Balloonigaas, Kroons, and the Fluu

This post is brought to you by the Estonian language, which I can’t pronounce, but think is rather amusing, since they have a predilection for doubling vowels. I mean, vooweells. And paarticullaar connsonnaannts.

This past weekend, my fellow American students and I piled into the ‘ole double-decker tour bus and went to Tallinn, Estonia. I had been looking forward to that trip since I heard about it last semester, and it was indeed a cool place to visit. Naturally, since I was coming from Russia, there had to be problems on the way there, while I was there, and on the way back. And, since it’s Russia we’re talking about, they were pretty amusing.

St. Petersburg and Tallinn are not that far from each other. It only took three or so hours to drive from the center of Piter to the Estonian border. However, it took another hour and generous change to get through the border. Not to get into Estonia, though. To get out of Russia. You see, Russia has a list of locations of every foreigner who is currently within the country (with info like this: John Smith, American, currently residing in St. Petersburg, Vasiliostrovsky Region, Maly Prospekt, House 22, etc…). When you leave Russia, they have to cross your name off that list, which entails a good amount of paperwork, fees and general bureaucratic schmaltz. Thus, when we arrived at the Russian-Estonian border, we had to prepare our passports, migration cards and multi-entry visas, and take all our luggage off the bus so that we could go through passport control. While we were getting our papers stamped (and our paperclips savagely ripped out of our passports because the border guy was mad he had to deal with 71 loud American college students), border guards were searching our bus. Then we made it out of Russia and, for fifteen minutes or so, were sitting in no-man’s-land between Russia and Estonia while the latter’s border officials stamped our passports. While Russia had required us to de-board with all our bourgeois crap in tow, Estonia sent one border official onto the bus who collected our passports, stamped them, and then gave them back to us shortly thereafter. The difference in procedure (and time) really epitomizes the difference between Russia and the rest of Europe.

Estonia, for those that don’t know, is part of the EU, so once we crossed the border we felt as if we were back in civilization. Mostly because the roads were paved nicely. (Russia has notoriously bad roads.) As we drove another couple of hours to the capitol city of Tallinn, it began to snow. The drive was pleasant, especially since my seat buddies and I were adding our own dubbing to a silly Russian movie playing on the bus.

The hotel we stayed in was supposedly a 4 star place, but compared with the 4 star joints in Russia we’d experienced, this one was a 5 star. People welcomed us to Estonia. People gave us free stuff. The rooms were nice and the bathroom floors were heated! The best part of the hotel, in my opinion, was the fact that I could drink the tap water. I felt like I was truly back in the West.

We had a walking tour of old Tallinn, which is a quaint little European/medieval city home to 400K smiling people. My tour guide was very funny (when splitting us into groups, he asked that all the pretty girls come with him…) and took us all over the old part of the city. After the tour, exploring buddy and I went around the town a bit more on our own and ran into some friends at a neat little coffee shop. We decided to have some hot chocolate, which turned out to be the best decision of a lifetime. It was a huge glass filled with a third of a cup of melted chocolate, a generous spoonful of cocoa, steaming hot milk, more cocoa powder and an Estonian chocolate on the side. Tres delicious.

Unfortunately for me, I came down with the 24-hour flu that evening, so the next day I spent mostly in my hotel room, watching strange movies and shows in Russian, Estonian, English and German. I did go out on a bus tour of the newer part of Tallinn and got to see the Baltic Sea, but I missed out on most of the souvenir-buying and general merriment opportunities. Luckily, I recovered enough by Sunday to enjoy the tour of the Narva fortress, on the border. (There are two fortresses facing each other on each side of the canal: one Estonian and one Russian. I can almost picture there having been a Monty-Python-esque exchanging of insults on more than one occasion.) We actually had lunch/dinner in the fortress, which was seriously cool, since I was seated at the head of the table and was telling everyone that it was only by my graciousness that I was allowing them to dine in my castle.

I bought a souvenir pillow at the fortress for my host sister (since I was missing her birthday and her concert by being abroad) and exchanged the rest of my Estonian stipend of kroons for rubles. I would have liked to have kept some kroons as momentos, but I barely had enough to exchange in the first place. (Estonia is moving into the Eurozone in 2011, so kroons are saying their farewell to the world.) Luckily for me, I happened to have picked up a 10 cent kroon coin (in Russia, of all places), so I will have a memento of my time in Tallinn and of the rapidly-dying currency. Too bad I couldn’t save the paper money, though. It was very colorful, like rubles.

The final excitement of the trip was the hullaballoo that entailed getting back into Russia. We had to fill out more migration cards and sit at the border (this time, the Estonian border, backed up because of the Russians) for over 3 hours. Then we hauled it home, hoping to make it in time before the metro closed at midnight…once we knew that wasn’t going to happen, we were shooting to get back before the bridges to Vasilievsky Island and Petrogradskaya were raised and we were stranded on the mainland until the metro opened again at 6 am. Our program directors called cabs ahead of time and dropped people off at lightning speed so that we barely made the bridge. Indeed, as we stopped to let people get off at Petrogradskaya, the bridge began to rise behind us. Had we spent another minute or two on the mainland, we would have been stranded. It was close, but by 3 am or so, all of us were finally home.

(In case I haven’t talked about this, St. Petersburg is an archipelago, and has a few islands connected to the mainland by the metro and bridges. The metro, as I said, closes at midnight. The bridges go up at 1:35 to let big commercial boats go through, and only certain ones go down again for 15 minutes at 2:45. Basically, if you live on one of the islands, like I do, you have to be Cinderella and make sure you’re home by midnight, or suffer the consequences and frustration of the bridge schedule.)

Though super-tired, I was very happy to be back in my lovably dysfunctional Russia. Tallinn was nice, though my experience wasn’t the greatest because of my flu, but Piter was calling me home.

And the best thing was…school was canceled for the next day. Probably because the big wigs knew that us getting back so late just meant that no one would have shown up, anyway. Forethought for the win.

Until next time,

Katya

P.s. So why balloonigaas? Because of this picture that I took at an Estonian gas station:

One Sunday in the Life of Katya

This post is brought to you by God, since He’s the one that gave me such a fantabulous weekend. To a lesser extent, this post is brought to you by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose classic One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovch has nothing to do with what I’m about to write, other than the fact that my title is modeled after his. (Cool points if you recognized that ahead of time.)

I had an awesome – the Russians would say изумительный (ih-zoo-ME-til-nee) or замичательный (zuh-me-CHA-til-nee) – day. For those of you not glued to Russian weather forecasts, the past week’s weather made my presence here in the motherland official: it snowed. It wasn’t much and it didn’t stick, but there were definitely white things falling from the sky for a few hours. And then it rained and my boots (which I bought here to be my waterproof footwear, only to have the escalator chew a hole into my heel when the woman in front of me stopped suddenly at the top) became water-carrying receptacles. But hey, it’s Russia. Life goes on. Anyway, the weather had been cold, grey and stereotypically European…until Sunday. I awoke to sunshine and large blue patches in the perennially cloudy sky. Awesome-ness number one.

What with the weather being so nice, I decided to sit in my room and read. I know, right? Kind of a waste of precious sunlight. I did enjoy the relatively warm weather and brilliant sun later on, though, when I went out with friends to a cello ensemble performance. As concert buddy and I were walking from the metro station to the concert location, I saw a guy standing in the middle of the sidewalk, holding a sign that said (in Russian), “Hug me.” Ecstatic that I finally ran into the Free Hugs campaign – and in stand-offish Russia, no less – I enthusiastically gave the guy a hug. It made my day. Awesome-ness the sequel. With awesome sauce on the side.

The cello ensemble concert, located in a rather difficult-to-find palace across from Pushkin’s old stomping ground and near the Hermitage Museum, was pretty cool. There were eight or so cellists, but from the first piece they played, I could have sworn there were people playing violins and a viola. It was neat to hear musicians play the full range of the cello, especially when they were playing some of my favorite Russian composers: Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Mussorgsky…They even played a jazzy piece and a blues number that involved rhythmic snapping. Awesome-ness numero tres.

One thing that I must mention is the way Russians clap. In America, whenever an audience wants to let the performer know he’s done a good job, people will give a rousing round of applause, with whistles and wooos! sprinkled in for good measure. In Russia, when a performer does well and the audience wants him to know, they all begin clapping in rhythm, so that it sounds like one person with really big hands is clapping. This simply goes to show that white people do indeed have rhythm. It’s the collective mentality, I suppose. Honestly, though, it feels rather unsatisfying to clap slowly with everyone else. But I guess that’s just my cultural upbringing. *shrug*

On the way back from the concert, it began to rain, so concert buddy and I dashed into a pyshki place, where I had just enough change for one pyshka and one piece of Russian candy. While the sweets were pretty awesome in and of themselves, I count my flawless ordering and correct guessing of what the singular of “candy” was as the true recipient of the awesome-ness the fourth award.

The penultimate awesome-ness of my Sunday belonged to the moment when I ran into another pair of Russian deaf girls in the metro. I watched their conversation, very aware that I was the only one staring, and was able to pick up a few things about guy-behind-me’s hair they thought looked funny. (Isn’t that the definition of talking smack about someone behind his back in front of his face? Lol) Awesome-ness part five.

The crown of my fabulous day was when I saw a piece of junk car rolling down the street…that had spinning rims. Yes, like the ones wannabe ghetto/gangsta/rap stars put on their shiny black Escalades to make it look like their wheels are spinning even when the car is stopped. Only 50 Kopeck (not to be confused with 50 Cent, since technically he’s worth more) had the lamest set of spinning rims ever, and they showed the beginnings of rust, to boot. L.O.L.

Man, I love Russia.

Until next time,

Katya

So There Was This One Time…

You are in for a treat, because this post is brought to you by two words. The first is анекдоты (ah-neek-DOE-ty), meaning “anecdotes” (though Russian anecdotes are usually short stories with punch lines). The second word is now my favorite in the entire Russian language: верблюд (veer-BLOOT), meaning “camel.”

The following are five stories I’ve been dying to retell:

5. Close Encounters of the Deaf Kind

For those that don’t know, I took 3 years of ASL (American Sign Language) in high school. Although I’m out-of-practice, I still try to understand sign whenever I see it. The other day, I had the opportunity to put my rusty reading skills to the test when I saw a pair of Russian deaf women on the metro. I didn’t understand much of what they were saying, though I did catch something about how one woman’s mom was driving somewhere the day before and saw something funny. Honestly, however, even if my interpreting skills were at their peak, I probably wouldn’t have understood too much more. Russian sign is its own language, much like spoken Russian is different from Polish, Czech or Croatian. There might be overlap in ASL and RSL, but it wouldn’t be the same. Anyway, I had fun watching them sign and seeing their expressiveness. (I don’t know if you’ve had the privilege of watching deaf people talk, but they are extremely dynamic with their facial expressions.) I also enjoyed watching them because I understood what they were talking about better than anyone else on the metro, for a change. Thus, I indulged in a few moments of linguistic superiority. Don’t judge.

4. Never Trust the Militsia

I’ve said already that the police in Russia are corrupt and that I’m afraid of them. In case you didn’t believe me, this is what my professor told me happened to her husband: He was heading toward his car after making a withdrawal from the bank (or something to that effect) when the militsia stopped him and asked for his documentation. He opened his wallet to get his paperwork and the militsia noticed he had a good amount of cash. They started to question him about where he had gotten so much money and eventually made him come down to the station to write a statement saying how he obtained it. They stuck him in an interrogation room, made him take out all the money in his wallet and lay it on the desk, and gave him a pen and paper on which to itemize who had given him money. Then they left the room. Just as he was beginning to write, the lights went out. The door opened again, the militsia swept around the room, then the lights came back on – and the money was gone. The husband asked, “Where’s my money?” and the militsia replied, “What money?” What could he do, report the crime? To the people who had committed it? They let him go and he went home. Never trust the militsia.

Another, less frightening story from the same professor: She had her purse stolen and reported the crime to the militsia. They said, “thank you, we’ll look into it.” Two years passed, and she finally got a call from the militsia, saying they might have captured the robber. Two years later! They asked her to come in and make an identification. The conversation that ensued was hilarious.

Militsia guy: “Do you think you could make a positive identification?”

Professor: “It’s been two years. Besides, all I saw was his behind as he ran away.”

Militsia guy (totally serious): “We’ll make the suspects turn around. Do you think you could recognize his behind?”

Professor: “Uh…no...”

Militsia guy: “Oh, well. Good day.”

~ click ~

Moral of the story? Don’t expect swift justice from the Russian militsia. And next time you get your purse stolen, keep the image of the hooligan’s rear end engrained in your memory, just in case.

3. Classy People Like Teremok

I’ve already talked about this amazing restaurant chain in Piter called Teremok: the one that serves a million variations of блины (blintzes) and is possibly the thing I will miss the most, when I leave. Well, yesterday, after spending a couple hours in the Russian Museum (where excursion buddy and I saw Russian icon art from the 13^th century!) we decided to eat at Teremok. While I was in line, I turned around to say something to excursion buddy when I saw a man and woman in period dress standing behind him. They were probably on their lunch break from working one of the nearby historical sites, but they were still entirely decked out in 18^th-century aristocratic garb, white powder wigs and all. I was really tempted to pull out my camera and take a picture, but I fought the urge. I don’t know about you, but there is something really anachronistically funny about Duke and Duchess Russia ordering fast food.

2. Putin Looks Like Dobby

If you think all I learn in my Russian classes is how to speak Russian, you are quite mistaken. I’ve learned a great deal about Russian life, culture, food, history, architecture, as well as the random opinions of my professors. One of the more recent amusing tangents in Grammar was my fault, when I asked (in perfect Russian grammar, I might add) what my professor would do if she met Putin. What began as a simple question launched into a discussion about how she thought Putin was a great guy (tidbit for Mom: apparently he’s a fabulous communicator and master of the Russian language) but she thought he looked like Dobby, from the Harry Potter movies. Fortunately for my prof, in case any FSB agents happen to be reading my blog, this connection has been made before. Google “Putin and Dobby” and you’ll see.

1. It’s 10 o’clock – Do You Know Where Your Camel Is?

If you’ve ever taken foreign language classes, you know that you have to come up with sentences using whatever grammatical structure you happen to be discussing in class. It can be difficult to think of examples on the fly, or just plain boring. Solution? Pick a random, silly word and use it in as many examples as possible. Like “camel.”

When my friend Jay first whipped out the camel sentences, it was absolutely hilarious, and everyone thought so. Now, however, some of our professors have begun reaching their heretofore-unknown camel tolerance limit and react to his examples with a mixture of mild frustration and tempered amusement. Naturally, that makes camel sentences even funnier. There’s talk of everyone coming in one day, ready with examples featuring other random animals, but it probably won’t happen. We wouldn’t want our teachers jumping into the Neva in despair. Or, purposefully teaching us improper Russian grammar…

Until next camel,

Katya

Death by Flowers

This blog post is brought to you by the phrase "слишком много цветов," (SLEESH-kum muh-NO-ga tsve-TOF), meaning "too many flowers."

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Russians have a thing for flowers. Actually, that's an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Outside my metro stop alone there are four flower shops and a lady who stands by the exit selling small bouquets. It seems that every ten feet (or 3 meters, to be regionally accurate) there is a flower-selling establishment. And they get serious business! Russian men are expected to give their girlfriends flowers on every date, as I understand it, and they are also expected to provide their female hosts with flowers at a party. Then, of course, you have your standard congratulatory flowers, sympathy flowers, thank you flowers and special event flowers. Russia rakes in a lot of money from selling gas to other countries, but their domestic economy is run on flower sales, I'm sure of it.

This became rather evident a few days ago, when I went to a concert. My host sister was singing backup at this concert and happened to have two free tickets to the show. So my friend and I went, knowing absolutely nothing about the kind of music we were about to subject ourselves to, other than the fact that the musician's name was Афина ("Afina"). Turns out that Афина is the Russian equivalent of Athena (as in Greek goddess of wisdom) and that the Greek reference was more than coincidental. Афина's music was a neat fusion of Greek pop/rock with Russian lyrics. She had Greek dancers on stage with her and even brought out some Gypsy dancers, too! I took some pictures, but I was mostly trying to get pics of my host sister, so I may not even have one of Афина herself. lol

Multiple times during the performance, the emcee's held up signs saying "flowers and gifts" and tons of people in the audience got up to give flowers to Афина. I would guess that 80% of the theater (which was a good size) ended up giving her flowers. Part of it had to do with the fact that it was her birthday, and part of it, my host sister told me later, is that Афина is well-loved and especially kind to her fans. (I asked if it was normal for Russian musicians to receive flowers in the middle of the performance, and my host sister said no.)

I left the concert early, partly because it was getting late, partly because my friend wasn't having as much fun as I was, and mostly because we were sick of dealing with the three blondes in front of us. They spent the entire time talking to one another, putting their heads together and blocking our view of the stage, and standing up in their row. The 7-year-old sitting with them was better behaved. At the end, they started tossing the 7-year-old's doll back and forth very high in the air...playing with her, obviously, but getting in the way of everyone behind them. I was really only mad at them for blocking my view of Lelya and for ruining multiple pictures. They could have blocked Афина all night, for all I cared. Still, their absolute disregard for the people behind them was a bit shocking, and I kind of wanted to whack them on the head and remind them that this was a concert, not a coffee shop, but I didn't. (Actually, I wouldn't have had to deal with them at all, if the people on the end of the row hadn't stolen my seats...but, hey, it's Russia. Can't expect people to respect the sanctity of private space.)

Anyway, after I went home, I decided to stop at one of the flower shops in my metro center and buy some flowers for my host sister. I had to keep two very important rules in my head as I chose, however:

RULE #1: NEVER give someone flowers in multiples of two. Even numbered bouquets are for funerals and deaths. Whenever someone receives even numbers of flowers, they get the heebie-jeebies. Or are insulted. (Usually, if a foreigner gives an even number, they don't take offense...but I didn't want to give my host sister and mother a heart attack.)

RULE #2: Yellow flowers mean intimacy...or are reserved for prostitutes. (Funny story: I was walking home from school when an older guy with a bouquet of yellow flowers came up to me, told me he liked my boots and asked me to help him out. I promptly said "No, sorry," and sped up. He left me alone. lol)

I decided upon two red carnations and a pink carnation, but I didn't like what the bouquet looked like and was about to add another flower when I caught myself at Rule #1. I actually started to say to the florist, "and I'll also have..." but I stopped myself, partly because I remembered the rule and partly because the florist started to look disturbed. Instead, I switched out the pink carnation for a white one and paid for my flowers. I felt pretty good, having gotten something kinda nice for my host sister, but when I woke up in the morning, I noticed she had a gorgeous bouquet of red, white and purple flowers on the table that Афина had given her as a thank-you. Next to that, my carnations looked scrawny and cheap, but she said she liked them and appreciated the note I had written her. I think she was just happy that I liked the performance and actually went to watch her. She's cool.

So if you're ever in Russia and want to give someone a dozen yellow roses...don't.

Top 10 Things I’ll Be Happy to Leave

I’ve loved being in Russia, so far, but it hasn’t been all roses and song. These are the things I will gladly say do svindanya to when I leave in December:

Smokers – Everybody smokes and likes to blow their cancerous habit in my face as I walk around town. I once went to a club where Jarlath, our program director, was playing and I used half a bottle of Febreeze on my coat alone to get out the smoke smell. There’s nothing like stepping outside in the morning in the rare sunshine and inhaling a lungful of smoke and cigarette ashes. I mean, seriously people, smoking is BAD FOR YOU. Knock. It. Off. Thank goodness America has gone postal on smoker’s rights and the air in big cities is full of more civilized things, like exhaust.

Scarce/temperamental internet access – Oh, Vanderbilt, how I miss your wireless campus. Oh, wireless routers at home. Oh, friendly people who actually SHARE networks. I’ve said enough about this that I don’t need to belabor the point. Though, I will say that not having regular access to the internet has enabled me to understand how people can survive without a computer. Sort of.

People who don’t smile – I’m not really a smiling bubbly person all the time, which is why living here hasn’t been that bad, but I will definitely appreciate being back in a place where it is accepted and expected to smile and say “good morning” to people walking down the street. I miss being nice. Except on the metro. There, get outta my way, fool! I’m in a hurry!

Commuting to class – My dorm last year was located as close to geographical center of my campus as possible, so the longest walk I had was 10 minutes in any direction. In Russia, I have a 30-40 minute commute to school, if I take the metro and the shuttle. If I walk once I get out of the metro, it’s closer to an hour. I’ve gotten used to waking up at 7:30 to get to school by 10, but I will love being back on a campus where I can get dressed 10 minutes before class starts and still be early.

Russian-style university – First off, classes are 90 minutes LONG. It’s been scientifically proven that people start losing focus when learning after an hour. I’m used to 50 minutes of class time. 90 minutes each class, with an average of 3 classes a day, and only 10 minutes between classes = lame sauce. Especially since the Russians at Smolny decided that it was a brilliant idea to have everyone in the Political Science Faculty have lunch at the exact same time, every day, and make the lunch break only 40 minutes. (<-- Example of Russian efficiency, or lack thereof.) That’s enough time if you brought your lunch, but if you need to buy it from the cafeteria or from across the street, you’re either going to have to shove it down your throat as you walk or be significantly late to class. And God help you if you don’t have close to exact change at the Smolny cafeteria. The cashier lady might just stab you with her serving spoon if you dare flash her a 500.

Enormous time difference between me and family/friends – Since my internet is limited, I can usually only Skype/G-chat with people when I’m at school, which is usually egregiously early in the morning for those of the Central and Pacific Time Zone persuasion. Or, when I’m walking to Chernyshevskaya from Smolny and want to chat with someone as I amble through the park, I can’t call home unless I want to give my parents a heart attack at 4 am. Often at Vandy, when I’m walking back from Wendy’s and going to my room, I’ll give my mom a ring and chat with her. I miss having the opportunity to do that, here.

Freaking out when I see anyone in uniform – I’ve already said that the militsia frightens me. I’m looking forward to when I can walk past a cop and feel like he’s really there to protect me.

Perennially overcast skies – St. Petersburg is located on the Gulf of Finland, so there is always enough water around to evaporate and turn into clouds. This means that every morning for the past month, basically, I have awoken to grey/white skies or tiny patches of blue. I look forward to seeing beautiful sunshine more often than once a day, every few days. (Then again, when the sun does come out in Piter, the beauty of the city around me just shimmers. I always used to appreciate sunshine in America, but I do so even more now.)

Paying for lunch – I know that I technically pay up front for my meal plan at Vanderbilt, but swiping the Card or using Commodore Cash (aka monopoly money) just feels so much better than digging into my wallet for 100 rubles every day. Or going to the produkti and buying lunch meat/bread/cheese to take to school. I like meal plans, because they are yet another way of staving off this thing called “being an adult and paying for your livelihood.”

Not understanding a thing people say – I know that’s why I’m here, but let’s face it: I’m not going to come back speaking fluent Russian after only 4 months. While my comprehension and speaking skills are improving (at least, I hope so, for the sake of my host mom), there are still plenty of instances where I have no freaking clue about what someone wants from me. While I intend to stick with Russian and hopefully someday trick people into thinking I’m a native speaker, it will be nice to be back in a country where I entirely understand what’s written on the menu.

Until next time,

Katya