You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2007.
I hope that all of my Chicago mates went to the tenth anniversary Critical Mass the other night. I am quite lonesome in the bike department, all I’ve got is vicarious living through flickr sets, and etc.
In other news, I made the move yesterday. Before leaving my Babushka made Pirozhki with cabbage, my favorite, and then wrote down the most detailed, most lovely Borscht instructions. I bought her a little rose plant as a parting gift, and we decided that sometime I’ll try and get some cheap student tickets to the Marinsky and we’ll go together.
I’m trying my hand at the Borscht tomorrow. The last time I made some, it turned out ok, but I didn’t make a proper Russian bullion, and I just sort of guesstimated the vegetables. It turned out way too heavy in the beet department. Per TP’s instructions I will not only make my buillon with a carrot and whole onion, but I’ll be sure not to keep the pot covered, because otherwise “all of the vitamins will fly out.”
Speaking of, someday I’ll write about the cult of home remedies and “useful” food products. I’ve heard arguments for the utility of everything from potato juice, kasha, to the obvious vodka. In the mornings with TP there was always some health program on the first or second channel accompanying my somnambulent, grouchy yogurt eating. I sort of love and hate this part of Russia. There is only so much garlic you want to stick up your nose when you’ve got an ordinary head cold.
Friday I tried to bring some friends to a “cabaret punk” concert, but something went wrong and we showed up to an empty bar. It’s still unclear what happened, whether I got the time wrong or whether the band, true gypsy-punk style, didn’t show up. Is it correct to say roma-punk? After all I learned this past year about the “gypsy” being an ethnic slur… Seems awkward though, and decidedly un-punk.
Zhenja has apparently come back to Petersburg, so hopefully these mix ups won’t be too much of a problem anymore.
The Irish/Australian regulars at City bar are quite blasted, this sunday evening. Much to the amusement/embarassment of the Russian staff and english-speaking (sober) patronage, alike. And this after all I wrote about American ex-pats being children.
Weekly moment of squalor: a guy asks Eric for the remains of his beer as we wait on a corner of Nevsky. Eric obliges, and we watch him poor it into an already half full McDonalds cup. He moves on to the other half-abandoned bottles on the street.
Autumn here is in full swing, although I suspect it’ll only last for another week or two. Strangely, as the leaves started to change en masse, the weather got warmer. It’s been 20 Celsius during the day for the last several days. Heaven. Yesterday, after the first round of moving via metro I walked around the Summer Garden (now about 10 minutes walk from my house…!), which is lovely enough in the fall to make a fellow question imperial Russian naming choices. As in Chicago, when the weather is nice here everybody is out in the street, and for the most part they were running around the city’s gardens collecting leaves and taking sassy pictures of themselves next to the sculpture. Wedding parties frequent the parks and palaces most days of the week, taking pictures and drinking champagne, but, as you might imagine, days like yesterday bring them out in droves. Imagine getting sick of seeing gorgeous brides…
On the news front, everybody here is pretty concerned about the situation in Georgia right now. My Babushka seemed to think a civil war there is imminent, and the news channels have been leading with news of the protests following the arrest of the former minister of defense. Scanning the western papers today, it doesn’t seem like quite the crisis it’s been made out to be over here, albeit still serious. The Russian response is, afterall, coming after several tense years of relations with Georgia, most recently an alleged flight and bombing by Russian aircraft near the border and increasing violence in South Ossetia.
Also, the results of the Ukrainian election tonight could be interesting. Although I don’t feel like sticking around the internet long enough to find out when they’re posted.
Finally, and keeping in the strangely determined second person style of this post, have you listened to the new Animal Collective album yet? Highly recommend it.
I just downloaded the New Yorker article on Gary Kasparov. I haven’t looked at it yet (that’s for when I’m off line at home), but it should make for interesting and timely reading. He’s been on my mind a lot here even if his name is suspiciously absent from most news outlets, and especially the television news channels. I’m curious what the stations were showing during the dissident marches last spring, I know they mentioned them, but according to most western sources the scale and coherence of the movement were minimalized, to say nothing of the somewhat extreme reaction by the government and pro-Kremlin youth groups. This latter element, by the way, is for me the most alarming element of the situation here, although to be honest I haven’t seen anything from them first hand.
Yesterday I asked one of my teachers about Kasparov and she explained that he and his “Other Russia” movement (briefly: a coalition of the various disenfranchised political parties who really only share common ground in the fact their opposition to the current regime, check out the article for more here, I guess) are sympathetic to educated, informed Russians because of his criticism of the fact that in Russia today there is capitalism but no real democracy. Nevertheless, from her point of view he lacks any meaningful program for changing Russia and in this lies his, and his movement’s weakness. This is nothing new, of course, and again I haven’t read the article yet so maybe this is better hashed out there. All the same, even without a substantive plan for Russia’s feature, the very fact of resistance is meaningful, and, from my limited perspective, essential to the future of this country. It’s for this reason that the coalition includes radical groups like Edward Limonov’s National Bolsheviks, who, I must admit, make me just as nervous as the United Russia youth and the folks spraying pro-Putin graffiti all over the place.
But I’m still trying to figure out where Kasparov et al fit into the minds of those less educated, severely less informed Russians. People like my Ivan, below.
Also my Babushka. It’s been quite awkward for me that we’ve had a number of critical, substantive conversation about politics in the United States, but next to nothing about Russia. We watch the news religiously, but all that really comes out of the Russia stories are her praise for Putin, and now Zubkov. Ои, какой молодец, наш президент! She’s certainly an intelligent, well-educated woman with strong, laudable values, and I wouldn’t say she’s simply parroting her beloved news broadcasts; but there is an extent to which these exclamations feel automatic, thoughtless. Ripe for manipulation. It bothers me a great deal.
But, it must be said, it’s near impossible for me to really look at the current situation from her perspective, or from the point of view of anyone who’s lived through the last two decades. But then, of course, working towards understanding that perspective is part of why I’m here.
Tuesday 9/25
I never properly mentioned or pointed to my photographs, posted last week, of a fire I witnessed around Chernishevskaya. The series begins here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/incandenzafied/1418127716/
At any rate, last thursday I went strolling after class, ostensibly looking for some second hand winter attire. I found a couple decent items, but nothing really stuck. As I was heading back to the metro, I noticed that the street looked a little hazy and I saw the beginnings of a crowd forming a couple blocks away. Being the natural student of the spectacle, and also, fortunately, armed with my camera I went to investigate.
When I arrived, flames were just beginning to shoot out of the chimney and the one fire truck on the scene was making an attempt to quell the blaze. To no avail, of course, the situation was already critical by the time they arrived, and I imagine the main purpose was to make sure the building was vacant. A couple minutes (and photographs) later, the top floor of the building started to flare and the area of the building with the ladder attached collapsed, leaving the fire fighters stranded. I heard from people around me that the building was under repair and so nobody was hurt. Nevertheless, it was pretty terrifying to watch the firefighters crawl along a fragile, half-burnt, catwalk just beneath an explosion of flames.
I stayed until the rest of the firefighting fleet arrived, and the blaze was out. At that point the smoke was getting to me, and I’d become rather inured to the awful spectacle.
Anyways, I’m quite happy with some of the results, and having an exciting subject, for a change, really piqued my desire to keep up with the photography. It’s only too bad I didn’t have any where to submit these, by the time the press corp guys had arrived everything had pretty much finished.
So, right, check out my photographs.
Also, I’m sitting in my new favorite place, City Bar, where they have good beer and free wifi. It’s owned by an American and right across from the US consulate, so that doesn’t bode the best for my linguistic immersion, but all the same it’s a nice place to hang out and catch up on the rest of the world.
Also, finally, the table next to me is occupied by three foreign service officers: French, American, and German, I think. It’ll be interesting to listen to this conversation.
Monday 9/24Friday:
The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review at one of the new hipster clubs on Konyshennaya Ploshad. A swell place, in spite of the crowd, and an excellent show. We worked up into the crowd and danced our minds out. Russian ska kids yell “ska” when they’re dancing, which, by the way, is usually not a skank or any kind of two step, but the generic flailing enthusiasm that’s the norm in the bars and clubs that don’t play hardcore techno. Anyways, it was fun all the same.
Afterwards we went about the usual roaming. Submitting to Danny’s hunger, we stopped by Subway and watched him order and eat an enormous, double meat sub. The staff was amused. Later, before going home some big guys seemed to be leering towards the two girls remaining with us, so I stepped in and hijacked them from the conversation. They turned out to be fine fellows, immigrant metro workers from Romania, they’ve lived here for 10 years. By way of parting one of them lifted me up by my belt, an endearing gesture in spite of its machismo.
After school on Friday I dropped by Quo Vadis (the slick internet cafe), and ran into Yulia. In addition to stuffing me with cookies, cake, and tea she told me about a friend of hers who’s looking for someone to fill a room in his apartment just off of Nevsky Prospekt, near Ploschad Vostaniia. I called him immediately and on Saturday I checked out the place. It’s in a beautiful courtyard, indeed just off Nevsky and the building is old in the best possible way. All of the amenities are there and there’s plenty of space, the rent is sort of ridiculously reasonable considering the location (pretty much as dead in the center of the city, near some of my favorite day and night locales, and 5 minutes from the Metro.
Meanwhile I’ve discussed the matter with TP and she was understanding about it, all things considered. She obviously wants me to stay with her, and so I’ve been fending off various arguments about why this is a bad idea all weekend. She also proposed a way for me to live with her at a lower cost, in fact a cost equivalent to the rent I’d be paying downtown (except it would include food). I do feel terrible leaving her, but there are several reasons why I think it’s for the best. First financially this is a great and one-time deal, it’s pretty much my dream apartment. I’d always intended to move into my own apartment, at some point, and I doubt anything this ideal would come by again. Second, the commute in and out of the center is beginning to wear on me, even if it is only the small distance to Primorskaya. I dont mind riding transport, or even walking home, but it undeniably makes socializing around town a little bit more difficult to deal with bridges, metro closing, and etc. This difficulty will only worsen when it gets cold. I’m well aware that this is kind of a spoiled point of view, that to live in a central location is a rare luxury, but all the same if my purpose living here is to work on my Russian, that’s best served, I think, by being out and about with my Russian friends. Third, the space thing is critical. I’m not so much talking about physical space, the apartment on Vasilevsky is plenty comfortable for two people. Instead I mean the ability to do everyday things like read, cook, leave and return as suits my schedule and desires. TP certainly allows me to live as I please, in fact she’s often bending over backwards to make me more comfortable, but at some point there’s always an extent to which I am a guest in her home and should behave accordingly and I’m always conscious of the demands that my presence put on her. This is fine for the time being, but I can’t imagine being comfortable living as a guest for more than a couple months. Finally, I really, really don’t want to blow my hair after taking a shower (especially now that they’ve turned the heat on and it’s like a sauna in the apartment) which has been established as, pretty much, a cardinal rule of my stay here.
Returning to the weekend: Saturday night found Eric and I hanging out at a cafe near Primorskaya. At some point a very drunk, very patriotic fellow named Ivan came up to me hoping to explain in very broken English how Russia’s strength lies in its goodness, in the fact that Russians care not for the good of themselves but for the good of everyone. He wanted my opinion on this, and the usual anti-American sentiments floating aloud. For some reason he had decided that I couldn’t speak any Russian (hence the English) but that Eric as a native speaker. He kept turning to Eric asking him to translate for me. This in spite of my insistence (in Russian) that I understood him perfectly and that it would be possible to continue in Russian. I even translated his Russian into English, which he immediately repeated for, presumably, my own benefit.
I agreed whole-heartedly about the goodness of Russians, but my attempts to qualify and nuance this talk of goodness were lost on him and he’d have nothing of my thoughts about the relationship between a people and its government. Instead, he started to explain (in English) that he’s a patriot and a member of United Russia (The party that backs Putin and controls pretty much everything), and that Russia would make this world a better place. I should know better than to make diplomatic attempts with anyone so far under… but all the same, he started to claim that we were also good people and implored us to drink with him. Bar denizens being, in fact, citizens of the world. Unfortunately, by the time Eric returned with Beer for the three of us his interests had fallen on two girls sitting nearby, and we were promptly abandoned. Would Ivan have understood my warning if I told him that his belief in doing good for all is one of the (purported, at least) core values of our neo-conservative movement and its strategy in the middle east? What with the road to hell being all good intentions, and all.
And etc.
Tuesday, 9/18
And sometimes I’m all sad sappy sucker, isolating myself in my stereophonic indie pop the minutes before leaving for school, the hours before going to sleep. This at least when I’m not roaming around the city, although more often than not that is similarly sound-tracked. I’ve always been the kind of person enjoy the journey mostly for the sake of the accompanying music. Quality time, and all that.
The only problem is when I get stuck in st. ides heaven, on repeat. Or like around this time last year when I sunk irretrievably into cat power. I’ve been thinking a lot about Elliott Smith lately, maybe because the died to young suicidal artist thing is all over this place. I mentioned earlier that my friend Yulia took me by Kamchatka the other day, Tsoi died in the early 90s in a car accident, and is only one of the more recent in a long history of early fatalities. And so goes the last poem in my book of Sergei Esenin:
До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья.
Милый мой, ты у меня в груди.
Предназначенное расставанье
обещает встречу впереди.
До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова,
Не грусти и не печаль бровей,-
В этой жизнь умирать не ново,
Но и жить, конечно, не новей.
Right, sorry to be cryptic and gloomy. It was actually a rather nice day, call me a sundowner.
After class Maria, Elza (France), Eric (NYC) and I strolled from Smolny to Nevsky, ate some blini, drank some tea, and then dropped by Stirka 40* which is the a laundromat and bar. It is also very small, pleasantly low-fi, and not as slamming with hipsters as you might think. When we got there was only a girl and a guy playing some discordant piano music.
Like I said, not a bad day. After an exhaustive walk home, I scarfed down some dinner, took a long shower and tried to hide from TP and her hair dryer. She was mortified and dried my hair herself, I came out looking like a lion. All in a good night’s fun here on Vasilevsky… Now, after some discursive homeworking, it’s between some Hemmingway and another movie. On the news I caught something briefly about Iran threatening missle strikes but I was too exhausted to put much energy into deciphering the details. Anyways, it was quickly segued into a 10 minute story about a new sky scraper in Moscow. Balanced as always. My conversation teacher yesterday told us how disheartened she is by the television news, like she was really saddened by it, а мы идем назад. Anyways she also mentioned that there’s a talk show with Tatyana Tolstaya on Chanel 1 that’s generally worth watching. And of course we have Пусть говорят the talk show I mentioned earlier. Actually the other day my Babushka was watching a debate type show on Chanel 1 that seemed to me rather intelligent and controversial. Of course I couldn’t make out even half of the discussion. Broadcast news seems to be my most problematic point with Russian.
Yesterday I took another solo stroll (I just learned the russian verb to stroll, btw… I still have so much to learn) around the Moika and Winter Palace in the rain, this time sans beer, ostensibly aiming to find one of the new hipster bars I’ve been reading about in the SPTimes. This one’s called Achtung Baby and supposedly they play brit pop and new wave, which is like a godsend after last summer’s repeated attempts to find a dj who’d put on some New Order for me. Have I mentioned the “Love will tear us apart tag” on Kazanskaya? At any rate, there’s a Jazz Ska show there on Friday that I’m totally all over. In other trendsturbation, the Times tells me that the Novus management opened a new place called Mod just around the corner. God bless the English language expat paper.
After the walk I landed at Maria’s apartment for some minor merriment in honor of her Belgians’ departure today. Music, pictures, politics. Soviet champagne and some really tasty Russian cheetos. I am definitely taking them up on the offer to visit Belgium, who would pass up finest beer and chocolate in the world. The weather softened a bit after the rain so I had quite the pleasant walk home, Mogwai blazing, not minding the damp.
My mouth is dry and I’m out of bottled water. I’m almost tempted to gulp some of the notorious Petersburg stuff…
Sunday 9/16
Just before leaving I ordered a pair of Adidas Gazelles from Zappos. They’re simple, cheap, and from what I understand hold up pretty well, all things considered. I also figured that they wouldn’t attract much attention, being the classic design and all all the more so as they’re black and white. At any rate, they’re a little bit too small, but it was too late to send them back and I figured they’d break in soon enough. They’re also the only shoes I brought with me, figuring that I’d buy some proper winter boots here, at some point. Well they’re about broken in now, but in the meantime they wreaked havoc on my poor feet. It reminds me of, I think, George Orwell and 1984 where somebody explains that he wears his shoes a size to small because that provides each day with at least one thing to look forward to. It turns out I was also wrong about not attracting attention. Apparently the gazelles are incredibly hard to find in Russia, and they’re in high demand by Adidas aficionados. Yesterday within a couple hours two people asked me where I bought my shoes, envious looks and everything. At least it gives me something to talk about. Apologies if the Orwell reference is incorrect, I can’t remember exactly and I am, obviously, without access to my books.
Speaking of books, I recommend the English Patient. As hot as Ray(ph?) Feins is, forget the movie, Michael Ondaatje is a master and his novel is magnificent. Or Velikolepnii, as Diana and, in fact, my little blue dictionary quite correctly informed me. Please excuse my incompetence.
I spent most of the day yesterday lazing about, doing odd bits of work and reading. Then after dinner I met up with something like 15 Russian kids near my friend Yulia. They were originally going to a concert at the legendary club Kamchatka (where Kino’s Victor Tsoi worked, the walls surrounding it are full of Tsoi-reverent graffiti), but the singer had an accident and so they relocated to a small bar adjacent. It was pretty much glorious, a huge wooden table, the expected vodka and beer, and general merriment. In addition to Yulia I was already familiar with Sasha, who hung out with us last summer at the Bunker club Griboedov. He is very tall, always grinning, and a decent-humored lad; back then he earned our affection when a drunk started accosting our table and he resolved the situation like a nastoyashii muzhik.
At first they treated me like something of a novelty, sort of bemused that I’d come to Russia and wanted to hang out with them, but after some jokes, some drinks conversation flowed and I met a bunch of interesting people. Anton, wearing a dark blazer and turtle neck sweater, to whom they pointed after the usual Chicago-gangster exchange (that is, upon finding out that I live(d) in Chicago, many people ask about Al Capone), and who is actually an econ student (so maybe the gangster thing is appropriate…). Misha the programming student who is making more money working part time now than his Doctor of Physics father, who also happens to live right next to my old building near Akademicheskaya. David, the socialite who is determined to practice his minimal english with me (I told him I’d be happy). Misha’s girlfriend, who spent time in Seattle. Prosto zdorovo. Needless to say, it was all quite merry and hopefully I’ll see them again.
Afterwards, I was to meet up with some students from Smolny in the center, but by the time I had arrived they had already left. Maria (from Belgium/Bulgaria) was going to be around later in the evening and her friends and I had promised to stay out all night, so I stayed in the center by myself. I bought 0.5 of Nevskoe, and walked around the Moika and the Palace square in the rain. It was actually quite, nice in spite of the damp cold; citys like Piter are at their most beautiful to the midnight carouser.
To my regret I discovered that they’ve closed down Novus, a tiny hipster dance bar just off of the Palace square and above an anonymous bistro. Luckily some the old haunts are still around and kicking, the obvious Dacha and Fidel (although the former is nowadays so crowded there’s little point in going, Fidel has the better music anyways) along with a new place “Belgrad” next door also owned by the Petersburg ska band Dva Samoleta. I haven’t been to Griboedov (the bunker club above) but Sasha, or as he would have you call him “Aleksandr Makedonskii” (we decided that I would also revert to my extended, more regal name), has declared our going back there essential. I’m also longing for Fish Fabrique, and I’m wondering if our crew of regulars are still going there. And of course, there is Tsinik where we spent last night and part of the night before. It’s even more crowded nowadays, particularly among the grunged hipster crowd, but it’s still reasonably priced, the grenki are delicious, and last night it was jumping, and mostly to Russian music.
Give me a week or two to
go absolutely cuckoo
then when you see your error
you can flee in terror.
Also, it sure is not as exciting to be out all night when it’s winter and still dark. I miss the white nights. And every day, pretty much, we lose a couple minutes of lightness. Supposedly soon enough it will dark on both ways to the university.
Tomorrow is my day off, but I’ll probably spend most of it trying to cut through bureaucracy and get the HIV test required for my extended visa. I shudder to think how much this, and the Visa process will cost me. And speaking of, I got killed by the exchange rates this week. My tuition payment got mixed up when it was wired over and so they canceled the payment and credited it back to my account. Only problem was the Euro > Dollar rate is lower than the the Dollar > Euro rate, making a difference of two hundred dollars at the end of the day. I don’t know a lot about currency and all of this, and I understand that they’re going to always give me the lower rate, but I would think that I’d actually get a little more if not the same back because the payment was in Euros, and the dollar has been falling so rapidly over the last two weeks. Almost as if I made a short-term investment. On top of that, the new payment must be made by credit card (I can’t wire money from abroad) which, apparently, means I have to pay the University’s bank another three percent of the payment. Anyways, relatively it’s nothing to hyperventilate about, and if I were to do so about every similar situation in the last month that’s ended up costing me I’d probably go ape shit. Russia is pretty good at teaching people to be calm in mind-bogglingly frustrating situations, particularly those involving one’s consciousness of one’s own insignificance before the vast, bureaucratic machines of governments and corporations.
I just got in a long conversation with TP about studying, money, her children, and etc. She even showed me her Soviet Почетные Грамоты (a government commendation for good work) from her time as a nurse. After a whole hour she talked about how boring it is for her much of the time, especially in the winter because usually there aren’t many students for her after the new year. This made me real sad, especially given my recent thoughts about moving. I know she would understand, particularly because it’s a matter of money (I don’t know that I would mention the part about needing my own space), but this doesn’t make it any less difficult to leave. Of course everything depends on money and availability and all that. If I moved it probably wouldn’t even be until after October anyways.
And finally: Zhenya responded to my emails! She’s in the Crimea right now, but she’ll be back at the end of the month. This is so exciting I will use another two exclamation points!! The timing is proper too, because I’m starting to crave some live music, underground clubs, and other things of which she is a specialist. It’s only too bad that I didn’t ever get her a Miles Davis T-shirt… I looked around charlotte on my last day, but to no avail. There was just not enough time. At any rate, hopefully she’ll be as happy to see me as I am to see her.
Also: I promise, I will take some new pictures, at some point.
And so, all for now, time for a movie and a book, and maybe, at some point, sleep.
Friday 9/14
Yet another night walking across the bridge back to Vasilevsky just before the raising hour, mostly because, again, I failed to flag a car. Actually I flagged one in time, but due to my botched pronunciation he immediately took me for an American and named an outrageous price. It’s a nice walk, and tolerable in the fall weather, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last. At least when it starts to freeze the bridges will stay open and there’ll be less pressure finding transport home. Of course, at that point, who’s to say where I’ll be living.
I enjoy living with my host, but there’s a bit of independence I’m still craving. I’d like to live a little closer to the center, and absent worries about waking her up coming home late at night. Also it’d be nice to cook on my own, and thus live a little cheaper. I should be thankful for my position, but it’s hard to ignore the beckoning city center, or at any rate a more suitable lifestyle with other students, young folks. I’m starting to meet more people, students and the sorts, so hopefully a room somewhere shouldn’t be hard to find in a month or so. Contacts here are everything
But don’t get me wrong. I’m really fond of my babushka. In one of my classes today the professor explained that Russia’s real wealth is in it’s babushki. This is positively the truth.
In the same class we were discussing national mentalities about work, wages, ad age when I was singled out to explain why it is that around the world many see Americans as children all their lives. It wasn’t quite so blunt in the context of the conversation, but I was several fold taken aback. Even ignoring the loaded question I can’t get past the fallacious assumption that I can speak for a vague and externally perceived national mentality.
And so the problem of representing my country has been bugging me all day, all the more so as this week I’ve been in a number of long discussions about the United States with some of my recent foreign friends. I find myself in the precarious position of explaining my own convictions about our administration it’s foreign policy while urging my European friends to consider and reconsider the still great things about my country. Mostly everyone I meet is intelligent enough to distinguish between the decisions of a government and its people, and some are even perceptive enough to recognize that a population’s votes are not necessarily wholesale sanction of it’s representatives’ actions, particularly when those representatives have clearly terrified and deceived their electorate. But while it’s reassuring that anti-war Swedes, Belgians, and Germans do not, in fact, hate or impugn Americans, it’s distressing to be on the defensive all the time, forever coaxing qualifications to those initial reactions to my citizenship. All the more so, when those reactions are tinted by this “childishness.”
But I’d say we have to in part blame ourselves for this sticky situation, and I’m not here talking so much about Iraq or US politics as about my teacher’s awkward question. That is, there really is a certain childish attitude about most of us abroad. I think a great deal of this has to with the global accessibility availed to native speakers of English. It’s also related to the economic and political power of our country. We’re used to ease and respect everywhere we go and I think we project those expectations on the countries we visit. When our expectations are disappointed, don’t we sometimes throw tantrums? This is by no means entirely unique to the United States, it’s just more, especially by comparison with Europe (and elsewhere, sorry to be so Eurocentric here, but pretty much everyone I know here is from around Europe, with the exception of a couple Japanese students) where learning at least several other languages is considered essential. You know, all that stuff about polyglossia in inverse relationship with the prestige of one’s “native” language.
Today I realized that, for one of the first times in my life I am not surrounded by my countrymen in some sphere or another. Because I enrolled in the University on my own, I’m in classes separated from the large group of American students who are studying through CIEE. Last summer I made every attempt to make Russian friends and hang out with Russians, but at the end of the day my classes were with other US students and I had a comfy American program to cushion me, in a small way, from the expatriot experience (not that I know what that is). The distance is quite refreshing, though. It’s perspective on both the truly optimistic and truly depressing elements of my country. As nice as those other students are, they do seem, as I must have seemed last year, like a bunch of children on holiday.
Not that this is any kind of new insight. I don’t remember exactly, but I think grand old de Tocqueville talks about this some where.
Related to all of this, I’m fascinated by my bi, tri and sometimes quadra-lingual friends. Or maybe I’m just jealous, I don’t know. At any rate, I’m quite sure that I’ll be learning more languages in my life. In the last couple days I’ve been around a handful of Belgians including two who are originally from Bulgaria, and one who speaks no Russian. The conversation slides around between Dutch, English, Bulgarian, and Russian. It’s touching, to me, when in my company they have a long conversation among themselves, regarding Belgian matters, but speaking in English as a clear gesture of inclusion to me.
In other news, I’m still pretty much out of the news loop. Which is a shame, because there’s a lot happening, or so I hear. But I can’t throw a stone without hearing about Putin, the recent dismemberment of the Cabinet, and expectations for the upcoming elections. Everybody is comparing it to Yeltsin’s appointment of Putin in 99 and, of course, they’re speculating on Putin’s future role in Russian politics. In the Russian system there is no limit to the total number of terms, just to consecutive terms and so people are saying that his return to the presidency inevitable, although anything can happen. It’s all very interesting, and I wish I was informed enough to speak more about it here, also this will be pretty much old news by the time I get around to posting.
Anyways, enough with the rambling talk, it’s time to sleep.
Tomorrow I’m making a concerted effort to stay out till the first Metro, if only to avoid another late night across the bridges.
Thursday 9/13
Intermittent rain and sun all over my afternoon walk back from school. I’ve still yet to purchase an umbrella, but the cold and wet makes the soul a little stronger, right? At any rate, the wet streets in the morning make the commute a little more interesting, crammed into a university bus at 8:30 we drive along the embankment past all of the typical Petersburg stuff… bronze horseman, hermitage, peter and paul fortress, combined with wet streets this a magical scene makes. On the other hand it is very cold, for September around 10 C during the day, if you’re keeping track) and the moisture will certainly make for a rough fall. Again, though, strength for the soul.
At any rate today I left Smolny with some second hand store ambitions, but chickened out after the first stop. No matter, instead I dropped by the Daniil Kharms plaque on Mayakovskaya to pay my respects, by which I mean little more than walking by, grinning, and leaving with a shrug. It seemed Kharmsian, anyways. Из дома вышел человек…
On a related note, near my bus stop somebody drove a car into a building. It seemed to have happened early in the morning, but nobody had seen anything. Most of the people standing around seemed only slightly amused. Our buses came, I didn’t investigate any further.
This evening, over pelmeni, Tamara Petrovna and I watched a talk show on the theme “love or generosity?” Except for several stubborn, and immediately villainized audience members, the former was the correct answer. One couple they interviewed consisted of an 80-something WWII vet and a 28 year old. Another was an amputee who met and fell in love with a professional dancer through an internet dating site. God bless. TP and I both got a little teary towards the end.
And speaking of saccharine, I pretty much can’t stop listening to the new Tegan and Sara album. I’m totally going soft.
There is nothing like a little bit of mass media isolation. The down side is the depression when I finally get around to catching up on the news. Not that the Patreus headlines are anything surprising…. At any rate, I’m heading back to my sanctuary of half-intelligible, half-rosey russian news. In other areas, I’ll only say that small adventures have been had, although nothing exciting enough to bore you with here. All the more so, as said adventures combined with classes and cold have left me rather exhausted today. Really the most important thing is that I’ve now got a cellphone, although after searching half of the city for used phones, as I mentioned before, I discovered a kiosk precisely that just outside of the grocery store near home. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to live with my barebones, over-priced, gadget.
And also, Neutral Milk Hotel is a band that I like.
I’ve been in Russia for a week.
And so here begins yet another ex-patriot webblog.
Congratulate me on rejoining the mass of personal-ish web drivel.
Something like a caveat: To be completely honest, I’m writing this for the most banal reason: because I’m abroad, because I need some kind of outlet, and because it’s likely that I’ll have a great deal of time on my hands. At best, some interesting content will poke through the dumping ground of personal stories and expat grumblings. But honestly it’s more likely that the latter will prevail, and the quality and quantity of anything that I do put up here is mostly dependent on the amount of boredom and loneliness I find in the next 10 + ? months. Which is to say, I’m making no bones about this blog being of little interest to anyone that doesn’t know me. Further, I’ll warn that my last experience in Russia marked a serious breakdown of English grammar, spelling, and style in my correspondence home. Whether that’s a product of linguistic atrophy or just the time is money ethos of the Internet cafe, I don’t know. At any rate, I apologize in advance for the length and convolution of my sentences.
A more explicit caveat: another motive is that, obviously, this sure beats writing a ton of personal emails to family and friends, or mass email several times a month. I’m letting you decide for yourselves whether you want to keep up with this other side of the world or not instead, oh ye loved ones, of bombarding your inboxes and risking an automatic deletion or, worse, the injunction of a filter. Plus noo hard feelings if don’t drop by regularly (and really I’m most excited when you guys visit my photographs. Further, I’ll still answer and write regular emails and all that, in fact I’m probably more likely to respond to emails now that I won’t be wasting half of my precious internet time on a big weekly recap email. The new address, by the way, is fredp8 (at) gmail.com.
Which is all a self-effacing, back pedaling way of saying welcome to my blog, greetings from Russia, and thanks for visiting.
So from the beginning:
Typically resolved to punish myself, I didn’t sleep much the night before my flight. Actually this was less because of nerves than because I have a severe procrastination problem. This meant that my largely sleepless flights (leg room…) and layovers (1.5 hours in DC, a brutal 6 in Frankfurt) were all the more devastating. By about halfway through I could do little more than spill coffee on myself and squirm in my seat half unconscious. Fortunately Antillies was with me to ward off any malintentions. Wins them over with his adorable little face every time.
In spite of the sleep situation, I made it through customs alright. Does anyone else have such a hard time suppressing the giggles opposite the stony faced but slathered with make-up customs ladies (the two times I’ve done this on the Russian side, I’ve only seen women)? For how lax customs actually is, the demeanor is something of an overkill.
My baggage arrived alright, and my driver was there waiting for me in the Terminal. I think this is the first time I’ve ever been waited on by a guy holding a sign with my name on it. Not that he deigned to talk to me, of course. At any rate, I was satisfied reacquainting myself with the city in the back of his van. Eventually we ended up on the western end of Vasilevsky Island. I was a little disappointed about this, having built up all sorts of ideas about living in the center, but all that’s disappeared pretty fast. There are problems sure enough with living on Vasilevsky, mostly having to do with the bitter winter winds from the gulf, but it’s nothing like being isolated in the north of the city, where I lived last summer. And really, who am I to be so picky about living near the center. Besides I’m already familiar with the place from hanging out with Risa and Kolya. Pivo at concrete heaven. Shampanskoe with Zhenia, watching the windsurfers at the beach. Even the stellar Klub Arktika: a combination copy center, internet cafe, bar, and dance club (sometimes gothic themed) where we spent a bizarre night during the G8. The best part, though, is the free morning bus to my classes that happens to pick up a half block away. Instead of braving marsrhutki and/or the metro, I get a nearly private ride along the Neva usually accompanied by glorious clouds lit by the rising sun. Class.
Furthermore, my hostess is generally swell and should be around a great deal. Moreover, she has a number of plants, comfortable furniture, and a generally attractive, if small, apartment. That bodes well, even if she, like all babushki, can be a bit overbearing. I got sick on my second day here and she straight away confined me to the apartment, made me wrap myself in clothing, snort garlic and onion, eat tons of honey. I’m pretty sure this was just a cold affected by stress, lack of sleep, dehydration and sudden change in climate (cold and rainy), but she was absolutely beyond convincing that the cause was other than the fact that I took a shower and then sat around the house with damp hair for a half hour. She’s now making me use a blow dryer. But all this is to be expected, especially the bit about the wet hair; she’s really just the Russian babushka I always wanted… nu kushai, kushai na zdorovie.
Apart from getting sick, my only other real difficulty has been adjusting to the time change along with a new schedule. My Babushka goes to sleep usually before 10, which would be hard enough without the jet lag. I usually end up reading for a bit, but our rooms (formerly one big room) are pretty much united and anytime either of us makes a noise or turns on the light the other one knows about it. Because of this I noticed that whenever I kept my light on reading she kept hers on as well, and when I turn mine out, within seconds she turns out hers. I’m not quite sure what this means, but for the last couple of nights I’ve been turning off my light, putting in a dvd and watching with headphones. It’s a swell way to pass the time and as far as she knows I’m asleep, the downside being that staring at a glowing screen for a couple hours doesn’t really bring down the eyelids. Sometimes I even turn on my light to read well after we’ve both gone to “sleep”, hoping I don’t wake her up. The jet lag should be fading, but I fear my typical nocturnal habits will cause some kind of problem.
Because of my cold, I didn’t get out into the city much over the weekend. I walked down Nevsky on my first day here, and all was as I remembered it. Most importantly, some fresh grafitti on Kazanskaya proclaims “BG forever”, truly a reassuring thought. My classes are at Smolny, which is on the far eastern side of the central island. It’s a beautiful old building, endeared to me when Neil, Joanna, and I walked the long way along the Neva from Finland Station to Smolny on account of the gleaming white domes of Smolny Cathedral rising over the city. It’s an attractive place to study; the outer walls are painted an enthralling shade of blue, cerulean I think.
Yesterday a hunt for used cell phones (wildly unsuccessful, by the way) turned into a discursive stroll about the city center. The weather after class was too beautiful to avoid Letnii Sad (“summer garden”… Linden trees, broad pathways, benches, and classical statuary the occasional snarling policeman), the Neva embankment, the Palace Bridge. I also realized that I’d yet to see Mars Field and the soviet era eternal flame, so I got check that off the list. It’s a strange place, and was today all the stranger when a wedding party started posing for pictures next to the flame all decked out with champagne. This is why I love this country.
I’m also in love with one of the tags I’m seeing all over the center: “Velikolepnii,” which, I think translates literaly as the great pawed one, although I suspect it has a real meaning (I’m sort of out of the dictionary loop right now, and a precursoy search hasn’t really come up with much). It beats me why this is so hilarious. “Emo Sucks” seems to be a trendy slogan. On the walls, on buttons, on T-shirts. I wonder if anyone over here knows about Ian Mackaye, Guy Picciotto (sorry for the spelling errors, a function of my internet dependency).
All for now.
