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Thursday,
October 30, 2003
In case you were asking yourself, "What is a 'New Russian'?" "New Russian" is a term generally referring to one of those dirty bastards who got rich off of the advent of capitalism in Russia. Not all people who got rich are New Russians, though - it's all about being noveau riche, cultureless, money-grubbing and unconcerned with other people's welfare. They are also known for almost hitting me with their damned beemers all the damn time.. - declared by Liusia @ 12:32 PM Conversations I have had with Sonya and Tolio, or conversations I have overheard, at home Tolio: When you left, you took all the keys with you and locked the security door! What if there were a fire? Would you rather I jumped out the east window or the west window?! Sonya: First of all, the windows face north and south. Secondly, your keys were in your coat pocket, see? Me: I have Russian song stuck in my head, and it doesn't make any sense. It goes "I'm a chocolate rabbit, oh oh oh. I'm a chocolate rabbit." Is it about Easter? Sonya: No. The young man who sings the song is black...why are you giggling? Tolio: You should put lemons in your tea. They're beneficial to your health. Lots of vitamins! There's nothing better than tea, and the best kind of tea is tea with vitamins! Me: I put some lemon in my tea. Tolio: Then, after you drink the tea, you should eat a whole lemon! (proceeds to stick an entire peeled lemon in his mouth) Me: Jesus! Tolio: (muffled) What? It's healthy! Sonya: Insomnia is bad. You poor thing, with your insomnia. Me: It could be worse. Sonya: You need to cure it! Me: It's not that bad. Sonya: One of my friends is an insomniac. But one time we drank a whole bottle of cognac, and she slept like a murdered thing! You're clearly not a big enough drunkard. Sonya: We still don't have hot water. Tolio: True. Sonya: It's the New Russians! New Russians are evil! Tolio: True. Sonya: I hate New Russians. Tolio: True. Sonya: You should go fix the water. Tolio: Tru- wait! I don't know how to fix the water! Sonya: Well, what good are you, then? Sonya: (to friend on telephone) I hate New Russians...(pause)...no, Natasha, we're not New Russians, we're accountants. - declared by Liusia @ 11:35 AM Monday,
October 27, 2003
Home sweet gulag Oh boy oh boy. What we are currently experiencing in my apartment could technically be described as BAD. Usually I just hate New Russians because they zoom all over Petersburg in there nasty big BMWs and cut in front of me in line at cafes, but now I have a whole new reason to hate those soulless capitalist bastards! They broke my hot water! Seriously, guys, it's like Gulag Archipelgo up in here! So, the stupid New Russians are building a 40 story apartment building next door to us. Petersburg is a swamp! Do you know what happens when you try to build a 40 story building on a swamp? It sinks! And do you know what happens when a 40 story building sinks into the water table? Oh yes, that's right folks...it makes the water table go kerblooey! There is now a swimming pool in our basement, because the water pressure increased so much that our pipes broke! The real problem here is not the fact that we only have cold running water (although, of course, it is lovely to wash my hair in a bucket of icy slush.) The problem is that the building has steam heat, and for steam heat, steam is required. And because we are such lucky people, the great New Russian New Atlantis Disaster decided to occur on the same day snow started falling and winter began in earnest! You know how laptops have a heat sink on the bottom, and you're not supposed to put them on your lap, because it can scorch your thighs? That gave me an idea. The laptop now lives under my blankets on my bed, where it acts as a footwarmer hot water bottle thingy. I am so technologically sophisticated. Where is Lenin when you need him? He would make those capitalist punks pay! On a different note, I think this blog was considerably better when I didn't have anything intersting to write about, so I pretended to be a gothic horror novel character or bitched about Pretentious Man at Middlebury.. I guess it turns out my real talent lies not in guide book writing, but in blathering pointlessly. So I think I'll try to up the pointless blather quotient of this blog once again. Look forward to a stupid essay tomorrow. I promise it will be totally dumb. - declared by Liusia @ 5:36 PM Sunday,
October 26, 2003
Back in the USSR In the cheezy words of Simon and Garfunkel, gee, but it's great to be back home. I was actually starting to be homesick for St. Petersburg. While I'm looking forward to going back to Madison and my life there, I think I'm really going to miss Petersburg.  You're mad Jack. You're as crazy as a march hare! Which of Jack Sparrow's multiple personalities are you? brought to you by Quizilla - declared by Liusia @ 10:33 AM Friday: Moscow Day 3. Hangings and gravestones and stairwells, oh my! As we headed out Friday morning on our planned activities, Sofia, Amanda and I realized that we had definitely made up the Moscow Creepy Tour for ourselves. Yesterday, Dead Lenin and the Garden of Fallen Idols, and today we had planned the Novodevitchy convent, necropolis and the bad Gorky house. It's a good thing we laugh in the face of unnervingness! Going outside, we discovered that it had snowed - not blizzard class, but a definite groundcovering. I love snow - it makes everything seem so clean and peaceful. Too bad then that the bastard people of the world have to stomp all over it with their nasty feet and the smog has to turn it grey and the cars kick up skanky dirty slush. 
Novodevichy convent was pretty, but many of the buildings were still under reconstruction inside, so mostly we could only walk around the grounds. There were two exhibitions open - one on old icons and church art, and one on St. Nicholas. In the church art one, there was defnitely an icon showing Jesus shooting shrapnel at an adoring crowd. 
Novodevitchy was where Peter the Great locked up both his half-sister and his first wife. His sister Sophia got the nastier deal - she'd seized power when he was young, despite not really being in the royal line, and didn't relinquish it when he grew up. So he had her locked in a cell in the convent, and strung up the bodies of her supporters outside her window. Peter wasn't really very nice. The picture we took outside what we think is her cell window turned out much artsier and moodier than intended. I think it deserves to be added to my angsty goth collection. It's me imitating one of Sophia's friends. 
His first wife was only there 'cuz he got bored with her, so she just had to be a nun and not leave. Kind of a step down, but there are worse things than being a nun. Like being locked in a cell and having to stare at your friends' dead bodies, for one. Then we walked around the necropolis. Lots of famous people are buried there - Chekhov, Gogol, Prokofiev, Eisenstein... 
Krushchev is also there. His gravestone is really stupid-looking - it's this geometrical design with a disembodied Krushchev head sitting in the middle. 
On our way out, we asked the ticket lady for directions to a nearby good restaurant. I guess she took the "good" part too seriously, because we ended up at a gourmet Georgian restaurant. According to the menu, Bill Clinton ate there in 1996. Then again, I guess that doesn't mean anything, since he was known for eating at McDonalds. Anyway, the place was a bit excessively expensive for Russia although not too bad by Western standards, and we got some very tasty soup and appetizers for a reasonable price. Next, we trucked it over to Arbat Street to see Gorky's eerie house. When Gorky was off on vacation, Stalin redecorated and rebuilt an old palacial residence for him. Gorky was pretty pissed off about it, since he wanted to be a good Communist and not own property, especially decadent property full of stained-glass windows. Also, he thought the house was super unnerving. I'd have to agree with Gorky on this one. The least creepy part of the house was the basement. Here's the evil-looking stairwell. 
There are rumors that Stalin had Gorky's bedroom walls coated in poisoned paint to hasten his death. All I know is, those stairs are mighty slippery. I'm surprised poor elderly Gorky didn't fall down and break a hip. Alas, all good things must end. We returned to the hotel, stopping along the way only to get Subway (oh, bless you, Moscow, for your American fast food - I'd been really jonesing for a sub) and to snap a photo of another amusing street sign. I think it speaks for itself.  choo choo! And when I went back to the hotel room to pack, I noticed something new on the back of the bathroom door: 
And so, we come full circle. - declared by Liusia @ 10:33 AM Thurs: Moscow Day 2. Dead Lenin! Suspicious Ivan the Terrible activity in Sector 7! The Hunt for Red October! Fallen Idols! Thursday morning over breakfast, we heard rumor that Lenin's tomb was open for visitors. It seemed unlikely, but we decided to check it out anyway. And when we arrived? Huzzah! Red Square was open! Apparently, they've been keeping the square closed most of the time, just opening it at random intervals for a few hours at a time. My theory was that Lenin's head fell off, but I guess it's actually some kind of clever plan to foil terrorists. We ended up lucking out hugely by happening to be there at the exact time it was open; there were students who studied the whole summer in Moscow and never got inside. We had to go through three security checks, leaving all our bags and cameras outside. Due to the bag thing, we went in two shifts - one time one group waited outside and held all the bags, the second time we switched. I went through with Sofia and Amanda. It was surreal. Dude, it was Lenin. You descend into this black stone structure, lit at odd angles by red lights. It's like a maze, and there are guards standing at every corner whose job it is to shush you and make sure you don't put your hands in your pockets. Finally, you get to Lenin, who is crazy backlit and draped in red velvet. Lenin! As memorable as it was to see Lenin, I do wish they'd bury him. He didn't want to be an idol, and the poor man deserves a peaceful rest after this long. At least they don't charge admission to Red Square; if they did, you'd actually get to see Lenin turning in his grave. Poor Lenin. Near Red Square, we saw this huge, building-sized sign:  "Together we should create a united, strong Russia..." -V.V. Putin Will (yeah, sorry, another American student enters the narrative) observed that a few decades ago, the same quote would have been up there, except it would have said USSR instead of Russia and been attributed to Stalin or Khruschev. Some things never change. We also spotted this Ivan the Terrible impersonator walking around looking sketchy. These impersonators are supposed to pose with tourists for photos, but no one wanted to pose with Ivan, especially this guy who appears to be hurrying away from him. I guess they realize that Ivan the Terrible used that staff to bludgeon his son to death. 
After seeing Lenin and touring the inside of St. Basils, we began our own version of The Hunt for Red October - the Red October chocolate factory, that is. We knew it was near a certain metro stop, but no more specific directions than that. We walked around for quite a while asking random passers-by for directions, but Muscovites are a lot crabbier than Petersburg residents, and either no one knew or no one was about to help. Finally, when we were asking some recalcitrant old babushka, another old lady overheard and came up to us. She told us to "go where the tramvai go!" It was all very mystic, but it turned out that the factory was, in fact, exactly where the tramvai went - all the little rail tracks converged in one area, which was just swarming with tramvai. And there wasw the chocolate factory, full of chocolaty delicousness. And appropriately enough, given the name of the factory, the chocolate was perfectly affordable - even a kilogram of fine truffles wasn't more than three or four dollars. It's a damn good thing I don't live near there, let me tell you. After the chocolate factory, we headed over to the Garden of Fallen Idols. It's where they take old statues that have been pulled down because they're, say, Stalin, or because they've broken in some way. The statues of creepier historical personages have been surrounded by artistic interpretations of their crimes - for example, the statue of the founder of the KGB is behind swarm of gaunt tortured figures looking at him with fear. 
Some of the statues were just removed because they're sort of tasteless, like this one of a bold Soviet white guy leading an African-American worker and a Chinese peasant to the bold future. 
Or this one, entitled Optimistic Tragedy, which features a bunch of workers on stilts trampling a figure that looks like Tsar Nicolas II. 
There were quite a few Lenins, but all the Lenins were there because they were broken or damaged in some way. Statues of Lenin are still up all over Russia. I really like this view of young Lenin standing in front of the Soviet crest and a sign that says "SSSR oplot mira" - which can be translated as either "The USSR is the Bulwark of Peace" or "The USSR is the Bulwark of the World." 
You can also see this ugly thing from the garden, although it isn't actually in with the other fallen idols. It's Peter the Great standing on a ship. Supposedly, the artist originally had Christopher Columbus on there, but no one in the US wanted the ugly thing, so he changed it into Peter, stuck a Russian flag on there and sold it Russia. Whatever it is, it's huge and hideous. 
After we'd thoroughly entertained ourselves in the Garden, taking pictures with Stalin and reading Soviet slogans aloud in boistrous tones (My favorite was "Slavo trudu!" "Slavo bogu" means something like "Praise the lord!", so "slavo trudu" would be "Praise the struggle!" Hee hee. No wonder it never caught on.) we headed on into the nearby Tretyakov Gallery, which exhibits Russian art both modern and classical. It was enjoyable, but there's really nothing exciting to say about an art gallery. - declared by Liusia @ 10:32 AM Wednesday: Moscow. And there was much weeping and rending of robes. Wednesday morning I woke up feeling ridiculously cranky, as my hand felt like it was burning and I the train was super cold. But walking to the hotel, I was cheered up, because the air around the hotel smelled like chocolate chip cookies (I guess there's a confectionary factory nearby) and there were a bunch of signs forbidding trumpets. 
Or maybe they are just forbidding trumpeters in groups of five? A trumpet quartet or sextet would be fine? We checked into the hotel and did a cursory and abortive search for bloodstains. To be honest, we were a little disappointed we didn't find any - we'd been imagining that we were on the trail of something! Something totally far-fetched and illogical, granted, but that never stopped Brother Cadafael! As a group, we took a tour of the Kremlin. When I tried to go in, the guard spent forever looking over my student ID, which is green, meaning that I study at a pedogogical university. Guard: Your ID is green. Me: Yes, it is. Guard: (comparing the picture to my face) You study where? Me: Hertzen State Pedogogical University in St. Petersburg. Guard: But you're not Russian! Me: True. I'm from the USA. But I study at Hertzen. Guard: Hertzen is a pedogogical university! That's why your ID is green! Me: Yes, it is. So, this stupid conversation went on for a while. I suppose I could have launched into a long explanation about the fact that while Hertzen is primarily a teaching college, they also have a general program for students needing Russian as a second language, and as such, have exchange programs with universities all over the world. And in any case, being American hardly precludes being a teacher. But the other guard saved me the trouble, mimicking the obstructing guard, "Green green green." He made little yakky hand gestures. "Who cares? Tolya, idiot, she probably teaches English. Let her go." Now, everywhere in Russia has stately government buildings and stunning onion-domed churches, but only the Moscow Kremlin has all that and a bell so large it was never rung and a cannon so big it was never fired! 
See, the Tsar Bell looks okay from this side. There's a normal-sized person standing next to it, so that gives you an idea of how large it is. Then, you look at it from a different angle, and see: 
Yeah. It had just recently been cast, and the guys were trying to figure out what the hell to do with it, when a fire broke out in the workshop and some idiot poured cold water over the bell to put out the flames. As metal tends to do when overheaded then quickly cooled, that big chunk cracked off. 
And then there's the Tsar Cannon. The wheels on the thing are as tall as I am. The balls weigh more than a ton. It's ridiculous. And it's pointing at Putin's house. Heh. Then, when we went over to Red Square, it was closed. The guard informed us that it would be closed "forever." That was a little discouraging. So we took a few photos, including one of us pretending to sob and rend our hair while standing in front of the big gate barring our entrance. Then I took the obligatory pictures of Lenin's tomb and St. Basil's Cathedral. They look kind of fuzzy. You know why? Red Square was closed. I had to blow them up on the computer. 
- declared by Liusia @ 10:32 AM Tuesday: Kazan Day 3. The Search for Sonya's Sister! Sonya, when she heard I was going to Kazan, gave me a letter to deliver to her sister who lives there. Originally, the plan was to call her sister upon arrival in Kazan and arrange for us to meet. That plan was thwarted by the god-awful provincial phone system, which wouldn't let my call through. So, since I had the address, I decided to deliver it myself. I got directions from the hotel manager, who advised me to take the number 10 trolleybus to Marshrutnaya street. She told me that it left from the nearby train station. So, I hiked over to the train station, and asked the nearest Russian-looking babushka where the number 10 trolleybus stopped. It turns out I'm sucky at determining ethnicity from physical appearance, as she was Tatar and had no idea what I was saying. But a nearby group of elderly Tartar women knew more Russian, and overhearing my question, came over to tell me that they too were going on the number 10 trolleybus, and I should follow them. In fact, they would tell me where to get off for Marshrutnaya street! Excellent, I thought. A transport came rattling up, and I followed the babushkas on. The first worrisome thing that I noticed was that it was number 9, not number 10. The second thing I noticed was that it was rattling around far too much to be a trolleybus - it was a tramvai. Russian transport is tricksy - the autobusses, trolleybusses and tramvais all use the same numbers, but the same numbers sometimes don't go to the same places. For example, back in Petersburg, the 22 trolleybus goes to my apartment, while the 22 autobus goes to an iron smelting plant across the river from Smolny. (Yeah, I found that one out the hard way.) I raised my concerns to the Tatar babushkas, who told me in broken Russian not to worry, the number 9 transfers to the number 10 and the number 10 tramvai goes to Marshrutnaya! Well, the number 9 did transfer to the number 10 line, and the helpful babushkas did tell me when to get off. Unfortunately, the 10 tramvai does not go to Marshrutnaya street, it goes to Maratnaya street. And the funny thing about Maratnaya street is that it's not a street, but a long line of brightly painted cottages beside a railroad track. And no one there speaks Russian. 
Based on the assumption that the tramvai took the railroad tracks out here, I followed the tracks back into the city. Considering that I'd been on the tramvai for about 45 minutes, it was a bit of a walk back in. Once I got back into town about two hours later, I found the number ten trolleybus myself, and once I got on, I asked the conductor if it went to Marshrutnaya, and she said yes. The trolleybus proceeded to drive in a big circle, then make everyone get out on Kazan's main street, Ulitsa Bauman, where I ran into Sofia and Andrew (yet another American student). Considering we had to catch the train out of Kazan in a few hours, I decided that if the letter was that important Sonya could send a telegram. I can't decide whether the moral of this story is "Elderly Tatar Women don't speak Russian" or "Never trust Russian public transport systems!" Both seem applicable. As Sofia and I walked around, two little teenage girls came up and asked if we were English. We told them no, we were American, and they seemed kind of confused about the difference between being English and being an English speaker. They're learning English in school, I guess, because they tried out all kinds of little dialogues on us. ("Where are you from?" "I'm from Wisconsin." "That is interesting. I am from Kazan!") When they found out that Andrew is from New Jersey, they asked him if he liked Jennifer Lopez. Heh. As we talked to them, a whole crowd of teenage girls started to congregate around us. One in the back was honestly hopping up and down to get a look at the Americans. From this, I conclude that Kazan does not get a lot of tourists. In places without tourists, Americans are curiosities. In places with a lot of tourists, they are annoyances, albeit annoyances who fuel the economy. So the day didn't go as planned, but at least it was a colorful adventure. Well, it was a colorful adventure up until the part of the train ride where the train jostled back and forth while I was getting boiling hot water from the samovar and poured over my hand giving me 2nd degree burns. Then the helpful conductor lady came up and poured what I thought was cold water over my hand, but turned out to be vodka, which is not, it turns out, what you are supposed to do to a scald wound. The train car smelled like burnt skin and burnt alcohol. So my fingers swelled up and grew a bunch of evil little blisters, and my hand felt like it was still on fire for the next 24 hour or so. I cried like a wussy little baby when it happened, folks. It turns out that burning your fingertips is really freakin' painful, especially when you add externally applied vodka to the equation. It hurt worse than the time I stepped on a sparkler. It hurt worse than the time the dentist pulled four of my teeth without anesthetic. It hurt even worse than the time I got burning ash in my eye. And that is saying something. - declared by Liusia @ 10:30 AM Monday: Kazan Day 2. Sleuthing monks and neon Pushkin! Monday's organized activity consisted of the group piling into a bus and heading out to Raifa to see the Holy Virgin Monastery. Now, at this point in my Russian travels, I have seen a truly absurd number of impressive churches. But this monastery was notable not for its architecture, but its history, peacefulness and music. 
During Soviet times, it was shut down, of course. Still, the faithful returned once a year to have services there and do some upkeep. Then, one year when they showed up, they were mowed down by soldiers. After that, the monastery was used for various government purposes, including use as a military training ground. But after the collapse of the USSR, a group of monks came back, and restoration began. The monastery is now fully operational, even including an orphanage. But most notable about the monastery is its music. Due to the power of the choir and a trick of architecture, when they sing inside a certain church, they can be heard for miles around. And, they have a traveling vocal quartet, who sang for us. They were divine. Obviously, recorded music isn't the same, but you can check out some .mp3s at their website. We found out about the website after the concert, when the bass came over to chat. He was really excited about barbershop quartets, and advised us not to drink the St. Petersburg water, because it is orange, and that can't be healthy. Sofia and I decided that he is a sleuthing monk, like Brother Cadafael. Returning to Kazan, Sofia, Amanda and I decided that we were too cheap to pay to do something, and therefore entertained ourselves by wandering around the city and finding odd things. We found a monument to the guy who made up the geometric rule about parallel lines never intersecting. We also found Lenin's alma mater. Actually, I don't know if you can call it his alma mater, because he got kicked out before graduation for "revolutionary activities," which seems like an understatement to me. We also happened upon the creeeepy area of town, in which there is this super-creepy mural and an even creepier tower. The mural depicts a bunch of sinster-looking guys meeting up with a guy who looks like Ivan the Terrible. Two of the sinister guys are holding axes. We posed in front of it looking frightened. Sofia was definitely the best at looking dramatically terrified.  Across the street was this blood-red tower. It looks old and pointless, which suggests to me it is a monument of some kind, but there was no plaque or dedication. And if we thought it was creepy during the day, oh, after dark it was even better. 
I think the evil red lights are an especially nice touch. We also spotted a neon Pushkin, which is the sort of thing you'll never see anywhere but in Russia. Does the US have neon Mark Twains or F. Scott Fitzgeralds? No. 
On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the 24-Hour Produkty. "Produkty" means "groceries" in Russian, but it turned out to be more like a "24-Hour Vodka and Cookies," so we bought a small bottle of vodka and some cookies. Back at the hotel,the three of us drank vodka out of teacups and watched a Russian miniseries called "Bayazet" about a cossack general with a short attention span. We were just joking about how at least this time Sofia and I didn't get stuck with the murder suite, when we noticed that there were suspicious russet splotches on the wall by the TV. I put my Raifa monk quartet CD that I purchased earlier that day in the photo for scale. 
I think this a case for the sleuthing monk! - declared by Liusia @ 3:55 AM |
