Our Final Frigid Days in Russia

Alright, I'm going to buckle down and finish up our tales of Russia... now that I have procrastinated to the last day before we leave again. :) Our second day in St. Petersburg, my brother Edward sent us off to the Winter Palace/Hermitage for the day, while he perused the flea markets for old Soviet cookware. The Winter Palace was the official residence of the Russian Tsars from 1732 to 1917 and now houses the huge State Hermitage Museum of art and culture (see pic). As with most of the museums in Russia, the entry fee cost several times as much for foreigners as for locals - even though most of the exhibit explanations were written only in Russian. So we couldn't understand what we were looking at, and we had to pay considerably more. And then there of course was another fee to use cameras in the museum (also common). But such is life.

Brian and I really could take or leave the art (hehe), but just seeing the interior of the palace was worth the entry fee. There are over a thousand rooms, most designed in an extremely ornate Baroque-style, using gold, marble, and malachite (a dark green mineral). Here is a picture of the Guard Room, with an example of the impressive gold columns found throughout the palace. It would take multiple days to get through the entire museum.

The following day we headed out to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and Cemetery, which contains the tombs of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Dostoevsky, and other famous Russians. My goal was to find the grave of Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer of one of my favorite pieces, "Scheherazade". I searched and searched to no avail, then went back and checked the map... and finally located a shed, covering his grave for the winter. :( So here's a picture of Rimsky-Korsakov's "winter shed".





An extreme cold front was beginning to blow in, so we decided to make the rounds of some of the city's cathedrals. We walked to the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood (see pic), which is the only building in St. Petersburg with the traditional Russian medieval architecture (like in Moscow). The rest of the city was built in a European Baroque/Neoclassical style.






Afterwards, we ventured into the Kazan Cathedral and St. Issac's Cathedral, before hiding out from the cold for awhile in the Gostiny Dvor department store. Here are pictures of the inside and outside of St. Issac's.


For dinner, we made the frigid walk over to Idiot Vegetarian Restaurant, where I had delicious patties made from broccoli and brussels sprouts covered with sunflower seeds and sour cream. (see pic) Then we shuffled back to the hotel in the extreme cold - here's a pic looking down the sidewalk at some of the "Christmas" lights. (New Years is the big present-swapping holiday in Russia; the Russian Orthodox Christmas is observed on January 7th due to the Julian Calendar.)

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and ventured to the Museum of Hygiene, which we didn't get a lot out of since we couldn't read the exhibits. We then made the mistake of trying to buy stamps at a Russian post office - I have a feeling that Brian and I are going to have a lot of trying times at foreign post offices, haha. After over an hour of chaos with Russians screaming and no one knowing what line to be in, we finally gave up and luckily were able to find stamps elsewhere. That night, we took the overnight Nikolay's Express train back to Moscow (see pic), sharing our 4-berth coupe with a nice Russian man who surprisingly spoke fluent English. (The urine-cicle photo is from this train.)

We arrived back in Moscow the following morning, where it was currently -27C (-17F). My eyelids and nosehairs were crunchy, and the snot from my incessant runny nose froze all over the front of my face. Yay! Even the Russians were complaining about the temperature. There was only one thing worth braving that kind of cold for - more khatchapuri! So sure enough, we met my brother down at the Georgian boat restaurant again for dinner - this time the entire Moscow River had frozen over. Here's a picture of the 3 of us getting ready to go back outside - we could pass for trick-or-treaters. :) The next day Brian and I departed Moscow and arrived in balmy 40F Tennessee, 57 degrees warmer than where we had just come from. I'll take it!

Russian Oddities

"Married with Children" tv show - Russian style. A friend of my brother's roommate used to be a writer for the American show, and was in Moscow helping to develop new episodes for the Russian version. Another popular sitcom over there is the Russian version of "The Nanny".







We saw this sign at the weekend market by the stands selling blue and white Uzbek pottery.










No offense, but I think I'll stick with Hanes.





Cosmonaut survival kit: These are the things you will need when fending off the bitter cold, bears, and drunk Russians when the capsule has once again gone ballistic and landed way off-target.






We had a heck of a time figuring out this microwave - rather than entering the cook time, you have to enter the type of cooking to be done, and the weight of the food in grams... I just pressed buttons until it started running. :)






One of the stainless steel "jail-type" toilets in the Hermitage.










I paid 17 rubles to use this lovely hole in the floor in the Moscow train station.











I just hate when I sit down somewhere and get stabbed by hypodermic needles... don't you?









I think this is my most prized picture of the entire Russian trip: One of the many urine-cicles hanging out of the bottom of the train bathrooms (they empty onto the tracks) on our frigid ride back to Moscow. :)

С НОВЫМ ГОДОМ! (Happy New Year!)

Brian and I have actually spent the past couple of days in North Carolina for my grandmother's 93rd birthday, amusing ourselves by watching the old women zoom down the nursing home hallways in their electric wheel-chairs, sportin' the one-armed gangsta lean while trying to run down the other women who might be competing for the one or two men in the place (my grandmother got her foot run over!). Sigh. We spent a nice Christmas in Tennessee with my family, and will be heading back to Austin for a few days before taking off for Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands next weekend. But first, I need to get caught up with the blog. Back to Moscow (cue the fog and spirit fingers)....

We had to delay our departure to St. Petersburg by a few days to wait on Edward's visa paperwork, so we passed the time by visiting the Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery, which contains the graves of Yeltsin (a large flag monument, see pic), and Prokofiev (see pic). We also tagged along with Edward to a large shopping mall near his place and the large outdoor food market where he gets his odd blue "pumpkins", and finally started getting accustomed to the Metro subway system (with gorgeous stations - see pic). Finally his paperwork came through, and we departed on the overnight Smena train to St. Petersburg, an 8-hour trip. The three of us had a 4-berth coupe to ourselves, which was nice, but the thick cigarette smoke on the train kept me up most of the night. Blech!

We arrived in St. Petersburg at 6:45am, and made our way to the hotel, which of course wouldn't let us check in yet, but after a jumbled conversation with the night security man, we were told to leave our bags in someone's room (and half expected to never see our luggage again). We then ambled down Nevsky Prospect, cold and hungry, looking for anything that might be open - the sun wouldn't rise until 10am. We finally stumbled upon a 24-hour baked potato place, and got a "unique" breakfast - here is the picture of my potato, covered with 2 cheeses, mushrooms, and pickle pieces. It actually wasn't all that bad!

We killed some more time in a coffeeshop, then ventured to the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, which documents Soviet polar exploration. As we were heading through the rooms, one of the older gold-toothed female museum employees started mysteriously following us around and started lecturing Edward (in Russian) on what is wrong with Russia today. She claimed that all the young people just want to have "sex sex sex" instead of having large families, leading to a dissipation of sexual energy, and that subliminal messages in commercials (the work of the 25th cadre) were encouraging young people to start smoking, which makes the babushkas cry. Edward frantically translated for us during the long conversation - once he got one part translated, she would come back over and start up again.It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but was probably the most interesting part of the museum visit. :)

After that lesson in Russian culture, we headed to the center of town to the Kunstkammer Museum (the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology). I, of course, wanted to see the most famous portion of the museum - Peter the Great's "natural science" collection of deformed animals and fetuses, decapitated baby heads, and children's skeletons. It did not disappoint! (see pic)

By this point it was beginning to get dark (~3pm), so we headed back to the hotel to see if anyone had absconded with our luggage. Luckily, it was still there, and we were able to check into our 2-BR apartment, which ended up also having a party shower! (see pic) This thing had party lights, a radio, 14 shower heads, a rain shower, a massager, and a jacuzzi. Sadly though, the tap water was brown in St. Petersburg (say hello to giardia!), so the party shower mostly just went to waste. Now if only I could get one of those back to Austin...