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.