The bear was on a motorbike 30.3.14

Last week saw the rise, and sudden demise, of our new favourite local ice-hockey team, СКА. We found out they were playing a game that could potentially be their last and bought tickets for it with a couple hours to spare, luckily grabbing the last 5 left together in the stadium. Turns out that getting to the next round involves playing the same team for the best out of 7 games. This was one that we had to win or risk being disqualified. To celebrate this, СКА had put out free t-shirts (in a size XL to fit even the most sturdy of Russian vodka and borsch drinking men) and inflatable clangers that worked as an effective dancing accessory. The musical theme to the game consisted of 20-25 seconds of music (namely “Simply The Best”) combined with throwing our inflatables around violently, and then 1.5 mins of serious game time. The interval provided us with the cheerleaders doing a routine (no pyramid to our grave disappointment), a bit of sumo wrestler racing and a blimp from the sponsors flying over the ice. Unfortunately they lost to Locomotive Yaroslavl on Friday evening, thereby ending my interest in ice-hockey until next winter.

The most interesting part of our reading week was the Monday evening spent at the circus. We were the only people above the age of 16 there without children under the age of 6 with us, but we still managed to take full pleasure in the popcorn/candyfloss stand. The circus is staged in a typical big Russian building, but is set to look like you’re in a big red tent as you walk inside, setting the scene rather well. The show started off with some dancers and some not-so-impressive backflipping and cartwheeling, until some girl came in and started dancing on a rope 20 feet in the air. No harnesses; every drop had my heart in my mouth. It was all very elegant and the music very reminiscent of Adele. Needless to say, they had to ruin it by having 2 clowns doing some stupid sketch to entertain the under 4s after every act. Luckily the kid behind us took advantage of enjoying this by squealing in our ears for the entirety. We left for the interval with a sense of disappointment at not having yet seen the bear on the motorbike as is on the poster. Luckily our chanting of bear bear bear bear bear throughout the skipping dance was enough encouragement and suddenly this big brown bear rides out on a motorcycle for a few laps around the ring, soon replaced by another bear doing roly polys, then cartwheels, then riding a bicycle, ending in it driving a big pink BMW. Words cannot begin to describe the emotions running through my mind as this happened. It was a mixture of hilarity, sadness, shock and pure euphoria. It was pretty sad to see those big animals being made to parade around a tent for our entertainment when they should be playing in a forest somewhere. The tigers weren’t nearly as impressive as the bears. They had them jumping through flaming hoops, but generally they tended to tease them into growling. We got the feeling that they are actually pretty tame because they definitely knew where they were meant to be and what they were meant to be doing at every given time.

Yesterday we went to the zoo and the price of £2.50 left us with low expectations of what to expect. We were very pleasantly surprised at the range of animals; also leaving us with the question of how they got hold of some of them. Unfortunately it was quite sad to see some of the bigger animals like the puma, leopards and tigers in such small cages. We did see them being fed and most of the animals did have trays of what looked like food from a local столовая in their cage, but the bigger animals were just pacing up and down without stopping for enough time that it’s very easy to imagine they’re feeling claustrophobic and would much rather be in the wild. Comparing it to London zoo where most animals do have a pretty accurate representation of their natural habitat, some of these animals were in a cage maybe 15 foot by 4 foot, with maybe one piece of aparatus to climb. I also just made those measurements up; no idea how big they were, but the space was definitely too small for them.

Not being the biggest appreciator of art, I normally stay as far away as possible from art museums. However, we went to the Russian Museum this week and it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. The only way I can think to describe it is that it was paintings of actual things in an abstract kinda way, sometimes. Probably not entirely accurate and definitely not a quote for their brochure but the paintings of the things that was sometimes accurate was highly enjoyable and I’ll be recommending it for years to come, as long as it stays the same.

Liquid Orange Cheese 12.3.14

This blog is very long overdue. Soznotsoz. Been über busy with all of the sightseeing going on. The Friday before last was our first trip to the Hermitage. The rumour going round is that you could probably spend at least a week going in there every day and still not really see everything. Personally, I found it’s a lot more hyped up than what you get when you walk inside. I’m not a particular art appreciator and once you’ve seen one museum you’ve almost definitely seen them all. However, some of the big rooms are quite magnificent and they have a mighty collection from many different eras. 

 It is free for students so we planned to go for some pie and then come back, but ended up at St. Isaac’s cathedral. Also free unless you want to go to the top and then you pay for the privelege of walking up a few hundred spiral stairs. Not particularly strenuous until you get to the top and you realise you can’t exactly walk in a straight line. It’s gorgeous up there with a view of the whole city in all its glory, including the place where Russia sends cranes to die.

Obviously the safest of Russian structures to climb

 Sunday was the festival called масленица. It’s meant to represent the end of winter and the start of spring. Needless to say it was about -3 outside. A few of us headed to another island where they’d put on a festival. Festivities included блины stands (of which we had a few), tug of war competitions, dancing, ethnic singing, weight lifting and of course a dancing sun. The dancing included a lot of people standing in a straight line and attempting to weave underneath other people’s linked arms in a complicated fashion. I’ve lost faith in humans’ sense of co-ordination since observing this. The weight lifting was very impressive. From what we gathered, there was this 40 pound weight and some guy lifted it over his head 90 times. He won a plastic bag with a magazine as a prize. I wonder if it was worth not being able to even shake the other guys hand when he was done.

 This weekend we went to the Church of Spilled Blood. Appaz someone died there so they decided to build this exquisite church on the spot this happened. It greatly ressembles St. Basil’s in Moscow, but is even nicer inside. It’s decorated wall-to-wall-to-ceiling and naturally there’s 2 gift shops and a cash point inside. Just in case. These churches just need an eatery and it could be a day trip.

What other control can you take?

In case you forget what the building looks like when you're inside.

St. Petersburg seems to be a city of sushi. Being a vegi, I luckily don’t ever have the problem of eating Russian raw fish because that does seem like a recipe for disaster. Nevertheless, I still attempted to get a sushi trip going this Monday (on our 4 day weekend!!) to watch the carnage occur in other people. Unfortunately we ended up at some American diner where the cheesy chips (seemingly reminiscent of the chippys back home) came with a pot of orange liquid cheese.Never have I ever had to cheese up my own cheesy chips. I feel this is where this blog should end..... with liquid orange cheese. 

Ready to go to the man on this one 26.2.14

I’m pretty much ready to call social services on the current situation. If such a thing even exists here. The little boy that lives here has already missed 2 days of school in the past week to sit and stare at his laptop screen from 9am until at least midnight. He doesn’t seem to get fed and most certainly isn’t getting his homework done. The father spends most of his time wretching in the bathroom (potential eating disorder)?? And the mother is in and out of the house leaving the child seemingly under only my supervision. Irresponsibility at its finest.

We had our first phonetics class the other day with a lady in a very purple ensemble. We didn’t have those last semester and I’m still not entirely sure what the class is supposed to entail. We started off by spending 10 minutes repeating lalala, dododo, soosoosoo, teeteetee and then watched “Up” in Russki. Obviously once the lights went out, so did any form of concentration until she started drawing photos of mouths and the direction in which our words come out on the board. The point?? I have no idea.

Finally received my student card! I saw finally, but it was definitely sitting in the international office for 5 days before I knew I was supposed to get it myself. We also filled out the paperwork and paid for our visa extension. Obviously Russia thinks students study for what is a 90 day semester and charge you a cheeky 1000 rubles for the privelege of staying any longer. The form was general transliterating your life history into cyrillic and then you pay via an ATM-type  machine in the corridor.

The face I make when I think about having to study. Study shmuddy

Speaking of ATMs, the ruble is currently crashing (or whatever currencies do) against the pound. Last semester we were looking at 47-50r to the £ and now we’re up to 59.89. I’m checking google every 15 minutes and praying for the economy to crash whilst simultaneously withdrawing all the money in my bank account. Soon we'll probably all be millionaires here. Best case scenario is that the currency gets such that everything in H&M is cheaper than in the UK.

There's actually an ATM to the left. Smiling at the crashing rouble wooo. 

Speaking of H&M, I popped to the Galeria shopping centre on Sunday and it’s basically a glorified form of the Trafford Centre. So much so that there was even an M&S. All it was missing was a Primark.

On Saturday a bunch of us met in town and went for a bit of a walk to explore the city as our days are so long that we don’t have much time after school during the week. We loitered outside some famous monuments and the Hermitage but didn’t venture in as we didn’t all have those magical student cards that give you free entry everywhere. The main highlight of the day was really our long lunch with the worst service I think I’ve seen here as of yet. They must’ve had only one oven for the restaurant because all 6 pizzas that we ordered came out 1 by 1 with a solid 8-9 minutes in between each one. We got our revenge by making the waitress feel uncomfortable with her stupid side plates. Moody cow. 

The Hermitage. 

We all kissed this camel's nose for good luck. Almost had a few cases of frozen lips stuck to frozen camel statue.

The grimiest Danish bar in the city.

This desolate car park is apparently the centre of all St. Petersburg night life, as one can see from the empty champagne bottles strewn on the floor

I wonder if Obama knows about this classy joint....

Jamie Oliver apparently has an Italian restaurant here. I wonder if he knows about this too.

Sunny day, pretty river still covered in ice.

Their ickle feet must be so chilly

My Return To The Motherland 19.2.14

My arrival back to the motherland has been long and arduous; starting with a 3am start at Heathrow for the first of my flights to Frankfurt. Needless to say, I hadn’t slept more than about an hour but it was adrenaline keeping me going. When that wore off I took the opportunity to charge all of my already fully charged gadgets at the airport merely because they had plugs there; such excitment charging your phone at an unfamiliar place. Unfortunately the only food we got on the flight there was yoghurt. Anyone that knows me knows I’m scared of yoghurt. It has a horrible consistency, is normally a rank colour and shouldn’t be allowed to exist. I can’t touch it, look at it, eat it or even think about it without having a mild panic attack. Needless to say I had to control myself because panic attacks don’t tend to go down too well on planes. Something about someone thrashing and screaming in a confined metal box 3000 feet in the air.

Thankfully it was handed to me in a napkin so no touching of the offending article was necessary.

When I arrived in Frankfurt I had to go through security again to get to my gate. My bag was picked out to be searched. The security guard fondled my stock of cereal bars for a bit and then let me go. I like to think he didn’t have a proper search due to my very aryan looks. Germans don’t wanna mess with that. I found a 5 euro note in my purse, but somehow still felt the need to ask the lady at McDs if I could use that here. She was like uuuuuh yeah, it’s a euro. Except I didn’t understand what she said because I don’t speak German, so I took her mocking eyes to mean yes.

The next flight was longer than the 1^st but I slept for most of it; awaking only when they bought the drinks carriage round. I had a glass of wine, and then another one when they came round again with the tea and coffee. Not as generous as BA where they give you a whole bottle to enjoy, but none the less it sent me right back to sleep. Kinda disappointed I didn’t get any on my 1^st flight. When I asked the guy then what drinks he had, he most certainly didn’t offer any wine. Maybe he thought I was too young, or maybe he thought 6am is too early for it. Either way, he’d be soo totes wrong.

Arriving to the airport was so much less stressful than last semester when I had no idea what was going on. I was straight through customs, and they clearly have no idea what they’re doing either. I have quite a typical Russian name and it’s spelt differently on both visas I have. What are this Russki visa office? My 1^st visa was right there in my passport; you probably could’ve photocopied it and just changed the dates. The whole journey to where I’m living was quite easy and I’ve missed this country where you can’t walk 2 steps without a man offering to help you with your stuff; although a few times it probably could’ve been confused for an almost mugging of my cases.

My room is little, but cute, and also a library. Guess who doesn’t even have to now leave her room for YA project research?! For 9000r a month, there is no going wrong. The host family live here; apparently in the kitchen. I’ve been here 4 days and the 7 year old blonde kid has been sat in the kitchen staring at his laptop almost every time I’ve walked through. Not sure he goes to school. After about midnight they must send him off to bed and the father takes up stag duty of the kitchen. Either that or the little boy morphes into a man at night. I’ve never seen them in the same room together, thereby making this the prevalent theory.

Classes are very different to Petrozavodsk. We have Fridays off and a late start Monday but 10-3:20 Tues and Wed. Us international lot have taken up residence loitering around the coffee machine at lunchtime. We went for a few getting to know you drinks last night with some of the Benedict Language School lot and ended up at some cool little bar playing music circa 2001. We’re talking Jennifer Lopez, bit of N’Sync, the ever-classic Bad Touch. Loving life. Except for the slush falling from the sky into my face no matter what direction I walk in.

Oh, the knowledge captured on these shelves! Let's marvel.

I'm not sure those 2 on the right of me, making the obscene finger gestures, were actually with us... Some people are just too cool to be loving life

Here are some pics from the last few weeks at Petrozavodsk. I’m shedding a tear. 

My last goodbye to the страус

Me and Robin having a mid walk snack, courtesy of Maddie (the photo, not the snack)

Letting out 21 years of anger by throwing stuff at the iced-over lake. 

What an artsy photo cause you can only see our silhouettes