An afternoon at GMPIR!

I HAVE to tell you about where I went today. After lunch Sandra (another friend from Munich) and I went to GMPIR, or the State Museum of Russian Political History, formerly a Museum of the Oktober Revolution and Communist Party. Sandra and I went alone because no-one else in the group was interested in soviet history.. their loss! Housed in two mansions, the Museum seemed huge to me (we spent nearly 4 hours there and only saw half!) but is probably child's play compared to monster museums like the Hermitage (which I can now get into for free, thanks to my new russian student card, that looks like KGB ID). The Political Museum was great - very contemporary design with lots of interactive exhibits and just full of Soviet relics like Kalinin's cane, Marshall Voroshilov's cossack sword, Yuri Gagarin's (suprisingly tiny) uniform, and Nikita Krushchev's hat and pants (!!). Some of the other more interesting things: a detailed chess set made of pieces of chewed bread by a gulag prisoner, early Soviet dinnerware with slogans like "Those who are not with us are our enemies!" or "Long live the Red Terror," and a moving letter from two teenage boys in the 1930s, appealing to the soviet authorities on behalf of their arrested parents. In it, they wrote that their father was a devoted party member and always worked hard - despite this, the parents were shot and the boys later starved to death in the war. The exhibits went nearly all the way to the present, the newest exhibit about the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The most impressive room was a brand new exhibit devoted to the Great Patriotic War, which is the Russian name for WW2. It was like a shrine in there - stark white walls with jeep tracks and boot prints painted on the floor in silver, blue, and black leading to a title wall, under which a row of candles burned. Photos (interestingly, all the photos of Germans were inverted like negatives, making them stick out from the rest) and signage everywhere, although unfortunately all in Russian, unlike the Russian/English in the museum. Sandra thought it was on purpose - the war does seem to be a very personal subject for Russians; even 60 years on, it has huge importance and remains a very present issue - one display was about a Russian archaeological team that has found the remains of over 700 Russian soldiers around Saint Petersburg in the past few years so that they can finally be given proper burial. A nearby glass showcase displayed rusty war finds dug from the ground here - cracked helmets, unexploded shells, barrels of rifles and submachine guns(the wooden stocks rotted away), and everyday items like battered cutlery, ID tags, and a gas mask. When you walk the busy streets amongst all the pretty buildings, it's hard to imagine that this incredible city was the site of so much death and destruction during the desperate three-year siege of the city in which something like a million Russians lost their lives. That exhibit really brought it home a bit.

One Day in the Life of Peter Gordonovitch

I'm still here, please don't worry that you havent heard from me for a few days! I will try to make amends...
So here is the story of a routine day in my life as of late:First, I wake up to the cooing of pigeons - apparently they live in some sort of attic space just above me. There's also often a sound of scurrying feet up there that'd I've decided unfortunately isnt pigeons, bleh! Hopping out of bed, I take a quick shower in the micro bathroom (hopefully there's hot water, but not always) and then tuck into a mega breakfast, usually an omelet, bread, yogurt, cheese, kolbassa, bread, kasha, and always tea - they dont drink water, though they assure me it's safe, contrary to the dire warnings of my travel book! From the apartment it's a short 5 min walk along bustling streets to Primorskaya Metro Station. On my way there I cross a bridge over the Smolenka canal from which I can take in the imperious Soviet housing project that stretches all along its bank. It's actually quite impressive, in an extremely ugly way. After going down the steepest escalator ever (even more then the skytrain one at Granville station!) I, and a couple hundred Russians board the metro, which isnt as nice as the palatial Moscow metro, but has some pretty awesome stations I will tell you about later.
It's just one stop and then about a 10 minute walk to the Institute of Philology, which is in a grand old building (a dime a dozen here) right on the Neva River. Class is three hours long, a mixture of fun and terror, as the two profs are merciless in insisting that only Russian is spoken and every question they ask must be answered, no matter how empty my mind has suddenly become! It's a good way to learn tho, shock treatment! I have two friends in the class, Helen from Scotland and Andreas from Munich, through whom I've met most everyone I hang out with.
I'm done class by quarter to one. Usually our group (Poles, Germans, Belgians, and a sole Canadian!) goes for "bizniz lanch" at a restaurant nearby or to the studentskaya stolovnaya, or student caf, which is cheap, has half-decent food, and cool clunky soviet cutlery! Ordering food is a bit of a problem as I dont know the names of Russian dishes, so I do alot of pointing. After lunch, I have the whole afternoon to do whatever, which gives me 5 hours to explore the fascinating city streets or check out one of Saint Petersburg's million and one museums and art galleries. Then it's metro back home for 7 pm dinner. I think Mila's made it her personal mission to fatten me up - there is always a ridiculous amount of food, just for me, with plenty of sour cream and potatoes as you can well imagine! Usually I collapse for a bit and watch the bbc news or puzzle my way through some usually truly bizzarre Russian programming (the soviet era kids cartoons are really incomprehensible!). Somehow I fit in homework and some writing, and that's it! Another day in Russia whizzes by...

Home?

...Petersburg! Busy shops, grand old Imperial buildings, and crowds of people rushing along made the scene outside my window seem so alive and vibrant after the stagnant near-wasteland we'd just passed through. Arriving at the Finland Station, a la Lenin, I wandered off the train, feeling really, really out of place for a moment in this strange world. Luckily the driver sent by the university was there on time, so we took off in his Van. He didnt know a word of English, but it really didnt matter as the amazing scenery, the blaring russian pop music on the radio, and the insane drivers around us would have made conversation near impossible. In about the first two blocks we drove, I realized that drivers in Russia are the wildest I've ever seen, super aggressive to the point of gunning it past some little old babushka or orphan who's already half way crossing the street or totally cutting each other off all the time. The thing is no-one seems to get mad abut it like they would back home, no angry honking or flipping of the bird. I guess it's just because that's how they ALL drive. Fast too, at one point I noticed we were doing 90km/h, a little scary for a busy city street!
Catching my first gimpse of the massive red brick walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Winter Palace across the water was pretty awesome. Seeing the apartment block that I'm staying in for the first time was decidely less so - very much a 60s or 70s prefab Soviet beauty and very run down. As we approached, I kept thinking "please not that one, please not that one..." and wouldnt you know it, it was that one! That said, the apartment itself isnt that bad, very small (tiny kitchen - dinner table can only have 2 chairs, submarine-style WC and bathroom, and 3 bedrooms, that's all folks!) but clean and well-ordered, which is very important. The host family - Mila, her husband, and 21-year old son Roma (an archaeology student at the state uni) are friendly, good-natured people, although they dont know almost any English which can make things awkward from time to time. My room is actually fairly large, bigger then my rez room at Totem or my old room at home. It has the busiest wallpaper I've ever seen, printed to look like green tiles covered in some type of flowering ivy - how charming! I've got a TV (all Russian channels except for the BBC and sometimes Deutsche Welle has english programs), a bookcase full of Russian books I cant read, plus a none-too-impressive view of the courtyard/park/parking lot surrounded by other dilapidated buildings. Luckily it seems pretty soundproof, probably the asbestos insulation does the trick! I dont know if I'd call it home, but I'll get used to it. Still hasnt sunk in that I'm actually in Russia..

(thus ends the excerpt from Wednesday, will post more recent stuff soon!)

First impressions

This excerpt written Wednesday night (Sept.20) in my new room in Petersburg:

I think the culture shock is starting to set in... I was beginning to wonder if it would at all, having felt really no unease or real sense of foreign-ness in Helsinki (where I spent last night), even though the fact I dont know a single word in Finnish, not even "hello" or "two beers, please!" Despite the sea of umlauts (the Finns really go crazy with those little dots over just about every letter it seems), Helsinki was so sleekly modern, hip, and obviously affluent that it didnt feel that different from some parts of Van, like Robson or Kits... Ok, mabye a little more Scandanavian and a whole lot cooler. Russia, from the brief glance I've had so far, is an entirely different kettle of fish.

My first experince of Russia was pretty unnerving. After a few hours by train from Helsinki, we arrived at the frontier under a grey drizzle. While Russian border guards (mostly not unattractive young blonde women!) checked the train, my solitary blue Canadian passport dissapearing into a large stack of red ones, I gazed at the dilapidated customs building and the huge Russian flag outside, flying over a field absolutely choked with dandelions. Once the train chugged off again, it was mabye another two hours to Petersburg, during which we passed through some positively gloomy countryside. Everywhere derelict buildings, collapsed fences, and abandoned factories - total contrast to the Finnish landscape of meticulously-kept farms and car dealerships. At one point a boarded up railway station flashed by, plaster hammer and sickle crumbling away over the main doorway, and a few times I saw bombed out concrete buildings, 60 years after the war and still not repaired. Everything looked so exhausted even I, who felt I knew enough about Russia to expect this sort of thing, was feeling my spirits sink. But then we pulled into Saint Petersburg...

Here at last!

Hey everyone! You'll be happy to know that I am alive and well, in Saint Petersburg at last. Well I've actually been here two full days now, but it's been such an extremely busy and rather disorientating time it feels like oh so much longer. But in a good way! I'm writing from an internet cafe with sticky keyboards, yum, that's about 2 mins walk from the apartment I'm staying at. Close enough that I can hopefully get online often and update this thing. Alright, on to telling you about my trip so far - so much to tell you about... I wrote in a journal over the past few days so the following are some excerpts. Enjoy!

3 days...

Alright, my first real entry! This will have to serve as something of an intro for the journey upon which I’m about to embark. For those who don’t know already, next Monday I will be leaving for St. Petersburg, Russia for six months, during which I’ll be taking Russian language courses at the State University there and having all sorts of terrific adventures no doubt! Why Russia, you ask? How many times have I heard THAT question? It’s valid enough, mind you - why decide to go to the world’s most northerly major city (the 4^th largest in Europe at 4.6 million) in the middle of the infamous Russian winter? Why not go somewhere nice and less crazy on my first trip abroad, somewhere like Germany perhaps? Well I’d love to visit Deutschland and I plan to do just that soon enough, but the inexorable pull of Russia is too strong! I find so much about the country absolutely fascinating: its dramatic and monumentally tragic history, its beautiful language, and its rich art, literature, and music. Part of Russia’s allure is no doubt the fact too that it’s such an unknown to people here, including myself… such a vast, mysterious place. Even after years of reading all sorts of Russian books, taking courses, and attempting to learn the language, I feel that I’ve barely scratched the surface of understanding the country Churchill famously called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Best just go and experience it myself!

Although the past four years of university have been great, I’m really looking forward to this radical change in my life, a chance to try something completely different from everything I’ve known. Plus, by the end I’ll hopefully have an amazing repertoire of my very own travel stories that will come in handy when my well-travelled friends tell me about their amazing trips to Europe, etc, etc while I sit in jealous silence. Up ‘til now my only far-away journeys have been family trips to Hamilton, Ontario aka the Lunch Bucket City!

I’m not expecting it to always be an easy time or a pleasant experience; I’ve heard enough stories about life and travel in contemporary Russia to know that there are plenty of problems over there. But it’s all part of the experience - I’ll take it how it comes.

That said, the Russian winter is still a worrisome prospect... I mean, facing cold that’s enough to freeze panzer armies in their tracks and turn the finest soldiers of Napoleon’s Grand Armée into a tottering pack of ragamuffins, what chance do I have? I’m from the toasty Okanagan, for Pete’s sake!