And so winter approaches and the light disappears 19.11.13

Friday night saw us make our mighty return to Sigmund Freud, no matter the forces that tried to stop us. The first came in the form of Andrei dropping off a poster in our classroom advertising an international party at the same time in Begemot. The 2^nd came in the form of Daniel writing a post on fb telling us to be there. And the 3^rd was a personal e-mail from Sasha reminding us about this international party and how we are the guests. Needless to say we ignored all 3 invitations, probably quite rudely actually, and thus the Brits advertised as turning up were too busy having karaoke malarky elsewhere. Zero regrets were had of course. It ended up being quite an uneventful night. Some lady who actually does have an amazing voice was dancing all sexy to Burlesque. Maddy thought she’d spotted some sass in her moves. She was mistaken. It was skank. No-one needed to see that. What they did need to see was the fight near the end of the night. I didn’t see it myself. My phone was unsociably in my phone arranging a skype-date. All I felt was Maddy pull me back close to her in what I first thought to be a romantic embrace. It was a protective embrace. Pretty romantic to me.

Turns out some guys had gotten into a typically Russian fight. The difference of this situation to an English situation is that, in the motherland:

1.       There are no repurcussions for breaking a leg off the table

2.       The barman/bouncer simply watched them hash it out

3.       They weren’t kicked out

4.       The fighters bought eachother beers afterwards

The fight was typically Russian mainly because it involved one man disgraces the other man’s girlfriend by pouring beer over her (accidentally one would presume, but one might be wrong- this is the motherland after all).

Sunday saw us visit Timeshop mid-afternoon. It was “English Discussion Club” so us Brits got all the coffee, tea, biscuits and ice-cream that we could muster, for free. We had some people we hadn’t met yet, including a lady who works at the new Radission opening today; and a girl who spent the summer in Oxford. It’s always nice to speak to people who have a genuine interest in a land that I’ve escaped from to come to a land they yearn to escape from.

Today Andrei had us going on a forced excursion. I’m not a fan of organised fun. Or authority. But it actually turned out to be great fun. Despire the 9am meeting in the pitch black. Although to be fair the sun isn’t rising until about 9:45am right now. Walks to uni are very much the same as walking at midnight. Or maybe walking at 4pm, because it’s getting dark by then too.

So we arrived at the school, and as usual, the foreigners are treated with such pleasure. Everyone is taking the chance to practice their English to us. We were treated to a play, better described as a spectacle of the highest order. I have no idea what happened but the teachers were dancing around with tights on their face, rainbow wigs and the last word of most sentences randomly in English. At one point, one of the teachers started to take his belt off and we were all there with bated breath at the route this student play had taken. Luckily (/not luckily?) he only used it to pretend to beat one of the kids.

Our 1^st lesson was Russian language. It consisted of a debate between chocolate and vanilla ice-cream. Got slightly racist. Some rude words were tossed about. Namely the N word. Being 19-22 year olds, we still giggled along with the 16 year olds.Lunch was in the cantine, cheap as ever, but lacking in anything other than potato, cabbage and rice for the 4 vegetarians among us. Then we moved on to literature. Andrei had told us to prepare a small review on a book from the last 40 years. Something more modern than the traditional Shakespeare that they all already know. I chose The Kite Runner. Probably a bit of a mistake seeing as I have read it, but so long ago that I very well should just say that I haven’t because I couldn’t really recall anything as close as to what Wikipedia told me. I had a group of 5 girls, including Ksusha, who I’d sat next to in the other class and she was an absolute babe. They loved hearing what I said about the story and made a pretty poster with a kite and birds. Somehow I managed to convince them that the kite was a symbol for freedom and childhood. I have no idea that this is true or not, but they lapped it up. After the lesson they somehow chose me to flock around and ask a thousand questions a minute to. We ended on music and I had them squealing. I swear to you, squealing their brains off by nodding at agreement when they said they liked One Direction. The reaction I got just led me to reciting American and British pop-stars/bands names so I could hear their delight in me. I gave my name out to 6 of them and Ksusha asked me for a hug at the end. Babe.

After this whole debarcle, we were invited to the teacher’s room for tea and potato pastries. I stuck my pinky out whilst drinking for show. I feel like that’s what they wanted from us. 

Reading Week Fun 10.11.13

Today marks 10 weeks of being in Russia, having just had our reading week, with only another 6 to go. Time is flying, but fun is being had. Of course we took this week to disperse around the Motherland hitting Kazan, Moscow, St.Petersburg and Novgorod between us.


Because I'm spending next semester in St.Petes, I decided to join Olivia, Sophia, Amy, Jenny and Ally in Moscow on Wednesday morning after one hell of an experience that my first journey on a sleeper train was.


It started off with me standing in the rain at the train station trying to figure out where to go. Once I finally plucked up the courage to ask one of the guards, I was directed to walk over the tracks and in between a couple of trains to a platform further away. Then I had to queue to get on the train along with other passengers and people waiting to wave to the departing train. Once your friend/mother/daughter is on the train you should move away and make room for others, the train most certainly doesn't need to be waved at. But alas, they waited anyway and I pushed my way through and handed my ticket and passport over to the attendant. I'd been severely mis-informed that the attendants are nice, but this one was horrendous. She yelled двадцать at me at least двадцать times and I thought she was talking about a different carriage so I started to walk away only to have двадцать yelled at me again until I got on the carriage. Turns out that this was my seat number; I'd been looking at the train number as my seat. As I boarded the 100 degree heated train I wandered up and down the aisle a couple times until showing someone my ticket and doing my "please pity me and show me where my seat is" face. I'd chosen a kind gentleman at the end of the corridor who even offered up some English and chose this moment where I was sweating my brains out and stressing that I was on the wrong train, to practice his English with me. I was next to some babushka who kept me filled up with lemon/limey sweets and the problem of etiquete approached. Am I allowed to sit on her bed until it's a reasonable bed time. How do I get up onto my bed? Will she be awake in the morning for my to get my case from under her chair? How do I make my bed? Where are the toilets? Why did I already eat all my food? Why is she knitting socks with 6 needles?


Luckily there was no time to think about these problems as my new friend, Yurai, came back to speak to me. And by speak, I mean that he very kindly made my bed and did a rendition of Don't Worry, Be Happy for my oh-so troubled soul. Then he called me his English girlfriend and assured me that I'd get his phone number in the morning. Oh and would I like to go back to his sleeping quarters with him. I played along, saying I'd love to get his number until he'd made my bed and then feigned utmost interest in my sudoku book. He's 41, from Petrozavodsk, but lives in Moscow as a grinder. Either that or he wants to grind me. I snuggled closer to my newfound babushka friend for support from unwanted advances to the foreigner. He left me alone for a bit, but returned after a stop smelling of alcohol and offering me magic "tea" and "coffee," whilst asking me if I had ANY questions, ANY questions, ANY questions. I assured him I had none and quickly escaped up to my bunk. Worst decision potentially ever. I lost my phone in the delves of my backpack and on the top bunk there's no room to sit up. Or move. So I'm freaking out, messing up my nicely made bed, unable to get down. Hating life. It's also really high and bumpy. Yurai returned one final time to tuck me in, and that was the last I heard from him until he ventured over, hungover, in the morning to force upon me his mobile number, e-mail address, full name, and promise of a future encounter in this "small, small world."


When I arrived I somehow managed to navigate my way to the correct train station. A taxi driver tried to offer me a £20 fare for 2 metro stops that cost 60p. I gave him some Russki sass in return. The hostel we were staying at was basically an apartment that some guy's put in a whole bunch of bunk beds. No signs, no nothing. Impossible to find. It was called "Nomad" and rather nice apart from the lack of signage. Not too busy.After getting a little settled in we ventured out to the Red Square/Kremlin region to meet Maddy who had a day-layover in Moscow.

St. Basil's Cathedral

Red Square fun

Turns out they close Red Square for a day to reposition their cavalry randomly, and places like seeing Lenin is only open certain days on certain times so it definitely would have been a good idea to make sure of all this well in advance for better planning, but we didn't seem to have too much bad luck. Everywhere is cheaper with a student card so it was only £2 to get into St.Basil's Cathedral, £2 for the Kremlin and £3 for the Pushkin Museum of Arts.


St.Basil's is really cool. You can stand and look out onto Red Square and make stupid faces that will be in countless tourist's photos if they zoom in enough. We did this for a couple of minutes until we realised that the windows are tinted so no-one can see what stupid things you're doing inside. Probably for the best.
The Kremlin is a massive grounds and you can venture into the various cathedrals or pay more and see exhibitions of some sort. Of course they've employed police and guards to cover every square inch of the place so we were very well-behaved.

The view from inside of St.Basil's

Cathedrals inside the Kremlin grounds

Kremlin canon

All the Kremlin canons

This guy was guarding this pedestrian crossing in case people forgot how to cross the empty road

GUM is also really nice. It's a shopping centre right off Red Square. The only problem being how high class it is. I've never felt such a feeling of non-belonging. It's all high class shops, mostly Western but even more expensive than they are back home. There was an amazing shop dedicated to Sochi with everything imaginable printed with the Olympic logo. If you have £28 for a pair of gloves that is.

Sochi luggage for the skier within you

Hipster bikes lined up, not for sale, don't touch, just look and be amazed by our culture

The Pushkin Museum of Arts is astounding if you don't look at the signs. It was befuzzling how Russia had come across so many statues in their Greek collection, only to discover that it was all plaster casts. Not impressed. They make up for it by having real mummys in the Ancient Egypt bit and a whole floor full of art and fashion. It was odd. We went upstairs for some old Italian paintings to be met by manikins dressed in some exquisite dresses. Weirdly they were from 12/13 collections so what they were doing in a museum was oddly curious, but I'm a sucker for a bedazzled ball gown so no complaints.

Scaaaary mummy

Ally looking all artsy and educated

This was fake

This was fake (and of a curious nature)

This was also fake

Fakeness

You get the picture

Pushkin Museum of Fakeness, I mean arts

Another place worth visiting was the Arbat street. It's lit up with cute, fake lamps at night and chock-full of tourist shops. I was surprised that there weren't as many as I originally thought there to be by Red Square as that tends to be the focal point for tourists. The Arbat most certainly hit the spot though and I spent a fair bit on useless memorabilia for la famille et les copains. The only thing they lacked in was stuffed bears saying "I love Moscow" or something similar on; normally a must-have for tourists/5-year-olds. We walked up and down that street a thousand times trying to gauge prices and strike a good deal. So much so that one lady got far too excited that she'd seen us in her shop already that week.

OMG I look as scarier than the bear in its ridiculous get-up

Arbat

 Our hostel was pretty good in the form of some weirdos, but not too many creeps, apart from Kesha who we met on Thursday night. He pipes up into our conversation stating that he's not Korean, but he is from Siberia. He wasn't. Clearly having more trouble with holding a Russian convo than we were. Of course when he said his name was Kesha I had to sing tik-tok, and get it up on my kindle, and taunt him mercilessly. He protested and got his revenge for our taunting by poking Olivia while she was trying to get to sleep. I forget that bullying of strangers isn't good when you have to sleep in the same room as them. At least he wasn't sleeping on my bottom bunk. Poor Olivia. Not soz. He wasn't particularly the sharpest tool in the box. We easily got him to believe that Olivia is Italian, despite her protesting, and that Amy studies at Hogwarts. Not only did he believe that she is in Ravenclaw, but that she IS Ravenclaw. Maybe the whole Harry Potter concept is lost on him but I almost fell off my bed from laughing so hard. Lies. I definitely fell off Ally's bed from hysterics.

Overall it was a great week and I got a bottom bunk on the sleeper back which eliminated all my issues by the sheer level of comfort and access to table space. In the 5 days I've been gone, daylight has disappeared for all but a few hours of the day. It was still dark outside until 9:30 and I'm presuming night will return by about half 4. Naturally we're all very deficient in vitamin D by now.


For the next 6 weeks we have a different timetable with some oral lessons being replaced by a Russian news lesson of some sort and the vegetarians are taking a stand against the usual lunchtime eatery. Choice of food there is cheesy toast, draniki (fried potato cake) or pizza. Sigmund Freud is a must if you ever find yourself in Petrozavodsk as a veggie. They have a whole page dedicated to no meat and a calming atmosphere. Of course, by calming atmosphere, I mean that it's pitch black, less for a few lamps, so you can't see a thing and hence fall asleep.

Lenin library where pigeons flock to sit outside every day

Museum of the house where Gorky lived

Puuurettttyyyy

Halloween Antics 2.11.13

Last night was Emma’s last night in Petrozavodsk and we decided to celebrate with Oreo cheesecake at our local hangout, Kivach. Oreo and cheesecake. 2 words which should always be used together. Every day preferably. We had a new waiter donning a blue and white stripy t-shirt as opposed to the usual navy blue emblemmed top. He had the hard task of informing a very outraged Nadia that there was no Oreo cheesecake left, just pineapple cake. Pineapple cake I exclaimed making a vomming face about 2 inches from his own. He got a mightly ole look at my tongue. In this case the messenger was about to be shot had there not been pancakes on the menu. It’s pretty standard Russia, having nothing on the menu. Normally you will be expected to make a top 5 list of foods to eat and even then they’re not guaranteed to have even one of them. Anyways, poor stripy t-shirt guy, as well as having to put up with my harassment, accidentally dropped his tray when he came to our table. Apple juice was flying everywhere, tiramassu was getting soggy. He was almost crying. Gonca was almost crying at her white jumper getting applefied. I was laughing my brains out at this just deserts.

They were all heading off on the overnight train to St.Petes, leaving me as the only Brit left. Luckily the other Europeans don’t have any form of reading week. Lucky for me, unlucky for them. So I went to Bigimot to play with them. Bigimot is another of the minor clubs. Except clubs don’t really exist here. There was an excess of seating area and a miniscule dancefloor that when ventured onto, only to be meeted by some 60 year old lad in a salmon-pink shirt attempting to grind all the 20 year olds.

Seeing as it’s still Halloween weekend we felt the need to make some effort; the other girls got some scary looking face-paint thing going on but I opted for the “50% off because it’s the day after H-ween” bat ears. But one of the ears kept falling backwards so I was really just a 1 eared bat. Wearing a normall dress. So just a girl with a stupid fluffy headband. It’s okay though, totes pulled it off. Bigimot had a cheeky little game going on. If you were a girl you got a pink card headed with “Привет, как дело.” You have a character name and you’re looking for a specific character. I was a female cat, looking for my Hannibal Lektor. Everything about it was a bit dodgy as a female cat probably doesn’t want to find her true love in a psychopathic killer who’s going to make her eat her brains, but I played along. I eventually found my Hannibal in the form of a car-mechanic, Anton. When you find your partner you get a glass of champagne each so we ventured to the bar in silence. I was too scared to have to make conversation in such a loud place in Russki so I just looked away and prayed he’d keep it simple. We started with the usual what’s your name, what do you do and he only had to say everything 2-3 times to get me to understand. It was like a very awkward first date, but we parted amicably. And no brains were eaten. Always a bonus. Unless you’re Hannibal Lektor. The rest of the night passed by in a haze of tarrot card readers and dancing vampires.

Before all of this occured, I ventured into Sigma (supermarket) to kill about 20 mins before I was meant to meet the girls and apparently at 10:30 on a Friday evening I was criminal number 1. The guards chose me to follow around the store. I stopped to take a photo of some packeted mushrooms because it had the word классический on it and that's some stupid private joke of ours. The security guard chose this moment to actually approach me and ask why I was photographing mushrooms. I couldn’t very well tell him that классический is just a hilarious word to foreigners so I opted for the “we don’t have mushrooms where I come from” and he accept this as a valid excuse and contined to follow me from 20 paces away muttering on his radio. No doubt about a  far away land where mushrooms don’t exist.

Photo that may have resulted in deportation.

Actual Halloween on Thursday night saw us start off the night in Kivach, which was very nicely decorated for the occasion. Bats and pumpkins were stuck onto and falling from every available nook and cranny. Then move onto Art Cafe so we can do the same but not hear what anyone else is saying. A very eventful night full of many the misdemeanor and self-confession, seeing us all at 9:45 grammar passively aggressively telling Sasha gossip from the past week under the pretence of education. He definitely just finds us all sorts of amusing, and stupid, and not able to sing. But we can translate to high heaven. So much so that on Thursday, during a test, he stopped to ask us if anyone knew how to say “let’s wait.” I confidently piped up with “давайте подождём” pleased that the one thing I’d learnt had come up and I was able to show this off in such a publi manner. I reckon Sasha was just surprised because he leaped to my desk and I was rewarded with a chocolate cupcake with an icing ghost on the top, followed by a warning about the toothpick inside, holding the ghost aplace. When we went for lunch, I named it Sasha and played with it for a while before the devourement. T’was joyous.

Oh happy days.

Oh even happier days.

Maddy "dressed up" as our favourite Kivach waiter, Maksim #babe

My prize.

This week, after we met with Ben, has been full of translating for the website he works for. He came here for his YA 2 years ago and just graduated. Whilst here, he met his now-wife at choir and has recently moved back. So he finds business-related articles in Russian and we translate/interpret, but mostly just completely re-write them and upload them onto the website. It is voluntary so only a couple of us were interested, but honestly it’s just something else for the ole C.V., and something to say you did whilst you were away. It is a lot more effort than I put into my translation module last year, but I feel I shall reap the rewards soon enough.

I have my own page! - http://rusbase.com/news/author/nadiaamroon/