Moscow!

Since we only recently received our passports back from the government, Leah and I (still Ross), as well as two of our roommates decided to make a trip this weekend to Moscow! Leah and I found a half decently priced hotel in Moscow on expedia.ca (hotel prices in Moscow can average around $350 US dollars a night) and booked it to take a bit of a break from the normal grind of everday life in St. Petersburg. As well, tourist season will be starting soon, and we wanted to try avoiding the big crowds to some of Russia's most popular attractions. We're planning on seeing all of the major sights: The Kremlin, Lenin's tomb, St. Basil's, Stalin's grave, as well as Red Square and might be heading to a more obscure museum that one of our roommates wants to see about the late Romanov family. Today was exciting as, before we returned to the homestay to pack all of our things, we stopped by the Moskovskii Vokzal train station to buy our train tickets before the rush on Friday night. Since we've booked our hotel rooms for Saturday and Sunday night, we decided to buy overnight train tickets leaving St. Petersburg at 11:15pm on Friday night, arriving in Moscow around 6:48am Saturday morning, and then leaving Moscow at 8:18pm Monday night, and arriving in St. Petersburg at 5:00am Tuesday morning. Since these are overnight sleeper trains, they have bunks that fold down at night and bed linens are provided. It will be interesting to see what it's actually like, and we'll post more once we're back from our trip. Wish us luck!

The O-o-o-opera

Having already seen a ballet in Russia, Leah and I (yes it's Ross again writing another blog...surprised Jeana?) decided that it would be a good idea to experience a Russian opera. Therefore, last Saturday, the 21st of March, Leah and I went to see the Queen of Spades opera at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, which was the same theatre that we saw the Nutcracker ballet at. Since we felt slightly uncomfortable the last time that we went there (we overdressed) we dressed down a bit and blended in quite nicely. This time we made sure to purchase tickets that sat us in the first row of the balcony since we learned from our last experience at the theatre that having people sitting in front of you is less than ideal (thank you annoying French group for proving that point). However something interesting happened to us this time as well. It appears that the theatre will allow people in to watch the performance for free but they are not given seats. Instead, these people are allowed to stand behind the last rows and also to the sides of the front rows. This is not normally a problem except that on this particular night there was an older lady who decided she couldn't stand for too long. Minutes into the performance she shoved her way onto half of my chair and forced the entire row to sit on half of their seat and half of their neighbour's. Luckily enough, during the second part of the opera we had our chairs to ourselves as she opted to stand and lean on my chair instead of trying to sit on it. During the third act someone in one of the rows decided to give her someone else's chair as they felt bad for her, only to have the actual owner of the chair come and yell at them. Someone eventually gave up their seat for her and that was the last of that drama. Apparently there was also a couple who decided to bring their six year old boy to the opera with them that sat beside Leah. So until the third act when he finally fell asleep, he was squirming around and kept asking "eta vsyo? eta vsyo?" which translates as "is that it? is that it?" But all the negativity aside, the opera itself was quite enjoyable. The costumes and set design, as well as the orchestra, were amazing. The Queen of Spades is a famous short story that the Russian author Pushkin wrote, and I would highly recommend reading it. Both Leah and I agree though that we much prefer the ballet to the opera as the dancing is much more interesting to watch than overly dramatic singing (no offense to anyone who reads this that likes opera music). Having seen a ballet and an opera at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, we are now looking forward to seeing something (hopefully a ballet) at the much bigger and more famous Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) Theatre.

Our Beloved Gostinitsa

Leah and I (yes this is Ross writing this blog to all those people *cough* Jeana *cough* who tell me that I'm lazy and never write blogs...) have had a very busy and slightly stressful last few weeks. To start with, as you all know, Leah and I tried out a homestay. We had always wondered since the begining of the program if it would be possible to find a homestay for a couple, and what it would be like. Since I had such a great experience in Quebec City with my homestay (Merci beaucoup Madame Belanger) we decided to give it a try and contacted our coordinator and asked if it was possible. Within less than a week she told us that she had found us a homestay, and we were eager to try it out. Leah and I ventured to a different region of St. Petersburg which we really loved (near metro stop tekhnologicheski institut), and found what was to be our new residence in a nice, but old apartment block. The new homestay consisted of a middle aged woman (probably around 40-50) and her elderly and "sick" mother. The apartment itself was quite nice and big, our room there was at least twice the size of our room at the Gostinitsa and was quite nicely decorated with hardwood floors, plants, and a big rug on the wall. The apartment had three big bedrooms, a small but clean bathroom and a small kitchen. It was conveniently located less than five minutes from a Metro stop that directly went to the school, and was also within walking distance of downtown. Everything was perfect except the homestay itself. We soon found out that the situation was less than ideal as our host people never really talked to us. The whole reason that we decided to give the homestay a try was to have the opportunity to practice speaking Russian more. Our host "mother" worked later then we had to go to school, so we would wake up and go to school and she would still be in her bedroom asleep. When she would come home in the evening she would usually make a quick dinner and then spent the rest of the night in her bedroom watching tv with the door closed. Neither of us felt particularly comfortable knocking on the bedroom door of a complete stranger and trying to make small talk with her, and as she didn't really make any effort to communicate with us, the situation was less than ideal. The agreement with the school for homestays was also that breakfast would be provided to us, and Leah and I were quite excited to not have to get up and try to make breakfast for ourselves. However, as she didn't need to get up when we did, she simply bought us some breakfast foods to make for ourselves. This was unfortunate as what she brought us was eggs, and making them in the morning would mean having to get up about an hour earlier than usual to make breakfast as well as to wash our dishes and then head out to school, whereas in the Gostinitsa we would roll out of bed, have a quick bite to eat (yoghurt, cereal etc) and then get driven to the school. The final determining factor was the cost. Despite Leah and I taking up the space of one person, because there was two of us the school wanted us to pay the equivalent of two people on the homestay. This worked out to 17.6 Euros each per night, which would mean around $60 Canadian for the two of us. The cost for the two of us to stay in the homestay for the rest of program would have cost us around $3600! Once we realized that the cost of the homestay far outweighed its benefits we decided to leave as soon as possible and contacted our coordinator. We explained the situation and paid for the time that we had already spent in the homestay. Today, after school Leah and I returned to the homestay, packed all of our stuff up again (we're experts now), called a taxi and moved back to the Gostnitsa. For some reason, despite all its faults, returning to the Gostinitsa was like a breath of fresh air, and Leah and I both breathed a big sigh of relief when we stepped through the doors.

Home-Stay

We finally have some interesting news to write about again: Ross and I have moved . . . into a homestay with a Russian family!
Details: When we were first applying to come on this program, we had heard from people that it was possible to live with a Russian family while studying here and since Ross had such a great experience living in a homestay when he was in Quebec we thought it might be nice to try it out here in Russia. However, at the time of applying, the coordinator informed us that it would be next to impossible for us to find a placement where we would be able to live together and so told us not to bother trying. Since we arrived in Russia however, more and more students started moving in with families and we were getting very frustrated/jealous, so we decided to give it a shot and at least ask what our chances were. We spoke with our coordinator at school and she quickly set us up with our new host person. On Thursday we came over to visit her and she showed us our room and the rest of the house and we sat and chatted with her over some tea. We still cannot communicate all that well but she is very nice and we just flipped through our dictionary every now and then to come up with a word. So the next day we confirmed with our coordinator that we wanted to live here and that we were planning to move in on Saturday.
Saturday came very quickly, Friday we had a good buy sushi dinner with Laura (earlier that day two of our other roommates had eaten sushi already, and Jessi was out to a concert) and the next morning we packed up a few bags and our backpacks and with Jessi and Laura’s help made our first trip over to our new place which is located much closer to the school than the Gostinitsa. Instead of walking from the school to the metro, taking it a stop, connecting to another metro line, going three more stops, then exiting and walking 20min, we now live four stops away from the school (one metro line only) and only three minutes from the nearest metro station! All in all a much shorter commute. We are living with a middle aged woman (she has a daughter who is married and now lives in Germany) and her elderly mother, who has some medical problems and so has difficulty getting around and so stays in her room most of the time. Apparently, on school days they will provide us with breakfast in the morning but the rest of the time we have to prepare our own meals (which is fine by me since I like to cook anyway)
So Laura and Jessi helped us to bring a load of stuff over, then Jessi headed out for a day of siteseeing while Laura stayed with us and came along to scope out our area. We found the Lenta (supermarket) which is only 10 minutes away and bought ourselves some staples then returned home to drop them off before returning to the gostinitsa for one last dinner and another load of our things. Unfortunately, we are not able to get back any of the money that we spent for the four months at the gostinitsa but it is ok since our room their will remain ours so that if at any time for whatever reason we wanted to return, we could. We have left some of our things there which we didn’t want to move over, souvenirs and books which we will not need until we go home, summer clothes and things we won’t need for the next few months, etc. Ross realized when we got all the way back to the gostinitsa that he had forgotten the key for our room there, here at our new place! So he came all the way back here, and then when back to the gostinitsa so we could get into our room there, poor guy he made too many trips back and forth.
At any rate, it is now our second night in our new room. It is at least twice the size of the tiny room we had at the gostinitsa, has a good sized and comfortable bed, a television, lots of closet and cupboard space, two comfy chairs, a desk that folds down from the wall which we can use for doing homework on, tones of plants (much to my liking, as Ross calls me the crazy plant lady) and two large windows which look out onto the courtyard of the building. I had a somewhat restless sleep last night, since I am not used to being here yet, but I think after the next few days it will begin to feel like home.
I think this experience will be really beneficial to our Russian. I am still sometimes nervous to speak, because I feel so silly and awkward sometimes and as though all the Russian words I know are falling out of my brain. I freeze a bit still, but it will get easier and easier since our host people speak no English so every day I will be forced to speak to them in Russian. I don’t think becoming fluent is necessarily realistic, but I will be one step closer after the end of the program in two months. And who knows maybe one day we will be able to come back here for a longer period of time, and then we might just become fluent. Final note: even though I miss our Canadian roommates in the gostinitsa, we will still see them at school and outside of school when we visit them, living in a home-stay is going to be great too.
Coming Soon: Ross and Leah go to the Opera!

Home Stays, Smoke, and Fur

Not all that much to report, or at least nothing exciting. I am still fighting off a cold this weekend so we didn't do very much adventuring. However, we have made some inquires at the school and may be moving into a homestay at some point in the next week or so. We had been told initially, by the coordinators in Canada, that finding a placement for both of us in the same home would be nearly impossible and so had pretty much abandoned the idea. Lately though, many other Canadian students have been moving in with Russian families so we thought we should at least ask what our chances of finding a place were. We spoke with the coordinator, who asked us a few simple questions and then told us that it shouldn't be a problem to find us a family to live with, and that we should meet with her sometime this week once she had some time to find us a possible placement. Since then however, my mom actually reminded me that with my allergy to smoke it may not be so easy afterall. I had completely forgotten at the time to mention it to our coordinator, but now that I think of it, given how prevelant smoking is in Russia, it may be very difficult to find a household wanting to host students that just happens to miraculously be smoke free. Keep your fingers crossed for us that the people our coordinator finds are not smokers, or short of that, that they refrain from smoking indoors. It might be a long shot, but I can hope.

Also worth mentioning, while out wandering for a little while on Sunday Ross and I spotted a group of protestors. It was the first time we had seen any form of political demonstration here (although apparently they are common) and I was even more surprised to find out that it was an anti-fur protest. Who would have thought that in Russia, where everyone we pass on the street is wearing a fur hat, a fur lined hood, or fur coat, I would see my first "Fur Is Murder" banner. The people were carrying small stuffed animal seals (they must have been protesting the seal hunt in particular), and some people were dressed in white full-body suits which later they splashed with red paint. I think it is quite ironic, that given the activism of people in Victoria, and the many animal rights supporters in Canada as a whole, that it took me coming all the way here to see this. I was approached once at school, wearing a hooded-sweater that was ligned in the hood with faux fur, by an animal rights supporter who asked me "Do you know how many rabbits had to die for your sweater?" to which I responded "None, its 100% polyester." But I hadn't seen an organized protest group before. Sadly, I don't think their message will be heard hear anytime soon. Fur is everywhere in Russia!

Being Sick in a Foreign Country Sucks - And Qualms with Travel Medical Insurance

I ended up taking a couple of sick days this week from school because I have been fighting off a wicked flu. It started out with a sore throat and quickly shifted its way to my sinuses so I haven't been sleeping well at night and am constantly sneezing and gurggling (as Ross says) to try and breath.
Fortunately for me, I haven't been the only one who has gotten sick while we have been here. At least two of the Canadian students were so sick that they have missed over a week and a half of classes now because they were diagnosed with tonsilitis when they finally went into the American Clinic. And our roommate Laura told us yesturday when we met up with her at lunchtime after our first two classes, that only 3 of the 7 people in her class had made it to school that day.
Even our teachers can't seem to avoid being inflicted by all these bugs flying around - twice we have had substitues for our Conversation class, twice our Phonetics teacher has been away, and yesturday, when we got to our last class of the day after lunch, our Film teacher was away too and we were given no replacement teacher.
Maybe the weather has something to do with it. We had a really warmish weekend of 5-8 degree weather but now it has dipped back down to just below freezing - but regardless of the temperature it is always damp here. I think my lungs are just sick of all the smoke/pollution, the crazy amount of dust in our apartment, and the cold damp air they have to breathe in when I am outside. At anyrate I'm taking the weekend to hopefully recover and if not I may just have to make my way to the American Clinic as well.
It could always be a lot worse however - yesturday we found out that one of the students from Canada had broken his wrist early in the week. He has slipped on the ice and fell, causing it to break and apparently there is a bone fragment now which must be operated on to remove. The trouble is, apart from him breaking his first bone here in Russia, that even though he has travel insurance, for some reason his provider will not pay for his surgery to be performed in Russia. Now he has to fly all the way back to Canada before they will pay for it, or pay the American Clinic or the Euro Clinic here himself. He isn't even sure if his flight home to Canada will be covered or not, but his plan right now is to fly home, get over jet lag, have the surgery, recover for the required 5 days at least, and then come back to Russia, only to have to get over jet lag again before being able to return to classes. The flights alone not being able to be booked in advance will probably cost him at least $3000. Poor guy. I am grateful that I am just in bed with a headache, coughing and sneezing and not having to deal with medical insurance companies.
Note to self - ask him who his insurrance provider is and keep fingers crossed it isn't the same as ours. Then make sure not to get sick, and finally make sure not to use his company in the future. I would be pretty upset if I were him right now, having purchased extended travel medical insurrance only to find out that the provider refuses to pay for your treatment until you return home. Sometimes I think the subtext to the fine print on things like that can be pretty frustrating. In the long run, he has to put up with a whole lot more stress than if the silly insurance provider weren't so concerned with saving a few pennies and would just pay someone to do it here. Surely out of the dozen or so European/American Hospitals in St. Petersburg alone they could have found a decent surgeon to do it, so they can't claim its for his own safety to go back to Canada. And if not in St. Petersburg, why not just send him to Moscow, or Helsinki, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter so he wouldn't have to fly half way around the world again. What's the use of travel medical insurance if it only works in your home country? Sure they save themselves the money and the extra paperwork, but what exactly did this guy pay for?

~Leah

Tsarskoe Selo - The Tsar's Village

The school organized another tour for the students this week to Tsarskoe Selo or the Tsar's Village where the summer residences of the Romanov's were built. On the grounds of the Tsar's Village (also nicknamed Pushkin, because the writer Pushkin studied at a university in this area) there are two different palaces, the Alexander Palace and the Catherine Palace, numerous gardens, smaller buildings, monuments, ponds, fountains, etc. . . On Friday afternoon, we were driven to Pushkin and were taken on a tour throughout the Catherine Palace. Then on Sunday Ross, Laura, and I returned again to visit the Alexander Palace. Laura in particular is really interested in Imperial History so we had to go and see these places.

Catherine Palace - We had a guided tour of this palace on Friday afternoon and our guide's English was fantastic. The palace was originally founded in the time of Peter I and was the summer residence of his wife Ekaterina (Catherine I - hence Catherine Palace) but was built largely under the reign of Elizabeth I beginning in 1744 and later expanded under Catherine the Great. It is 740 meters long, nearly the size of Versailles, it would have been larger, but Catherine was given the wrong dimensions. Not all of this massive building has been restored yet - during the Second World War the entire structure was gutted by a huge fire, there were photos on the walls showing what it looked like after 1945 and all that was left, were the stones and bricks which made the foundation and walls of the building - so we were taken just through the one wing which has been rebuilt. Even though we saw probably only a 1/3 of the whole building it was unbelievably elaborate! One series of rooms facing out onto the parade yard at the front of the building are decorated floor to ceiling with carved mouldings which were guilded in gold! Almost every inch of the wall is decorated with these guilded carvings (gold leafed wooden carvings) which are a staple of Russian Imperial Architecture. Over 100 kilograms of gold were used to decorate it! Some interior dimensions for Dad so he can envision the size of the size of one of the rooms: the Great Ballroom is 846 square meteres - (sorry not sure of the conversion into feet) and apparently this didn't even seem big enough so there are mirrors on pretty much every surface that isn't covered in gold, so that it would appear larger. Also of interest, is the famous Amber Room. Initially the panels inlaid with amber were meant to decorate a palace in Germany, but they were sent as a gift to Peter the Great as a gift in 1717 and had to be added to because the dimensions were too small for the room he wanted to put them in. Now, the entire room, a study, is covered in mosaics made entirely of amber. The frames of the paintings, the doorframes, and everything else from the baseboards to the crown mouldings is decorated in amber. The original panels which covered the walls of this room, were looted by the Nazis in WWII and were never recovered, so what is present there today, is a recreation of the orginial decor taken from photos and paintings of the room. The parquet floors - every room has a different pattern on the floor, and our guide mentioned somewhere in the range of 45 different types of wood were used - oak, maple, walnut, ebony, roseword, mahogany, etc. All in all, an extremely over the top palace!

Alexander Palace - This palace was constructed as a gift to Alexander I, Catherine the Great's favorite grandson between 1792 and 1796. This Palace is also significant because it is where the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II and his family, chose to live and where they were eventually placed under arrest before eventually being taken to Ekaterineburg where they were held prisoner until their execution in July 1918. We made our way back to Pushkin on Sunday, taking first the metro to a train station in the city, and then a train from St. Petersburg out to Pushkin. This is definitely the way to travel if you are going to visit Pushkin, because the train is so much smoother and faster than taking one of the tour buses or vans which leave from the centre of the city. Once we arrived in Pushkin, we hopped on a bus which took us the rest of the way, from the train station up to the palaces. We hopped off at the Catherine Palace because we wanted to grab a quick snack in its little cafe, and then try to see the front parade yard before making our way to the Alexander Palace. Unfortunately, the front of the building was gated off because they are working on the exterior of the building for its upcoming 300th Anniversary in 2010. We next made our way through the grounds of the Alexander Palace, coming up behind the building, and taking a few minutes to visit a site that Laura in particular was eager to see. Off to one side of the Palace, in one of the garden's ponds is the Childrens' Island, where there is a "play house" aka their own small palace, and a small graveyard of the family's pets. Laura was very excited to see this place, because since there is no longer a bridge connecting the island to the rest of the park, it is only possible to visit it in the winter when the pond is frozen over and since it is where the Romanov children played. After seeing the Childrens' Island we headed for the Palace, which sadly is in terrible condition. One half of the building is now a museum, but requires still more attention, and the other half, which looks as though it is crumbling, has been used recently by a branch of the military and has not been kept up at all. Aparently, the museum has bought out the other half of the building now and there are plans to continue the restoration process. Inside, we were able to visit one floor of one wing, which has been mostly restored to how it would have looked when Nicholas II and his family lived there. It is far less extravagant than the Catherine Palace, but this is likely because its interiors are of a newer style which is far more modest than the style in the time of Catherine the Great.

Russian Food

As promised, I wanted to write a bit about the food we have been eating here, and Russian foods in general.
Restaurants - Firstly, just like anywhere else in the world now, you can find just about any type of food you could imagine here in Russia (just about). We have gone out to eat sushi about four different times now and in different sushi restaurants because it just feels so nice after a few days of starch-heavy Russian food, to eat something fresh and cool. It also helps that sushi here is really cheap. If we go for "business lunch" for example, you can get a sushi combination special for around 300 rubles (about $10 Can.) and it will include a drink, a bowl of soup, and usually between 18-24 pieces of sushi. We have also seen or the city has: Chinese, Indian, Thai (which we will have to find soon because Ross and I have been craving Thai food and unfortunately haven't been able to find the ingredients Ross would need to make his famous Thai dishes), Scandinavian, Italian, etc. in restaurants all over the city. There are also some great options for Caucasian food, already Ross and I have been out for Georgian food which was fantastic. We ate shashlik (they are meat kebabs with either beef, chicken, pork, lamb or goat), a very tasty beet salad, and seasoned potatoes. From what we could determine, Georgian food is a bit like Mediteranean food, the potatoes were boiled but then seasoned in a vinegar like dressing with some spices, and a spieced oil and vinegar sauce was brought out to go with out meat.

Grocery Stores - The grocery stores are a bit of a different story to restaurants, and while there are plenty of options to choose from, we haven't been able to find some of the items we would like. The fruits and vegetables for instance, which are almost entirely imported (from Spain, Italy, even South America) are of poor quality and are often spoiling in the store. We have however found potatoes, onions, an occassional good looking pepper, mushrooms (always! this wouldn't be Russia without mushrooms - will explain), apples, bananas and oranges. Leafy vegetables aside from cabbage are almost completely non-existant and the other fruits and vegetables we avoid as well. This is partly because of the water issues here. Although the water is treated, in many places the pipes are very old and so heavy metals have been found in the drinking water, as well, there is a particular parasite in the water here which Russians have built up immunity to, but would cause us a lot of troubles. Since fruits and vegetables are often laid out on ice, or are rinsed in the grocery stores we have been advised to avoid fruits and vegetables that can't be pealed or aren't going to be cooked.

Mushrooms - Huge deal in Russia! It is considered a national pasttime for people to go out with their families on weekends, etc. into the forested and rural areas to pick mushrooms. Everyone seems to be a mushroom critic, the older women scrutinize the mushrooms in the grocery store forever and I am sure at somepoint one of them will scold me for picking up what seem to me at least, to be perfectly fine mushrooms. We have seen women selling strings of dried mushrooms from around their necks outside of metro stations, and have eaten mushrooms in just about everything. Russians eat mushrooms in soups, on Blini (the little pancake things I described before), in salads, inside verenikii (basically the same thing as a perogii which is the ukranian name), and the even have mushroom flavoured chips.

Chips - Like in England, Russian chips aren't condiment flavoured and so they are infinitely better than Canadian chips. We have been eating mostly Lays Chips just none of these silly Ketchup, Salt and Vinegar, or Barbeque flavors. Instead, Russians eat, White Mushroom, Sour Cream and Leek (ok- this one is a bit similar to our sour cream and onion except that it actually tastes like leek), Shashlik, Crab, and Red Caviar chips. The red caviar ones are actually new, we had been seeing billboards and comercials for them since we got here, and then we could only find them in tiny sample packs attached to Pepsi bottles, but now we can finally find them in larger packages all over the place! I love red caviar chips.

Dairy Products - Russians eat sour cream - "smetanna" on absolutely everything. In borscht and other soups, on varenikii (perogies), pelmeni (similar to ravioli - they are stuffed with meat, cheese, pottato, or mushrooms of course, etc. .) on potatoes but the trouble is that the sour cream here is at the least 15% fat! if not 20 or 30%. Unfortunately that is the reality of dairy products here in general: the average fat percentage of milk is 2.5% or 3.5% and although I have found lactose free skimmed milk, it comes from Finland. There is also something else here called "Kefir" which Russians like to drink, and it is similar in consistency to butter milk but smells as though it is a bit soured with a similar aroma to cottage cheese, it is also very very high in fat. Likewise, yogurhts and cheeses are also have higher percentages of fat than we are used to.

Starch, Starch and More Starch! - Every meal here typically consists of 100% of your recommended daily intake of carbohydrates. For breakfast, Russians eat Kasha - a porridge made from buckwheat. At lunch they eat Pidishki (not sure how it is spelt in english) which is a pastry about the size of a bagel which is stuffed with either meat and rice, egg and rice, or sometimes saurkraut - these are fantastic and a staple of our school's cafeteria but unfortunately they are typically very greasy. Also available for lunch at our cafeteria at lunch are various meat or egg dishes served with, you guessed it more starches - either buckwheat, rice or pureed potatoes. As if this weren't enough, bread is a huge staple here - dark, dense rye bread (actually very similar to the rye that Bedstemor makes) which is eaten with cheese, kolbasa (sausage), etc. . . On top of all these add on varenikii and pelmeni - which I love!! yum. . . and you could eat only starches all day long. A note about varenikii here - Jeana this is for you - we have only been able to find three flavours of prepared varenikii in the stores: 1) mushroom which speaks for itself 2) cherry - don't ask me apparently they like sweet flavoured ones too 3) a cottage cheese type one, I know what you are thinking Jeana yay! just like our favorite ones which you make, but you would be wrong. . . we bought a package of these thinking they would make a fantastic dinner only to be horribly disappointed. Apparently cottage cheese here is sweet! We boiled them up for dinner, put a dob of sour cream next to them on our plate and dove in, only to find out that they taste like a cream puff or something in the middle, very vanilla-y. Needless to say we have only been purchasing the mushroom ones ever since. . . I just can't wrap my head around the idea of eating varenikii for dessert.

Art Lovers!

Photo: Ross on the Jordan Steps - Hermitage Museum
Its been about a week or so since Ross and I went back to the Hermitage to see some more of the art and I have been wanting to brag about it ever since so here goes:
After finishing classes that morning (some days we have only two classes, one from 9:30 until 11 and another from 11:30 until 1pm) so we headed to the city centre and had a quick "business lunch" (even in Russia they call it this, just with an accent of course, but almost all of the cafes and restaurants here have "business lunch" specials) in a great sushi before heading to the Hermitage.
Once there, Ross was wanting to see some of the most famous rooms and architectural features of the building, so we headed to the Jordan Steps, the grandest of the many staircases of the building and then walked through a portion of the second floor, where instead of art they had some of the rooms set up and furished how they would have been when the last royal family was living there. Ross was also very interested to see the thrown room, the Concert Hall, and others, but unfortunately some of these were closed off. Likely this is because they were doing maintenance or something, since the majority of visitors come in the summer months now would probably be the best time to do any upgrading and what not.
After seeing these, and much of the art displayed in the rooms between these rooms, we wanted to find the more famous artworks that are apart of the collection. First we found Da Vinci - the Hermitage has two of his works, the Bennois Madonna and the Madonna Litta. Still hard to imagine that we were actually standing there and looking at Da Vinci's. Also near Da Vinci, were some works of a few other recognizable artists - a sculpture by Michalangelo, and two paintings by Raphael!
Eventually, we made our way to the third (and my favorite floor), where all of the 19th and 20th century paintings were. For me, many of the earlier paintings all look the same, but what makes them special is how old they are, whereas these more modern paintings I find absolutely stunning even if they are newer and less historic (I still think they are worthy of being called historic though). Ok so a quick run down of the people's art we saw, and perhaps a few of their titles, only the best ones though: *note* I am going to post a link to the bottom of this entry of the Hermitage Museum - on their website they have a fantastic Virtual Collection where you can search by artist, theme, type of artwork and view nearly every piece of art in the collection . . . trust me look up some of these guys! 1)Van Gogh - one of my top three (I still can't figure out who is my favorite out of these three) there were 4 or 5 of his pieces. Monet - (again top three) just something about the way Monet paints is emotional as well as beautiful and I am a sucker for landscapes. I love his -painting called "Lady in a Garden." Picasso - (last but not least of the top three) Ross bought me a print of my favorite of his works, I forget the name in English it only has it in Russian on the back of my copy but I believe it is called "the Dance of the Veils" (again check the website, it is from Picasso's famous Blue Period). Ross' favorite painting is one of Picasso's as well called "Composition with a Skull." There were at least a dozen of his paintings and some of his pottery as well. Mattisse - certainly not my favorite, but because his name is so well known, it was very interesting to see some of his paintings. Someone in the museum's history must have really liked his works too because there were as I recall two rooms containing his pieces. Also worth noting - Cezanne and Rodin: slightly lesser known possibly, but beautiful! To be honest we were looking at this part of the museum about an hour before it closed, so I rushed past a lot of the lesser known artists to get to the guys who I really wanted to see. I definitely plan to go back however and take a closer look at some of the things I skipped, and to appreciate my favorites again.

Just wanted to say lastly, sorry to anyone who is wanting to know more about life in Russia in general, or about school, etc. . . I do intend to write later on about Russian food, the Russian people, more about our residence building, and about St. Petersburg in general, but since there are over 400 museums and other important cultural sites in St. Petersburg I think many of our posts will be dominated by all the history we are able to re-live through these places. Count: 12 or so Historical Sites/Museums down 380 some-odd more to go! Except for ones like the Bread Museum, the Vodka Museum, the Communications Museum, the Antarctic Museum . . . I think we may be able to skip those.

link: http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html
And once there, just click on the virtual collection menu and from there you can select to view art either by category, artist etc.

Novgorod the Great

The other day Leah and I and our roommates went on an excursion via Smolny to the ancient Russian city of Novgorod (called Novgorod the Great by many in Russians). As it was organized by the school we did not have to worry about transportation or food, and we even had our own English speaking tour guide to explain to us the significance of the sights that we were seeing. We rolled out of bed around 7:20am (6:20pm BC time) and quickly phoned our friend Jeana as it was her birthday! We got ready and then managed to get downstairs on time to leave for Novgorod, as the bus was going to be leaving around 8:00am.
A little bit about Novgorod. It is situated 4 hours south of St. Petersburg by car and is one of the oldest Russian cities. When we arrived in Novgorod our guide mentioned to us that this year Novgorod was celebrating it's 1150th birthday and just to put some contrast to that, Canada's oldest city, Quebec City, just recently celebrated it's 400th birthday, and Canada has a country is less than 200 years old. Novgorod became famous under the rule of the Viking Rurik, who was later to establish the first of Russia's two dynasty's, which ruled Russia for more than 700 years. By the 12th century Novgorod was Russia's biggest city, and was unique in its politics as it was a quasi democracy, where the inhabitants hired and fired the princes. It was spared from the Mongol invasion of Russia, and was independent until Ivan the Third attacked and annexed it to Moscow. Today Novgorod only has about 300,000 people, whereas Moscow has around 14 million. Novgord is also unique in its architecture. Whereas St. Petersburg was built to resemble most other European cities with mostly French and Italian designs, Novgorod retains traditional Slavic architecture and looks quite different. Anyway, back to the actual trip...
So we got on the bus around 7:50 or so and there ended up being 8 Canadians (from our group), 1 German girl, 1 Japanese girl, and 5 Finns. Everyone was excited to see what the Russian countryside would look like. Since Russians in cities do not own houses, (they all live in apartments/condos) almost everyone also has a dacha, or countryhouse, outside the city in the countryside somewhere. It is interesting because almost the entire drive to Novgorod, there were all these little houses (some nice and some dilapitated) on both sides of the highway. There were a few breaks here and there, and the scenary is very similar to Alberta (minus the fields), with sort of low grass, and lots of birch and fir trees.
After we arrived in Novgorod (a side note is that our driver got pulled over by the traffic police because he was driving 82 kph, when the speed limit was 80. About 20 minutes later he came back into the van and turned around and said vsyo normalno (everything's fine) and off we went again). we took 10 minutes to look at some souvenir stands and then they took us to see our first sight of the day, the Yurev Monestary. It was built in the 12th century and still is used as a monestary, run by 4 monks and 4 training monks. It's a huge monestary, with multiple buildings and a surrounding wall, so they have a lot of work to do. Novgorod was also one of the major fronts of the Second World War, and was occupied by the Hispanic division of the Nazi armed forces. They used the Yurev Monestary, and the Cathedral of St. George (inside the monestary) as an outpost (after completely demolishing most of the city, save for a few churches). The inside of the cathedral was quite cold, as the whole buildings is constructed of stone, and in fact is not used in the wintertime. Services run from May until late fall as it does not have a heating system. The insides are decorated in similar Russian fashion, with icons painted on the walls and was quite a sight.
Upon completing our tour of the cathedral we drove a short distance to the Museum of Wooden Architecture which was interesting. Although not all the buildings were native to Novgorod, they were shipped here from all over Russia to give the visitor an idea of what a common village would look like during ancient times. Most of the buildings are able to be entered and there was a small souvenir market across the street which we also looked at.
We got back on the bus and drove back into the centre of the city where we walked through a small park and into the Kremlin of the city. A bit of an explanation, in Russia a Kremlin is a fortified area (usually surrounded by a wall and moat) that housed the political and military buildings of the city. The Kremlin in Moscow, which houses the current political institutions of the Russian Federation follows this same principle. We then walked to the Detinets Restaurant, which is actually housed in the top of one of the towers of the Kremlin. The food and ambiance of the restaurant was amazing and we had a delicious traditional Russian meal. Rye bread was waiting at the table as well as cranberry juice and water. The first course was a light, but tasty salad consisting of slices of cucumber and tomato with a small dollop of sour cream and salt and pepper. This was followed with a delicious beef soup (soups are very hearty here and the rule of thumb is that a spoon must be able to stand straight in it or it's not good), with vegetables. The main course were 3 of the best cabbage rolls I have ever eaten, and desert consisted of two blinys (Russian crêpes) with honey and then coffee or tea. It was certainly of the best, if not the best meal that we've had since we've arrived here and it did the trick to warm us up since the weather was quite chilly and damp.
After dinner we finished our tour of the Kremlin, including the Millennium of Russia Monument, which is a massive 300-tonne sculpture made in 1862, depicting over 127 figures of Russia's history (rulers, statsemen, artists, scupltors, writers, musicians.) The monument is 16 metres high and was cut up by the Nazi's who wanted to take it back to Germany, but luckily they fled before they could take it away and it was shortly re-assembled.
A short walk from the monument is the famed Cathedral of St. Sophia, built in Byzantine stye it is one of Russia's oldest buildings and (according to our guide) the first stone Russian building. Ornamentation was reserved for the interior and insude the icons date from around the 14th century. Like all Russian cathedrals the interior is decorated with fresoes and icons painted onto the walls and ceilings and was quite beautiful.
St. Sophia was our last sight in Novgorod and shortly after we got back on the bus and drove to St. Petersburg.