of a naval captain; Middle Right: Kronstadt Sea Cathedral; Middle Bottom: Eternal flame memorialising different uprisings and revolutions; Bottom: Another canal)

After lunch, we decided to go on a boat trip out of Kronstadt harbour, which took us around part of the Gulf of Finland littered with forts. As we were sitting outside and the commentary was in Russian, we didn't learn all that much about the area's history, but it was really nice to get out on a boat again and see the nearby sea forts close up. Here are my pictures from our boat trip:

Shortly after our boat trip finished, we headed back to the bus stop for the trip back to Petersburg. I had an absolutely lovely day in Kronstadt, and I thoroughly recommend it as a day trip, especially if you're interested in naval history. That night I stayed up until stupid o'clock watching the Eurovision Song Contest... I'm a huge fan and have been watching it for as long as I can remember, so I couldn't miss out just because I was in Russia! I passed up on my first opportunity ever to vote for the UK however, as I was all about Ireland. Unfortunately they were beaten by a much poorer entry from Azerbaijan, but I'll just say they were robbed and leave it at that.

Since it's already getting late here and I'm extremely tired, I'll stop here with this post. Since Saturday I've been to the Cruiser Aurora (again!), the Cabin of Peter the Great, the Museum of the History of Religion, and the inside of St Isaac's Cathedral, but I'll have to write about those next time! I'm doing so much recently that it's become very difficult to keep up when writing my blog!

Naomi :)

A long overdue post about my trip to Petrozavodsk.

2011-05-14T21:27:00.001+04:00

Firstly, I must apologise for my longer than usual hiatus from blogging! A mixture of busy-ness, tiredness and laziness are to blame, as always... I've had a rather busy couple of weeks, so I'm going to make a post solely about my trip to Petrozavodsk, before I update again on everything I've been up to in Petersburg.

On the evening of the 1st of May, my friend Katie and I took the sleeper train to Petrozavodsk for a three-day break. Though the train ride was pretty much problem-free, I'm confused as to why it takes so long... 8 hours to reach a city closer to Petersburg than Moscow?! Not that it mattered, anyway - the tickets were cheap and we wanted to escape Petersburg for a few days.

We'd been checking the weather forecast obsessively for Petrozavodsk for a few days, and every time we checked the predicted weather had changed for the worse. Not much could have prepared me for the sight out of the train window when I woke up, though:

Yes, that is snow, and yes, it is May. Russia never fails to surprise me! We had already been rather worried about our trip, as we hadn't booked a hotel and we weren't sure whether any of the tourist sights would actually be open this early in the year, so this weather really spelled disaster...

When our train finally pulled up at the station in Petrozavodsk, it was 6.50am. We got off the train, and with no map and no real idea of where we were going, we decided one of the streets we could see looked a little more civilised than all the others, and went down it. We walked for about ten minutes, and just as we were starting to give up all hope, jump in a taxi and ask them to take us to a hotel, we stumbled across the hotel 'Severnaya'. We thought we may as well get out of the snow and try our luck there, so went inside. What we discovered was a nice, English-speaking receptionist, who sorted us out with a room and even let us check in early! Our prayers had been answered! We went up to our room and had a nap, intending to start the day again when we were a little more refreshed. Here's a photo of our cheap and cheerful hotel, which I would definitely recommend to anyone travelling to Petrozavodsk on a budget:

When we woke up later and started the day for the second time, we decided to go and explore the city. We were pleased to find that quite a lot of the snow from earlier on had melted already, but it was still very grey and miserable outside. Since we'd been planning to visit the island Кижи (Kizhi), the main sight in the area, we thought we should head down to the lakefront to check out boats... Approaching the lake, we saw that almost all of the ice had melted, so we were quite optimistic about a visit to Kizhi being possible. Upon reaching the shore, however, there were no signs of any people, let alone tourists, and we started to worry that we'd come too early. Despite there being not a lot to do in this part of town, we had a walk along the lakefront and took some photos of the lake and the numerous sculptures around. Here are a few of mine:

(Top Middle: What was left of the ice on Lake Onego; Top Left: A nice old cannon on the lakefront; Top Right: A sculpture with a constellation drilled through it - not bullet holes!; Middle: Me trying to look excited by a pole-y sculpture; Bottom Left: Said pole-y sculpture; Bottom Right: 'Wishing tree' sculpture - supposedly hears & grants your wishes; Bottom Middle: Fishermen sculpture)

After our walk on the lakefront, we realised we were really rather hungry, so went to try and find something cheap and easy to eat. This is easier said than done in Petrozavodsk, as they don't even have a McDonald's or Teremok (Russian fast food pancake chain)... We decided to try out the one fast food place we could find - Mak Dak. This turned out to be a rather big mistake, as their microwaved burgers, soggy chips and dodgy sauces left a lot to be desired. There were also more copyright violations than one would care to count (for example 'I'm Lovin' It' became 'I'm Liking It' and 'Happy Meal' became 'Funny Meal' - though spelt 'Fanny Meal' in Russian), so I fear poor old Mak Dak may not last too long. What a shame.

After lunch we checked out a different part of the city, passing several other sights of Petrozavodsk on our way to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. As you can see, the weather was still very grey and depressing, but started to improve a little during our walk there:

(Top Left: Statue of Lenin on Lenin Square; Top Right: Lots of little flags making up the colours of the Russian flag; Top Middle: Eternal flame on Lenin Square; Middle: Sculptures on the Doll Theatre; Bottom Left: Statue of Marx & Engels; Bottom Right: Statue of Kirov outside Petrozavodsk Theatre; Bottom Middle: Petrozavodsk Theatre)

We then had to walk through a rather lovely little park to reach the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. It had several little bridges, all covered in wedding padlocks. If you didn't already know, it's tradition in Russia to put a padlock bearing the date and the names of the bride and groom on a bridge on your wedding day. It's quite sweet really, and seemingly leads to all sorts of creative padlock designs in order to stand out from all the others. Here are my pictures of the park, the cathedral and a cute little church we found nearby:

Realising we had really walked quite far and that the weather was getting worse again, we decided to get the trolleybus back to the city centre. Giving up on sightseeing, we decided to go and watch a film at the cinema. As Petrozavodsk isn't exactly a bustling metropolis, I was quite surprised that it had a cinema... This became slightly less surprising when it turned out that the cinema was in fact a nightclub as well, so the building served a dual purpose. There were a total of three films to choose from, so we chose the least manly one - Water for Elephants. Though we didn't understand entirely everything, it was still entertaining and better than I'd expected - Robert Pattinson wasn't too annoying. After the cinema we went to a restaurant called Kivach for dinner, as they served huge pizzas for under £4, and then retired back to our hotel.

On the next day - Tuesday - we decided to find out if we could actually go to Kizhi or not. It turned out the boats don't start running until at least mid-May, so we were just a bit too early to visit. This was pretty annoying, as Kizhi (a beautiful island covered in wooden churches and other buildings) is basically the main reason people visit Petrozavodsk, though I think I may still go back one day to visit it. We also enquired about visiting the nearby waterfall, which is inland, but it turned out that it would be really expensive for just the two of us to go, so we decided against it. We went for another lakefront walk and had lunch in a cafe called Deja Vu, where there were buttons on the table to call your waitress (why don't all cafes have this?!) and where the food was okay. We'd resigned ourselves to staying in the city by this point, and decided to visit the Karelian Museum of Local History after lunch.

The museum turned out to be rather large, and was quite good. We learnt a lot about the city's history, including during the reign of Peter the Great (the city's name means 'Peter's Factory'), when it was very industrial. I didn't take any pictures of the inside of the museum as there were several very observant old ladies watching our every move, but here is what it looks like from the outside:

After our morning walk and visit to the museum, the weather was awful yet again and we were tired, so we went back to the hotel to play some Scrabble and watch TV, like two old ladies. Later on, we had dinner in Petrozavodsk's only Mexican restaurant, Sanches, and had a drink in the German beer hall before calling it a night.

On Wednesday, our final day, we checked out at 12pm and had almost 11 hours to waste before our train back to Petersburg. Our first port of call was the Karelian Museum of Fine Art, though we stopped en route to see the facade of the old tractor factory, which turned out to be a bit of a let down - it really was just a building. The fine art museum itself was fairly good, and managed to keep us entertained for a couple of hours. From there we headed on down to the statue of Peter the Great by the shore, which we hadn't seen yet - it was much smaller than we'd expected and wasn't all that impressive really, but never mind. We ended up spending the rest of the day between cafes, shops and Kivach (cheap pizza restaurant) trying to waste time until our train. Here are my photos from our final day in Petrozavodsk:

(Top Top Middle: Petrozavodsk Tractor Factory facade; Top Middle: Karelian Museum of Fine Art; Middle Top: Me with the statue of Peter the Great; Middle Bottom: Petrozavodsk Train Station; Bottom Middle: Petrozavodsk State University) - Yes, I realise all the top, middle and bottom bits don't really make sense, but I'm sure you get the gist...

Finally 10.50pm arrived and we pulled away from Petrozavodsk on our train, rather relieved in the end to be heading back to Petersburg. Don't get me wrong, I had a lovely time in Petrozavodsk and we did manage to keep ourselves entertained, but in hindsight three days was a little too long in a small city where the two main attractions were out of reach! I'm sure in the summer the city is transformed completely, and hopefully one day I'll get to see that, but for now all of my memories of Petrozavodsk will be mainly grey and snowy...

Now I've finished my post about Petrozavodsk, I can move on to what I've been up to in Petersburg since... Watch this space, as in the next few days (possibly tomorrow) I'll be writing all about Victory Day, my city boat tour, visiting Rosa's dacha again, the Dostoevsky House-Museum and Kronstadt (see why I didn't want to make it all one huge post?!)...

Naomi :)

Pavlovsk, Blockade Memorial & CATS!!!

2011-05-01T12:42:00.003+04:00

So, I'd say this week has been a little less eventful than the previous one, but I still managed to tick a few more things off of my Petersburg list... I definitely need to up my game though, as I'm worried I won't get everything done in time!

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, on Saturday I went to Pavlovsk, a lovely palace surrounded by a huge park, with my friends Katie and Karin. We decided to get the train there, which turned out to be much more of a mission than we'd expected... We were directed to no more than three different ticket offices before we found the right one, but once we'd bought our (incredibly cheap) tickets and found our train, the day went without a hitch. The grounds of the palace really reminded me of a typical English country house - acres of woodland and parkland littered with lakes, buildings and pretty little bridges - and for a day it felt like being back home again. Here are a few of my photos of the park at Pavlovsk:

(Top Middle: Pavlovsk train station, designed to match the palace buildings; Top Left & Right: Lots of nice trees; Middle: A lake with a nice bridge; Bottom Left: A pretty pavilion; Bottom Right: Pavilion and people fishing; Bottom Middle: Me and Katie on a nice bridge)

Once we'd thoroughly explored the park in our shockingly inappropriate footwear (we didn't realise there'd still be some unmelted snow there!), we found the palace, had a spot of lunch and went inside. Though the original palace was apparently burnt down by a careless Soviet soldier failing to put out his cigarette, the restored palace seemed extremely accurate and was still very beautiful regardless. We got in for free with our student cards and spent a couple of hours looking around this lovely building, which houses many works of art as well as a museum of interior design, a museum of costume and an exhibition on women's roles in aristocratic society. There's not much else to say other than that it was an absolutely lovely building, so I'll let my pictures do the talking... Just so you know, I didn't buy a photo permit for inside, so excuse some of the dodgy angles - I was being sneaky when I took them!

(Top Middle: Pavlovsk Palace; Top Left: Statue of Emperor Paul, looking a bit pirate-like; Top Right: Inside the palace; Middle: A lovely painted ceiling in the palace; Bottom Left: A rather realistic crazy 3D painted ceiling in the palace; Bottom Right: Chapel in the palace; Bottom: One of many dining halls in the palace)

When we came back out of the palace, we walked back to the train station through the park and made our way home. On the way to the station, we finally saw some squirrels (we'd been looking for them all day after Katie bought some hazelnuts specially!)... They were friendlier than expected, and one actually ended up eating nuts out of Katie's hand! Here are a couple of squirrel pictures, just because they are so cute:

It was an absolutely lovely day, and the weather was perfect, so I'm really glad I went. I'll finish off this part of the post with a nice panorama I took of the grounds. If you hadn't already guessed, I'm pretty addicted to the panorama setting on my camera right now...

The next notable event of my week was on Sunday, when I went to a cat show with my friends Helen and Katie, and then to the 'Defenders of Leningrad' monument. We weren't too sure what to expect at the cat show, as Helen had found out about it from a small advert on the side of a bus - we didn't even know if you could go in as a spectator. Luckily you could, and it was pretty cool - like Crufts, only smaller in scale and with cats instead of dogs. The judges appeared to have come from all over Europe, and the competition actually seemed to be quite a big deal! It was fun seeing the cats get inspected by the judges, who were checking the cats' appearance as well as their overall health and temperament, which they tested by playing with them. If I had a penny for every time one of us said "Aww!" on the day I'd be loaded. The whole thing made me really miss all of my cats, who I'll be seeing in a matter of weeks, and was an interesting (and very different!) thing to do for a day out. Here are my pictures from the cat show:

After the cat show, we met up with Pippa and our Russian friend Yaroslav and went to the 'Defenders of Leningrad' monument, which was right next to the exhibition hall with the cat show. The monument is huge, and though I'd seen it several times out of the window of the bus on my way to and from the airport, I'd never seen it close-up or been inside the memorial hall beneath it. As with many of the sights I've been to recently, this monument is in memory of the Leningrad blockade, though it is a little more upbeat as it's celebrating the heroes of the blockade and the eventual victory in World War II. It was another beautiful day, as you can see in my photos:

(I hope it's fairly obvious what all of the memorial pictures are - there are too many to write a caption for... Bottom Right: An awesome mini-Kremlin we found just off Moskovsky Prospekt)

On Wednesday, Pippa and I went to the Smolensky Cemetery on Vasilevsky Island. This was quite interesting, as I'd never been to a Russian cemetery before and wasn't expecting it to be all that different from English ones, but it was... Lots of the gravestones looked rather Soviet, even some which were only a couple of years old, and lots of graves had their own benches for mourners to sit on. It was nice to see quite a few people tending to graves, either tidying them up a little or actually painting or repairing them. After having a nice wander around the cemetery, we walked down to the Neva, where there was an amazing tall ship visiting from South America, the Simon Bolivar. As this is the only other major thing I've done this week apart from the weekend, here are my photos of the cemetery and the ship (and a Soviet submarine) on the Neva:

We also went out on Thursday night to say goodbye to Pippa, who flew back to England yesterday. It was a really nice night, but of course it's sad to see Pippa go. She's been one of my closest friends here all year, so it'll be really strange not having her around! I'm not going to let it get me down though, I know she'll have loads of fun back in England with her friends and family, and I can't wait to hang out with her in Manchester and Nottingham next year :)

Tonight I'm getting the train to the city of Petrozavodsk for a few days, where I'll hopefully visit the famous nearby island of Кижи (Kizhi) and do a few other exciting touristy things. I'm sure I'll have plenty to update on when I get back on Thursday!

Naomi :)

A relatively eventful week!

2011-04-22T23:30:00.001+04:00

Hello everybody! After putting it off for a few days now due to a mixture of laziness, busy-ness and a minor hangover, I thought I'd better update my blog. This week has been surprisingly eventful, partly due to my super awesome list of Petersburg sights to see/things to do before I leave (containing 34 sights/activities) and partly due to good weather, which is making everyone seem a bit more upbeat and willing to do things.

The first major excursion of the week was to the Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery, where I went with Pippa and our Russian friend Yaroslav who we met on the train home from Moscow. The cemetery is a memorial to the thousands of people who died during the Leningrad blockade, so it was very interesting to visit just two days after I'd been to the Leningrad Blockade Museum (which you can read about in my previous post). Although the cemetery is made up of mass graves rather than individual ones, its sheer size, the statue of Mother Russia, eternal flame and numerous memorial plaques make it a special place. The plaques mainly tell about how the cemetery is intended to serve as a reminder of the past in order to educate the youth to stop such tragedies happening again. I thought it certainly achieved this, as the whole place felt very Soviet (they were even playing music out of loudspeakers) and really emphasised the sheer number of victims. There was also a small museum with pictures and a computer where you could search for people buried there. It was quite moving being there, though I wouldn't call it a particularly uplifting destination for a day out. Here a few of my photos from the cemetery:

(Top Middle: Sign at the entrance to the cemetery; Top Middle II: Panorama of the statue of Mother Russia; Top Left: One of the mass graves, which were sorted by year of death; Top Right: Close-up of the statue of Mother Russia; Middle: One of the memorial inscriptions on the wall behind Mother Russia; Bottom Left: Me at the cemetery, trying to look as sombre as possible; Bottom Right: A pretty bird we saw; Bottom Middle: The view from the eternal flame at the entrance)

Before I write about my next jaunt around the city, I need to post a couple of photos I took on a street near my flat (Гороховая - Gorohovaya). This street has been undergoing huge roadworks for a few months now, but something looked a little different as I walked along it on Monday... See for yourself here:

(Yep, it's an upside down lorry in a hole. Health and safety really doesn't exist in Russia, though I do hope the driver was okay)

Anyway, the next event in my eventful week was on Monday afternoon, when Marion and I created 'The List' (as mentioned above) over lunch on Nevsky. This list is pretty thorough, and I hope to complete all of the tasks on it before I leave in 6 weeks' time. As I said earlier, it features 34 activities in total, so I'm not overly hopeful that I'll complete it, but we shall see! As of today (Friday), I have completed three of the activities, though tomorrow I should be able to tick another box off when I visit Pavlovsk (expect a post about this in the next few days...). After lunch and list-making, we had an urge to visit a couple of places along Nevsky we hadn't yet been to, so went to St Catherine's Church (one of very few Catholic churches here), the Armenian church, and an old shopping centre called 'Passazh' (passage). The two churches were very different, but both beautiful in their own way, and the shopping centre was lovely, even if it was full of very expensive tat. It was also a lovely sunny day, as you can see in the following pictures:

(Top Middle: St Catherine's Church; Top Left: Inside St Catherine's Church - very minimalist compared to Russian Orthodox churches, but still had very lovely pastel walls; Top Right: Inside St Catherine's again; Middle Top: The dome in St Catherine's Church; Middle Bottom: The Armenian Church - I didn't take any pictures inside as it was tiny and I think we would have been scowled at; Bottom Left: 'Passazh' shopping centre, with its lovely glass ceiling; Bottom Right: Glass ceiling in 'Passazh'; Bottom Middle: The boat trips have started again in Petersburg! I need to go on one! [It's on the list])

On Tuesday night, another odd event occurred (though not quite as odd as finding a lorry in a hole) - the roof of the house opposite mine caught fire. Somehow I managed to sleep through the noise of the fire itself, four fire engines and their crews shouting in the middle of the night... I've been reassured by Rosa that this is a fairly common occurrence, as tramps often live in abandoned houses and light fires in them to keep warm, but it's still a little disconcerting. As you may know, I take a lot of photos of the pretty skies out of my window, and those will all look quite a lot uglier now there'll be a burnt-out roof in them, but never mind. Here are a couple of pictures of the damage:

On Wednesday I missed school due to laziness of epic proportions, though I felt a bit more energised later in the day and met up with Katie and Luka after school to tick another activity off of the list. As it was a lovely clear and sunny day, we decided to go up to the top of St Isaac's Cathedral, which offers a panoramic view of the whole city centre. It was absolutely amazing, and we'd chosen the perfect day to go up it. All of the major sights were visible, though they all looked much smaller than usual and closer together than they feel when walking on foot! This sounds a bit stupid though really, as that's obviously what happens when you climb something high... Oh yes, I forgot to mention that we had to climb the entire way up... After buying our tickets we were met by a huge spiral staircase with a tiny metal staircase at the top, followed outdoor steps at the top. I would really advise against taking anyone old, obese or afraid of heights up there. Apart from that it's really one of the best tourist activities I've done since I got here. Here are a few of my photos:

(Top: The evil spiral staircase; Top II: The view which made said steps seem worth it; Top left: The view, with one of the mini domes of St Isaac's; Top Right: Even more steps - it could have been worse!; Middle: The directions were painted on each side; Bottom Left: Me at the top - it's officially sunglasses weather now; Bottom Right: Peter and Paul Fortress, the Admiralty & the Hermitage all looking very close together; Bottom: Another panorama shot... I'm addicted now!)

On Wednesday night we decided to go out... I ended up drinking far too much disgusting cheap wine in far too short a period of time, and really paid the price on Thursday. Unfortunately this meant missing another day of school. Oops.

On Friday, that's today, we decided to visit the Russian Museum of Political History after school. The museum is on the Petrogradskaya island of the city, and is right next to the main mosque in Petersburg. We took the opportunity to get a closer look at the mosque, which I'd only seen from a distance before. It is a rather strange looking building, and it seemed prayers were about to begin as there were a lot of people milling around it so we didn't go in or anything, but I took a couple of photos of the outside:

Anyway, on to our main destination of the day. The Russian Museum of Political History is housed within the Kshesinskaya Mansion, where Lenin once made a famous speech from the balcony. This mansion previously belonged to star ballerina of the Russian Ballet Mathilda Kshesinskaya (who was also the lover of Tsar Nicholas II), before becoming the Bolshevik headquarters following the revolution. The Soviets seemed to like ironically replacing the contents of buildings with the complete opposite, as I also discovered when reading about St Isaac's Cathedral earlier in the week - it once housed the 'Museum of Anti-religion'. The museum was a lot bigger than I was expecting, and contained all manner of exhibits. Quite a lot of the descriptions had been translated to English, and I was surprised to hear several people speaking English whilst I was looking around... It must be somewhat of a tourist hotspot. I don't know what else to say about this museum, really, other than that it was very interesting and a good tourist destination for anyone who is interested in Russian politics. Here are my photos from our visit:

(Top: Main entrance to the Museum of Russian Political History, closed right now due to refurbishment; Top Left: The slightly less glamorous entrance we used; Top Right: Inside the museum; Middle Top: A selection of old bank notes, which were all huge, including a 50 Kopeck note - around 1p in today's money; Middle Bottom: The old Bolshevik headquarters; Bottom Left: Painting of the Tsar, torn up with bayonets during the storming of the Winter Palace; Bottom Right: A beret given to Yuri Gagarin by Fidel Castro... Yep, weird; Bottom Middle: A cool Soviet mural)

I think I managed to include all of the main things I've done this week in this post... Time to go to bed now I think, so I'll be wide awake for my trip to Pavlovsk tomorrow. As you can see, I'm becoming a lot more enthusiastic about visiting places around the city now I only have 6 more weeks here! I'll be sure to update every time I visit somewhere to tick off the list!

Naomi :)

The great thaw, and the Leningrad Blockade Museum...

2011-04-16T13:27:00.002+04:00

So, I thought I should probably make a short update (makes a change from my epic posts) on what I've been doing for the last few weeks. This comprises of really very little, except for going to school every day, so I don't have very much to say, but here goes...

The first thing to report is that the weather has completely changed in Petersburg. It felt extremely sudden, but looking back I suppose there had been signs of the changing climate for a few weeks beforehand... The snow has almost entirely gone, the rivers have all melted and the icicles have all disappeared from the gutters. I'd become so used to there being snow and ice everywhere that it feels like a completely different city! We've had several days of sunshine, and temperatures have reached highs of up to 9 degrees! I really can't wait until summer arrives... Sitting in the sun in a beautiful Petersburg park will almost make the harsh winter weather seem worth it.

The above picture was taken yesterday, when my friend Marion and I decided to walk to the Leningrad Blockade Museum after school. The Fontanka river has finally fully thawed, and I think you'll agree looks absolutely lovely in the springtime sun. Since not a lot else has happened in the last few weeks, I'll skip everything up until yesterday and talk about our walk and the Blockade Museum.

I have somehow managed to lose my super-detailed map of the city (but I think it's somewhere hiding in my room), and Marion couldn't find any free WiFi to scab Google Maps on her iPod, so we had to make the trip from memory. This turned out to be absolutely fine, surprisingly, and we managed to find the museum without a hitch... Here are some photos of the sights we passed en route:

(Top Middle: Awesome Scrabble-style shop sign; Top Left: 'Perfectly-proportioned' street; Top Right: Rather cool statue outside the circus; Middle: The circus itself; Bottom Left: A lovely Orthodox church we came across; Bottom Right: I don't know what this building is but it's beautiful; Bottom Middle: Newspapers stuck up in the street... I just liked the photo)

So, I should discuss our ultimate destination on this journey: The Leningrad Blockade Museum. This is the museum we'd tried to visit before, but upon arrival discovered that it was closed for 'technical reasons'. Luckily this time it was fully open and operational, and we even got in free with our student cards. Looking back, I should have paid for the photo pass, especially since I got free entry, as then I'd be able to show what the museum was like in greater detail... Oh well. It was a lovely museum, which was really well laid out and very interesting. The exhibits had been well-chosen and though the presentation was fairly modern, it was still very true to the old items on display, complementing them in many cases. Though there weren't that many signs in English, I recommend visiting even if you don't speak Russian, as personally I think the blockade of Leningrad is shockingly overlooked by most people in the West. In case you don't know anything about it, the blockade/siege on Leningrad by the Nazis during WWII lasted 900 days and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens. If you're interested in Russian history, I recommend reading more about it, as we studied it at university last year and it's a very sad but insteresting part of Russia's history.

Tomorrow I'm planning to visit another reminder of the blockade - a memorial cemetery. If I do visit, I'll be sure to post about it within the next few days. I'm also going to make a big list of places I still need to visit and things I still need to do, during my 7 remaining weeks here, so hopefully I'll have plenty to blog about in the near future!

Naomi :)

I escape Russia for the first time in seven months! (AKA Helsinki trip)

2011-04-03T19:38:00.004+04:00

So, my long-awaited trip to visit my dad in Helsinki finally arrived. I've actually been back in Petersburg since Wednesday night, but have only just mustered up the motivation and energy to write about our trip! Expect this to be a long and excruciatingly comprehensive post...

Last Saturday I woke up feeling both excited and nervous: excited that I was going to see my dad for the first time in seven months that evening, and nervous that in order to do so, I had chosen to fly with budget Russian airline Россия (Rossiya - Russia). I'd decided upon booking said flight that it was worth the risk, as the ticket was almost half the price of the fast train, for some reason. Luckily, my flatmate and our mutual friend had also travelled to Helsinki two weeks earlier using the same company and were still alive, so at least I knew I'd probably survive the flight, if nothing else.

My flight wasn't until 6.50pm on Saturday, so I spent the day packing my things and watching trashy television, before leaving my flat at the ridiculously (in hindsight) early time of 3.30pm. After struggling with my rucksack on the metro and машрутка (Mashrutka - a cross between a bus and a taxi), I arrived at Petersburg's Пулково-2 (Pulkovo-2) international airport around 45 minutes before I could even check in for my flight. It's easy to say that it's better to be safe than sorry, but once I was through the first two security checks (there were four in total!) it felt like I was waiting for an age, staring blankly at the relevant empty check-in desk. Finally 5.10pm arrived and I was able to check in. Cue the first of several strange looks from airport staff as I present my British passport for a flight between Russia and Finland, combined with a nervous look on my face as they proceed to examine all of my documents. Luckily everything was in order, and I was told to proceed through the third security check of the day - this one involved several noisily-delivered stamps being placed in my passport and visa.

Once everything was stamped (and I felt like I'd already been scrutinised to death), I was presented with the fourth and final security check of my outbound trip. Here I had a choice: I could either go up to the 'Departures' area of the airport, which had shops, bars and restaurants, or continue through to my gate, which my dehydrated self assumed would have a shop, cafe or at the very least a vending machine. I decided it would be best to get to my gate as early as possible, so proceeded through the final security check. There were no cafes, shops or vending machines, and I plonked myself down on a seat to wait some more, thirsty and bored. After a few more minutes of boredom (I'd become quite used to it by now), the bus finally showed up to take us to our plane. The flight itself was actually problem-free, and they even provided us with a free drink and chocolate bar, something I would never expect on a 45-minute flight in the UK. One thing that struck me as odd about my outbound flight, though, was the significant lack of passengers. There must have been about 25 people on the plane in total, and I was surprised that such unpopular flights even run, let alone for the extremely low price we must have all paid...

I arrived in Helsinki about 25 minutes before I'd taken off, due to the time difference and a quicker-than-scheduled flight. I happily swanned past all of the Russian passengers and through the EU passport checkpoint, before strolling through baggage reclaim with my hand luggage. I was expecting my dad to be waiting for me as his flight was due to land earlier, so when I couldn't see him I panicked and wandered around the Arrivals area trying to find him, only to realise my flight had landed ahead of schedule and that actually I'd have to wait for him! Sure enough, he showed up around 5 minutes later, looking a little confused as to why I wasn't still in the air. We exchanged greetings and went outside to find the bus to the city centre, which was luckily already waiting just outside the exit. We boarded and made our way to the city, whilst catching up on recent happenings.

Once off the bus, we got our bearings with the map and managed to find our hotel with relative ease, as it was a mere 5 minute walk away from the train station where the bus had dropped us off. We checked in, found our room, dumped our belongings, got refreshed and went out for a walk and dinner. After a little hunting around the local area, we found a Chinese restaurant and decided to eat there. I excitedly ate tofu in sweet and sour sauce for the first time in what felt like an age, and quickly realised how much I must have adjusted to the vegetarian-unfriendly bubble that is Russia. After our yummy meal, we wandered back to the hotel via the city centre streets of Helsinki - here are a couple of pictures of night-time Helsinki:

(Top: Some lovely coloured lights; Bottom: Main entrance of Stockmann - a famous Finnish department store, a lot like Selfridges in the UK)

The next day, after our extremely filling and tasty buffet breakfast, we decided to buy two 'Helsinki cards'. These cards are a clever idea for tourists, as they allow you to get in free to almost all of the museums, travel on all public transport for free, and also give you a free bus tour of the city. We took up the offer of the free bus tour on that very day, as it was our first real day there and we hadn't seen most of the sights yet. The tour was actually really good, because you got a set of headphones and could choose the language to hear all about the stuff you were seeing. It was surprisingly busy on the bus, and the tour lasted about an hour and a half, taking us around the central sights as well as those further afield, such as the Olympic Stadium and the Sibelius Monument in Sibelius Park. Here are some photos from our bus tour - as you can tell the weather was lovely on Sunday:

(Top Left: Sibelius Monument; Top Right: Monument again; Top Middle: Arty farty picture of the monument; Bottom Middle: Sibelius Park; Bottom Left: Arty farty picture of a nice building out of the bus window; Bottom Right: An orthodox church in the city centre)

After our bus tour had finished, we headed for Senate Square, a place we'd been through on the bus and wanted to explore some more. Senate Square is home to Helsinki Cathedral, a big statue of Tsar Alexander II and a host of other pretty buildings. I don't know why, but we didn't go inside the cathedral, though I'm not too worried as it leaves something to do next time I visit Helsinki (we did pretty much everything else!). After taking several photographs, we consulted our guide book and saw that Helsinki City Museum was nearby, so we decided to visit. The museum was quite interesting, and gave a broad overview of Helsinki's history - I found the exhibition about Helsinki (and all of Finland for that matter) being under Russian rule the most interesting, for obvious reasons. Here are some of my photos from Senate Square and Helsinki City Museum:

(Top Middle: Helsinki Cathedral; Top Left: Me in front of the cathedral and statue of Alexander II; Top Right: Close up of the statue of Alexander II; Bottom Middle: Helsinki City Museum; Bottom Left: Some models of boats in the museum; Bottom Right: Display of retro things in the museum)

After the Helsinki City Museum, we decided to head for the national gallery of Finland (called Ateneum). Our Helsinki Cards got us in free to everywhere, so as you'll see in this post we went to quite a lot of museums... The Finnish national gallery was in an absolutely lovely building, and since we didn't know any of the art it was a learning experience. The gallery was really well laid out and the paintings were displayed so nicely, it was really unlike visiting many museums and galleries in Petersburg, which often feel a little neglected and out of date. You can see a couple of pictures of the outside and inside of the lovely Ateneum building here:

The Ateneum is on one of the main squares in central Helsinki, which has many other lovely buildings. Before heading back to the hotel via one of the big shopping centres (involving a trip to my beloved LIDL!), we walked around this square and I took some photos of the main sights:

(Top Left: I think this building was a casino of some kind, not sure though, I just thought it was pretty; Top Right: Finnish National Theatre, complete with statue of someone I've never heard of called Aleksis Kivi; Middle: Helsinki train station, a lovely building; Bottom: Clock tower of Helsinki train station)

That night we decided to eat in a restaurant we'd spotted the night before - an all you can eat pizza buffet. It wasn't that expensive and you could eat as much pizza, pasta and salad as you wanted, as well as have unlimited soft drinks... My kind of restaurant!

The next day we went to a nearby island fortress called Suomenlinna (or Sveaborg in Swedish). We had to take the ferry to get there, but that was free with our Helsinki Cards - handy! They never came round asking for tickets anyway though, so I guess it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. I was surprised at how easily the relatively small ferry cut its way through the thousands of chunks of ice floating in the bay, and after just a 15 minute trip we reached the island. We walked across the snow, which was much more slippery than any on the mainland, presumably because they don't clear it as often, to the Suomenlinna Museum. The island has several museums, but almost all of them are closed during winter, so we didn't have much choice but to visit the main museum about the history of the island. The museum building was really nice, as it was obviously some sort of old storage building that had been restored in a modern style, but it hadn't been spoiled. We watched a film about the history of the fortress and read about all of the exhibits, then went back outside to walk around the island for a little bit. It would have been completely different had we gone there in summertime, as all of the museums would have been open and we could have walked around a bit more easily, so if I ever do go back to Helsinki in summer I'll be sure to visit again. Here are my photos from our trip to Suomenlinna:

(Top 2: Views from the ferry on the way to Suomenlinna; Top Left: Pink tower on Suomenlinna; Top Right: Church which was once Orthodox and is now Lutheran; Middle: Cute old pink house on Suomenlinna; Middle Left: View from a window in the museum; Middle Right: Flags outside the museum; Middle: Amazingly shaped icebergs on Suomenlinna; Bottom Middle: Submarine which you can go on in the summer; Bottom Left: Some of the actual fortress; Bottom Right: My dad! Yay!)

As the weather wasn't so good on the Monday, we didn't walk around too much on Suomenlinna and decided to head back to the mainland instead. Once we got off the ferry, we went to have a closer look at the Uspensk Cathedral, a beautiful old Orthodox cathedral left over from the Russian rule. Though only a very small percentage of Finns are now Orthodox, there still seem to be quite a few Orthodox churches and cathedrals about, and it's nice that they haven't been destroyed just because of the changeover of religions. We didn't go inside though, instead choosing to walk back to the city centre, to the Amos Anderson Art Museum to be precise. We didn't really know who Amos Anderson was, or what was in the museum, but it was in our guidebook and it sounded nice, plus almost all of the other museums were closed on Mondays. It was quite a nice museum, with a few lovely paintings and a private chapel on the top floor. I still don't know who Amos Anderson actually was though, as there wasn't any information about him, but we did find out that Tove Jansson (author of the Moomin books) was actually a woman, and that she painted lots of lovely paintings totally unrelated to Moomins. Here are my photos of Uspensk Cathedral and the Amos Anderson Art Museum:

(Top Left: Uspensk Cathedral; Top Right: Flags outside the Amos Anderson Art Museum; Middle: One of the rooms inside the museum; Bottom Left: A lovely painted organ in the private chapel of the museum; Bottom Right: The ancient lift in the museum, rather scary to use!)

I also tested out the panoramic feature on my camera, a feature I always forget exists and so never use when it's sunny or I actually have a nice view to photograph. So here is a cloudy picture of the harbour in Helsinki, merely because it's the only panoramic picture I took:

That night we had dinner in a place called 'Morrison's'. I think it was attempting to seem English, with a name like that, and they also served an array of beers and ciders, including Strongbow. The portions were absolutely humongous, much bigger than I was expecting, and I had a double veggie burger with halloumi cheese. This was incredible, as I hadn't eaten a veggie burger in months (excluding the powdered mixes my mum brought over and sends in the post!), let alone halloumi! There really is a lot less choice in Russia than the West when it comes to food, though that might just be highlighted because I'm a vegetarian and a fussy one at that...

On Tuesday we attempted to go to Kiasma, the museum of contemporary art. Unfortunately, nobody had thought to put a sign up saying that all of the exhibitions were closed until late April, so that plan was scuppered rather quickly. We had planned to go to the National Museum of Finland afterwards, so decided we may as well just head there, though via the park and Finlandia Hall as it wasn't due to open for another 45 minutes or so. The photos from our short-lived trip to Kiasma and the following time-wasting walk follow:

(Top Left: In the lobby of Kiasma, before we realised it was all closed; Top Right: Statue of Mannerheim on his horse; Top Middle: The outside of Kiasma; Top Bottom: Finnish Parliament building - really weird but quite cool; Middle Left: View of Linnanmaki amusement park across a huge frozen lake; Middle Right: Finlandia Hall, a concert/conference hall; Bottom Top: Finlandia Hall sign; Bottom: Me with a wooden Moomin outside a souvenir shop, taken on dad's phone)

Once we'd wasted enough time and the museum was open, we went inside. We learnt even more about Finnish history than we'd already found out, and the museum was in yet another gorgeous building. It was quite a big museum, but unfortunately the temporary exhibition area was in between exhibitions, so was closed. We looked around the rest of the museum though, partly accompanied by a rather talkative guide who told us all about the exhibits. Here are some of my photos of the inside and outside of the National Museum of Finland:

After leaving the museum, we realised we were actually quite near the Olympic Stadium, so decided to go and have a look at it. Since we were going to be there anyway, we thought we should go to the National Sport Museum of Finland, despite the fact it sounded like it could be a bit rubbish. It was actually quite good, as they had a lot of memorabilia from the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, as well as lots of Olympic medals from other Olympic games. Since it was free for us to get in with our Helsinki Cards (I sound like I work for them, don't i?!) I thought it was pretty worth it, plus it was further from the city so we were able to take the tram back to the city centre, which was an experience in itself. Here are my photos of Opera House en route to the Olympic Stadium, the stadium itself and the Sports Museum:

(Top Middle: Helsinki Opera House; Top Left: Statue of Paavo Nurmi in front of the Olympic Stadium; Top Right: Observation tower of the Olympic Stadium - unfortunately currently closed for renovation; Middle: The Olympic Stadium; Bottom Left: Mika Hakkinen's racing suit; Bottom Right: Posters in several languages for the 1952 Olympics; Bottom: Olympic flag)

Once we were off the tram in the city centre, we decided to cram one more museum in and visit the Helsinki Design Museum, which I'd been told was good by a couple of people. Though it was good, it was a lot smaller than I was expecting, and was nothing compared to the V&A in London. It was nice though, and I learnt a bit more about Finnish design than I'd previously known. The building itself was lovely as well, as you can see here:

As I said at the beginning of the post, because we had free entry to all the museums, we went to quite a few museums we otherwise wouldn't have - I suppose this is the aim of the Helsinki Card, really. It's a shame when people visit places and learn absolutely nothing about the culture and history of that country/city, so I'm quite glad we did all the cultural things we did.

On the Tuesday night, we decided to get our glad rags on (sort of) for our last night in Helsinki and visit the hotel restaurant. We could even wear normal shoes and no coats, as we didn't need to go outside :) It was a Spanish restaurant and proved to be very tasty.

Wednesday was another sunny day, like the Sunday, and we decided to get the train to the area of the city known as Vantaa. This area is the part of the city nearest to the airport, and it sounded quite good from the internet, so we thought we'd kill two birds with one stone and see a nice part of the city on our way to the airport. We got our train tickets but due to our confusion with the Finnish railway system we thought they weren't valid until 12:25pm, so we had time to waste. We wandered around the city for an hour or so in the sunshine, and then realised upon returning to the station that the tickets were valid until 12:25pm, not from. Luckily we had time to spare and could still get a train to Vantaa before they expired. I did get some nice photos of the city in the sunshine though, which made up for some of the grey ones on the other days:

(Top: Our hotel bathed in sunlight. Quite an ugly building from the outside, but lovely inside; Top Bottom: Kiasma art gallery in the sun; Middle: The main post office, also housing Finland's post museum; Bottom Left: One of the main shopping streets of Helsinki; Bottom Right: Arty farty photo taken in a courtyard)

Unfortunately, Vantaa turned out to be pretty rubbish. There was little more there than one shopping centre and a small shopping street. We exhausted the shops after not long at all, and sat down to have a drink and a cake. After mulling over our options, we decided it would be better to just get the bus to the airport and waste time there than to go back to the city. This was somewhat of a mistake, since upon arrival at the airport I realised I couldn't even check in for another 2 hours, so we were stuck on the wrong side of security with nothing to do. The time passed fairly quickly though, and eventually I was able to check in and we passed security with no problems. We had a quick look around a couple of the airport shops before eating dinner at a nice restaurant, where I ate tasty tofu with stir fry noodles.

By the time we'd finished eating it was almost time for me to board my plane, and I had to leave my dad to sit for 2 hours by himself waiting for his later flight. It was sad saying goodbye to my dad for another couple of months, but it was really nice to see him again after so long and explore such a lovely city with him, and I'm really grateful for everything he did for me over those few days :) Only another 2 months until I'll be back in England, where I'll be able to catch up with him again along with the rest of my family and friends. Sad as I'll be to leave Russia, deep down I cannot wait for normality again!

Ирония Судьбы... An impromptu trip to Moscow.

2011-03-25T19:52:00.005+03:00

So, I went to Moscow on a whim last weekend. I'll write in detail about my trip in this post, but first I'll write a little about Троице-Измайловский Собор (translates to English as 'Trinity Cathedral'), where I went after school last Thursday.

After seeing its distinctive blue and gold domes on the horizon every day on my way to school for the last few months, I finally decided to visit Trinity Cathedral. Sadly, during its restoration following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the cathedral caught on fire in 2006. Since then, the renovation of the exterior has been completed, but the interior is still being restored. We decided to go inside, but I wasn't able to take any photos as it's a working cathedral and not a tourist attraction like many others - this means it's free to get in, but you have to be very quiet, and women must cover their heads. There's not a lot else to say about the cathedral other than the fact that it's stunningly beautiful (on the outside, at least), so I'll just put some pictures of it here:

(Top: The whole cathedral; Bottom Left: Front-on view; Bottom Right: A memorial column in front of the cathedral, made out of cannons)

Also, if anyone is interested, this is a picture of the cathedral when it was ablaze in 2006, stolen from Wikipedia. I think it's great to see how lovely it looks now - the Russians sure do work hard when it comes to restoring their old buildings.

Another great thing we discovered upon visiting the cathedral is that there's a huge market right next to it. The market sells a whole range of extremely cheap clothing, shoes, bags and household goods, including a whole host of fakes. Though we didn't buy anything on our first trip there, Pippa and I decided to go back again this week and buy some fake Fred Perry shoes we'd seen. They are extremely good fakes and truly lovely shoes, and only cost around £12.

You can see from my pictures above that we've been having absolutely gorgeous weather here in Petersburg. It's started to get a bit colder again unfortunately, but I don't really mind because most days the sun is shining and the blue sky makes everything look better! I can't say the same for the weather in Moscow, sadly, but we'll get to that shortly...

As I said in my last two posts on here, I was planning to go to Novgorod with some friends at the weekend. This plan somewhat backfired when I realised the information I'd found online was really quite out of date, which was confirmed by my landlady phoning the train station and being told there isn't even a direct train there anymore. Upon hearing this news, we started researching different cities to go to and went to the ticket office to buy tickets on Friday, though when we got there we were met with a few too many unfriendly cashiers who were confused by our Russian and us theirs. Luckily, they were kind enough to provide some touch-screen monitors which allow you to browse journeys and available seats. After a few stressful moments of browsing, we realised our newly-chosen destination of Старая Ладога (Old Ladoga) also didn't seem to be served by a direct train from Petersburg. Though this finally made me learn the lesson to never trust information on the internet, it was fairly annoying that we had nowhere to go. Then, on a whim, Pippa and I decided to finally go to Moscow, a trip we'd been wanting to do for a few months. Our fellow potential travel companions decided that buying tickets on a train to Moscow 4 hours before the train's departure was a little too adventurous for them, so backed out of the trip. We are going to go to Novgorod together after this reading week though, just on the bus rather than the train. We found the cheapest tickets to Moscow (about £8 there and £16 back!), wrote down the train times and bought the tickets. Photos from the train ticket buying debacle:

(Top Left: Saint Petersburg ticket office - Soviet architecture at it's strangest; Top Right: Close-up of sci-fi-esque skylights; Bottom: Train tickets! A lot fancier than they are in the UK)

Once our tickets were bought, the race was on... The train left at 10pm, and it was already around 5 o'clock, so we had to rush home and pack. We met up later that evening, both paranoid that we'd forgotten to pack essentials in our haste (though actually neither of us had) and waited on the platform to board our train. On the way there, we'd bought the cheapest of the cheap tickets, which were seated... I thought having seats on a sleeper train wouldn't be a problem, and really it wasn't actually the seats that ended up making the journey terrible - it was the heat! Everything was pretty much fine, excluding the scary-looking gypsy men surrounding us on all sides, up until about an hour into the journey, when the heating obviously kicked in and the carriage turned into a moving sauna. Anyway, we made it and arrived in Moscow at about 5.30am, feeling surprisingly energetic following our 3 hour sleep on the train. When we got off the train, we instantly recognised where we were - we were in the same station we'd left from. Well, not exactly, but the two stations we'd passed through were obviously identical, which was rather confusing, especially at 5.30 in the morning. Both inside and outside, they were the same - only the names were different... The station we'd left from in Petersburg was called 'Moskovsky Vokzal' (Moscow Station) and the one we'd arrived at was called 'Leningradsky Vokzal' (Leningrad/Petersburg Station). It was like being in a parallel universe or something.

Anyway, once we'd navigated our way out of the familiar-feeling station, we went straight to a 24-hour coffee shop for a sit down and a drink, accompanied by the sudden realisation that we'd just spontaneously come to Moscow. Once we'd finished our drinks it was already getting light, so we decided to head to Red Square nice and early to avoid all the tourists. This plan was quite successful, as the place was almost deserted and we had a nice walk around, including walking the entire Kremlin wall during a moment of poor navigation by yours truly. Here are a few pictures from our early-morning walk around the usually bustling centre of Moscow:

(Top Left: Me throwing a coin behind me whilst standing on a (surprisingly slippery) metal circle - this is supposed to be lucky... This early in the morning you avoid all the old ladies who come and stand around all day instantly grabbing any coins of value that get thrown by tourists; Top Right: Me in front of St. Basil's Cathedral; Top Middle: Pippa on Red Square; Middle Left: The clock tower of the Kremlin; Middle Right: St. Basil's Cathedral; Bottom Middle: Lenin's mausoleum; Bottom Left: Archways and tiny chapel at one of the entrances to Red Square; Bottom Right: One of the more fancy parts of the Kremlin wall, featuring blocks with names of Soviet cities)

After our epic walk around Red Square and the entirety of the Kremlin, we stopped in McDonald's for breakfast. I had my first ever Egg McMuffin, which was absolutely delightful. It's a good job they only sell them in the mornings, otherwise I'd become addicted! After a long sit down, we decided we should probably find somewhere to stay. We'd done a little bit of research beforehand, and Pippa had an address for a hostel, but the map in my lecturer's guidebook for Moscow (she left it here when she stayed) was totally useless, listing only the main streets, so we had to find an internet cafe. We walked around the vicinity for hours and hours looking for either a hostel or an internet cafe, and gave up all hope at around 10.30am. I thought I knew a place where we could find an internet cafe, so we got on the metro and went there. There was indeed an internet cafe there, so we managed to find a suitable hostel which still had space and got the metro there. The Moscow metro is ridiculously difficult to use, something I failed to notice the last time I visited... They have stations with the same names on different colour lines, which aren't in the same place! How stupid is that?! Here are photos of random things we saw on our trek around the area whilst looking for a hostel:

(Top Left: A plaque about Lenin; Top Right: View down a path in some park; Middle: An extremely Soviet-looking building; Bottom Left: A lovely little church near our hostel; Bottom Right: One of Stalin's 'Seven Sisters' skyscrapers)

Anyway, we found our hostel finally and checked in. We got a private room with 2 beds all to ourselves, so we refreshed by having showers and a lie down. Feeling rather a lot cleaner and better, we headed out for dinner and then headed to a bar for drinks with some friends who studied in Petersburg last semester. First we went to an Irish Pub which was lovely and which I'd been to the last time I was in Moscow. Here we were bought a couple of drinks by a lovely (albeit very drunk) Irish man, who had obviously got a bit over-excited in the build-up to the rugby match between England and Ireland. It turned out he actually works as a manager for a huge oil and gas company for the whole of Russia :o After the Irish Pub, we were taken to a bar called Radio City by our friend Lauren, who Pippa knows from uni in England and who I met last semester here in Petersburg. The bar was New York/jazz themed and was really quite nice, though it was full of British expats, who were there to watch the rugby. I don't think you'd ever find that in Petersburg! I saw more British people (who I didn't know) in Moscow in two days than I've seen here in 7 months! Anyway, we had a lovely evening and it was nice catching up with Lauren and seeing what a night out is like in Moscow. We didn't stay too late though as we were extremely tired from our lack of sleep the previous night, and we retired back to our hostel in a frighteningly fast taxi...

On the Sunday, after a great night's sleep in the hostel, we checked out at 11am and headed back towards Red Square. En route, we came across a number of lovely little churches, much older than anything you'd find in Petersburg (which only came into existence in 1703). We also stumbled upon 'The Old English Court', a very old building which claimed to be the first English embassy in Russia. Intrigued, we went up to get a closer look and realised you could go inside. Since it was free for students, we went in and had a look around - it was interesting being in such an old building, and it was full of artifacts documenting the history of Russia's relationship with England, including letters from British monarchs to Russian tsars. I didn't take any photos inside since I wasn't sure if it was allowed, but here are a few pictures of the churches and the outside of The Old English Court:

(Top Left: Very old, beautiful Russian Orthodox church; Top Right: Another lovely church; Top Middle: The Old English Court; Bottom Middle: Sign for The Old English Court; Bottom Left: Yet another gorgeous church; Bottom Right: Extremely cute stray kitten - I wanted to take it home!)

We carried on walking to Red Square, where stopped off for some lunch. I got in touch with my friend Flick, who I met last semester whilst she was studying in Petersburg, and we arranged to meet up and go to the State Historical Museum. I didn't go there last time I was in Moscow, and I have to say I wasn't expecting a great deal after constantly hearing that Petersburg was the capital of culture and assuming its museums would be better than any in Moscow. I was pleasantly surprised though, as we were greeted by an absolutely lovely building both inside and out, containing a whole load of interesting objects, including a huge collection of the Tsars' gold, guarded by police. Talking of police, when Pippa and I first entered the museum with our huge rucksacks, we were ordered to take them off and show a policeman what was inside. This policeman must have been about 20 years old and was a complete jobsworth, forcing us to chuck our stuff out in the middle of the floor in front of everyone. Obviously we looked like complete terrorists or something. He really got on our nerves, and when we started trying to talk about him in English we were scolded and told to only speak in Russian! Bah! Anyway, here are my photos from the State Historical Museum, which are mostly just pictures of the beautiful ceilings...

(Top Left: Outside of The State Historical Museum; Top Right: Ceiling in the main hall bit in the State Historical Museum; Others: Lovely ceilings inside the museum)

After our trip to the museum, we went with Flick to the Arbat - a very touristy street in the middle of Moscow, full of souvenir shops and street entertainers. Here we wasted time wandering around browsing souvenirs and watching performers, including a man painting really good posters with spray paint, then we ate at Moo Moo, a chain of cool restaurants in Moscow. After just a couple of hours, it was already time for Pippa and I to head to the train station to await our journey back to Petersburg. Here are a couple of photos from our walk down the Arbat:

(Top: Me and Flick, who it was lovely to see again; Bottom Left: Me with the cuuuuute cow outside Moo Moo; Bottom Right: Really weird graffiti - it seemed funnier at the time, possibly due to tiredness)

The only thing left to talk about is the train home. We weren't sure what to expect, since when we bought the return ticket we didn't specify whether we wanted seats or beds. The tickets were twice as expensive (at the princely sum of £16!) so we were hoping for beds, but we still weren't sure. After getting completely confused and not finding our seat numbers anywhere, we were shown to our beds (yay!) by a friendly conductor lady. Upon finding our beds, we weren't sure if we actually got the whole bed to ourselves, or whether other people just sat on them with us like seats. We asked a friendly old lady, who told us 'Of course you get your own beds!' and helped us out with the confusing things such as bedlinen. A nice guy came and spoke to us, and also a lady in a nearby bed. The whole journey was 100% better than on the way to Moscow, and I'd definitely recommend getting a bed instead of a seat, since it was nowhere near as warm and the people were much friendlier! That's all I have to say about Moscow really... I'll end by saying that though I do like the city, it's a lot harder to get around and a lot easier to get by just speaking English there than in Petersburg, and all in all I'm really glad I chose to spend 9 months here rather than there. I'm sure I'll go back there one day, though!

As a final note - I finished knitting my scarf! I actually finished it ages ago, but I've only just thought to post about it on my blog now. It's so long and warm and lovely! Here it is:

As a final final note, I am going to Helsinki tomorrow to meet my dad. I'm really excited, but also a little nervous! It's the first time I've left Russia since I got here in September, and I'm flying with a pretty budget Russian airline. I'm sure all will be fine though, and expect another similarly lengthy post about Helsinki sometime next week!

Naomi :D

Maslenitsa & Smolny Cathedral... Twice!

2011-03-11T19:52:00.002+03:00

Yay, my blog is starting to become semi-regular now! It's a lot easier to think of things to write now I'm actually going places and doing things again, I suppose... I'll update on all the main events since my last post.

Firstly, I went to the Hermitage again last Friday, to show my recently-arrived friend Marion around. I'm really starting to make the most of my free entry to that place! It was quite fun, and though Marion wasn't too impressed by the shoddy displaying of the paintings (it's a bit thrown together), she had a nice time taking plenty of photos of the outside and looking at all the pretty ceilings. We walked around most of the galleries and admitted defeat when our feet started hurting. I'm sure I'll go back there at least once more before I go home!

As I said in my last post, Russians celebrate before lent with not just a Pancake Day, but a Pancake Week - or Maslenitsa (Масленица) in Russian. We decided to celebrate this on Sunday with a trip to one of the many festivals going on in the city parks. Unfortunately, we decided to go to the festival mentioned on the poster in school, and it was pretty rubbish... There was a bit of stuff going on in the park, but nothing like what we'd imagined, and I really wished we'd gone to the bigger park, where the celebrations were apparently very good. Oh well, perhaps I'll be in Russia over Maslenitsa another year... Here are some pictures from the park we went to, anyway - it was a very sunny day so I took a lot of nice pictures:

(Top: A very snowy, very sunny park; Top Left: Some traditional Maslenitsa ribbons in the park; Top Right: A wedding padlock on a bridge in the park; Middle: My attempt to write my name in the snow; Bottom Left: A very Soviet monument in the park; Bottom Right: Me standing on a bench to show how deep the snow is here!)

After our failed attempt at Maslenitsa, we didn't want to give up and go home or back to the city centre, so we decided to walk to Smolny Cathedral, which we realised was very near the park. Whilst on our way to the cathedral, we found a few nice government buildings, but I'm not 100% sure what any of them were... We also got told off by some guards for trying to walk down a road near the biggest government building... Oops. They probably realised we were foreign and didn't know any better - probably the only reason we weren't shot on sight ;) Anyway, here are a few pictures of the impressive government buildings and other sights en route:

(Top Left: Statue of Karl Marx; Top right: Statue of Friedrich Engels; Middle: Gorgeous, huge government building; Bottom Left: Close up of said building, complete with obligatory statue of Lenin; Bottom Right: Soviet-looking government building, complete with bird in-flight - what amazing timing!)

We eventually reached our destination: Smolny Cathedral. After having read a bit about the building last year for one of my modules at university, it was even bigger and grander that I'd anticipated. It's not really my style, but I can appreciate that it's an extremely beautiful building. It was designed by Rastrelli, the famous Italian architect who also designed the Hermitage (Winter Palace), Peterhof (a huge palace near Saint Petersburg I am still yet to visit), Catherine Palace (an even huger palace I also haven't visited yet - but I intend to go to both palaces when it's a bit warmer!), and plenty of other ridiculously elaborate buildings in Russia and a few other nearby countries. Here are some pictures of the outside of the Cathedral:

(All fairly self-explanatory, I hope!)

We decided that since we were already there, we may as well go inside and have a look. Annoyingly, I'd forgotten my student card after taking it out of my purse (for the first time ever) and putting it in my other handbag - grr! - so I didn't get in free, but it was only 150 Roubles (about £3) to get in anyway, so I didn't mind too much. The inside of the cathedral was not really what I was expecting at all. I realise that the whole style of the building differs from most other Russian cathedrals and is far more European, but I was expecting perhaps a few paintings on the walls or sculptures around the place... I think I've become far too accustomed to the interiors of Orthodox churches - when I get home all churches will seem boring in comparison! We did find out from reading information inside that the construction of the cathedral was abandoned for some time, and the interior was completed by a different architect, so perhaps it was initially supposed to be more elaborate anyway. The inside of the building has actually been transformed into a concert hall, as you can sort of see from my pictures:

(Top Left: The stage inside Smolny Cathedral; Top Right: The detailing at the top of the pillars; Bottom: Looking up into the main dome)

Once we had finished looking around the cathedral, we picked up a programme of concert listings. We saw that a good concert was on the very next day - 'Genius of Baroque: Bach, Handel & Vivaldi'. Expecting the tickets to be ridiculously expensive, we were all pleasantly surprised when Clara asked and discovered that the cheapest tickets were only 150 Roubles (about £3). We decided for that money it simply had to be worth it, and bought tickets to come back in the evening on Monday.

The next day we went to the concert, which was really rather good. Considering our tickets had been so cheap, our seats weren't bad at all, and it didn't really matter if we could see much or not anyway, since it was the music we'd gone to hear. I don't know a lot about classical music, but I did recognise a few songs, and it was nice to hear Baroque music within a Baroque building :) Here are a couple of pictures from the night, excuse my camera's inability to take photos as soon as it gets dark:

(Top: The view from our seats, before the concert started; Middle Left: The (electric) candles - very pretty; Middle Right: More candles; Bottom: A very blurry picture of the musicians)

A good evening was had by all, and I'm glad I went back for the concert. I might go to some more in the future, since they're so cheap!

Since Monday, I haven't been up to much apart from school. Oh, I have been knitting a scarf actually (my first go at knitting anything!) - I started a week ago today and I already have around 4ft of scarf done! It seems I'm quite a fast knitter... Especially when I'm procrastinating. So that'll be finished soon. I'll post a photo of it when it's done. We decided not to go to Novgorod this weekend, but we should be going next weekend instead. Expect a huge update about that trip, and also another huge one about my trip to Helsinki in two weeks' time :D How exciting!

Naomi

The last 6 weeks or so...

2011-03-02T16:01:00.002+03:00

My last post was all about my mum & her boyfriend Rod's visit to Russia. They left on January 20th, so I thought I should write a quick update about what I've been up to since then. I'm also getting a little better at regularly updating my blog - it's only 10 days since my last post! The last few weeks have mainly been taken up with going to school, which I started back at on the January 31st. I must say it's been pretty boring, but that's not school's fault or anything, merely my reluctance to do any work! Though I can't really remember most of what I've done outside of school, I will try to recount a few of the major events.

Firstly, my good friend Marion arrived in Petersburg. She studies Russian with me in Manchester, and is spending the whole of her second semester here (Yay!), so we have plenty of plans for fun travels around Russia. She seems to be enjoying herself here so far, so all is good! As of yet we've mainly just been looking around the city (we did A LOT of walking when she first arrived) and shopping, though we did try to go to the Leningrad Blockade Museum, and only failed because it was closed for 'technical reasons'... Here is a picture of said museum, which looked very pretty in the sun. We're going to go back another day, when it will hopefully be open!

Within the last few weeks, we have also started a tradition of going bowling after school on Tuesdays. This is great fun, (sort of) exercise, and is much cheaper than it is in England! You get a lane for an hour for £6, which isn't bad when split between 3 or 4 people. I like the idea of doing it per hour rather than per game as well, so if you play quickly you can get 2 or 3 games in. The bowling place is also right near school so it's really handy for going straight after lessons. A funny thing is that all the computers are in English there, so the attendants have to type our English names in how they think they're spelt. This results in some odd nicknames, for example my friend Helen somehow became 'Alan'. Here is a picture of our score computer from one week, as you can see I was losing pretty badly!

I also went with my flatmate Mike to buy tickets for a gig in April. One of our favourite bands (along with our friend David) - Mogwai - are coming to Petersburg and playing at a club about 20 minutes' walk from our flat. We felt we had to take up the opportunity and got tickets. I'm rather excited!

Another thing that's happened in the last few weeks is that I got a sudden urge to read Russian, and finally finished my book of Russian stories. I swiftly started one of the many other books I've bought since I got here, a fairly simple kids' book about a mouse. I haven't quite finished it yet, but when I do, I intend to start on the first Harry Potter book, which I bought a couple of weeks ago. It would be great to finish it before I go home, but we'll see... Also, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on here yet, but in Russia, Harry Potter is called 'Garry Potter'. It sounds like some sort of knock-off version, but really they just find it easier to say the name Harry as 'Garry'. This also means our ginger British prince is 'Prince Garry', and Hitler becomes 'Gitler', a rather entertaining fact for many non-Russians.

That's really all I can think to write right now, though if I recall any other recent happenings, I will add them to this post. A combination of laziness and forgetfulness means this is a relatively short post! It's been far too cold here to do a great deal, but now it's starting to warm up I will hopefully start doing more exciting things. This week is 'Pancake Week' in Russia - yes, they have a whole week rather than just a day! - and this weekend I'm planning to go to some of the celebrations for it. They take the whole thing pretty seriously here! I also currently have a provisional plan to visit the nearby city of Novgorod, so if I do end up going I'm sure I'll write about that. Over and out!

Naomi :)

Mother comes to the Motherland! (Long time no post, oops)

2011-02-20T16:43:00.003+03:00

So, as you can see, my New Year's Resolution completely failed. My promise to blog more often has been completely and utterly broken, as I've yet again fallen back into my lazy ways. Hopefully that will be resolved soon though, as me and my friend Marion are planning to spur each other on with our blogs...

This epically long post is all about my mum and her boyfriend's trip to Petersburg to visit me. They came from the 16th to the 20th of January and stayed just around the corner from my flat, in the Fifth Corner (Пятый угол) hotel, which wasn't bad for the money, and apparently served a very large and tasty breakfast.

Firstly, I went to meet them at the airport and we got a taxi back to the hotel, where my mum unpacked all of my amazing Christmas presents, which I swiftly opened. Amongst other things, I got lots of English chocolate (YUMMY!), a lovely Hello Kitty make up bag, a Hello Kitty mug, some Smirnoff vodka with a glass (a bit of a joke there), some nice socks, a sparkly belt, some very nice nail varnishes, and plenty more things I can't remember right now :) Quite a haul I think you'll agree! After all the unpacking and present-giving was over, we made our way to my flat so mum & Rod could meet Rosa, my landlady. Upon arrival, the traditional Russian aggressive hospitality was in full flow, and soon we had confectioneries coming out of our ears and were full of tea and champagne. I was chief translator, and was surprised that we managed to have a fairly in-depth conversation about all sorts of things together, and I think I only had to look in the dictionary once or twice the whole time! A lovely evening was had by all, and we got a fairly early night in preparation for the first proper touristy day...

On the first day, I decided to show my mum & Rod Nevsky Prospect, the main avenue in the centre of Saint Petersburg, which is very famous within Russian literature and culture as the hub of activity in the city. It was a bit cold and sleety, but nevertheless we marched on down Nevsky as I pointed out all of the places of interest. We went up to the Church on Spilled Blood (or whatever it's called - it has a longer, more complicated name I can never remember) and my mum asked what it was like inside. I replied saying I'd never actually been in, so my mum suggested we go inside. Inside it's absolutely stunning, perhaps even more so than on the outside... The walls were completely covered in paintings, the domes were all painted on the inside as well, and there was a lovely marble floor in the centre. There was also a small interesting exhibition about the restoration of the church, which was in a pretty bad state during most of the Soviet period. Here are some pictures of the church, inside and out:

(Top: Lots of paintings inside the Church on Spilled Blood; Bottom Left: The altar-y section in the church; Bottom Right: Me and my mum outside, looking a little chilly!)

After our trip to the church, we moved on to the Russian Museum. It's actually one of the less-frequented tourist places in Petersburg, as all of the art is Russian and foreigners don't generally know many Russian artists. This is a great shame, because it really is a lovely museum, featuring some truly underrated (at least internationally, anyway) Russian artists. It's also interesting as they have a section with a lot of Soviet art and portraits of Lenin and Stalin, which I find surprisingly eerie. My mum and Rod enjoyed the museum, even though they didn't recognise any of the paintings, and we also had a nice sit down in the museum cafe. Here are some pictures (stolen from my mum) of our museum trip:

(Top: Rod doing an impression of Pushkin, a popular photo pose with this statue; Bottom: The grand entrance inside the Russian Museum)

Despite already having walked several miles on the first day, we decided it was too early to call it a day and ventured to the massive city centre shopping centre, Galeria. Here we browsed all the shops and mum & Rod marvelled at the novelty of being able to smoke in Costa Coffee. After a couple of hours of shopping, our feet were too tired and Rod was too bored, so we made our way back to the hotel for dinner. The problem with eating out when mum & Rod were here was that I barely know any restaurants in the city. As a poor student, I always cook at home or eat in cheap and easy cafe-style places, so when asked where we should go for dinner, I didn't really have an answer! This meant we ate in the restaurant under the hotel a couple of times, but that was okay because it was a very nice restaurant with good food. Plus, we could wear normal shoes as you didn't need to go outside to reach it from the hotel. We ate there that evening and had a few drinks in the hotel room whilst my mum uploaded all of her photos on to Facebook (the wonder of technology!). I then walked home to get plenty of rest for our next touristy day.

We met up bright and early the next morning to walk through the sleet to the Hermitage. After my mum & Rod were so taken aback by the grand scale and decorativeness of the Russian Museum the day before, I don't think they were quite prepared for the Hermitage to just completely blow it out of the water... As we walked into Palace Square, there were several "Ooh"s and "Ahh"s at the sight of the Winter Palace, and we went inside. Despite the fact I studied Art History at university for a year, my mum knows a lot more about European art than I do, so I was sure she would love the Hermitage. I was not wrong, and she got rather excited upon seeing the sheer number of Picassos, Da Vincis, Mattisses and Monets on display. Since I forgot we should have bought a photo-taking pass at the beginning, we weren't really allowed to take photos inside the museum... This didn't stop my mum, though, who turned the situation into a good opportunity for some covert spy-style photo taking. We spent a good few hours exploring the museum, and I think we managed to see a good part of the full collection on show, though you never really know with the Hermitage as I always seem to discover new sections every time I visit! We had lunch inside the museum and browsed the gift shops, then went back out into the cold. Here are some pictures of our Hermitage visit:

(Top: Mum & Rod in front of the Hermitage; Middle Left: General Staff Building on Palace Square; Middle Right: Alexander's Column in Palace Square; Middle: One of the main staircases in the Hermitage; Bottom: Plaque in the Hermitage commemorating the storming of the Winter Palace during the October Russian revolution in 1917)

It was quite late when we got out of the Hermitage, so instead of going somewhere else, I just took mum & Rod on a walk around a couple of the other nearby sights. We went and saw the statue of the Bronze Horseman and St Isaac's Cathedral, then walked back towards Nevsky. It was still a little early to go back to the hotel, so we went into Gostiny Dvor, a huge department store-style building, where my mum decided she had to buy a Russian doll, then proceeded to spend what felt like hours trying to find the perfect one... Eventually she found one which met her inexplicably high standards and bought it :P She also got a set of really cute Russian doll salt & pepper pots, which I hadn't ever seen before. We then decided it was time to call it a day and headed back to the hotel for the evening.

For their last full day in Petersburg, I decided to take mum & Rod to the Cruiser Aurora, a Russian naval Cruiser moored on the river which now serves as a museum. It is the longest serving Russian naval ship ever, and played a key part in the October revolution, so I had wanted to visit it for ages, but hadn't. Rod is very interested in ships so I thought it would make up for dragging him around all the shops a couple of days earlier... It did not disappoint, and it was interesting looking around the ship and all the memorabilia inside. I really want to go back again when it's warm and sunny, to get some non-cloudy pictures. Here are some pictures from the Aurora:

(Top Left: The Cruiser Aurora; Top Right: Mast on Aurora; Bottom: Life ring featuring the name of the ship)

We then continued the naval theme and walked from the Aurora to the Naval Museum, passing by the Peter and Paul fortress. I still am yet to visit the fortress, but I really want to. I think it would probably be better to go when it's a bit warmer and sunnier, though... We then went into the Naval Museum, which was housed inside the beautiful old Stock Exchange building. The museum itself was pretty interesting, although there were hardly any signs at all in English so it was hard to tell what a lot of the things were in detail. A lot of the stuff was fairly self explanatory though, and there were lots of cool Soviet flags and banners dotted around. I hope someone pumps some money into the museum at some point, because I think it has the potential to be really good... It just needs some English signs and a lick of paint, I think.

After this we weren't sure what to do as it was too early to go back to the hotel. We decided to take a visit to Auchan, the supermarket, as me and my mum absolutely love browsing the supermarket at home (as sad as that sounds!) and foreign supermarkets are always interesting for tourists! Mum & Rod bought a surprising amount of stuff (they had plenty of room in the suitcase from where my Xmas presents had been!) and it was fun showing them all of the random products on offer here. We then popped back to my flat as it was on the way back to the hotel, and quickly had a cup of tea and a chat with Rosa. We ate in the hotel restaurant again on this night, which was yet again very tasty.

On the final day of their trip, we decided to stay fairly near the hotel as the taxi to the airport was booked for 2pm. We just had a little walk around the nearby area, including a shopping centre, and had a coffee, and then it was time to go already. I went with mum & Rod to the airport, where we had lunch in Costa Coffee before saying goodbye. It felt like their stay went so quickly, but it was really so lovely having them here and showing them the city I so love living in and I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as I did. I hope now it makes more sense to them why I find Russia so interesting!

I'm wondering if this post could be a contender for my longest so far, so I think I'm going to stop here! I have quite a lot else to update on since my mum & Rod's visit, but I think I'll save that for another (not so distant!) day. Time to go and do some homework!

Christmas and everything that followed...

2011-01-06T15:47:00.000+03:00

Firstly, in case you didn't notice, this is the second post today - yes, after being so lazy for a month I'm making two in one day! - therefore, if you really want to know everything I've been up to, I recommend you read the post below first. Oh and sorry for the sheer length of this post. That is all.

A lot of people found my decision to stay in Russia during the Christmas period surprising, but I'm really glad I did. Luckily a few of the people I've met here were also planning to stay, so we got to be all creative and make our own Christmas from scratch. As I said in the previous post, Russians don't celebrate anything at all on the 25th of December... It was quite a weird feeling to see people going about their daily business on Christmas Day! I actually really enjoyed preparing for Christmas, and I think we all did really well considering it was all of our first time doing it all ourselves, and not just sitting back as our parents/grandparents prepared it all for us...

Our first Christmassy get-together was on Christmas Eve, when we all went to my friend Luka's flat for food, drinks and Articulate (an awesome word game, which I must buy when I get home). It was a lovely evening, and highlights included the phrase "I can't believe it's Christmas already" being said numerous times, an absolutely DELICIOUS cake and several different people spilling several different drinks for no obvious reason. It was a lovely start to our Christmas celebrations, and I suppose it was when it finally hit me that I was going to be spending Christmas Day in Russia. Here are some pictures to document the EVEnt (see what I did there?):

(Top Left: Lovely people in Luka's kitchen; Top Right: Tipsily-taken photo of Christmas lights on the way home, included to keep the pattern of photos I like on here; Bottom: Destroyed cake - it was so delicious it sent us all into an animalistic rage)

I got back from the Christmas Eve party fairly early, luckily early enough to finish my personal preparations for Christmas Day - a chocolate log and crackers. I iced the log and added the final touches to my crackers and got an early night, knowing when I woke up it'd be CHRISTMAS! Eee!

Oh, and here are some pictures of the crackers I made since I can't think of another place to put them in this post:

(Everyone got a balloon, toy, sweets, hat and a joke - I tried to make them as authentic as possible!)

I woke up, and it was CHRISTMAS! Eee! I was greeted by a lovely unexpected present from my amazing Russian landlady Rosa, who had placed it under our miniature Christmas tree on the kitchen table. She got me a nice Nivea toiletry bag with yummy-smelling toiletries inside :) After this lovely start to the day, I proceeded to get ready and go to Pippa, Seb and George's flat for Christmassy fun times. Presents, crackers and chocolate log in hands, I trekked across the city, wondering if anyone even knew t was (our) Christmas Day here... The Band Aid song springs to mind ;)

All systems were go when I arrived at the flat - George and Pippa were being all Ready Steady Cook with military precision. I was impressed. Seb arrived shortly after and wowed everyone with his knowledge of carrot shapes - "So, you want them Julienned?" Luka also arrived, and our Christmas fivesome was complete. After a few drinks and a little cooking, we sat down for present-giving time. Pippa gave me an amazing nautical scarf she had knitted and a vintage Soviet sailor badge :D I also got a tasty chocolate Santa from Luka. Here are some pictures of the present-giving:

(Top Left: Russian Christmas tree!; Top Right: My awesome new scarf, hand-made by Pippa; Bottom: Pippa with her present from me - a Cheburashka (Soviet cartoon she likes) cushion)

The next notable event of the day was of course Christmas dinner! I don't really know what else to say about it other than the fact it was extremely tasty and we were all very full afterwards. Here are some pictures to visually describe the food timeline:

(I don't think I need to describe the pictures - I hope they speak for themselves, and show why we were all so full!)

So yes, that was my Christmas Day. It was really fun and I'm glad I stayed in Russia for it, because I suppose I'll remember it forever as my first Russian Christmas :)

Between Christmas and New Year I did precisely nothing. A few days were spent feeling very full and not really needing to eat anything, then a few days were spent sitting around watching films and playing computer games, and then it was New Year's Eve already. Russians go absolutely nuts for New Year's Eve - they have a tree, give presents, eat loads of food and have Дед Мороз (Grandfather Frost - their version of Father Christmas). It's very similar to English Christmas only on a different day.

We all celebrated New Year's Eve with a party at our friend Nick's house. I think at one point we'd intended to go out to a bar afterwards, but in the end we couldn't really be bothered. We had lots of drinks, tasty food (cooked by Nick's girlfriend, who is from Kyrgyzstan) and several games of Uno - a pleasant evening was had. Here are some pictures from NYE:

(Top Left: Remnants of home-made Russian salad; Top Right: Medvedev's televised New Year speech - kind of like the Queen's speech at home; Bottom: Me and Pippa shortly after Midnight)

Like the few days after Christmas, I didn't do a lot following New Year's Eve. I got invited into my landlady's flat several times to help eat all of the leftovers from their celebrations, including several salads which oddly all seemed to contain lethal amounts of garlic... I only ventured out of the house again on Tuesday, when me and Pippa went for a nice (albeit chilly) walk around the city. I'll end this HUGE post with a few pictures from said walk:

(Top Left: Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood; Top Right: Frozen Neva; Bottom: View of the Hermitage across the frozen Neva)

I'd like to say congratulations to anyone who managed to reach the bottom of this post without falling asleep, I think it must be my record longest post... Oh well, I've got it all out of the way now! I'm going to try and update at least once a week now, to make my posts a bit shorter and more concise :P

Once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Naomi

Pre-Christmas epic post...

2011-01-06T14:55:00.000+03:00

Hello! I've been so lazy recently, and I figured I may as well make the New Year's resolution to write in my blog more, so here goes. Firstly I plan to update you all on everything that happened in the run up to Christmas, in this post. Then I intend to write another epic post all about Christmas Day and everything that's followed it...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! if I haven't already said it to you. It's a bit late now but hey, better late than never.

I feel I should mention now that Russians don't celebrate Christmas as we do. They do have a Christmas, but it's on January 6th/7th rather than December 25th. That said, nobody actually celebrates that Christmas apart from very religious people, so their main celebration is New Year. Because of this, we had to invent our own Christmas from scratch for the 25th :D

The run up to Christmas was mainly filled with school. Less and less people started coming in the nearer it got to the holidays, but it wasn't too bad. A few lessons were filled with the watching of lovely Russian films, so I was never particularly bored. One of the films we got to watch was Ирония Судьбы - Продолжение (The Irony of Fate 2) which was actually lovely, and sort of like the Russian version of Love Actually or something. A lot of Russians hate it because it pretty much bastardises the original from the 70s, which is a Russian New Year classic - they show it on several channels at once on New Year's Eve here. Anyway, I thoroughly recommend the sequel, though maybe watch the first one beforehand if you can, as it's great in its own way. A week before the end of term, we all had to take tests to check we'd actually learnt something. They weren't too bad, and I'm happy with how I did, though I've only got the marks back for 2/5 tests so far, so it could all go wrong still...

Also at school, we had a Christmas party. It was proper primary school-style, with each class having to dress up and give a performance. It was really fun, and my class performed a song we wrote to the tune of '12 Days of Christmas', only we changed it to '12 Days of Russia' and included lots of different things we've experienced in Russia. It was lovely to see what the other classes had done, which included a modern version of the Nativity, acting out the teachers getting drunk, and performing a cartoon all the classes had watched as a play. Everyone did amazingly well, and it was especially nice to get everyone together since some people aren't coming back next term :(

I didn't do a huge amount of sightseeing between my last post and Christmas. I'm mainly holding back on sightseeing because my mum and her boyfriend are arriving at the end of next week so I'll go to lots of places with them. One thing I did do though was go to an awesome exhibition of digital art (Yota Space Festival) at an abandoned department store, with my friend Flick. The department store was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, which we discovered when we tried to get lunch nearby beforehand... After 10 minutes or so of wandering aimlessly in very strong, very cold winds, we finally found a Чайная Ложка (Tea Spoon - a Russian pancake chain) and settled down for lunch. It was really SO cold that day, I think it must be the coldest I've felt since I got here! Despite this, we braved the outside once again and walked to the department store. What greeted us was a wondrous world of trippy art installations in pitch black rooms, accompanied with good music and (unfortunately) hordes of Russians. We had a nice time wandering round, and also watched a lecture by an English DJ cum artist called Matt Black (nope, we'd never heard of him either). The lecture was a little long and not particularly interesting, but it was fun and probably useful to listen to him speak in English followed by a direct Russian translation of what he said. The exhibition was only temporary, so I'm really glad I went, as it really was an awesome experience.

Here are some photos I took there - please bear in mind my camera seems to hate taking photos in the dark:

(Top: Mesmerising light sticks which changed colour, moved and made noises as you walked near them; Middle: Gorgeous red-lit staircase; Bottom: Lecture by Matt Black - there were several different lectures each day)

The only other really notable thing I can remember from before Christmas was the super Christmas Market on Nevsky. It was really cool wandering round the stalls and browsing Christmassy/New Yeary things, souvenirs, presents, hats and plenty more. Here are some pictures from the market, because I don't really know what else to say about it other than the fact it was totally cute and really got me in the mood for Christmas:

(Top Left: Christmas Market; Top Right: Cute teddy made of lights at the Christmas Market; Bottom: Me in my new hat I got at the Christmas Market - Not real fur!)

I think I'll end this post here, and start on the next epic - Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and everything since!

Naomi :)

Apologies...

2010-12-12T20:16:00.002+03:00

I'd just like to apologise for my laziness with my blog lately. I am still alive and well, and intend to update it again as soon as I can be bothered. Argh!

Oops, I haven't updated this in yonks...

2010-12-03T22:38:00.000+03:00

Oh god! I did it again... Weeks without updating. I do it every time I post, and every time I do it I say I'll update more often in future. Oops.

Firstly, I have exciting news - I have a job! Yes, a Russian job! How exciting. Well, not that exciting, it's only teaching English, but it should be fun. My first class is on Monday at the biggest beer brewery in the whole of Russia, Baltika. The brand is owned by Carlsberg and pretty much has a monopoly on beer sales here, so it's pretty cool - shame I don't like beer though! I wasn't planning on getting a job here, but then I thought about how much time I waste doing nothing, and it'd be nice to have some extra cash, so I thought I may as well use my time a bit more productively. It's good money as well... We'll see how it goes.

I also went to the Hermitage again since my last update. It was nice to see some of the things I didn't see the last time I visited, such as Mattisse's 'Danse', 'Madonna Litta' by Leonardo da Vinci, and the stunning moving peacock clock made out of gold. I'm sure it won't be my last trip there, as there is still so much to see (and it's free!)... I think this is the only cultural thing I've done in the last few weeks, which is a little embarrassing, though I do still have plenty of time for sightseeing, especially when my parents come and visit! My mum has actually booked her trip here, she arrives on the 16th of January with her boyfriend - I'm so excited! It'll be so cool to show my mum the city I absolutely adore, and I'm also looking forward to English treats brought from home :D

I'm racking my brains trying to think of all the stuff I've done since my last update... This is the main reason I need to update more - my memory is terrible. It feels like I've mainly been shopping, basically. An amazing new shopping centre has opened 15 minutes walk from my house. It took 3 years to build and opened a couple of weeks ago, so the locals seem fairly excited about it and I'm quite happy to get in on the fun too. It's absolutely massive and has tons of new shops, including a few more English ones - yay! I've been three times already, oops.

I've had a few nights out recently, as well, though none were particularly crazy... Which is probably for the best! I really do enjoy Russian bars and clubs, even if they are a little smoky. Today I tried my first glass of 'fruity beer', and it was rather delicious. I really dislike beer usually, but the fruit quite overpowers the taste of the beer. I tried the cherry and apple ones today, but intend to try the rest of the wide range of flavours available...

I suppose the only other notable thing I need to mention is that the weather has changed dramatically since my last post... Nowadays, -16 is a normal daytime temperature. Anything above this is a great bonus! So anyone in England moaning about the cold, please feel for me before you do so. The snow here is great fun, though I might not be saying that anymore if I slip over, something I'm really scared of doing. It's so dry and flaky, it feels fake! Then again, I've never really been out in proper snow - Plymouth always seems to miss out - maybe this is what it's always like!

This has actually proved to be a much shorter post than I was expecting it to be... Perhaps it's because I'm tired and want to go to bed, or perhaps it's because I have a terrible memory and can't actually think of anything else to talk about, I don't know! I'm sure I'll think of something I've missed - I really feel like I've done more than the above in the last few weeks... Anyway, I'll end with some pictures of the snow I've taken around the city :)

(Left: An avenue of trees in Park Pobedy; Right: A ferris wheel I thought looked cool at Park Pobedy)

(Me in Park Pobedy - that's a frozen lake behind me!)

(An example of the epically big icicles one can find here... People get killed by them every year apparently)

Okay, that's all! Naomi :)

Только в России...

2010-11-16T17:14:00.001+03:00

So... Time to update the blog! I have a fair amount to talk about since my last update, so I hope you're sitting comfortably :P Just so you - my loyal readers - know, the title means 'only in Russia', a phrase I'm finding myself saying with increasing frequency...

Firstly, we went to our landlady (Roza)'s dacha. All Russians have some interesting obsession with living in the countryside, but also like the convenience of the city. This means almost every middle-aged person has both a city flat and a dacha, which they often build themselves from scratch or in kit form. I first discovered this strange country house phenomenon last year when I was in Russia and visited a dacha, which was extremely confusing since my knowledge of Russian was limited at best. I'm not sure if it's just a Russian tradition or what, perhaps other countries also partake in the two-houses-no-matter-how-poor-you-are craze. I dread to think how much petrol is used by Russians just going to their dachas (usually done several times a week, and they can be up to an hour or so from the city), but I expect it's a lot. This is Russia, though, and they seem to still believe their resources are limitless. Roza's dacha has been built from scratch by her husband, Vanya, who is a bit of a Jack of all trades... It has so far taken them ten years, and it seems likely at this rate that they'll still be adding to it in another ten years. It's definitely still a 'work in progress', and they actually live in a small wagon when they're there. I admire their determination in building their dream house, but it does seem a little excessive.

So we left for the dacha on Wednesday morning, after Roza had told us the traffic would be better during the week so skiving school was a good plan. A 40-minute-ish drive later and we arrived at their 'village'... The first thing that struck me (and Maddy, too) was how strange all the houses looked. They really looked like they'd popped straight out of the computer game 'The Sims' - all very strange designs, many covered in plastic fascias as though they were bought flat-pack in Ikea or something. I loved it, and decided I'd enjoy building the life-size plastic wendyhouse of my dreams if I had the chance. After stopping off at the local supermarket to buy some privisions, including a big yummy cake, Roza drove us to her house. It was in a great location, right near the coast with a nice view of the Gulf of Finland (though it was extremely misty on the day so we couldn't see very far), and I was impressed :) We sat and had tea and cake in the wagon, along with Roza's pet terrapin, who I inadvertently scared with my camera flash, before looking around the half-built dacha then going for a walk around the village. Roza is extremely similar to me in a couple of ways. The first way is our shared love of shopping (she calls me шопаголик 2 - shopaholic 2, her being number one), and the second is the fact we're both rather nosy. Wandering round the village examining everyone's houses was lovely, and Roza's commentary was entertaining - "This is a very old house - take a picture!", "A very rich old lady lives here, all on her own!", "Look at this stream, this is where the poo goes into the sea... The Finnish people don't like it," were some typical examples.

A good time was had by all, and we headed back to the city in the afternoon after a nice day of fresh air in the country. Here are some pictures to accompany my dacha story:

(Top Left: Roza's dacha; Top Right: The quality toilet facilities on offer at said dacha; Bottom: A very misty view out to the Gulf of Finland.)

The next notable event of recent days was going out on Friday night. Everyone decided to go on a huge school night out to Club Griboedov, which was handy as I can see it from my bedroom window, it's extraordinarily close, though before Friday I'd never actually been there. We started with drinks in Fidel, where I had a couple of 'cocktail Natasha's, my usual drink in Fidel. I'm not 100% sure what's in them, but they definitely contain a lot of vodka and some grenadine, and they're pretty tasty. We met a couple of German tourists in the bar and chatted to them, and they joined us for the evening. They were pretty fun guys, and had just arrived in Petersburg for the first time ever that day, so we were keen to show them a good time. We moved on to Barbara for one drink, then ran for the last metro to the club. We literally did run, by the way, which was hilarious and embarrassing, but we made it on to the last train of the night with 4 minutes to spare. The club wasn't bad, it's housed in a nuclear bomb shelter which is underground, but has an upstairs terrace and glass-walled bar. It was actually the coolest place I've been to since I got here, though it was a little pricey. I treated myself to a 'white Russian' cocktail even though it was a bit expensive, as it was the first time I'd actually seen one for sale in Russia, and it's my favourite cocktail back home... I had a good night all in all, and there were many drunken foreigners knocking about the club, so much so that I can't even remember overhearing any conversations in Russian - only English. I was yet again hungover on Saturday, even though I've quit the horrible pikey cocktails-in-cans, opting for the more traditional drink of vodka. My body couldn't even handle that! I am a rubbish drinker.

I didn't do a lot over the weekend, only a big shop in Auchan (still my favourite supermarket) and watched a few films. I watched 'Stalker', a Russian classic by Andrei Tarkovsky, though I think it needs another watch as it made little to no sense. Then again, I think that was supposed to be the point. Hmm. Yesterday I went to Mega (huge shopping mall) once again, with my friends Pippa and George, though managed to refrain from buying anything. I do need to go back later in the week to buy myself some new jeans, though, as my current pairs are getting very worn out. Bah. We found something extremely cool at Mega - a huge матрёшка (Russian doll) made of Lego, and here is a picture of me next to it:

Anyway, I apologise as always for the lengthy blog post... I don't even know who reads this anymore! It's sort of like a diary, though, it'll be nice to read over it again myself when I've forgotten bits of my year abroad!

Naomi :)

"This is Russia, not Indonesia!"

2010-11-08T21:11:00.003+03:00

So, not a huge amount has happened since my last post... Reading week went well, I had a nice week of rest and recuperation speckled with entertaining moments.

On Wednesday me and Pippa decided to go for a walk around the islands of Petersburg, covering two, Vasilevsky and Petrogradsky. Vasilevsky is where Pippa lives and is quite pretty, and Petrogradsky is where Zenit (one of Petersburg's main football teams) plays their matches. Petrogradsky was actually very posh and had some beautiful buildings and very expensive shops. Here are a couple of snaps from our jaunt:

(Top left: FC Zenit stadium; Top right: A pretty building on Petrograsky Island; Bottom: An entertaining sign in a fast food restaurant, listing mainly N. American cities in Cyrillic.)

On Friday, my friends George and Seb hosted a party, which was pleasant. We had two visiting guests, Tom (from Manchester) and Adam (from my uni but studying in Moscow), so it was nice catching up with them. The party moved on to our friend Nick's flat, which is 2 minutes from my flat, via a lovely Russian gypsy cab... This trip was eventful as at one point the poor driver, who appeared to speak no English, actually got out to check his tyres for punctures. Four drunken English students + one poor conked out Lada's back seat = recipe for disaster. Luckily, we all got to Nick's flat alive, though a few card games later I was starting to feel pretty tired and went home. It was a nice night, though I wasn't quite drunk enough to deserve the hellish hangover I received on Saturday :( I've resolved to quit drinking (yes, in Russia!) for the time being... Or maybe I should just quit the cheapy 9% 'cocktails' made up of unknown alcohols I insist on drinking, and stick to the more traditional beverages. We'll see.

On Sunday, me and Pippa decided to check out this flea market Pippa had read about on the internet. It was quite far from the centre in an area neither of us had previously visited, so we were a little worried about what we'd find there. The website Pippa had found directions from appeared to be from the age of dial up, so we were dubious as to whether the market even existed anymore... Luckily, it did, and our Удельная adventure began! It was basically one huge car boot sale, only with no cars, just tarpaulins laid on the ground... Cue a few hours of browsing amongst the market, which stretched as far as the eye could see in a field that made Glastonbury look well kept. Me and Pippa were pleasantly surprised at how friendly all the salesmen and women were, even when they realised we were foreign. It felt like we'd left the ever-xenophobic Russia far behind! We were brought back down to earth when we saw the sheer amount of scary 'military goods' on sale, such as knives, bullets, rusty army helmets - some with bullet holes - and grenades (no such thing as Health & Safety here!). All in all it was a great trip, even though all I bought was a pair of socks, and was a chance to speak to some lovely people... I intend to buy more next time, as we've decided to visit as often as possible, hopefully every weekend :)

I would have added some pictures of the flea market to this post, but I didn't actually take any. I was a bit scared that taking pictures of people's items might have seemed a little rude... I'll take some distance shots next time we go and upload them so you get more of an idea of what the market's like!

The aforementioned market seemed even better after we visited the tourist market near Nevsky Prospect later that same day... It was a stark contrast, as most people at the tourist market spoke English to us and were really on the hard sell. I didn't like it at all! Though it seems to be one of the better places to go to buy souvenirs, and I think if they'd realised we spoke some Russian the prices may have reduced quite drastically. Oh well, I don't need to buy any souvenirs for at least another 6 months, so I'll worry about it nearer to the time! Oh and the quote which forms the title of this post is some market stall owner's reponse when we questioned the extortionate prices of his watches...

Anyway, this is a rather long blog post considering I said I didn't have much to talk about, so I'll end it here! Also, I'm supposed to be going to my landlady's dacha (country house) on Wednesday, so hopefully I'll have lots of fun to report and nice pictures to share from there! Here are a couple more pictures from the last few days:

(Left: Amazingly named English pub near my house; Right: These snowflakes were big enough to be picked up by my camera! Winter's a-coming!)

Naomi :)

Reading week has commenced! Huzzah.

2010-11-02T16:05:00.000+03:00

As the title suggests, it is currently reading week :D A time to get some much-needed rest, and maybe do some cultural activities too. Oh, and maybe a little work. It's been so long since my last post that I can't really remember everything that's happened. I'd list key events like I did in my last post, but nothing has been particularly of note. It's not been a bad week, just a pretty regular one... Therefore, I think I'll keep this post short and sweet and just say this...

...I bought a new camera! Yay! This one is a lot more 'portable' than my old one, being around a third of the size, so I'll be taking a lot more pictures from now on. I got a total bargain, a 14MP 5x optical zoom Fujifilm for around £68, plus the sales assistant was amazing. He got shoved towards us in the shop by his fellow employees, presumably because he was the only one who spoke intelligible English... He was lovely and helpful and told me and Pippa we were beautiful and thanked us for being so smiley. It's been so nice not having to lug my huge old camera around, and it means I can carry it around with me 24/7, resulting in more 'snapshot'-style photos. I haven't actually had much to take pictures of since I bought it, but here are a couple of the ones I have taken:

(Top left: What was left of the snow mentioned in my last post once I woke up; Top right: Plaque near my house informing passers-by that Lenin once lived there; Bottom: Vodka aisle at the local supermarket... Yes, it's a lot of vodka.)

My plans for reading week are as follows: Russian Museum, Alexandr Nevsky cathedral/cemetery, perhaps visit some other museum-y type things, take lots of photos, go to a party or two and sleep a lot. I'd like to be able to say I had more adventurous plans, but I'm here for 9 months and do intend to do lots of travelling, just not quite yet. There's still so much in Peter I haven't yet explored!

I'll update this again soon, hopefully with more interesting/exciting news...

Naomi :)

Зимние неба... Winter Skies...

2010-10-22T23:13:00.001+04:00

Sorry for yet again having neglected my blog for over a week... I've been a very bad blogger recently. To make up for this, have three lovely pictures of the view from my window, with varying colours of sky.

Apparently I should stop taking quite so many photos out of my window. I haven't taken my camera out of the flat this week, though, so it's all I can offer.

As an update on my previous post, I did go to the comic exhibition. It was good, and free, and featured lots of artists from Scandinavian/European countries, which was interesting. It was actually in the museum of Anna Akhmatova, a famous female Soviet poet. The museum also contained the actual apartment she lived in, which we also visited. I liked how they'd set up the museum, it was a bit more contemporary than the Hermitage, and it was interesting to see an (somewhat) untouched Soviet apartment. We followed up our museum visit with a quick trip to Testo Mesto, an awesome chain of pie shops in St Petersburg. They sell lots of different sweet & savoury pies and you get unlimited juice, and it's rather cheap. I've been there three times already, as their pies are delicious :D

Friday saw the first snow of Winter in Petersburg! It was quite exciting at first because I hardly ever get to see snow in England. It got a little annoying after a while, though, when it's blowing horizontally at your face... And it didn't settle at all. We had a little more snow on Saturday morning, but since then it hasn't snowed until today (Friday). The snow today was heavier and the ground was a lot drier, but it only seems to have settled on the buildings and cars. Guess I'll still have to wait for the blanket of snow I envisaged Petersburg being covered with...

On Saturday my friends George and Seb had a flat party. It wasn't too crazy or anything, but it was nice and fun and their neighbours didn't seem to mind, which is always good. It was a pleasant evening, and I didn't drink too much like I did at the other party I went to before... On Sunday I went to the gig I mentioned in my last post, to see This Will Destroy You. The club the gig was in was really cool, my kind of place in terms of decor and clientele. The support band were Russian, and they were really cool. The main band who I've wanted to see for ages lived up to expectations, and I really enjoyed myself. It was quite hard to see the band, though, as the stage was very small! Next time I'll have to get there earlier to stand nearer the front. Something that was also cool was that the band hung around after the gig. I know they aren't really that famous, but it was really nice to have a little chat with them (I was too nervous to say any more) and to get my gig ticket signed. They're coming back to St Petersburg in the Spring, so I'll probably go and see them again then :)

This Will Destroy You. Not my picture, but I thought I'd break up the waffle with it :P

Monday saw yet another visit to Mega, the huge out-of-town shopping mall, for me and Pippa. I managed to get some amazing bargains in the sales and in Ашан (Auchan - supermarket mentioned in previous post)... I got a nice coat I'd actually tried on and was tempted to buy in England for half the price here at a reasonable £14 in New Look... I also got a pair of lovely brown brogue-style shoes there for a tenner. In Ашан (Auchan) I managed to find a lovely pink flowery pair of wellies for a mere £5! Great for the wet/snowy Winter ahead!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were good in terms of school... Some schoolkids have come over from England to study Russian at the other Benedict School location, so some of our lecturers had to adjust their timetables with us. This meant I started at 12pm three days in a row! Three lie-ins! Ace.

As for Thursday, well I left the flat at 11am and didn't return home until 6pm on Friday (today)... We (me, Pippa and George) decided to go for a drink in Дача (Datcha), our favourite watering hole, after school. After 'a drink' turned into 'a few', we decided to leave to find our friend Seb, who was in another bar. As we were getting up to leave, three Russian guys who had been sitting next to us for a while stopped us and started speaking to us in English. They seemed pretty cool so we decided to stay and chat with them for a bit. They were getting increasingly drunk and exponentially funnier, so when we left to meet Seb for the second time, we took them with us. We spent a long time trying to find the bar Seb was in, and eventually gave up. One of the Russian guys kept going on about doing his washing, and we were really confused and just assumed he was drunk and crazy, but it turned out he was taking us to a bar which is also a laundrette. It was super cool, really nice decor and you could do your washing whilst you have a drink! I intend to go back some other time... We stayed for a while and chatted to a large group of Finnish students here on holiday, before leaving and finding Seb outside. He suggested we go back to Дача/Datcha, so we did. En route, me and Pippa ran into two Russian girls and a guy, who stopped us and started speaking English to us! For some reason all Russian people wanted to be our friends last night... They thought we were cool and asked if we liked vodka, to which we replied "DA!", and they then produced a bottle from a bag. We drank the whole thing with them on the street within a matter of minutes, and went to Дача/Datcha as planned, with our two new groups of Russian friends. The night wound down a bit after that, and we went to George & Seb's flat to sleep (me and Pippa didn't fancy our chances walking home alone so late). This morning we had a very tasty breakfast of crisp sandwiches, accompanied by watching Jeremy Kyle online. All in all a good way to get over the night before! We went to SPB bar after our non-skiving fellow students had finished school, but I didn't drink any alcohol... And so was my 36-ish hour adventure, with a few new Russian friends made :D

Sorry for the length of this post! I promise I'll start updating more regularly, with shorter posts...

Naomi :)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

2010-10-13T22:22:00.002+04:00

...But I do apologise for my absence from blogging. There's no excuse other than the fact I am a very lazy person, haha. Because of this great absence, I have absolutely loads to write about, so I apologise in advance for the length of this post, which will inevitably be huge.

I can't really remember as far back as my last post, so I'm not even sure of everything I need to update about! Therefore I will just stick to the major events rather than describing everything I've done in great detail.

The first major event was the birthday of my flatmate Mike, who turned 21 on October 5th. We celebrated the occasion by going out to our usual haunts, including the new bar we discovered, Barbara. Here they do a lovely alcoholic Slush Puppie-style drink called a Barbarita, which tastes of tropical fruits and is nice and cold and refreshing. This drink is only 50 Rubles, around £1, which also helps... Everyone had a lovely night, and a particular highlight was dancing to the YMCA with some Russian strangers. Mike got suitably drunk considering it was his 21st, so I think we succeeded on that part. Since I've had complaints (not naming any names) about the lack of photos on my blog, here is a picture of me from the night:

In the above photo (taken by my lovely flatmate Maddy), I am holding the aforementioned Barbarita drink.

Another main event from the past few weeks was my visit to Kunstkamera with Pippa. Kunstkamera was the first museum to be built in Petersburg, under orders from Peter I himself. It's supposed to be a museum of anthropology and ethnography, but a lot of people seem to go just to visit the 'Academy of Sciences' room. This room sticks out like a sore thumb within the museum, and I don't really understand why it is here, but basically it just has hundreds of dead babies in jars. Most of them display different genetic mutations found in babies, and I'm not a squeamish person, but it seemed a little excessive having so many of them. It was a truly strange experience. The rest of the museum was pleasant, and contained lots of interesting objects from Peter I's travels around the world, such as costumes, tools and art. The museum was free to get in with our student cards, so I'll probably visit again before I go home, though perhaps I don't need to visit the strange science room next time.

Another exciting development (for me, anyway), is that we discovered a HUGE hypermarket about 10 minutes walk from the flat. It's called Ашан, which is the Russian way of saying Auchan, the name of a large French chain of hypermarkets. You may recognise the name, or the logo below... It feels like being in France when you're walking around, as they sell pretty much everything there and it's all very nice and cheap. I also managed to buy Russian Scrabble there for around £4! Though playing Scrabble in Russian is much harder than I expected, so we play with a dictionary to help us. I'm hoping this will improve my Russian spelling and also my vocabulary. Ашан is basically my new favourite place in the whole of Russia. Ha. And they sell Wagon Wheels!

On Friday, some friends of mine had a flatwarming party, as, like many other people, they had decided to move out of their homestay accommodation. It was a great party, and everyone got rather merry, including myself. I didn't drink that much alcohol, and didn't even feel that drunk on the night itself, though I had one awful hangover on Saturday. It was reminiscent of the hellish hangover I had last year in Russia, and has led me to the conclusion that Russian alcohol messes me up. I'll try not to drink that much again in the future, especially if I don't fancy feeling like death the next day...

In other news, we watched a really good film in my 'kino' (cinema) class last week. It's called Стиляги (Stilyagi) and is about a rock and roll style subculture in 1950s Russia. It's basically a cheesy musical with amazing songs and costumes and I loved it. So if you love the 50s and/or Russian musicals, I highly recommend it.

The only other thing I can think to mention is the fact I've dyed my hair a very bright shade of red. It's a little too bright, if I'm honest, but I'm planning to keep it for the near future at least, as everyone seems to approve. Here's a picture to show how it now looks:

I'll end this post with a little update about my plans for the next few days, just in case I don't post on here again for ages! Tomorrow I'm supposed to be going to an exhibition of comic book art at a gallery, with one of my classmates and a Russian girl I met at the party on Friday. I'm quite excited, as I haven't been to any small galleries in Petersburg yet, so it should be interesting! And who doesn't love comics? I also think my new hair will fit in nicely. I have also bought a ticket to a gig on Sunday, which will be my first experience of live music in Russia! Exciting! Though I expect nobody reading this has heard of the band, they are called This Will Destroy You. They're an American post-rock band. They are ruddy good, and I've never seen them live before, so that makes it even more exciting! Hopefully my first Russian gig experience won't be too scary...

Anyway, time to go and finish tidying my messy bedroom! Lots of love, Naomi :)

PS. I've now made it possible to leave comments on my blog without needing an account! Hopefully this means more people will comment? Let's see...

Спасибо вам большое!

2010-10-01T15:41:00.002+04:00

Nothing new to report, just a post to say thanks very much to my relatives (and common law relatives!) for my birthday cards :D The package arrived intact today, around 2 weeks after Dad sent them, which isn't too bad for Russian post, apparently. So, thanks everyone for the belated birthday wishes :) x

I can't think of a title.

2010-09-30T19:12:00.004+04:00

Hello!

I've realised I never actually uploaded any photos of my coat and boots, as I said I would in my last post. I'm a bit too lazy to do this right now, but I'll get round to doing it eventually. Everything is still going well over here in St Petersburg, I'm settling in a lot now, which is good in some ways and bad in others. I need to keep exploring rather than repeatedly going to the same old places...

I need to start updating this blog a little more often! It's difficult to even remember all the things I've done since my last post... I didn't do a great deal over the weekend, as usual. School tires me out far too much during the week, so the weekend really is for relaxing! I did, however, watch a great deal of Russian television, which turned out to be pretty hilarious. I caught some of the Russian version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' (Кто хочет стать миллионером?, a literal translation), and actually managed to answer the first two questions correctly! It was all downhill after that, though. After that I watched some bizarre programme which was sort of like 'Total Wipeout' fused with 'It's a Knockout', though most of the games involved live bulls trying to derail the contestants, rather than people in funny costumes throwing gunge. The climax of my evening of Russian television was Russia's equivalent of 'Britain's got Talent', Минута славы which had seemingly copied its every feature from BGT... It starred, amongst others, a group of mechanics making music with things found in their garage, a grandma playing the guitar with a lightbulb (weird, I know), a contortionist, and a guy singing the song from Tetris (Коробейники - actually a traditional Russian folk song) slowly with balalaikas in the background. All very weird, all very Russian.

The rest of this week has been very 'normal'. As I said before, I keep returning to the same places time and time again at the moment. I'm sure this will change over time as I get more adventurous and confident with my Russian. I did explore a massive street near my house which I hadn't previously been down, and found a British Pub called 'Bristol Pub' - need to get a picture of that for my Bristolian family! We also went to a new bar on Tuesday evening. It's on the same road as all of our other frequently-visited bars, Думская, but still...

Today the sky was extremely blue, so I naturally went on a bit of a photo-taking spree. I didn't take too many photos, but the ones I did take are quite pretty, so I'll add some on to the end of this post :)

In other news, I might be hanging out with some Russian people on Saturday. My friend Pippa started talking to this guy in Fidel, a regular haunt of ours, and he apparently goes to this 'discussion group' where Russians speak to each other in English. Anyway, he invited her along and she asked if she could bring a friend (me), and he said yes, so we're supposed to be going there on Saturday. Obviously this won't help our Russian initially, but we figured it's a good way to meet Russian people and make contacts. Plus, speaking Russian to a person who knows a bit of English is really nice, as they can help you out if you get stuck.

Anyway, time to go and cook myself BEANS ON TOAST for dinner! Awesome.

(Top left: Griboedov Canal near school; Top right: a pretty street near school; Bottom: the Neva river.)

My first ever Russian birthday! And other things.

2010-09-23T12:38:00.001+04:00

Hello! So firstly, I must apologise for my absence. I haven't updated my blog for a whole week! I've had far too much homework... And other, more exciting stuff to do. Anyway, I'll try to remember what I've been up to since last Wednesday, and recount it here for your reading pleasure :P

Thursday was a regular day at university, nothing special to report. In the evening, however, there was a housewarming party hosted by a couple of my fellow students, which was followed by going to a pretty cool bar. I was very tired, and didn't feel like drinking much (this always seems to be the case here!) so I didn't go crazy or anything. It was a nice evening, though, and it was cool to catch up with people, especially the ones from Manchester who go to the State University, as I hadn't seen them for ages. Friday at university was quite funny. After the previous night's events, so few people showed up to university the lecturers guessed there must have been a party... I went in, though, and out of my class of 10, a meagre 4 people showed up! It was quite fun actually, and my translation lecture actually felt better than the week before (when I hadn't really enjoyed it at all). There was another housewarming party on Friday night, but I ended up missing it because I started feeling really quite ill in the evening. It's a shame but two parties in two days is a little much for me!

The weekend was a fairly similar affair, not much to report at all. My flatmates and I spent most of the weekend relaxing at home or buying food at the supermarket... Went to our regular bar Datcha on Sunday evening for a few quiet drinks though, which was nice.

On Monday, my friend Pippa and I decided to venture to the out-of-town shopping mall 'Mega' once again. It was finally student loan time and we both needed boots and coats. I managed to grab some bargains, and now have a pair of rather red, very warm snow boots, which were half price at around £35. They aren't the greatest looking boots, and I wouldn't be seen dead in them at home, but they'll get the job done! Then again, when I showed my landlady said boots, she said "Wow... They'll be very warm. Possibly TOO warm!" so now I'm a little worried. Better too warm than too cold, though, I guess! And since they were so cheap, if I need to buy a lighter pair I can. I also bought myself a coat, which I found in a shop we'd somehow missed out on our last visit. The place is called Спортмастер (Sportmaster), and is pretty much the Russian version of JJB Sports or something. Only since this is Russia, quite a lot of it is more like what you'd find in Millets. My coat was half price (like the boots) and cost about £65, which really isn't bad considering it's a down coat, so feels pretty much like wearing a duvet. The only real problem is that it has raccoon fur attached to the hood, which I don't really agree with. To be honest, buying a coat without fur here is about as easy as understanding a drunk Russian tramp, so I don't feel too bad. Plus, the fur is removable, so if I start feeling really bad or if it creeps me out, I'll take it off. I'll be nice and warm whilst feeling guilty, anyway.

Tuesday wasn't very eventful at all, just went to school then came back and relaxed, really. Wednesday, however, was my birthday! A birthday in Russia! How exciting! I am now 22 years old (eek!) and celebrated with a meal of pizza with friends followed by drinks at Fidel. When I woke up yesterday, my flatmates greeted me with home-made pancakes and champagne! The table was all laid up with a candle and a flower (courtesy of my landlady) and it was truly a lovely start to the day :) It did mean I was a little tipsy by the time I got to school, but that was quite funny. Plus, you're allowed if it's your birthday. I think. After school I went shopping and got a couple of new tops in the sales, which was cool. Wore one with a skirt for my birthday celebrations. I didn't really drink much last night, but considering I never usually do anything for my birthday, I never intended for it to be a total blowout. It was just a pleasant evening spent with lovely people, and I couldn't have asked for a nicer Russian birthday :)

Anyway, this is far too long and has no photos, so I'll shut up now. I'll add a couple of photos of my coat and boots later on today, actually. Just in case anyone cares! Haha.

Naomi x

Жизнь в России...

2010-09-16T00:32:00.000+04:00

So, it's been quite a while since my last post on here. Not too much is new, to be honest... Still enjoying life in Russia, though everything is beginning to seem much more 'normal' here now.

I spent most of the weekend in my flat, studying and relaxing. I seriously needed to catch up on some sleep! My flatmates went to Peterhof on Saturday, to see the palace there, and I was going to go too but I was simply too tired... I need to find someone else to go with really, as it shuts for the winter quite soon, though I suppose I could go when it re-opens in Spring. I do really want to go, though, as it sounds beautiful. The only other event over the weekend was a nice evening out on Sunday, when I went to Дача and Фидел (Datcha and Fidel), two bars next door to one another. A pleasant evening was had, though we didn't go too crazy as we had lectures the next day! I did have a nice cocktail, oddly named "Cocktail Natasha", in Фидел, which seemed to have more vodka in than anything else. My kind of drink!

Lectures on Monday went as per usual, then afterwards I went to a few shops with my flatmate Mike. After we'd browsed some places on Nevsky, we decided to try and find a charity shop I had read about on the internet... It was apparently set up by some guys who saw the success of charity shops in Europe and wanted to spread the good idea throughout Russia. We looked far and wide (and were on the street listed online and everything) but never found it! Which somewhat sucked, especially since my feet were absolutely KILLING me! Oh well, guess it closed down or something. Shame.

Yesterday's lectures were also fine, and afterwards I ended up going to the huge out-of-town mall, MEGA, with my classmate Pippa. It was totally awesome there! As sad as this sounds, it had so many English shops... These included Marks & Spencer, New Look, BHS and Peacocks, which I really didn't expect to see there! I was looking for a warm coat for winter and some boots for the snow, though I didn't end up buying either. I got a new pair of pyjamas, though. I did find a lovely Roxy coat for snowboarding, but it was around £160! Which is rather expensive. I think I might browse a little more before I commit... There are plenty of boots to choose from, though, I'd go so far as to say there is actually too much choice. All are fairly reasonably priced at around £60-70, so I'm sure I'll find a pair when I need them. Something else that must be said about this mall is that it's extremely easy to get to, just 22 Rubles (less than 50p) for the ride on the Metro, then a short ride on a free bus from the Metro station. Whenever I need clothes from now on, this place is going to be my first port of call. New Look!

I loved the "London" addition to the Peacocks sign, as though they want people to think it's some kind of posh shop. Rather funny. I also like how the IKEA sign looks in Russian :)

Today I had school once again, which actually went rather slowly :( It's still good, though, and I feel like my Russian is improving slowly but surely. After school, we went to our favourite fast food restaurant, Сити Грилл (city grill), where the entire menu is written in hilariously transliterated English, resulting in the ever-so-appetizing 'gamburger' option. I just had chips as usual, what with being a vegetarian and everything. I'm still alive, just about. After this we went to Дача (Datcha) for a couple of drinks, before coming home. On my way home, it started raining when I was about 5 minutes from my flat. I was just in time to avoid an epic rain shower, so I felt rather lucky!

Anyway, I have a nice lie in tomorrow, yay! Bedtime now.

I found Baked Beans!

2010-09-11T12:37:00.000+04:00

Yes, I found some Heinz Baked Beans for sale in my local Russian supermarket. I thought this was totally awesome so bought them. They were rather expensive, though, so I think I'll keep them for a special occasion. Here is a photo of said tin of beans, in case you haven't already seen it on Facebook:

In the same complex where the large supermarket is, my flatmade Maddy and I discovered several clothes shops upstairs, as well as some kind of dinosaur-based indoor theme park thing. There was also what we thought may be a Rainforest Cafe, but when I researched online later it turns out it's some sort of London Dungeon-style attraction about St Petersburg. Now I really want to go! Saving that for a rainy day, methinks...

Before we went to the big supermarket yesterday, we had school. I had Translation and Oral classes, both of which were okay. The translation was fairly difficult, as there were several colloquial phrases and words, making it almost impossible for us to know the correct answers. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get used to it. I have absolutely loads of homework to do over the weekend, so I'd better get cracking on that ASAP...

I was tempted to visit Peterhof with my flatmates and some of the other students today, but I was simply too tired. I've decided that today is just going to be a relaxing day at home. It's sad because I feel like I'm wasting being in such an amazing city, but I also know that my feet can't take much more walking right now... Hopefully I'll get to visit Peterhof before it closes for winter, though. It looks beautiful.

I'm still on the hunt for a nice winter coat! I found a gorgeous one in Zara the other day but it was about £120. I told my landlady and she's pointed me in the direction of some huge shopping mall which has Ikea and apparently LOADS of clothes shops. She says I need to look around all the shops before I make a decision on a coat, which I think is sound advice! So I may look into going there tomorrow or next weekend, or maybe one day after school. Looks like I'm going to end up paying around £100 for a coat though, I guess they hike the prices up in cold countries! Oh well, better that than get hypothermia, I suppose.

This is a relatively short post for me, guess I'm starting to get used to life in St Petersburg now... I'll end it with a couple of photos from my flat, for those who may not have seen them on Facebook.

Left: My Bedroom, Right: The UK on our HUGE World Map.