Top 10 Things I Already Know I’ll Miss

I know I’ve only been here a month, but there are several things I know I will sorely miss when I get back home:

Teremok – a chain restaurant that serves amazing Russian food like bliny (blintzes), borsht and kvass. It’s cheap, it’s delicious and it’s possibly my favorite place to eat out, right now.

Pyshki – Russian donuts, basically like funnel cake only impossibly lighter, softer and approximately 30¢ each. (Actually, as I think of it, I’ll miss Russian food as a whole…)

Smolny – Vanderbilt is pretty and everything, but it isn’t a 19^th century monastery painted ice blue and featuring gold-capped cupolas. I think more than the aesthetics, though, I will miss the millions of wedding pictures taken in front of the building and the superior feeling I get when I walk past tourists in the morning and imagine them saying to each other, “Hey, look, Russian students!” (They provide me almost as much amusement as seeing tour groups go around Vanderbilt’s campus…)

Student discounts – Yes, students at Vandy get discounts at certain stores, restaurants and events, but here, Russian students get discounts everywhere, and some places are totally free, like the Hermitage museum. Train tickets, metro cards, ballets, operas, museums, boat rides…discount! Too bad supermarkets and clothing stores don’t jump on the discount wagon, too.

Beautiful historical architecture - it’s everywhere. There are cathedrals, palaces, statues, bridges, parks, monuments…even certain metro stations are works of art! Sure, the tsars ate off gold flatware while the peasants starved, but they sure left pretty houses for us history buffs to appreciate. Just look at Peterhof and the Hermitage.

Street performers – they are everywhere, too. Just this afternoon, I was walking back to the metro after class when I saw a guy playing pipes and guitar and manipulating a puppet simultaneously. He totally deserved the ten rubles in my pocket. Late at night, when the metro is practically empty, musicians will come out to make some money. (Some are okay, but others are spectacular. Case in point, there is a woman at Gostiniy Dvor who sings opera at night.) There were a couple of guys by the Hermitage with three pet monkeys…good times. lol

Endless diminutives of my name – Russian is a rather blunt and straightforward language that occasionally borders on rude in comparison to certain English constructions. (For example, when you order something at a restaurant, you say, “Give me X dish…” rather than “I’ll have X.” Also, to get a waitress’ attention – because they are almost always women – you say, “Girl!”) However, there are TONS of suffixes that turn the language into something totally sweet. Take my name, for example. Katya is already a shortened and sweet form of Ekaterina, but my host mother has not called me Katya since I stepped foot in her house. I’m Katiusha, Katenka, Kationka, Katyush, Katyushenka, “my sunshine,” “my child,” “my soul” (a very old term of endearment…the concept of the Russian soul is a big topic in my society class), “my bunny,” “my dear,” “my little girl,” “my sweetie”...

The metro – I don’t know why, but I adore the metro. It’s cheap, it’s easy, the trains come every three minutes, there are convenient stops everywhere, changing lines is a snap if you follow the very clear signs posted overhead…also, everyone is in a hurry, which is my natural state of existence, so I fit right in. And, since I’m small and travel-sized for your convenience, I have no trouble weaving in a out of people when there is a massive crowd in front of me. Plus, sitting on the metro sometimes feels like you’re on a rollercoaster ride, since the train moves so fast. I live on Vasilievsky Island, which only has two metro stations. The ride between Primorskaya (my stop) and Vasiliostrovskaya (if you can pronounce that on the first try, you’re my hero) is usually pretty fast, but from Vasiliostrovskaya to the first stop on the mainland, Gostiniy Dvor, the metro driver hauls around a curve! It’s awesome. As an added bonus, St. Petersburg has the deepest metro in the world…so, yeah.

Mullets – Russian men (and some women, unfortunately) seem to think that mullets are cool. My host mom’s grandson has one, I’m sorry to report. (But he’s 4.5 years old and doesn’t yet know how silly he looks.) There is nothing more hilarious than a guy walking down Nevsky Prospekt with a leather jacket and a mullet. My friend Marie is convinced that mullets are on the out, though, and I do admit that I’ve seen fewer ‘dos over the past month. She seems to think that the men are tired of getting laughed at by Americans…

My host family – they are indeed my family, because they have warmly accepted me as their surrogate daughter for four months. My host mom, Nina, is the sweetest thing in the world. She’s impossibly patient with my horrendous grammar and limited vocabulary, she hugs me, makes sure I have everything I need, cooks me delicious meals, chats a little with me and watches tv with me. She also likes to make fun of me for saying thank you all the time. I once asked for a glass of water and she (and her daughter, Lelya) was like, “No way, it’s too difficult to reach all the way over and grab the pitcher to pour you some water. Why are you making me work so hard?” And speaking of Lelya, she is a singer/pianist and has a gorgeous voice. (She’s appearing in some sort of production of Alice in Wonderland and has invited me to attend.) She’s around 30 and is a ton of fun, though she definitely likes to mess with me more than Nina does, which is okay. She’s the one who calls me “bunny” all the time. I have a harder time understanding her Russian, though, so our conversations are more lopsided since I can’t reply as easily. She speaks very quickly and very quietly, though as my comprehension improves, I catch more of what she says. Finally, there is Liusha, the grandson. (I have called him Alyosha on this blog, once, and I’m not entirely sure if Liusha/Aliusha is a diminutive of Alyosha/Aleksandr or not.) He is a very active little guy who always seems to have this playful, sneaky gleam in his eye. I like playing with him, but he has no clue about when enough is enough, so I have to be very careful about what I allow him to do. Also, I hardly ever understand what he says…toddlers/preschoolers are hard enough to understand when they’re speaking in your native language. Now imagine my problem. Most of the time, I stick to enthusiastic “yeahs” or pensive “I don’t knows” when talking to him. It has worked pretty well so far.

Lack of real homework – study abroad is pretty much a cakewalk, academically, as long as you understand what your professors are saying. My daily assignments in Russia are laughable compared to the work I did last semester. Let’s put it this way: last semester, I was taking four history classes and one language class. All I did was read in massive amounts and write papers. I was a stress basket in the beginning of the semester and after I literally scheduled free time for myself, I got a bit better. This semester, I have homework that takes me ten minutes to complete, I don’t have to read hundreds of pages a night, I don’t have to write essays longer than 15 sentences, and in two of my classes, no homework has been assigned for the past two weeks. I have about as much free time as I did freshman year. I have the capacity to get bored. It’s wonderful. CIEE’s policy is that less homework assigned means more time to immerse ourselves in the culture and language. I tend to agree, both philosophically and, well, lazily. (Coming back to Vandy is probably going to be a shock, though. “You mean two hundred pages…by tomorrow? A ten-page paper? Quizzes and tests before midterms and finals? What is this crap? I’m going back to Russia.”)

Everyone I’ve met here – There are some cool people who came on this program, with me. I’m very sad that I’ll probably never see them again. But, there is always Facebook stalking!

Tempus Certainly Does Fugit

This blog post is brought to you by one of my father's pet phrases, featured in the title.

I've been in Russia for over a month, now, and I can hardly believe I'll be Stateside in another three. My adoration for this city hasn't diminished at all, though this might change when the weather becomes less hospitable and the world goes dark for the winter. (My professors say that there will be only 4 hours of sunlight toward the end of the semester...) However, since I have managed to avoid breaking out the winter coat, gloves and heavy underclothing, I still think the weather here is pretty good in comparison to the stifling Arizona heat I left.

In my short/epochal time here, I’ve managed to check off a great deal from my bucket list. Here’s a small summary of what I’ve been up to for the past four weeks:

- Museums/Memorials/Palaces: Peterhof Palace, Hermitage, Leningrad Blockade, Peter and Paul Fortress, Pavlosk Palace, Russian Naval Museum, Wooden Architecture Museum.

- Trip to Novgorod.

- Churches/Monasteries/Cathedrals: St. Sophia’s, Church on the Spilled Blood, St. Isaac’s (though I didn’t go inside, so I guess it doesn’t count), Smolny, and one ten minutes away from metro station Chernyshevskaya that I don’t know the name of.

- Ate the most stereotypical Russian foods while in Russia: borsht (technically Ukrainian and even more technically, properly transliterated as borshch)*, shchi (pronounced “she” – cabbage soup, the Russian version of borsht), pelmeni (kind of like ravioli, but without spaghetti sauce – served with sour cream/ketchup. Tastes better than it sounds), kvass (fermented bread drink…again, tastes better than it sounds. Served on tap at some places, which I find hilarious), pirozhki (“pe-rush-KEE” – basically, rolls of bread with either meat, veggies or fruit inside).

- Have used more forms of public transportation on a regular basis than I ever have in my life: metro/subway (I’m a pro, now. I’ve actually been on every single metro line in St. Petersburg except for one), bus, cable car, taxi and, of course, walking.

- Have watched multiple American/English films in dubbed Russian: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Commando, Conan the Barbarian, Predator (it was a Schwarzenegger marathon that I watched solely to hear the Russian version of the Governator), Mulan, Brother Bear, Mel Gibson’s Hamlet (Hamlet’s famous soliloquy is just as epic in Russian!), and The Fifth Element (boy, did they get Bruce Willis’ voice wrong…).

- Took a boat ride on the Neva River.

- Watched the ballet classic Swan Lake and the opera classic Eugene Onegin (at the Mariinsky, no less!)

*I really don’t know why we transliterate borsht with the “t.” Maybe the Ukrainian pronunciation merits that letter? I don’t know. It’s the same letter that appears in Khrushchev’s name, but we don’t see a “t” in his…“Khrushtev” just looks weird. ANECDOTE: So the first time I read Khrushchev’s name in Russian, I was stunned at how short it was. It takes ten letters in English to express six in Russian. Also, Americans put stress on the first syllable of his name while in Russian, the stress is on the end. Same goes for Gorbachev. But I’m done being a grammar nerd.

I’ve been a busy little bee here in the Motherland, and that’s only a brief list of the places I’ve been. I’ve also been hanging around Nevsky Prospekt with my new tovarishchi (haha, old vocab word for you! Cool points to anyone who remembered it means “comrades”), spending some time with my host mom/family and, of course, going to school. Although the guided tours and mandatory excursions have waned since the first two weeks, I have a jam-packed schedule until I fly home in December. Next weekend, I’m taking a trip to Tsarskoe Selo, a suburb of Piter where the tsars (hence “TSARskoe”) got away from it all and two weeks after that, I’ll be heading to Estonia. Then, in November, I’ll be going to Moscow for a few days, immediately after which my friend Dave and I will head out to Warsaw and Vienna for a week. I’m a full-blown jet-setter, now.

There are some things that I have flat out refused to do here in Russia, and here they are:

- Drink vodka. For those that don’t know, I rather hate alcohol, so vodka is completely out of the question. Fortunately, the only alcohol I’ve been offered was some champagne at a friend’s 21^st birthday dinner. No Russian has yet to offer me alcohol. (As a point of interest, the legal drinking age here is 18 and I was tempted to buy a drink for someone just because I can, but I wasn’t enticed enough, or magnanimous enough, to follow through.)

- Go to the banya. (Banya= sauna, sans the towel.) The people I know who have gone really enjoyed the experience (and some have started a banya club that goes out every Friday), but the idea of lounging around in...nothing...in a sweltering room with a bunch of women whom I don’t know is not exactly what I’d call scintillating. Sounds closer to mortifying.

- Ride in a marshrutka. A marshrutka is a mini-bus (think soccer mom van size or slightly larger) that a bunch of people cram into, shove over some money to the driver and tell where they need to stop. They, however, are responsible for knowing where the stop is and clambering out in time. For someone who is small and whom tall people think it okay to squish/overstep/overlook/violate personal space (what little actually exists here)…and especially someone who hasn’t quite gotten Russian street geography down yet and whose Russian is limited to basic requests and likes…using a marshrutka sounds positively terrifying.

I do have three months left to try vodka, go to the banya and ride a marshrutka, so I guess I have three months left to see pigs fly and hell freeze over. *Shrug*

Until next time,

Katya

To Tame a Capitalist

This post is brought to you by all-purpose interjection кошмар (cosh-MAR), meaning “what a nightmare!” (This word is wonderful because it can be used in almost any situation demanding an expression of intense emotion. Examples: You got into an auto accident because a suicidal chicken crossed the road in front of you. Кошмар! You and a horde of people are trying to get onto an escalator and you can’t breathe because of the pressure. Кошмар! You forgot to buy cookies at the store. Кошмар!!!)

Let’s play a round of what-if. Imagine yourself standing in line at your local Kroger’s/Albertson’s/Wal-Mart equivalent. You are buying Twinkies. The box costs $3.89, but all you happen to have on you is a $100 bill. You go up to the register, hand her your Benjamin and receive your change, possibly with a raised eyebrow, but without much fuss. You then leave (with your precious Twinkies in a plastic bag) and go home to enjoy the heart-healthy, cream-filled food of the gods.

Now, imagine yourself in Russia, at a chain market called Produkti. You are there to buy a bottle of water, a packet of cookies and some chocolate. Altogether, it will cost you 117 rubles. All you have is a 500 ruble note. You go up to the cashier, hand her your bill, and she asks if you have either 7 or 17 rubles, so she doesn’t have to try so hard to make change. If you do, you escape with only minor disapproval. If you don’t, she hands you your 383 rubles in an obviously irritated fashion. God help you if you have a 1,000 ruble note.

Russians don’t like dealing with change of either the kopeck OR ruble persuasion. Some places, like big supermarkets or fancier stores, will break your large bills without too much hassle (though they may ask you to round out the change to even bills). Most everywhere else in my experience either loathes you if you try to hand them a large bill, or will simply refuse your business if you can’t provide close to exact change.

Russian cashiers have trained me to think of their convenience when making purchases. It’s to the point where I will buy something extra, occasionally, just so that they don’t have to make change. (Mostly, this happens in Smolny’s cafeteria, because the lady there practically yells at you if you attempt to give her a 500.)

The difference in mentality between American and Russian places of business is this: in America, the store is there to serve you; in Russia, you are there to take advantage of the store’s resources, and are thus expected to cater to them somewhat. Dealing with Russian “customer service” certainly takes some getting used to…As a caveat, I have to say that not all places have surly customer service, and some are almost as nice as they are in America. Those places are definitely not the norm, however. (I’m sure a big reason is that Russians don’t smile like Americans do, so the friendly atmosphere at restaurants and stores doesn’t really exist out here. I would characterize the majority of good customer service in Russia as very polite, rather than friendly.

Therefore, when making your travel plans to St. Petersburg, be sure to exchange your dollars in for rubles in denominations of 100s, 50s and 10s. Then, you will have a much smaller chance of having a Produkti lady tell you to take a hike when you hand over a 1,000 for a 42-ruble Pepsi.

Oh, and the reason this blog post was brought to you by the word кошмар is that I have a 5,000-ruble bill I need to break. Pray for me.

Katya.

Si, yo hablo Russian.

This post is brought to you by the word култура (cool-TOO-ruh), meaning “culture.”

Yesterday, I done got myself some exposure to Russian culture. My friends and I went to see Swan Lake, the iconic Russian ballet, at a theater located across the street from the Mariinsky. For the equivalent of $15, we had decent balcony seats opposite the stage. Before I talk about the ballet, though, I feel obligated to recount a ridiculous, but oh-so-me, moment I had prior to the show.

My friends and I decided to eat dinner at Sennaya Ploshchad (the metro stop/street square closest to the theater) and, after some debate, we settled on the very American and always classy Carl’s Jr. (Nothing like a greasy burger to precede a ballet, right?) I made the mistake of talking with my friends in English about what I was thinking of eating before I actually got up to the cashier and ordered. What ensued when I did try to order was nothing short of comic:

Cashier: May I help you? (in Russian)

Me: (Russian) Hello, may I have number (English) 8?

Cashier: (strange look) Excuse me?

Me: (realizing my mistake) Oh, ocho. (Spanish)

Cashier: (starting to smile at the poor idiot foreigner, but still patient): I’m sorry, what?

Me: (hanging my head in shame and covering my eyes)* I’m so sorry. Eight. (Russian. Finally.)

Cashier: (quite amused) Do you want the combo?

Me: (feeling more confident) Da.

Cashier: Blahbitty blah blah blah?

Me: (heart plummeting) Sorry?

Cashier: (thinking of who she would recount this story to once her shift ends) Blahbitty blah blah blah? (motions around her, which I discern means “Dine-in or take-out?”)

Me: (not knowing how to say “dine-in” since I missed it the first two times) Uh, here. (pointing down)

Cashier: (nodding, smiling indulgently) 240 rubles. Blahbitty blah blah blah salad?

Me: (assuming she’s asking me if I’d like to spend more money) Nyet. (I fork over the money, take my change and try to escape as quickly as possible)

Cashier: Young lady! (I look back and see her handing me the cup I, in my haste to get off the hot seat, have forgotten)

Me: (sheepish) Thank you.

*I literally did this.

I learned two things from that episode: 1) never speak in English immediately before you are about to order something in Russian, and 2) my brain will revert to the first foreign language it learned, despite the fact that I no longer speak that language and couldn’t string two sentences together if my life depended on it. Actually, I’ve noticed that, on occasion, when I’m in Russian class and am struggling to remember a word or phrase, it will come to me in Spanish before it comes in Russian. I suppose that means that I could easily pick up Spanish again if I devoted a little effort to it, but it’s a rather bad sign since the language I’m majoring in is, um, NOT Spanish.

Anyway, after my eventful dinner, my heretofore-unnamed friends and I went to the theater. The ballet was beautiful – or, I think it was. My contacts were extremely dry and I, like a schmuck, left my precious eye drops at home, so I spent a good 30% of the time blinking ferociously and rubbing my eyes. I am happy to report that the other 70% of the ballet was enjoyable. The dancers did throw me two major fake-outs, however. First, at the end of the fourth act or so, the swan princess dashed offstage and the prince rushed after her, leaving everyone else on stage “shocked” at their sudden departure. The curtain fell, signaling the end of the act, but it rose almost immediately and the dancers started bowing, as if the show were over. Once they were done, the house lights rose and people started to get up. My friends and I looked at each other with classic “what the heck?” expressions and could not believe that had been the curtain call. We’d already had an intermission, so this had to be the end, right? But it was a cliffhanger!

Fortunately, one of the more cultured American students assured us that there was indeed one more act and to hold our horses for a bit. This was a second intermission. (Insert huge shrug here.) We were happy to hear that there was another act, because we wanted to see the tragic ending. It was, after all, a Russian ballet, and even we uncultured swine knew that Swan Lake was a tragedy. Therein lay fake-out number 2: the bad guy died and the swan princess and her beloved lived happily ever after. Say what?

All of us American students were nonplussed, to say the least. Nonplussed enough to go online and check how Swan Lake should have ended. Turns out that the Mariinsky Theater put on a production of Swan Lake a few years ago that had a happy ending and since then all Russian productions of the ballet (except those at the Mikhailovsky Theater) have featured that ending. Abroad, Swan Lake remains a tragedy, in which either the swan princess or both the princess and her beloved commit suicide a la Romeo & Juliet. Personally, I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t get my tragic death scene, but there is hope on the horizon. Next week, the Mariinsky theater will satisfy my bloodlust, as I am going to see the Pushkin classic “Eugene Onegin.” For those unfamiliar with the opera, Eugene Onegin features an epic duel/death scene at the end. (I swear, if the Mariinsky messes up the plot, I will do something nefarious, like stick out my tongue as I attempt to demand a refund in broken Russian.)

Until next time,

The Wealth of Nations

This post is brought to you by K. Marx, V. Lenin and J. Stalin. And, to a lesser extent, B. Yeltsin, V. Putin and D. Medvedev.

Everyone knows a peso is worthless. Monopoly money could buy you more cervezas. Russian coins are essentially the same, considering the ruble to dollar ratio is 30:1. The poor little kopeck, the equivalent of a penny, is of more use as a tourist’s souvenir than as actual currency. The metal used to make it is probably worth more than the coin itself. Fortunately, 99.9% of all prices do not list kopecks. I have only once needed any kopeck coin, and it was for a 1.5 ruble plastic cover. Stores don’t like dealing with kopecks because they are worthless and clumsy, so all prices are in even ruble numbers and as far as I can tell, there is either no sales tax, or it’s included in the prices.

I see 1, 10 and 50 kopeck coins on the street all the time. I used to pick them up, but I’ve since stopped, because there is no real use for them other than wallet fodder. I once thought that people simply didn’t realize that they had dropped their money on the ground, but today I learned otherwise. I was talking with my Vandy friend Masha outside our metro station when a woman was stuffing something inside of her wallet. As she did, a 50 kopeck coin (the most useful of the kopeck family) fell onto the ground. She watched it fall, looked at it on the ground and kept walking as if nothing had happened.

You know something needs to change when a woman isn’t willing to spend the extra second stooping down to retrieve the equivalent of two quarters of her own money. And judging by her need to use public transportation, I doubt she is a millionaire of the Gates variety who is worth too much to care about any piddly sum that falls to the street.

Until next time,

Katya.

New Rules

Hey all,

I've gotten a lot of comments by this guy Anonymous and I don't know who he is. He (or she, actually) seems to know me and care about my posts, but either s/he is unduly shy or s/he thinks I'm telepathic and don't need any clues to figure out identity. Thus, to help out a poor, confused study abroad student, when you leave me a comment, please sign your name. If you have a blogger account, you don't have to worry about it.

Thanks!

Katya

Top 8 Things You Can't Do in Russia

This blog post is brought to you by the word нельзя (neel-ZYAH), roughly meaning, “No way, José.”

In Russia, you can’t…

1. Drink the water. Just like in Mexico, chugging the tap water is a Grade A certifiable bad idea. It’s okay to shower and brush your teeth with, but consumption is a NOvember GOrgon type deal. (Cool points to the first person who can identify the movie reference I just made. And Mom: apologies, but you can’t play. You and I share brainwaves so it’s not fair to everyone else if you guess the movie before anyone has time to think.) Most Russians have filtration systems, boil the water for a while before using it or do some combination of both. My host mom boils it, puts it through a filter and then puts it in a special jug reserved only for clean water before she gives any to you.

2. Wear shoes in the house. In Russia, as with Asian cultures, it is customary to take off your shoes and put on slippers, or tapochki, once you enter someone’s home. The streets in Russia are very dirty and everyone walks on them, so to avoid having all that grime on the carpet, people buy house slippers and keep their shoes in a special hallway by the door.

3. Get a plastic bag for your groceries without paying extra. So the perfect way to get a grocery store employee to yell at you is to attempt to grab a plastic bag. I know this from experience. Lemme tell you the story: I went to the corner market to get some snacks for school and after checkout, I realized that the lady hadn’t given me a plastic bag. She was helping another customer, so I decided just to reach around her and grab one myself. As I was fumbling for a bag, she turned around with the most baleful glare and said, “You have to pay for that! You can’t just take a bag, it costs X kopecks! What do you think you’re doing?” (Or something to that effect.) Confident I would melt under her vicious stare if I lingered, I apologized hastily, stuffed my snacks as well as I could into my pockets, and split. I felt like a hobo walking back to my apartment with food stuffed into my coat pockets, and I’m sure I had a shell-shocked expression on my face for a few hours. But, seriously! In the civilized world, when you buy groceries, they give you a bag so you can take them home! Silly Russians…

4. Cross the street without fear for your life. While this is slightly exaggerated, the spirit of the rule is true. Living in Russia for 3 weeks has made me appreciate the traffic laws in my home country – something I never thought I would say. In America, the pedestrian has the right of way. In Russia, the motorist does. Whether this is de jure or merely de facto law, I don’t know, but taking a stroll across a crosswalk when the light is green and you CAN GO is generally a nerve wracking endeavor, in my experience. Even if your collection of atoms has the right to exist in a forward linear motion in the middle of a designated ambulatory section of the road, a vehicle can and often will encroach or entirely invade upon your intended trajectory without overdo regard for your safety and/or legal privileges, requiring you to halt and reconsider your place in the world, as well as your desire to continue breathing.

5. Get onto Netflix.com. I thought the internet was the internet everywhere, but apparently, it’s not. When you get onto search engine websites outside of the United States, they recognize your foreign IP address. Sometimes, this translates to having country-specific websites shown to you. For example, when I was in Germany, Google was in German. In Russia, it’s in Russian, and the url is .ru rather than .com. (In case you are wondering, there is indeed a difference between Google.com and Google.ru.) Some websites, however, simply don’t work unless you are in the States. Netflix is unfortunately one of them. Apparently, there are legal restrictions about watching movies and tv shows online when abroad…who knew?

6. Judge the weather by looking at the sky. Mornings are almost invariably cloudy, but that does not mean it will rain, and it does not mean it will be cold. In fact, there are times when it is overcast, hot and drizzling at the same time. Worse is when it’s mostly sunny, drizzling and warm. The key to surviving the absolutely incomprehensible weather is mastering the art of layering clothing. Coat and scarf for the chilly walk to the metro, moderately warm shirt with decent undershirt that can be worn by itself if/when it heats up during the afternoon, and an umbrella or hoodie for when it begins to rain. And I thought Nashville’s weather was bipolar! St. Petersburg is, like, tripolar at the very least.

7. Take photos of many famous locations without paying upfront for the privilege. I’ve gone to several landmarks over the past couple weeks and have discovered that having a camera can be expensive. Let’s say you want to visit the wooden architectural museum in Novgorod and take pics of what 15^th century villagers lived like. That’ll cost you 50 rubles. What if you want to take non-flash pictures in the Hermitage museum? 70 rubles. The palace at Pavlovsk? GIMME YOUR RUBLES! These people demand money to step foot on the premises, and then they have the audacity (or the brilliant capitalistic sense) to require more money if you’d like to take personal pictures of what you already paid to see. This leads to tourists forking over wads of rubles, as well as to people sneaking precious and illicit pictures at the back of the tour group.

8. Buy peanut butter. It just doesn’t exist as Americans would recognize it. Finding any peanut butter is typically a Herculean challenge and has been the bitter topic of conversation in several of my classes. I wouldn’t call myself a die-hard peanut butter enthusiast, but consuming that nutty spread is apparently a big deal for some people.

Why stop at eight? Because in Russia, you can’t complain about more than 8 things at once. :-)

Foreign Language

This blog post is brought to you by the phrase, Я не понимаю, meaning “I don’t understand.”

I’ve officially been in Russia for ten days, and the culture shock is definitely wearing off. It’s very much a different world, and in many ways a very backwards one, but if you accept that fact (or embrace it) life in St. Petersburg becomes much less frustrating.

First of all, as I mentioned before, I do not have internet access in my homestay. So far, I haven’t found a convenient location with free wi-fi, which is why it has taken me so long to update my blog. Most Russians do not have wireless internet in their homes, and I was not fortunate enough to be placed in a house that could connect to the internet. As a caveat, I should mention that there are plenty of wireless signals in my vicinity, but all of them are security-enabled. Since hacking is not one of my technological talents, I’ve been rather removed from email, skype and blogging. I have found this very interesting, though, since Russians are known for their collective mentality. I suppose that mentality does not stretch to the realm of internet access, however. That is the one area of Russian life where sharing is not the norm.

It’s said that language shapes culture, and here, that seems to be perfectly accurate. For example, several words in English do not translate into Russian – neither the words, nor the concepts. Here is a short list: efficiency, personal space, privacy, challenge (as in mentally challenged or vertically challenged, in my case), fun, excitement, and tolerance. Some of these words don’t surprise me as being untranslatable, and some are just funny. I’ll break it down for you:

Efficiency – the goal of American life, it would seem. So many products and services are popularized and advertized for increasing efficiency and supposedly making your life easier to manage. In fact, this is one of the biggest factors of successful American businesses outlined in the socio-anthropological work, The McDonaldization of Society. (It’s a good, quick and pleasurable read, if you have the time.) This is a totally unknown and rather laughable concept in Russia, however. The sheer number of lines one stands in every day is a testament to that. Lines in the metro station, lines for the cashier, lines for restrooms, lines for the elevator, the escalator…it never ends. “Hurry up and wait” is the slogan of this city. My favorite example of lack of efficiency is what happened to me a few days ago. I take the metro to and from school, and I usually avoid rush hour by going home early. This past week, though, some friends and I decided to visit a cathedral in the area and go home at 5. Big mistake. We found a gargantuan horde of people outside the metro station (probably close to 200 people) trying to fit through one open door to get inside. There were six doors to the metro station, but five were closed. After that experience, I know precisely what it feels like to be a camel shoved through the eye of a needle.

Personal space/privacy – St. Petersburg is a pretty big city of approximately 5 million. It’s not like New York in that high-rises aren’t everywhere, but it’s still a lot of people for a relatively small space. People are accustomed to pressing into each other to fit into the tight apartments, metro cars and alleyways. Thus, when they speak to you, they get much closer to you than Americans would. Also, they don’t much care if they invade your bubble, because they themselves don’t have bubbles. As an illustration, by host mother has a 4.5 year-old grandson named Alyosha. He and I often eat at the same time, or watch television together. However, I’ve noticed that Alyosha has no problem stretching his legs over me or pushing his toys into where I’m sitting. It’s not that he’s being rude, it’s just that plopping on top of me or accidentally touching my leg is not a problem to him. In America, people apologize to each other for accidentally brushing into them or their belongings, as if any uninvited physical contact is a cardinal sin. Americans feel the need to ask forgiveness for intruding on another’s sacred personal space, while Russians do not think people have a two-foot radius of no-man’s-land surrounding them.

Challenge – This one surprised me, though as I think about it, it makes sense. Russians are very direct and straightforward, and I don’t think they use euphemisms in their daily speech. Thus, calling someone “challenged” wouldn’t really happen. The concept doesn’t make sense to them. (A funny story about this: my friend made a joke about the Leaning Tower of Pisa being “gravitationally-challenged” and his host dad, who speaks impeccable English, could not understand what the phrase meant. My friend tried to explain the concept of challenge to him, and he simply did not get it.)

Fun and excitement – These two words have been a serious struggle for me ever since I began taking Russian. I once asked my professor how to say I was excited about going on a trip, and he said, “Russians don’t get excited.” After living here for 10 days, I’ve found this to be mostly true. It takes a LOT to get Russians to smile when they aren’t around family and friends. Yesterday, my fellow students and I went on an excursion to Pavlosk Palace and rode the train to get there. On the way back, a man walked into our car and played the accordion and sang for us. He was funny and good, and he actually made a few Russians in the car with us SMILE! After his song, he held out his hat for tips and made about 30 rubles from my friend and I alone – we figured that any man who can make Russians smile at a stranger deserves to be rewarded.

One note on the word “fun” before I move on: Coming to Russia and not being able to say it has made me very aware of how often I use it. I’ve had to catch myself numerous times and change what I was going to say because the word “fun” does not translate. (I looked it up in a Russian-English dictionary. The closest translation was “happy” or “pleasing.”) My host mom’s grandson went off for his first day of school and I wanted to tell him to have fun, but I couldn’t. A friend of mine was leaving for class and I wanted to wish him a fun time, but I couldn’t. My host mom asked me how a concert I attended was and I wanted to say the experience was fun, but I couldn’t. I settled for “good.” NOT THE SAME. I can’t say that I write for fun, that I think doing Sudoku is fun or that I’m only studying Russian culture for the fun of it. They don’t understand the concept! I mean, they definitely enjoy themselves and laugh and smile like other people (though certainly not as often as Americans do), but fun is just not a part of the culture. It’s become a joke among us American students. A friend of mine was leaving to go do something and I said to him in English, “I’d tell you to have fun, but I can’t!” He was amused.

Tolerance – admittedly, this word has been abused in America and has become an idol of political correctness, but experiencing its absence makes me appreciate it more than I used to. Russia is gigantic and encompasses more than 100 different ethnicities in its borders, but it is a very prejudicial and hostile place if you don’t fit the mold of what is accepted. During orientation, the program coordinators warned all males in our group that if they had dark hair, tanned skin, dark eyes and facial hair that they might be stopped by the police. Why? Because they look Caucasian, and anybody from the Caucasus is considered a potential terrorist. Racial profiling? You betcha. But people here don’t like anyone who looks like they don’t belong. Fortunately for me, however, they are generally forgiving when you butcher their language. (Funny story about that: I wanted to buy a notebook for school, but all they sell here are graph paper notebooks instead of lined paper. I tried to explain to the cashier – in spectacularly broken Russian – what I wanted and apologized, saying that I speak poor Russian. Her response, though patient and surprisingly kind, was “I know, but go on.” lol)

That's all for now!

Katya

Top 10 Reasons I Belong in Russia

1. Russians love tea. I love tea. We’re perfect for each other.

2. Russians don’t usually go to the doctor when they are sick and they don’t take pills unless absolutely necessary. Instead, they prefer to try home remedies, diet changes or simply wait to see if the illness passes quickly. I, too, think of medicine and doctors as a last resort.

3. Russians don’t sleep with a top sheet. I hate the top sheet. They understand me in a way Americans can’t.

4. Russians go to sleep late and get up late. Example: businesses in America open at 8 or 9. Their Russian counterparts open around 10. Isn’t it great?

5. Two words: figure skating.

6. Everyone here speaks Russian. Go figure.

7. The school I am studying at (the Smolny Institute of Political Science, at St. Petersburg State University) is essentially a palace. Its monastery was built specifically for a Russian princess, and it was later ground zero for Lenin’s Bolshevik revolutionary activities in 1917. I mean, seriously. How cool is that?

8. There are beautiful old buildings, monuments and cathedrals everywhere. (If such things existed in close proximity to my house in America, I would frequent them.)

9. University students get free tickets to museums like the Hermitage. Free. As in, no moolah.

10. My room in my host mom’s flat is green. The wallpaper is green, the carpet is green, my bedding is green. It’s cosmic.

Katya Has Two Mommies

This post is brought to you by the phrase мамочка, meaning, “little mother.”

On August 27, I learned where I would live for the semester and I moved into my new home. My host family turned out just to be a middle-aged woman named Nina Anatolievna, who immediately gave me a hug and a kiss upon first sight. I was rather concerned about my host mom – I had heard horror stories of extremely hands-off families who only chose to host exchange students for the money. Nina is very much welcoming and involved, and it’s obvious that she cares about me and wants to take care of me while I’m here. Today, she dropped me off at Kazansky Cathedral for a tour of the city with my classmates, but before she left, she gave me a kiss and blessed me! She’s really sweet (and she loved the gifts I brought her), but she also isn’t insanely overprotective. (Though, this morning before we got on the metro, she fixed my scarf and buttoned on my jacket as if I were a six-year-old going out to play in the snow. lol) She speaks a little English, but she tries to explain as much as she can in Russian so that I can improve my comprehension. So far, the only real communication snag was at dinner when I was struggling to say the food smelled good and it took her a while to understand the terribly broken and circumlocutory Russian fumbling out of my mouth.

So, it seems Nina and I are off to a good start and she is determined to act as my surrogate mother for the semester, which is welcome. In other news, the food here is good, as I expected, though something about breakfast did not agree with me. I’ve only been here a few days, but I’ve already learned that Russians like to use a lot of basil and butter in their foods, and they expect you to eat things that don’t really taste like much just because they are “good for your health.” (The first night in Nina’s flat, she asked me what foods I didn’t eat and I told her fish and bananas…she was okay with that, but she questioned me at length about why I didn’t like them and told me they were very good for me. She actually said to me that my not eating fish was sad. lol)

Russian food is definitely more bland than the food Americans are used to, but it’s tasty in a subtle way. In fact, the difference in spice usage between American and Russian food is proportional to the difference between Indian and American food. Most things I’ve tasted so far have been good, but very different from what I expected. For example, the blini (aka blintzes) you get in the U.S. are not the same as the ones in Russia. The typical cheese filling you get in America is NOT the same here. At least, not at Teremok, the locals’ favorite restaurant on Nevsky Prospekt. It was still delicious, in an entirely undiscovered way.

Speaking of the locals, I’ve been told not to smile at them and today I learned why. My friends and I were walking along Nevsky and one girl could not help but smile at people walking by. Well, a 60+ year-old guy stopped walking and made it clear he was interested in her. She kept smiling (awkwardly, now) and edged toward the middle of the group, an action the guy mirrored. After a few seconds or so, he blew her a kiss and walked away. She hung around the boys for the rest of the walk back to the metro. During orientation, the program coordinators said that Russian men are sketchy and very forward unless you make it absolutely clear that you are not interested in them. For them, smiling = “take me, I’m yours.” Therefore, if you want to be left alone, don’t smile, or make one of your guy friends your boyfriend-in-a-pinch. Russian men stay away from other men’s girls. It’s a territory thing.

The whole creepy guy incident with my friend may sound scary or threatening, but it really wasn’t. He looked like he was just messing with her. She learned her lesson. (Well, after this, she said that she failed at not being an American and that she needed to get on the next flight home because she just couldn’t stop smiling. Happy people take note: if you are a ray of sunshine and live to smile, don’t come to Russia.)

In case you start worrying about me (and this is really for the family’s sake), I’ve gotten very good at making it seem like I hate the world. It was strange at first not to smile and acknowledge someone who held the door open for me, but I’ve grown accustomed to it. The only thing I need to work on now is to stop apologizing when I bump into people. In America, when you bump into someone, inadvertently touch their stuff or otherwise invade their personal space, you say you’re sorry. (This probably isn’t always true in bigger cities like NYC, but I’ve never lived there.) Here, you don’t even look twice. In fact, the word “privacy” does not really exist in Russian. So I may not look like a foreigner walking down the street, but I act like one when I smack into Russians coming out of the metro. Oh well.

Perfecting my frown,

Katya

WARNING: Snow Globes! or, How to Pick Up TSA Guys

(Sorry this has taken so long to update, but I don't have internet access near where I live. I need to go to school to get online...so get ready for barrage of old posts!)

This post is brought to you by the words смешные людей, meaning "funny people."

Privet from the Motherland! I am writing this blog post from the comfort of my hotel room in Sankt-Peterburg! After a whirlwind 24 hours, there is nowhere else I would rather be than in the company of my down pillow. I’ve never traveled abroad, before, so the international airport scene was terrifyingly exciting. What could have been a series of frustrating disasters ended up being anticlimactically routine. For posterity’s sake, I’ll walk you through each leg of my trip.

I arrived at the Phoenix airport very early because I was worried about my boarding pass situation. I had called Lufthansa the day before to check in for my Frankfurt > Petersburg flight but was unable to do so, and they told me I’d have to deal with the situation when I got to the airport. They took my bags (which weighed less than 50 lbs, thank the Lord) and shuffled me through to security. The TSA guys stopped me and checked my carry-on for a very suspicious item: my 4-inch Arizona snow globe (well, it’s a sand globe, really, since there’s no snow in the desert). The TSA guy was very nice and chatted with me about traveling abroad and souvenirs and jazz (while weighing my host family’s gift candle and telling me it smelled good)...After being ineffably charming for a while, I was able to go to my gate. The flight to Chicago was pleasant; I even got to listen to FAA air chatter by plugging my headphones into the armrest! Modern technology for the win!

I had a 3 hour layover in Chicago, during which time I took advantage of my last opportunity to use my phone (it doesn’t work abroad). Lunch was exorbitantly expensive and relatively unexciting, but it got the job done. The flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany was 8 hours LONG. I watched Shrek the 4^th, bits of Toy Story 2 and The Losers, and an episode of Monk before I got really bored. I spent the rest of the time trying to study my Russian grammar book, listening to New Age armrest music, watching the moon reflect off the Atlantic Ocean (!!) and discovering the meaning of futility, aka trying to go to sleep.

The hardest part of my trip was picking my way through Frankfurt’s airport. Not only was there a ridiculous amount of construction going on to the point where navigation involved a 3 mile hike around chain-link fences, but also the signs supposedly telling you where to go and what to do when you are flying in from another country were pitifully scarce and difficult to follow. Thus, when you are new to being a world traveler, are lost in a foreign airport with people speaking a language you don’t understand and are seemingly too busy to give you a quick answer as to whether you need to pass through Customs and Passport Control…it can be frustrating. I spent a good hour getting to the correct terminal and gate (I had to ask several Lufthansa employees where my St. Petersburg flight would be, since the monitors only listed the terminal and not the gate). Along the way, I went through security and had my bag searched, again. This time, the rather cute, English-speaking TSA-type guy apologized profusely for having to rifle through my carry-on to investigate my nefarious candle. (I thought that would be the end of my suitcase troubles, but Lufthansa confiscated my bag, along with everyone else’s, claiming we could only take one carry-on OR one personal item. They didn’t charge us to check in our carry-on, however, since they had made the mistake of telling all of us that two bags were acceptable. Silly Germans. Trix are for kids.) Once in the terminal, I had to figure out how to contact my parents to let them know I was okay. I ended up using some internet kiosks (at 37 cents a minute!) to go on Facebook. I am now officially a gigantic FB fan for allowing me to communicate with my family in less than 1.5 minutes.

The flight from Germany to St. Petersburg was rather pleasant. I sat next to a fellow study-abroader named Peter and discussed our mutual fears about Russian grammar and the giant unknown of our host families. Landing at Petersburg’s Pulkovo 2 airport was exhilarating and surprising in multiple ways. Actual touch-down on the tarmac was more akin to a moderate rollercoaster than a plane landing (Frankfurt’s had been equally as jarring), but needless to say, we all survived. However, I was surprised to see so many TREES at the airport. We probably taxied for ten minutes after landing before we made it to the gate. It felt like we were in a giant forest that happened to have an airstrip running through it.

After deplaning, we went through passport control and got our migration cards stamped, which basically entailed waiting in a line until it was your turn to hand a surly woman your passport, have her glare at your for an instant, type something into her computer, and usher you on so she could not smile to the next annoying foreigner invading her country. After that excitement was baggage claim, which was uneventful except for my discovery that my once-clean orange luggage had delightful black smears on the front pockets. Aside from the new refuse-chic art adorning my bags, nothing was damaged. I and my twenty new best friends from America then breezed through customs and were ushered off to our hotel. And then, our adventure in Russia began…

Until next time,

Katya