So far fall break is going well. We've been to:
Tallinn, Estonia
Helsinki, Finland
Parnu, Estonia
Riga, Latvia
and in less than 2 hours we leave for Vilnius, Lithuania.
It's been so great. I don't really have time to do a full update now, but I wanted to let you know that I posted some pictures. Check out the recently-added "Newest Photos" section!
Okay, so, 3pm in Moscow is 7am on the east coast. It's ridiculous to think that anyone would be answering emails or Facebook messages at this hour, but still.
Plua I woke up at like 11 today to pack because I thought it would take forever, but it didn't. And last night I didn't finish my dinner, so there was some салат (sal-ah-t; trans. "salad", in quotes because it's more like the tuna/chicken mayo-y type salad) and half of one of the котлеты (cot-let-e; trans. ground beef patties that taste more like meatloaf than hamburgers). Well, I ate the "salad" when I got up and was going to eat the beef thing with an orange a couple hours later, but my host mom came home at noon and started making lunch. So we had pork, fresh veggies, and canned corn (which I have officially gotten used to being cold) and then she reminded me that I need to eat the beef thing before I leave. Sometimes she eats them with острый кетчуп (os-tree kyetchup, trans. spicy ketchup (but it's actually regular ketchup... which inspires the question, what is regular Russian ketchup?). I really have to eat them by themselves.
So I was originally going to bring a backpack and a wheely carry-on, but the my friend, Anna, who I'm travelling with, called and said she's just bringing a backpack. I just fit everything that was in my carry-on into my backpack, and only had a few small things left over to put into my purse. I have no idea why I didn't just try the backpack in the first place. Just goes to show I'm not an efficient packer.
I better go force down the last of my leftovers so my host mom doesn't freak. Then I'm going shopping for delicious train food (aka a loaf of my favorite bread and some pre-sliced salami), which should cost me about 60 rubles total (trans. $2.40). Mmm, my favorite flavor: cheap!
Goodbye for now! The next time you hear from me I'll have at least two more stamps in my passport! :-D
Russia, that is...
Anyway... I finally found a place that the photo-upload application on Facebook works at. So, I put a few new pictures up of my trip so far. Hopefully they're a little more impressive than the randomly-selected pictures I put up when I had no idea what I was uploading. And there'll be more to come!
So, the itinerary for the next week or so...
Friday: leave for Tallinn, Estonia at 6pm
Saturday: arrive at 8:30am and spend day in Tallinn
Sunday: leave for Helsinki, Finland (by boat) at 8am; arrive 11am and spend day in Helsinki; sometime go back to Tallinn to sleep there again
Monday: 4-hour trip to Riga, Latvia
Tuesday: Riga
Wednesday: 4-hour trip to Vilnius, Lithuania
Thursday: Vilnius; night bus to Gdansk, Poland
Friday: Gdansk
Saturday: 5-hour trip to Kaliningrad, Russia
Sunday: Kaliningrad; flight home at 8pm
The other day I went to the library to check out a book, to find out that you can't actually check books out of the library. You can reserve them and then read them in the library. Or you can copy them. Anyway, not the point of the story... I was about to leave when I saw some bookshelves with paperbacks for sale. It being the Foreign Languages Library, I thought just maybe some of these books might be in English. They were! I bought nine books for less than $25. I love Russia. Although, it is difficult to tell sometimes if a book is the original text. Russians apparently like to have the text dumbed-down a bit for them before they will attempt an English version. Seven of the nine I'm sure are original-text versions. The copy of Lolita says it's the original text, but I'm fairly certain Nabokov wrote in Russian, so I'm not sure that's possible. And I thought I had found and original-text version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, but now that I take another look at it, I'm not so sure. I already read Murder on the Orient Express, and the other 6 are: The First Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass), The Hounds of Baskerville, and Slaughterhouse Five. Should be a good time--even if I don't have a high school English teacher to tell me their "significance". ;-)
I don't remember if I posted this already or not, but Russia is not the world's most multicultural place. Every time I see a black person, I think, "Oh, right! I knew something looked a little off without you!" So, this happened like 5 times or so since I've been here. Yeah, scary. ...I miss my multicultural motherland.
Oh, I don't think I mentioned the time she brought home a package of whole, salted fish, each about 7 inches long. I was really hoping they were for the stray dog that she feeds... They weren't. She showed me how to eat them: you cut off the head, cut off the stomach, hold the tail and make little bites up to the tail where you bite it off. You kind of eat them like a celery stalk, if you were holding the leafy end in you hand, and didn't eat that part. ...And you ate the whole stalk in one mouthful. She showed me a couple times and then asked me if I wanted to try some, adding something like, "They're SO delicious!" I think I said something along the lines of, "No, thank you. I don't quite believe you..." She laughed and that was the end of that. Well, she kept eating them, but she didn't ask me if I wanted to try them again.
The reason this came to mind is because the food has been delicious for the past few days. ...And when I say delicious, I mean just like home! :-D We (I) had "American sandwiches" the last few days. It was great! She bought this bread called Harry's American Sandwich (which is like Wonder Bread, but completely square) as well as some ham, lettuce, and tomatoes! It was amazing. Except for the mayo not being Hellmann's Light, it was pretty perfect--almost like being in America again! :-D
I should be able to keep in touch pretty well (or at least as well as I have been) while travelling. Feel free to shoot me an email or something. However, I heard on the grapevine that some of you have sent me letters and/or packages. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get those until Tuesday, November 6 (I get back Sunday night, but Monday the 5th is a federal holiday). Well, if they're even there by then. Letters seem to be taking about two weeks, on average, and I've been waiting a month, tomorrow, for a certain package... I mean, I'm confident that everything winging it's way to me as we speak, will be ready and waiting for me when I get back.
And on that overly-confident note, I bid you farewell. Wish me luck at the border (x7)!
Yes, I really had to make it rhyme.
I've been fielding some questions about politics in Russia, next year's elections specifically. Here goes nothing... (Let's hope Putin is okay with what I have to say...)
An overwhelming majority of people love Putin. Actually I shouldn't say that. An overwhelming majority of people have no interest in politics whatsoever, and these people generally answer polls to say they'd be happy to have Putin for a third term. It looks like they won't amend the constitution in order for this to happen. However, they totally want him to be prime minister. And this is not degrading in any way, unlike a president running for vice president (or anything else for that matter) in America. The most shocking thing I found out is that, also not like America, Putin can be president again in 4 years. The limit's not 2 terms in a lifetime here, it's just 2 consecutive terms. So, basically whatever happens during the next term, Putin will be elected president again in 2012. The only chance of this not happening is if Putin does not have a hand in politics whatsoever during the new guy's term AND things go really well. Then that guy might have a fighting chance against Putin. But, at least right now, that seems unlikely.
How is this a democratic country, you ask? Well, the people are voting... But more than that, no one cares. As my politics teacher so aptly put it: "Russians don't care if Russia is a democracy; it's only important that the West thinks that Russia is democratic." Putin even asked famous people to run against him in the presidential elections (i.e. director Mikhailkov) to make Russia seem more like it was having democratic elections. Hey, if Russians are receiving the type of political system they voted for, isn't that what a democracy is all about?
Next topic: Russian drinking laws... (This is where you ask, "Wait, there are drinking laws in Russia??") The drinking laws in Russia are few and far between. You can't buy alcohol if you're under 18. (Laugh here.) You can't drink alcohol on the metro. (Laugh here.) And I'm fairly certain the blood-alcohol limit for driving is close to (if not actually) the European standard of zero percent. This one's not really a laughing matter, despite the fact that everyone does it too. The weird thing is that even in America you can buy alcohol until 2am, but in Moscow the metro closes at 1am. And the only time of day the streets aren't over-packed with cars is the middle of the night. So, they're kind of just asking people to drive home drunk. I mean, the metro opens again at 5:30, which is really not all that long to be closed, but if you realize at 1:30am that you missed the metro, those are 4 long, drunken hours til you get to go home. I'm sure people end up taking cabs home, but of you have your car anyway, I'm sure that idea isn't very appealing. (Taxis in Russia are overwhelmingly of the gypsy variety, and the shadier side of gypsy at that.) So anyway, the point is that there are loads and loads of drunken, after-1am car wrecks that probably could be prevented by keeping the metro open another hour or two. Okay, so, the other two loose drinking ...well, let's call them "rules". Basically as long as you look like you might be somewhat close to 18 they pretty much let you buy alcohol. (This generally includes anyone who looks 15 or older.) And as for not drinking in the metro, I think everyone generally takes that to mean that as long as you're not anywhere where the metro maids (like meter maids? ...but meaner and paid less) can yell at you. So, actually ON the metro seems to be okay. Why are people just walking around drinking alcohol, you ask? Because this isn't America. It's totally okay to just walk around with open alcohol. Well, if you're really drunk and a cop sees you, you can get put in ...not jail exactly... I guess it's just a vomit-encrusted, sober-up cell.. until the next morning. In the winter this prevents you from falling down outside and freezing to death (which happened to one of the coordinator's friend's 16-year-old son last year). But the rest of the time it's probably pretty unnecessary. ...Except for the fact that you'd have dozens (if not hundreds) of drunk men lying around the city every morning. Now, I have lived in a college town the last 3 (or maybe 7?) years of my life, so you'll know what I mean when I say I have seen my fair share of drunk people wandering around. However, I'm totally serious when I say that I have never seen a peoples more consistently and completely drunk than I have in Russia. By 6pm on weekdays, and pretty much all day on weekends, the metro stinks of vodka or beer. I still have no idea how they manage to do it; they seem to drink it like I drink ice-cold water on a 90-degree day--except more cheerfully.
Ah, parking. There are no discernible parking laws in Russia. As long as you're not completely blocking traffic, all's good. So, you often have to cross the street simply to be able to walk down it because there are cars parked on the sidewalk. If a road has two lanes each way, it can become one lane each way. If there's a large intersection where you can't turn left (which is most of them), people will park in the intersection! This one always confuses me the most.
If you get arrested for any reason, the minimum sentence is 15 days. Like, once you're booked, that's it. I have no idea why this exists. I know it also happened during Soviet times, but I haven't been able to discern a reason for it yet. Let me know if you find out...
Not this upcoming week, but the next week we have a week off. So, on Friday I leave for Eastern Europe! A girl in my program, Anna, and I are going to: Tallinn, Estonia; Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Latvia; Vilnius, Lithuania; Gdansk, Poland; and Kaliningrad, Russia. I don't know if I'll have time to update on the road, so I'll try and get in one more (and some more pictures) before I leave. :-)
So, Tuesday night we met at the train station to catch the night train to Kazan. I was very excited, as I had never been on a night train before. We were going плацкарт (plats-cart, trans. third class). This just means that there are no doors between you and the other people. In each section, there are 2 bottom bunks and 2 top bunks, then across the aisle there is one more top bunk and one more bottom. It was fun. Except for the whole getting up really early and waiting in line to use the bathroom.
We got there on Wednesday morning and went to check into the hotel. We got there (after a very long up-hill walk) to find out that our "travel agency called and cancelled". We don't have a travel agency. After a lot of harassing, they finally admitted that the weather was nice and they simply gave our rooms away. But, and this is somehow supposed to make up for it, they did help us find a nice "sanitorium" (aka hostel) to stay in. We were 4 and 5 to a room. It was nice. Clean. Quiet. But there was only one shower for everyone on our floor. And the toilets were the squat-over kind. But it was nice. And cheap, so we got more of our meals paid for (and they were nicer).
So, after the hotel detour, we went on a walking tour of the city. The guide was very sweet, except she kept saying things like, "Right now we're in the city of Kazan--you knew that right?" or "...the October Revolution--you know what that is, right?" So amusing. We saw some amazing stuff, though: the Kazan Kremlin, the Kul Sharif Mosque, the Anunciation Cathedral, the (outside of the) president's house, etc. The thing with the coolest story behind it is the Syuyumbike Tower: it is named after the long-suffering Princess Syuyumbike who was married to three successive khans. Ivan the Terrible then came into town and started destroying things after the princess refused to marry him. In order to save her city, she agreed to marry Ivan, but only if he could build a tower higher than anything else in Kazan in only a week. Well, he did, and then she threw herself off the top of it. Pretty cool stuff, but--as stressed by our guide--only a legend.
The next day was our daytrip to the Bulgar Historical Site. It started out well, our guide was friendly, we stopped to get lunch at a little roadside cafe, etc. etc. We drove three hours to a little park in Bulyarsk to climb the world's tallest hill to see three stones which the Russians have dubbed a monument. Then we sat for 15 mins while the guide tried to find the driver. Then we drove another 2 hours. During this time, the guide and driver managed to get completely lost and had to stop and ask for directions. However, it is extremely difficult to ask for directions when you're in the middle of nowhere. They stopped and asked a hitch hiker--in an army uniform and carrying a hatchet--where Bulgar is. The hitch hiker apparently knew, but wanted a ride. So, we drove him--and his hatchet--to his desired destination, and then they still had to ask for directions (after eating lunch at a very empty hotel playing American oldies). After much ado, we got to Bulgar. It was 2 buildings and a very tall tower (which we climbed) then got back in the car for 30 seconds to see another building, and then drove the 3 hours back to Kazan. Very interesting stuff, but I'm not sure it was worth the 7 hours in a van.
The next day was our free day and my friend Alexis and I went back to the Kremlin and had another look around. Then we ate at a Turkish restaurant where I had--drumroll, please!--iceberg lettuce for the first time in a month! Delish. Then we went back to the sanitorium (so much better than calling it a hostel) and I had a little nap before dinner. Dinner was at a very posh hotel that served real Tatar cuisine. I had лапша с грибами (lahp-sha s gree-bom-e), trans. soup with thin noodles and mushrooms), кролик (krol-lick, trans. rabbit), and a delicious frozen custard thing. Mmmmm.
Saturday was our last day. We went out to the longest breakfast ever, walked around the "mall" for a little bit, and then sat in a cafe and read for a while. At the cafe I had--another drum roll--a caesar salad! It was delicious. It was like being in America. :-D Except not.
On the way back we had were in купе (coop-ay, trans. second class). This time we were 4 to a compartment (two top bunks to bottom) and the cots were longer. Also, we had a door. This actually caused a problem, though, because the train's heat was on and the window didn't open. It was ridiculously hot. And we didn't get to sleep til around 1am, and had to get up at 6:30 to be in Moscow by 7:10. Blech. Then I slept all yesterday. :-D
So, that was my time in Kazan. Hope you enjoyed it! :-D There should be some new pictures to check out on the righthand side! :-)
Today we are leaving to go to Kazan. My phone will be roaming there, so please don't call and don't expect any updates until I get back on Sunday morning. Byeeeee!
