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.