The Art of Looking

Thursday 30th July, 2009

So where did I leave you? Oh, that's it - bleary-eyed and parched in Moscow's Leningradsky Station. Luggage left and travel clothes changed, we headed for the exit. Once again, the first sense to be overpowered was smell. Urine and kebab meat. Just what I needed at breakfast. Yum. This was a pervasive, cloying stench, that followed us around as we searched in vain for the Metro. I actually resorted to holding my t-shirt over my face, mexican-in-pandemic-style, to try to get away from the smell. It wasn't one to be gotten used to. Neither was the sight of hundreds of beggars, many of them war veterans or other amputees, who slept on whatever raised surfaces they could find outside of the station doors. They tussled for space with the roaming wild dogs, both undernourished, both unkempt, and both with a fearsome rabid look in their eyes. We increased the intensity of our search for the Metro.

Now looking for things is an art, especially in a foreign country. And just as there are many different ways of capturing an image, there are many different ways of looking for things. Our travelling triumvirate provides a case study: Nikolaj is a wannabe Languages Officer in the Danish Army (which he tells me are going to be big one day, so keep an eye out). Nikolaj is like Manuel, from Fawlty Towers, in that when it comes to foreign languages, he, too, 'learn it from a book'. A combination of the age of the book (at least 20 years) and the lack of any pronunciation guide means that Nikolaj's rudimentary Russian is precise, but outdated and incomprehensible without hearing it at least three times, and knowing the context. It was armed with this that Nikolaj took on the tramps and babushkas outside the station, attempting to quiz them as to the quickest way out of the exquisitely piss-scented area. 'Young man...' he would begin, as is polite in Russia. The problem is, as you will have already gathered, that no one is really polite here. So in response to this antiquated salutation, most of the bums and old men touting accommodation just laughed. One went so far as to take a deep breath before belching loudly in Nikolaj's direction. This did not appear to be a fruitful variant of the Art of Looking.

Laura's approach was unsurprising. Loud, and in English. And slower when lack of comprehension became apparent. I'd say maybe one in twenty people bustling around the station early that morning spoke English. I'd say that of this small number, about one in twenty was not a tourist. Thus those who understood us knew not the answer to our question, and those who understood us not would probably have known what we wanted. Though, as Russians responding to shouted English, they would probably have been justifiably too proud to answer. It appeared that variant two of the Art was also doomed to failure.

You've probably guessed by now that my version of this dark Art of Looking was the one which finally allowed us to get ourselves orientated, and to discover the Metro. Whilst Nikolaj charmed and attracted pick-pockets, and Laura shouted and attracted filthy glares, I ran the gauntlet formed by the effluent from the portable toilets to find a street map, which had a 'You are here' sticker so big that it covered the entire station district, making the Metro entrance very hard to see. 'Til I looked up, that is, and saw the tell-tall sign of the big red 'M'. The Art of Looking. In its most simple form. Beauty indeed. We bounced down the steps, keen to get away from the squalor and into the Moscow that Russia really wanted us to see.

The Metro was broken. Or had one booth open to deal with thousands of passengers. The effect was the same - Moscow hadn't seen queues that long since Ligachev tried to ban Vodka back in the early years of perestroika. Being resourceful, we took the tram to the next Metro stop, where we practised our form of the Art once more. This time a Nikolaj-based approach with my observational skills found us the entrance, and next thing we knew we were coming up to the light once more under the towering red walls of the Kremlin. A photo-shoot began, Laura playing photographer, Nikolaj and I getting embarrassed and recoiling whenever the flash went off under the nose of a Kremlin guard or in the face of a Muscovite policeman. Occasionally we waited long enough to be caught on film ourselves, but mostly, we kept our distance.

At 0830 on Saturday morning, as a light rain teased the dirt from the Kremlin stars and a cool wind blew in from the river below, we entered Red Square.

Laurence

'One ticket to hell please' (or why whoever thought of 'sleeper trains' ought to be sued for false advertising)

Wednesday 29th July, 2009

Why did I not fly instead? As I lugged my bag into the hot, sticky, airless box of the sleeping carriage, I cursed my travelling companions. They'd decided that taking bunks on the overnight train to Moscow on Friday evening would be a better idea than taking the short flight early on Saturday morning. I looked at the thin leather covers on the fold-away bunks, took in the double-glazed windows, bolted shut, and retched as what was already a pungent combination of garlic, meat, feet, and unwashed traveller threatened to overwhelm me on the threshold of the carriage. Facing up to the prospect of a night in this crowded carriage, I began to wish that I'd brought the standard provision of the Russian traveller - vodka. I didn't bring it, as there wasn't room alongside my bottles of water. I fear that I am far from becoming a passable Russian, as by rights I ought to have ditched the water instead! My plan had been to take a couple of painkillers and to drift off to sleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the train and the peaceful murmur of peasant travellers. This wasn't going to work, so my hastily-formed plan two was to find a friendly and well-supplied native and attempt to snaffle as much alcohol as possible, thus ensuring a deep and painless sleep, no matter the devils of the communal carriage. Then Viktor arrived. He was to take the lower bunk, whilst I was to sleep three metres up the wall of the train on a leather plank no more than 18 inches wide. He was Russian, about 55, and as he plonked himself on the seat across from me he grinned, revealing at least seven gold teeth, and said hello. I replied, in my best Russian. At which point he figured I was foreign, and he said no more.

My German schoolmate Laura bounced up the carriage a few minutes later, pushed her way onto someone else's bunk, and started to talk to everyone in the vicinity in very loud English. I noticed the looks we were getting from the bunks around, and glanced upwards to check that my passport and tickets could not be seen - we were getting far too much attention for my liking. My increasingly painful headache provided me with a great excuse to duck out of the monologue. Relieved, I wandered off to see if there was any running water on the train. Returning ten minutes later having found only a trickle of brackish brown water, I discovered Laura had waltzed off to visit our other pal, Nikolaj, in his air-conditioned couchette. I slumped back into the window seat and tried to ignore my headache, my companions, and the heat. No such luck.

Victor prodded me awake, grunting 'Do you want sausage?' Not another one, I thought. Then I realised he was actually proffering kolbasa, a big greasy Russian sandwich-meat, and relaxed somewhat. He was just being friendly. I took his sausage. It was nice. Then I took cucumbers, cheese and bread, and had a nice little meal. No vodka. Not good for headaches. The journey took on a more pleasant aspect as the sun finally decided to die for the day, leaving the sleeping cars to cool as they sped through the wooded countryside. Sped is perhaps the wrong word, but you get the idea. Anyway, the temperature dropped below 30 and my stuttering Russian proved good enough to interrogate Viktor about his holiday in the North. He tried to distract me with what must have been literally thousands of postcards of SPb, but I stuck to the task. It's only just struck me that his apparent hoarding of postcards was not due to some OCD, but because they were the only gifts that old-Russians would have been able to afford in SPb - the place is so costly when it comes to things that might be considered non-essential. That said, there were some pretty special photos in his collection. And I brought back a pack of postcards for my family too, so I can't criticise. Happily fed and with a brain turned to mush by the heat and the Russian, I scaled the walls and rolled clumsily on to the bunk.

I was vaguely aware of being awake almost all night. I was vaguely aware that we spent a lot of the journey moving at snail's pace, and vaguely aware of the insects that had found their way in through the one open window. I was very aware of being shaken awake by Laura with an hour of the journey left, just as I had finally nodded off properly. So pale, dazed and utterly exhausted, I staggered into the Leningradsky Station main hall at 5am on Saturday morning. The night-train nightmare was over.

Laurence

How the other half lived...

Monday 27th July, 2009

The hangover from Sunday seemed to last well into the following week. I moped around, getting frustrated at the slow pace of the language school - everything interesting, we learn 'later, now too hard'. Then I decided to cheer up, and to do some interesting things instead. I went to the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world. I went to the Artillery Museum, and the Museum of the History of Russian Politics. I found out where Putin's younger daughter lives, but have not taken to hanging around outside yet. Maybe towards the end of my stint here. That would be a catch.

The Hermitage is obscene. It's absolutely huge, and each room is pretty much priceless. There is more gold on the walls than there is stored in Fort Knox. Or in your average Russian's gleaming false teeth (of which more, later). There are loads of satellite museums dotted all over the city, but still, the collections fill the entirety of the Winter Palace, a stunning edifice that lines the Palace Embankment looking over the Neva to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The museum is one of 'the things' to do here in SPb, so whilst the prospect of wandering through rooms filled with the frankly dull artwork of some revered Dutchman or German of the 18th Century did not exactly thrill me, I thought it only right that I at least gave it a couple of hours. Not an awful lot to ask, considering those in the know claim you could be there every day for a month and still not see everything. So after a somewhat disappointing lunch at a Georgian cafe behind the language school, I joined Sasha in the queue for the Hermitage. It stretched right out of the door, into the courtyard, out of the gates, into the immense Palace Square, and right the way up to the souvenir booths that surround the Alexander Column at the centre of the square. It took us well over 90 minutes to get in. If it wasn't for the fact that the Hermitage is a state museum, and consequently free to students, there was no way I'd have waited that long. The queue, long as it appeared to be, was actually about twice as long again, as many people had place-holders in the queue, and in their inimitable Russian fashion, any locals wanting to visit simply skipped the line in such a brazen fashion that no one really could do anything. So Sasha and I did the same. Once inside, we joined the scramble for the tickets, and having survived this crush, we headed inside. Sasha was on at least her third visit, so headed up to the third floor to inspect some display or other, and I decided that I would check out the famous Jordan Staircase. So much gold. Look it up on Google or something - I didn't buy a camera ticket. Impressive as this was, it wasn't going to keep me for more than five minutes, so I headed up to the exhibition halls. As I said, the Hermitage is a big, big place. I got lost much more quickly than I ought to have done, and wandered aimlessly from room to room, trying to interest myself in a piece of French lace or a spoon from Venice that formed part of a diplomatic attempt at appeasement after some war or another. My feet were aching, and keen as I was to spend at least as much time in the museum as I did in the queue to get in, I was starting to flag. But each time I considered leaving, I would either be unable to find an exit, or be stopped dead in my tracks by something on display that really was special. I wandered into a corner suite of bedroom, boudoir, and study, all decked out in red velvet with golden furniture. I happened across a fantastic piece of functional art, the Peacock Clock (again, Google Images), and spent ten minutes trying to work out how much white wine the Tsars would have needed to fill just one of the immense silver wine coolers. I chanced across the 1812 Room, which is a long, narrow room with a very high ceiling filled with huge oil-paintings of battles from the 1812 conflict with the French. The room also contains portraits of each of the Russian commanders involved in the campaign. It's certainly remarkable, and really makes you sit up and notice just how big these warring factions were, and as a consequence, just how many people were killed! This room runs alongside the main State Rooms, which were designed to show off to visiting dignitaries just how rich the Russian tsars were. Let me assure you, they were very well-off. The rooms were stunning. In fact, I reckon that the architecture of the Winter Palace is actually more impressive than most of the art contained therein. I really can only think of two pieces I saw that grabbed my attention - two more modern creations by Kandinsky, right next to a sign saying 'Exit'. I looked out of the window, saw the blazing sunshine, and decided my artistic longings had been fulfilled. I grabbed an extortionately priced coffee from a stand outside, and headed home.

The Artillery Museum left me much more satisfied than the Hermitage. As I value the friendship of those of you not obsessed with wars of the past centuries, I will not bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, there were many cannons, many tanks, many displays of Russian and Soviet flags, and much evidence of the denial of Russian military inferiority. It was great fun. Those of you even more keen on this stuff than I am, I have no doubt I'll tell you all about it soon enough. Same goes for the Politics museum - the most friendly and translated museum that I have visited here. And, as a state museum, it was free. Highlights here were letters from the Gulag, various artefacts from previous leaders, and, what I consider to be the cream of the crop, the video camera used by Gorbachev in August of 1991 to record his address from house-arrest that sparked the counter-coup and, eventually, the complete collapse of the Soviet Union. So if you're into your Russian politics, you'll get the stories.

Friday evening, we took the night train to Moscow. More on that, anon.

Laurence

Dacha and Dacha

Sunday 19th July, 2009

Following Friday's misadventure, Saturday was dacha-day. Irina having left the previous night, I had to deal with Russian public transport again. Getting to the station was easy - just the metro. Buying a ticket, also easy. No awkward questions, no shouted demands for documents, just a quick exchange of cash and a ticket. 

The train was old and airy. In place of air conditioning, there were windows bolted open. In place of upholstered seats, there were long wooden benches. In place of a buffet car, old women dressed in blue tabards ran from train to train at each station, climbing on board with cool-boxes and cries of 'Ice Cream, Water, Ice Cream'. I took my seat in an empty carriage and waited for the off. 

The carriage filled rapidly as we journeyed through the suburbs. As we passed Kresty Prison, one of many prisons around SPb famed for holding political prisoners, I was joined on my bench by three men. I glanced over at them as they sat down, and noticed that they were perfect stereotypes. One had a buzz-cut, one had a mullet, one was bald. One was skinny, one was fat, one was obese. Two wore muscle-vests and suit trousers, and the third wore whatever he'd picked out of the dirty laundry that morning. All three were drinking from large bottles, and all three were eating piroshki, which are a Cornish Pasty/Bread Roll hybrid. All three stank to high heaven - it seems to be a common misconception here that if it's too cold to sweat for ten months of the year, there's no need to deodorize, or even wash, during the two months when temperatures rise. Needless to say, the rest of my journey was hella uncomfortable. 

On arrival at Komarova, I was met by Irina with two teenagers, Andrei and Nikita. They were to give me the grand tour of the forest village before lunch was served. I saw the library, and some trees. I also questioned Andrei in English about all sorts of things, as I'd been given the heads-up by Irina that he wanted to practice his English. Despite this, I received very little response, and I was quite glad when we came upon the dacha that I remembered from the first weekend, which now seemed so very long ago.

I've spoken before about the tranquility of the dacha, and, this being my second visit, such simplicity was what I was expecting, and I enjoyed it. Permit me some literary excess, if you will. I have recently acquired a collection of Gogol's short stories, one of which deals with the 'Old-Fashioned Farmers'. Like the lives of his farmers, the life of those at the dacha is 'so quiet, so quiet, that  you forget yourself for a moment, and think that the passions, wishes, and the uneasy offspring of the Evil One, which keep the world in an uproar, do not exist at all'.

Depending upon whether strong alcohol is one of Beelzebub's 'uneasy offspring', this sentiment can be either accurate or way off-beam. As I was introduced to Sasha (Alexander) and Tanya, Andrei's parents, and, once again, Vera the babushka, I was handed a beaker. Sasha nodded at the bottle of vodka lying waiting on the table. 'You drink', he said. I got the impression that the lack of interrogative intonation was no error. I didn't have a choice. So the beakers were filled, and the first of the day's vodkas was drunk, 'to the meeting'. It was 2 p.m. This toasting continued until both bottles of vodka had emptied themselves. Each shot would be accompanied by a toast: 'to my learning Russian', 'to the dacha', to the family', 'to Piter', and many more that for some reason I can't quite remember. One that came later that still stands out was Vera's only toasting contribution - it seems she was wishing us all good fortune and wealth, because her toast was 'to be like Bill Gates, yes'. I didn't tell her I was an Apple-man. 

Between the toasts, I was grilled, in Russian, by Sasha, about my purpose here, my wishes and my goals. He spoke English, and would repeat everything I said translated back to me. This method of conversation was good, as it allowed me to hear what I'd said again, and thus ensured I remained in control of my tongue, despite the warm, fuzzy feeling that was slowly overcoming me. Before we reached the stage where sitting and rocking on our rough-hewn benches was all that was possible, Vera and Sasha showed me where to pick wild mushrooms, how to pick wild strawberries and blueberries, and most importantly, what these all tasted like once prepared - I was avoiding drunkenness   by eating a little between each shot. Some of the food was excellent, simple as it was. Just when I thought things were winding down, and as I prepared to inquire as best I could as to the next train back to SPb, Irina's daughter turned up with her boyfriend Vova, two more friends, salmon steaks, fresh vegetables, pork chops and another bottle of vodka. The grill was fired up, and thirty minutes later we were eating and drinking all over again. I was understanding maybe 20% of the conversation, but as Vova spoke French, I was able to get a decent enough idea relayed to me. The darkness drew in under the forest canopy, and eventually it was time for me to hop, step and jump (stumble) back on to the SPb train. What a great day. 

Drunk as I felt when leaving the dacha, by the time I arrived home I was feeling sober again. It being midnight, I decided to go out. Andrea (not Andrei, this time) had told me that the place to go for the students of the language school was a club, called...Dacha. So I left one dacha, cleaned myself up, and headed for the next. At Dacha, I was thrilled to see so many people I knew. Especially a couple of the Italian girls. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Having been drinking from 2 p.m, by 6 a.m I was a little worse for the wear. I left earlier than my new friends, and proceeded in the direction of the Metro. Or at least I thought I did. In an elaborate version of Laurence-pinball, I bounced from wall to railing to cafe door and back again, before coming to rest against the footbridge over one of SPbs canals. I must have looked a state, as a guy came up and asked if I was alright. I assume that's what he said. I replied that I was, and just needed to know where the Metro was. He pointed it out, very helpfully, and walked away. I pointed myself in the direction he had indicated, and lurched forward. Two minutes and twenty metres later, I heard a toot on a car horn. It was the same chap, calling 'v metro?' out of the window. Ah, I thought, he wants to help. Kind soul. So I opened the door and sat down, murmuring 'metro...metro...gdje?' He drove off, towards the main street, which was where the Metro stop was. Then he drove past the station. I was drunk, but I knew that this was not right. We went about thirty seconds down the road before encountering some traffic lights. As the car started to slow, my good Samaritan reached over, put his hand on my thigh, and, looking deep into my eyes, said 'What is you called, beautiful boy?' Barely had the hand touched my jeans when I yanked the door handle, kicked the door open and scrambled out into the street, rolling away from the car as it slowed to a stop by the red traffic light. For the second time in three days, I was running from a suitor. I haven't shaved since then - maybe I just need to look more masculine and the Petersburg gays won't be so keen. I have neither been hit on nor abducted since. 

Sunday was hangover day. I watched synchronised swimming, beach volleyball, and fly fishing on Russian TV, as well as a badly dubbed film with Jean Claude van Damme in it. Nothing of any value was achieved. I wrote a couple of postcards, and didn't do my homework. 

Laurence

A&E and the Tale of the Black Mercedes

Friday 17th July, 2009

Having had a relatively uneventful week, I planned to make sure my weekend was as packed as possible. This would include another trip to the dacha, nightclubs, and museums. Dachas tend to be 'something for the weekend', and despite the rather lax approach to working hours I've noticed here, Friday noon does not quite count. So for me, school was to be followed by some 'culture'. 

The Kunstkammer is a world-famous collection of oddities gathered together by Peter the Great as an educational resource. The Anthropological and Ethnographical Museum, situated downstairs in the same building, is a celebration of Russian imperialism, or in most cases, imperialism-by-proxy (I don't know about you, but I've never heard of Russian East Africa or Russian California. Most of the exhibits here were gifts from diplomats or those  scared Russian scientists who felt that the Tsars needed pleasing). The Naval Museum is housed in the Old Stock Exchange, an incredibly domineering neo-classical temple that looks over towards the Peter and Paul Fortress. Fortunately for my constantly leaden legs, these three museums are all within 200 yards of each other. I decided to start with the Anthropological and Ethnographical Museum.

I wasn't really sure what to expect of the Russian position on anthropology or ethnography. Remember, in the two hours I'd spent the company of 20000 people at the FC Zenit game, I had learned enough about some approaches to foreigners, and especially to those who look a little different. I'd also been looking in Russian language textbooks in the SPbSU bookshop. These books advised the reader on how to say 'I am from America', 'I am from Germany', 'I am from England' and 'I am from Africa'. I wasn't holding out much hope for an enlightened exhibition at the A&E Museum. Still, I paid my student rate admission and ventured forth. The first section ('Eskimos') was not translated, except for the titles of each cabinet. I'd sort of guessed they were Inuit exhibits from the models that wore the various coloured rugs and furry hats whilst clubbing baby seals and snarling viciously, but I appreciated the effort. The next room was 'Indians'. By this the A&E did not mean subcontinental Asian, but the peoples it would now be politically incorrect to call 'Red Indians'. These displays of native Americans were somewhat more sophisticated that those of the Eskimo, and the section on shamanic masks was downright scary, despite the lack of translation. The 'Natives of the Amazon' room caused no offence, and I was beginning to feel guilty for assigning some horrifically stereotypical views to Russians in general, when I found myself in the 'Africa' room. For most of the exhibition, Africa was treated as one country. To be fair to the curators, they made reference to various different tribes and areas, and perhaps it's a reflection on our Western hegemonic position that we feel the need to impose country boundaries on other peoples (cue applause from the coffee-house commissars), but really, countries are countries, continents are continents, and they really aren't that hard to get the right way around. However, whilst there may be some ambiguity as to whether judgement can be passed in this instance, in the following two the cases are open-shut. The first came in the 'African Toys' section. 'Our collection of African toys is small. That is because there are not many toys in Africa. That is because African children do not like to play with toys'. Either the museum is wrong or Comic Relief has been scamming us for years. The second case is more extreme. It appears in the 'African Food' section. The commentary starts: 'In Africa, when you are hungry, all you need to do is to reach out and grab a banana'. I didn't read the section on 'African Health', although I'm pretty sure I could have predicted it, word for word. 

Having survived A&E, I went upstairs. The Kunstkammer is also known as the Cabinet of Curiosities, and as my guidebook says, is Russia's oldest museum. I'd done no more research than that, but a friend at the language school had told me it was well worth visiting, but to make sure I hadn't eaten first. As soon as I walked into the main exhibition hall I understood exactly what was meant by this. I wanted to vomit. There were about fifteen glass display cabinets in the room, and almost all of them were chock-full of dead babies. But these were no normal dead babies (if there is such a thing). These were Peter the Great's famed 'monsters', the stars of his teratological collection. Each neonate (or foetus, Peter wasn't fussy) had severe abnormalities. Each was fitted snugly into its very own jam-jar, where it floated sickeningly in formaline preservative. Each had long lost all colour, but other than this, the preservation was doing a remarkable job. I could see quite clearly the 'parasite child', a headless body attached to the chest of the 'healthy' baby. I could make out the bulbous eye on the 'cyclops' child, and count each one of the five legs, three arms and two heads on another of Peter's treasures. He paid large sums to people who brought him dead specimens, and as I saw the picked face of a child with a cleft palate, and another who had just three fingers, I couldn't help but wonder whether perhaps in these cases, relatively normal lives could have been led if there had not been such a bounty upon the heads of the 'monsters'. This was early science, and I recognised this. But I still found it sick. In the 'non-street' sense. Somewhat bizarrely, there was a fish at the top of each cabinet. There was nothing otherworldly about the fish. I assume Peter was just a fan, and codn't resist himself. I hadn't eaten before going into the museum, and I really didn't feel like it after the freak-show. So I headed for the naval museum. 

SPb is mad about it's naval history. It has a right to be so, given the pivotal role it has played in Baltic and East-European strategy in the 300-odd years since it was founded. After watching the Zenit match on Sunday, I'd headed down to the embankments, where a tall-ship rally was going on, and the place was swarming with swarthy sailors. They seemed to have free reign to do as they wished. Most were drunk in uniform. This was also fine, I believe. In this town, the Navy is untouchable. Since I've been here, one in every two billboards I've seen has been a patriotic expression of pride in the Russian Fleet. The blue St. Andrew's cross on a white background, the standard of the Russian Navy, flies from the grandest buildings in town, and flutters from the aerials of all sorts of cars as they race across the Neva bridges. The location of the Naval Museum reinforces the dominance of the Navy in this city. The Old Stock Exchange is a fantastic building on the end of the Strelka, the easternmost point on Vasilievsky Island. The interior is even more striking. Banners, standards, pennants and flags from various campaigns hang from the vaulted roof high above the main hall, which contains Peter the Great's first skiff and parts of Russian submarines amongst other items of nautical history. Very little in this museum is translated, but even with this handicap it was still an awesome place to go and visit. Moving away from the early years, the museum traces the use of the Navy in the revolutions, and in the 2nd World War. Rooms are decked out entirely in red flags decorated with either Lenin or the Hammer and Sickle. Other rooms contain airborne torpedoes, whilst the entrance staircase weaves around two ICBMs from the museums 'Towards the Nuclear Age' section. As I left the museum, I determined to make sure that I can, one day, speak this bloody language - if I ever manage it then I think I'll head back, and the Naval Museum would be high priority.

Right, now I think I've reached, or possibly overreached, my geek-quota for the week. I'll attempt to dispel the myths of intellectualism and cleverness with a quite contrasting tale:

 

'The young man looked around him, desperately scanning the skyline for familiar landmarks. He shivered, and settled back into the heated subway entrance - the night was colder than he had thought possible for mid-July. Standing in the warmth of the ventilation ducts, he checked his pockets once more for his metro card, and once more came up with nothing. Across the square was a park, and next to the park was a huge concert hall, floodlit from the surrounding rooftops. The young man decided to make a move - he was not going to meet his objective by hiding in the underground. He crossed the street and emerged at the entrance to the park, the towering statue of Catherine the Great looming large over the gilded gates. The park was dark, but by no means empty. Even at this late hour, hordes of Japanese tourists stood on the feet of the statue, posing for the necessary photographs before being ushered back onto their tour buses by weary-looking guides. He didn't like tourists, and he didn't want to be in any Japanese photos, so the man took a circuitous route through the park towards the concert hall opposite. The street the other side of the park fence was quiet, and his sharp eyes noticed a dark Mercedes idling in the shadows. Nothing particularly odd, he thought. This is Saint-Petersburg - if a black Mercedes wasn't idling menacingly you would be suspicious. Then the headlights flared. Just once, but enough to worry him. With the distinct impression he was being watched, he hurried towards the lights on the square in front of the concert hall. He saw the map on the billboard and breathed a huge sigh of relief. After two false metro stops and one lost ticket, he'd found out where he was. Now to find out how to get to the meeting point. He stepped quickly away from the map, and hurried back towards the road. The Mercedes was there again. As he rounded the corner, it flashed its headlights once more. Starting to wonder what was going on, he upped the pace, aiming for the main road. As he drew alongside the car, the window opened, and a low whistle reached him. Now truly panicked, he turned left into the park once more, and sprinted towards the concert hall. He dashed across the open square, and ducked under the covered walkway around the gleaming building, relaxing only once he found the exit to the square along a clean, well-lit boulevard. He stopped to catch his breath. Behind him, the Mercedes rounded the corner almost silently, and edged alongside. Hearing the engine cut out, the young man knew it was time to run. The street had been empty a minute beforehand, but as the door to the Mercedes opened, the door to the club next door opened too. Grateful for the unknowing intervention of the bouncer, the young man hid amongst the crowd of intoxicated revellers, and slipped quickly into the night.'

Yeah. That was me, on Friday. I went to meet a friend from the language school to watch the Neva bridges open, and I got lost. I didn't manage to locate my friend, and had to wait for the bridges to close again to get home. Whilst looking for these bridges, I was well and truly spooked by the Mercedes, and it was only a couple of days later that chatting to the same friend, I was told that the park across from the Metro was the site used by the local homosexualists to meet with others for their various escapades. Although I'm in SPb to experience new things and broaden my horizons, I'm pretty glad I decided to run. 

Laurence

All the small things...

Thursday 16th July, 2009

School once again occupied me this week. Small things amused me. Like the philosophy held by all Russian hairdressers that mullets and buzz-cuts form the inviolable binary of coiffeur choice. Or the fact that traffic cops here actually act like the woman on the Gaviscon advert, dancing their way through the traffic, blowing their whistles and flourishing their batons with too much enthusiasm and not enough knowledge of where the cars and pedestrians are. I also like the immense lengths that servers in the cafes will go to to ensure that your food weighs exactly the amount detailed on the menus or display board - it's another throw-back to Soviet times when all food was sold by weight, in grams. Even vodka. I saw a server removing individual grains of rice from a plate just to make sure it made weight. 

I marked the receipt of my 'respectable' (Freeden, 2009) performance in Finals with a meal at a CouchSurfing friend's place, and a trip around the island crammed into an unmarked police Merc belonging to Misha and Sergei, friends of the friend. The trip finished out by the bay. I stood with the others on the old sea-wall, wearing Misha's leather jacket, drinking Russian Standard from cheap plastic cups and telling jokes whilst kicking stones from the decaying Soviet jetties into the still, oily water, to disturb the blinding golden reflections of the eventual and prolonged sunset.  I spent the rest of the night struggling to sleep and calling all corners of the globe to keep various promises to keep people informed of my grades, and missed half of my school lessons the next day. Then I went to Kronstadt - the home of the Russian Baltic Fleet. Utter. Fail.

Kronstadt's a city on the island of Kotlin. The island sits in the middle of the narrowest part of the Gulf of Finland, and it's strategic value was noticed by Peter the Great, who established a naval base there. Until recently, only Russians could go visit. A little before that, not even Russians could go. It was a Navy city, and only a Navy city. So, intrepid as I am, and accompanied once more by my more competent American friends Sasha and Eileen, we hopped on the minibus and arrived in sweltering Kronstadt 40 minutes later. It was small. And laid out grid-wise. We found the famous Naval Cathedral, and the ubiquitous Eternal Flame. We did not find the Kronstadt naval museum. We think it was closed. We did not see the sea. This is despite the fact that the island is only about 2km wide. We did get lost. We did come across a very, very deep pool with no apparent purpose, and did stumble across a selection of rusting armaments. We did not see the Russian Baltic Fleet. I like to think that this was because they go sailing on Wednesdays, but I know that it's because I was just rubbish. On the bus back we convinced ourselves that the two fishing skiffs in the Gulf made up the entire fleet, but the pretence was difficult to maintain, especially when they bumped into each other. The weather was nice.

Laurence

Cultural Immersion Exercise: Sport

Sunday 12th July, 2009

Sunday before last (I'm really getting very behind with this), I went to watch the most racist football team in the world. 

Zenit Saint-Petersburg has had various names since its foundation in the early 1900s, including the excellent Leningrad Stalinets until sometime around about the end of WW2. I think that's an excellent name. It's like calling Birmingham City the Churchilltown Thatcherites. I think that would go down exceptionally well in the 2nd city. Anyway, whichever name the club has played under over the years, it has never once employed a black player. Recently, they branched out from the Russian/Eastern European only policy, and now Fernando Meira of Portugal and two whole Koreans are on the books, as important team members. This doesn't really indicate diversity, and whilst successive coaches may claim that they just haven't found the right black player, you can't help but feel it's a bit like those ageing theatre/showbiz-types who for years claim that they've just not found the right woman yet, then declare as their fame declines that they've been seeing their same-sex manager for years. Maybe Zenit will prove us all wrong - indeed, their website has a special link for the Russian version of the 'Kick It Out' anti-racism campaign (as opposed to the 'Kick Them Out' pro-racism campaign, I imagine) - but I think that years of nurture have turned to nature in this case. If I spoke Russian, I might be able to tell you what was shouted at the Senegalese full-back on the Moscow team every time he got the ball, but thankfully, I can't. I think it is probably best left without me knowing. 

Getting into the ground was a challenge. My Italian chums from the language school had agreed to meet me on 'the bridge by the stadium'. This is SPb - a city of rivers, canals, and bridges. The Petrovsky Stadium is on an island of its own. There are at least 3 bridges by the stadium, and each was packed with Russians decked out in as many royal and marine blue clothes as they could find. After a fruitless search around 2 of the bridges, I finally spotted Isabella, Marina and Marco by the ticket offices on the final bridge. I headed over, only to be told we'd missed out on the cheap tickets. Dammit. I just assumed that was that, but after some fearsome exhanges between Isabella and a rather shady looking young man (I know, this is an almost universal characteristic here), we found ourselves with seats directly above the half-way line in Sector 10, one of 'the places' to be. And we only paid 100 ruble more than we should have done for the worst seats. It seems that touting is not in any way illegal here...

The match should have started at 2pm. But first, a treat. Svetlana Kuznetsova, everyone. Wayhay. Another blonde Russian tennis player. And not one of the fit ones either. "Get of the pitch, I want to see football" (said Marco). Then Svetlana took the ball. Maybe if they played tennis with a ball that size she would be able to actually hit it occasionally, and not crash out to unheard-of eastern Europeans at every major tournament. [In the interests of fairness I should point out she won the 2009 French Open]. So we had no ball, and no sign of a replacement. The genius in charge of the stadium jumbotrons put the lyrics to the Zenit song up, and 20000 people started singing. You know, the type of martial song you hear on documentaries about life in Kiev under Stalin or the development of collective farms in the 1930s. It was really really really noisy. And tuneful. It would probably have been inspiring if I understood anything other that 'Zenit!' Even without comprehension, it was still awesome. We found a ball and got underway. The match was boring as anything, but the different factions in the crowd were busy warring with each other, so there was plenty to keep me entertained. The 'Submarines' would start shouting at the 'North West Supporters', who would get confused and start gesturing at the 'Nevsky Front', who were already taunting either 'Bridge City' or 'Bad Company'. Only my faction, which followed the Soviet-hangover tendency to take the most obvious name possible (the Sector 10 Group, from Sector 10), focussed on ridiculing the 200 or so brave Muscovites who'd decided to risk the Sunday trains. Again, it was awesome. We finally scored, a really scrappy goal, and the place went even more wild. Everyone united against the Moscow crowd. Except for the man on my left, who had become so distracted at the sight of Isabella bouncing up and down during the goal celebrations that he spent the remainder of the half staring at her breasts and the whole of half-time flexing his biceps at her whilst trying to engage her in conversation. The second half was more entertaining. It seemed like it had been decided that Zenit would win. The refereeing was awful, the diving even worse, and when the away team was awarded a penalty (a free shot at goal from 12 yards with only the goaltender to beat, in case you are American), the entire stadium went quiet. Not angry, as you'd expect. Just quiet, as though someone hadn't read the script. No damage was done - the Zenit 'keeper saved it and as the rebound was smashed home, the ref decided he'd seen a push, and gave Zenit a free-kick. Problem solved. Zenit won 1-0. 

Laurence

Visiting Vyborg

Saturday, 11th July, 2009

O.K - so this week saw even fewer chances to get anything written down that the previous one. This means that I am busy and enjoying myself, which is good. However, it does make the blog look a little rubbish, and it does deprive you all of the updates you've definitely been waiting at your computers for. Sorry. 

So, last Saturday, I was up too early. I met with Sasha and Eileen outside Primorskaya Metro, and 45 minutes later we arrived at Parnas Metro. In the case of Parnas, metropolitan is not really an adequate adjective. It's probably closer to Finland than it is to SPb, which was convenient, because on this fine morning we were braving Russian public transport, and heading to the oft-contested Karelian town of Vyborg. Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, there was a powerful country called Sweden, and another powerful state called the Republic of Novgorod. For those of you scratching your heads trying to remember a time when Sweden was great, don't bother - it was back in the 1200s! Anyway, these two states enjoyed the odd war, and in order to establish Swedish control over a key trading route inland from the Gulf of Finland, Torkel Knutsson built a castle on an island in the river. The rest of the town was built on the peninsula below the castle, and was expanded in three main stages over the years. The strategic importance of this town led to it changing hands between the Russians and the Swedes for centuries, and then between the Russians and the Finns after 1917. Now, Vyborg is very, very Russian, which by definition makes it very pretty but run down in places, and horrifically ugly but ignorant of this fact in others. The bus station definitely falls into the second category.

Unattractive as sight that welcomed us to Vyborg was, it was still a welcome relief to get off the bus. I said we were braving public transport, and on a 25 year old bus with no seatbelts, no suspension, no windows that opened, and no control over the radiators in the footwells, it really was a harrowing journey. Add to this the aforementioned Russian 'driving' and awful road surfaces, and the only way not to suffer a panic attack en route is to sleep. Which I did. Until an encounter with a large pothole slammed my head rather forcefully into the window, and I was rudely awakened. Twenty minutes of temple-massaging later we rolled into Vyborg.

The guide-books were right. Once the scraggy Soviet suburbs are forgotten, Vyborg is a very pretty little town. A wide market square is overlooked by a fortified round-house, and the route up towards the old town is quaint and cobbled. In the bright morning sunshine the square could easily have been found in any southern French market town, and once again I was struggling to believe that I was actually further north than the capital of Alaska! Only one thing reminded me that I was in nothern Russia - the huge banner hanging from the round house advertising Rally Russia, which was taking place on the roads around Vyborg last weekend. Ah, I thought. That explains all the souped-up Ladas. I had thought that these brightly painted overly-sporty-looking piles of junk were just examples of a strange Russian irony, but apparently, the Ladas actually raced. The main square was devoted to the repair area for the competitors, and I was not surprised to see the Lada mechanics looking far more stressed and exhausted than any others. I did enjoy seeing the Audi team wheeling a shopping trolley of Baltika lager back to the base camp. Drink driving - never...

After a stomach-filling and wallet-emptying lunch, we wandered through the streets of the old town. It was almost deserted, and well over half the buildings were in such a state of disrepair that there is no way they were inhabited. Elaine's guidebook mentioned that lots of the buildings had seen no structural amelioration since the end of WW2, and this was not difficult to believe. On one ruined building overlooking the trade port we came across a selection of graffiti. These sprayed messages were in many different languages, but between the three of us we were able to make sense of most of them. Three remain imprinted in my memory: one idealist message was in Spanish - 'Liberty - you are my body'; one, more motivational, in English - 'Crush my weakness and Give me power', and the third, more upsetting, in Russian - 'Mama, I love you, and I miss you'. Somewhat quietened, we moved on. 

Health and Safety just does not exist here. We climbed the Vyborg clock-tower, a structure almost fifty metres tall. Inside the tower we found uneven wooden stairs and no artificial lighting. What light there was came from windows open higher up in the tower walls. When we reached these windows we saw that they were easily big enough to fall out of, and they were at stair-level. We also saw that there were no guards on the windows. A slight slip on the way down the darkened stairway would be enough to send a person sailing out of the windows 4 storeys up. But getting to the top made the dangerous ascent worthwhile. The views were amazing. The bright blue and gold spires of the Orthodox cathedral competed with the more restrained Lutheran spires of cream and yellow, whilst across the bay the castle and the gleaming white 'modern classical' (or 'hideously Soviet') art and culture gallery vied for the attention of our cameras. Russian children scrambled over the ruins of the old cathedral down below, and jetskis and motorboats raced each other around the enormous fountain in the bay. A guide was giving a the Russian tourists the detailed history of the tower, and he'd obviously heard our idle chatter, as he interrupted his spiel to tell the assembled crowd that they would have to excuse him, as he was going to switch to English to give the tour to 'our American visitors' instead. You could almost see the dollar signs, flashing, cartoon-style, in his eyes. In contrast, his slighted natives were looking daggers at us. I then realised quite how far away the ground was over the rickety wooden balustrade. Anyway, despite getting my nationality badly wrong (although Sasha and Elaine are from New Jersey and Ohio respectively), and causing the other tourists to 'give us the evils', Konstantin was very pleasant. He was the English teacher in the local school, and he was full of strange facts about the town defenses and long-winded apologies for his English, which was fine until he started getting confused over his apologies. After a week of believing that Russians chose not to speak any English just out of spite, it was so refreshing to hear someone so keen to chatter away in a language I understood. His enthusiasm was, however, possibly the most impressive part of the rather dull list of dates and names he recited. He did also tell us his special American joke - 'Hey! Can you send a telegram to Washington? - Of course not, he's dead!' That's a joke I would definitely be proud of. Honest. 

Talk over, we arrived back at street level by the bridge to the castle. Traffic was gridlocked, as there were two bridegrooms carrying their newly tied-down wives across the bridge back into the old town. Apparently this is traditional. Like carrying you wife over the threshold, but more extreme. I do like this idea, although it can wreak havoc when the bridge that's being used carries the main road from Helsinki to SPb. 

Sooner than we realised, the time came to head back to the bus. This time, we had a brand new bus. We found our seats, and waited for the off. As the bus pulled out of the station, four people ran to the door. I'm not sure why, but the driver opened the door. The two fat woman bustled on and started looking for seats. The two skinnier men got on behind them. Then the row started. We're not sure what it was about, but we think it was something along the lines of the women having the wrong tickets, or the seats they had been allocated not being present on the bus. Whatever it was, the ticket office manager was summoned to the bus, and she ordered them off. Until this point, the four had been angry, but controlled. After they were ordered off, the shouting started. The skinniest man started screaming at the driver and the official, flourishing a piece of paper that was supposed to be a ticket. After ten minutes of argument, and with the bus now delayed, the other passengers got involved. A man piped up telling the fiery four where to go, and things escalated some more. Just as I thought the fists and flick-knives were about to come out, the ticket office woman somehow managed to increased the volume of her voice once again, and this scared the four. I don't know what she said, but they all shut up, and got off the bus as quickly as they could. Maybe she threatened them with Siberia.

Hope this was worth a small part of the wait. The rest is coming soon. 

Laurence

That Was The Week That Was

Friday, 10th July, 2009

Apologies - my week has been busy and my brain has started to function only when out on the mean streets of 'Pete'. Each morning I crawl out of bed  across to the shower, scalding myself every time with the water that all the guidebooks told me would be orange and freezing. It's neither, and I never remember that first thing in the morning. I'm now an old hand on the SPb Metro, a force to be reckoned with. So getting to the school is no longer a  feat of which I can be proud. I need something else now. So I've ploughed my energies into my studies, and I have made progress. In fact, my transformation from bumbling foreign idiot to less-idiotic foreign bumbler has been so rapid that I feel I've made more progress with my Russian in the past week than the Soviet economy did in 70 years. But more of that anon. I've ended the week being moved up a class, which is excellent, and have bought myself the Karmannaya Grammatika for weekend work. Despite the fact that classes have been quite easy this week, I've still managed to exhaust myself during them. This exertion is a combination of my learning on the spot as my classmate answers his questions (lots of learning of this kind is possible), and of my practising of cursive script, which I quickly realised would be necessary, as no-one writes anything in print here, ever. To give the report for the end of maya pyervuiya nedelja: Laurence can conjugate regular verbs in the present and past tenses, decline the nominative, accusative and prepositional cases, and talk about where he lives, what his hobbies are, when he does his homework, and other vital topics of everyday conversation. So school certainly picked up, and is now seeming like a very good idea. 

Each evening I use the last of my reserves of intelligence to decipher the messages left to tell me where my dinner is. Irina writes in cursive script, which I've only just started to write in, and I sure as anything can't read in it. Thus I am making neither head nor tail of my feeding instructions. I think I'm understanding an average of about 40% of the words, once transcribed, but long gone are the days when all we needed was 40%. Nevertheless, each evening I have been fed. And still, I have no complaints about the food - sure, it wouldn't really suit anyone on a low GI diet, or anyone with any allergies or fussiness whatsoever, but I'm not a fussy person, and many of you will know that I'm not averse to fat, or to strange foods. As part of what I'm thinking of patenting as 'Atkins+' (the plus is for the carbs), I ate hedgehogs and hearts yesterday. More on that, later. Previous days saw more fish, more rice, more porridge, or kasha, which is nearly the same, with butter, and more tomato salad.

Wednesday was uneventful, and included many hours of sleeping - the bright nights are making me quasi-nocturnal, as it really doesn't matter too much when you try to sleep. It will always be a struggle unless you're completely knackered. On Wednesday, I was dead on my feet. So I slept. And slept. Then woke, just in time for a very late supper. Perfect. And, we had a guest. Alex, I thought he was called. His name was actually Oleg, but it's pretty much the same, no? Oleg was a little older than me, and I think he was Irina's nephew. I'm not sure - I have yet to be sure about any of her friend/relatives/workmates statuses, but I'm going to go with nephew. After all, who's going to know if I'm wrong? Oleg was an excellent student, I was told, and was a Bachelor in Economics from SPb. He spent the first half of the meal (not rice, nor pasta, but potatoes and sausage) listening to my broken Russian ('shattered' might be a better term), before revealing over tea and cakes that he did in fact speak English. This was the most pleasing of the things he went on to say. In a blunt fashion that I grant was a product of the language gap, he informed me that 1) a BA is worth nothing, 2) studying politics was a waste of time, 3) living in England was 'economically dangerous', 4) the Soviet system was better than the new Russian system, 5) that the data and statistics show this and 6) that the UK was the worst possible place to have 'economic interest' at the moment. He could tell from my face that I didn't agree. So he switched to talking about my career plans - I mentioned international organisations, and gave the UN and NATO as examples, to make sure I was understood. He replied 'So you don't care if war or peace? UN is for peace people, NATO is for war people. You are a peace-war person?'. I was then grilled on the interventions in the Balkans (a special interest of mine), but could not get past the first sentence before Oleg barked 'Was it a crime? Tell me. Was it?' This was a terrifying dinner-table inquisition. For a moment I was no longer in Leningrad, but in the Lubyanka. He believed in the old system, and our little chat with chai convinced me that he would have flourished in it. Still, I did enjoy the company, and Irina seemed to relish 'entertaining'. Maybe Oleg will come back at the end of the month. Then, perhaps, I can begin the re-education.

Thursday saw me being photographed for yet more documents. These ones might prove useful, as they allow me to get a student card which means that things go from 'tourist-rip-off' prices to 'Russian-poor-student' prices. Excellent. I also bought a new SIM card for Russia, so can communicate with the other people in the dorms. Socialising just got easier. Though I remain myself, so really, it just became easier to organise socially deleterious situations. Anyone wanting the number will find it on my Facebook page - it'll be the only mobile number I'll use for the next 3 weeks, just so you know. It only cost me 99 руб - less than £2.00 - and included 99 units of credit. Calls in Russia are 1 pyб/minute. That's 2p, mobile to mobile. Cheap as. Did lunch with the group of Italian students at the school - their Russian is excellent, but they speak to each other in Italian. The rest of us listened on without much understanding. I gave them a burst of Italian as we parted ways, because I didn't trust their English. Very impressed, they were. This lunchtime, I spoke more Italian than Russian and English combined, so if I don't come back speaking Russian, I may at least have picked up another language. 

Thursday was when I ate hedgehogs and hearts. Before anyone complains that I've taken the strange foods thing too far, let me clarify. The hedgehogs were not actual cute things that drink milk, kill slugs and get run-over by lorries on country roads. They were meat-and-rice balls, where the rice sticks out, like a hedgehog's spiky-bits. They were also very tasty indeed. Hearts: not so. I think they were small-bird hearts, and I'm not sure if I was meant to cook them/reheat them/eat them. So I ate them. Or a couple of them. I think they may have been pickled. Whatever, they weren't too bad to taste, but the texture was alien and they really did look very strange. I might stick to regular cuts from here on in. Today I ate ezhiki (hedgehogs) again, as Irina is staying away tonight, so cooked loads up yesterday. They get better with age. (Is it too soon to make a Michael Jackson joke?)

Time for bed now, but something from way back on Tuesday morning still sticks in my head: Learning the alphabet, we came across Э. This is a 'eh' sound, like in 'yeah', and is used almost exclusively in words with non-Russian roots. So my teacher wrote 'Espresso' on the board, then 'Эспрессо' (Espryessa). Then she turned to me and said 'Yes, Laurence, I believe you have this sound in English. Like in the word 'cat''. Ket?!? I think I was right to be at least a little worried back then. But that was then, and this is now. School's out for the weekend, and it's time to turn tourist.

Laurence

'T.I.R, man, T.I.R'

Monday, 6th July, 2009

School was scheduled to start today. But to misquote Leo di Caprio, 'T.I.R, man, T.I.R'. This is Russia.

Not wanting to be late (and not having been given a time to turn up) I left the flat around 0800. Primorskaya Metro is only 5 minutes away, but I didn't time my journey yesterday so decided it best to hurry. As in London, you stand on one side of the escalators, and move down on the other side. In London, this is a fairly safe thing to do - a little bit of squeezing past fat kids is required, but that's as dangerous as it gets, as far as I'm aware. In SPb, if you decided to walk down the left hand side, you will probably die. You run down, or you stand with the old women and their shopping bags on the right hand side. I do actually mean run. Either two steps at a time, bouncing down towards the tunnels, or jogging down every step doing that gay little hip-twist thing that Olympic race-walkers do. Either way, there's a significant risk that unless you are good at either, you will fall. If you fall, there's not really any way to stop, and as the deepest Metro system in the world, it's a long, long way down (I did actually time the escalators - it's 3 minutes top to bottom in Primorskaya, and 2 minutes 40 in Vasilyostrovskaya - that information could save your life). In every station, a woman sits in a booth at the bottom of the escalators. In every station, this woman is an exact copy of the one in the booth of the station you've just come from. It's like a uniformed set of Matryoshka dolls, but somehow they're all the same size. These women are meant to direct traffic and hit the 'Stop' button if anyone falls. I have two problems with this. The first is that the Metro is a relic of the 1980s, with faux-wood panelling, 'stylish' tube lights and piped musak - as a consequence, I very much doubt that there is both a 'Stop' button and that it works. The second problem is that I have seen the look in these women's eyes. It's like the look that kid in The Exorcist gives before her head swivels and she stabs herself. I reckon that when the Metro closes they all descend on one of the great vaulted halls in the bigger stations to compare stories of horrific falls and idiot foreigners. I reckon they've got a sweepstake going on each week for the number of broken bones sustained. It's like the members of the Politburo, seeing just how much structural damage they can get away with before one of them goes too far. Anyway, as I was hurrying, I tried to walk down. I got about twenty paces before someone yelled something Russian at me and I got the message - get on with it or get out of the way. I tried doing the gay little hip-twist things but surprisingly enough was not very good at them. I tried missing steps out, but was even worse at that. I could feel my feet slipping on the narrow steps and my head was starting to spin, but I had no option but to carry on running - there were simply no gaps to slide into. I had to run the entire way. I nearly died. And I'm horrifically unfit. My calf muscles have been aching non-stop since then. Poor me. I vowed never to hurry anywhere ever again, and slumped into the Metro carriage to recover.

I arrive at the school, shaken, aching and wanting to just sit in a classroom all morning absorbing Russian-ness. But, T.I.R.:

1st Secretary: Zdravstvuitye!

Me: Zdravstvuitye! (Hello) Vy gavarite pa-anglitski? (Do you speak English?)

1st Secretary: Nyet. (No.)

Me: Oh.

1st Secretary: blahski blahski blahski etc.

Me: Erm...

So that was the transcript of what I've now figured out to be her telling me to come back later. The rest of the morning followed a similar pattern. At one point a sheet of paper with Russian on was placed before me. I didn't do anything to it. Two minutes later it was taken away. Apparently, that was the test. I got 0%. Sweet. Finally the course director, Boris, showed up. He and his secretary spoke English. Phew. Now I could ask all the questions I wanted. Like, when do I start? Not yet, apparently. So could I pay them now? No. Not now, not them. I had to walk to the other end of the university (25 minutes) with Boris' invoice, pay the cash desk, come back with a receipt, receive a student registration form, which I was to take back to the main complex, where I would wait to fill out a second visa registration, and come back to Boris, where I would be able to pay my accommodation fee. Yup, that's there and back, then there and back. Efficiency has long been a Russian tradition. Could I pay both bills together? No. Could I pay either by card? No. Did that mean that I'd also have to find a bank that would cash Travellers' Cheques in the vicinity and carry nearly £1000 worth of rubles back and forth between the university offices? Yes. How many banks did I try? Five. How many had heard of TCs? One. RaffaisenBank (not a Russian one). How long did this bank take to process my business. Well over 40 minutes. This was turning into a very very long day. Payments made, I decided to hold off the visa registration 'til tomorrow, and went for lunch with Sasha, an American grad student starting at Harvard Kennedy School in the 'fall'. She was having similar difficulties, and she'd been learning Russian for a few years. I felt so much better. Lunch was from a kafe, which is more like a canteen than a cafe, but it was hearty food. Not healthy. Fried some-type-of-meat with omelette on top and fried mushrooms and potatoes somewhere in-between.Thus nourished, I went for a walk, before returning for the afternoon session at the school, where I was finally told 'You start tomorrow. Bye'. I hopped back on to the Metro (slowly this time) and went straight home, where I watched Family Guy and South Park both dubbed into Russian. Ochen' stranny. Very strange. And it's not actually Family Guy, it's Greefeents. But is was funny to hear the CoolWhip/CooHwip debate in Russian. 

We took another short drive to the port to see the sunset (it's a big thing around here) and returned to find our next door neighbours staring at their new car, which was now without wheels. Probably the safest type of car to have over here to be honest. I figured they wouldn't understand or appreciate this, so kept stumm. Going back up to the 19th floor in the lift, we discovered that someone had also seen fit to steal the lightbulb from the lift-casing, leaving us in a dark box about 1m x 1m x 2m. I hope they fix it soon, but as no one seems to know who they are, this seems unlikely. 

Early school again in the morning, so it's paka from me...

Laurence

Djeckson, Death, Dachas and Dogs.

Sunday, 5th July, 2009 

So there I was, talking about the frequency of my posting. Then things got busy. Anyhow, time to make amends.

Sunday started late, around 1300, and sluggishly. This was possibly more down to the breakfast I had (a mountain of porridge with half a pack of salted butter stirred in) than lack of sleep. I sat at the small kitchen table, trying to kick my brain into gear so that I could at least say 'nice breakfast' to Irina, but found myself unable to think, thanks to the constant barrage of adverts for 'Kahnzert Mikhail Djeckson' - an MJ tribute concert that was running on state TV throughtout Sunday evening. 

Having had enough of Billie Jean, I decided to beat it. I thought it would be a good idea to locate the language school in advance, to make Monday morning easier. I also thought it would be a good idea to walk from Novosmolenskaya to the school. 25 minutes into my little stroll and I was beginning to regret the second of these ideas. Then I chanced across a park. Or at least what I thought was a park. Trees, walkways, overgrown undergrowth, large green areas...sounds like a park, yeah? A couple came towards me, so, being my chirpy little self, I smiled. The woman started crying. Now, I'm used to my smile having that affect on women, but when I noticed that the next four people I saw were also crying, I did start to wonder what was going on. So I took a closer look amongst the weeds around the edges of the track. There were heads, everywhere. Bronze ones, marble ones, ones that I suppose could have been granite, heads of all shapes, sizes and constructions, worked into stone and metal placards seemingly just dumped on the ground between nettles and dock leaves. I'm sure there would have been a fair few concrete heads if the town planners hadn't used it all on my tower block. It's a sign of how confused I've been in the last couple of days that it took me so long, but I finally realised that I was in a Soviet cemetery. Obviously, there were no crosses to give the game away. Nor were there any flowers by these neglected communist graves. Just these faces, in relief, sitting amongst the weeds. Creepy. Telling myself to avoid the shortcut through the 'park' in the future, I moved on. My burial ground experience was brightened somewhat by the discovery of a renovated section, where the Orthodox cross took its place on the tombstones once more, and flowers surrounded well tended graves. This was much more like it - how burial really should be done. 

On leaving the cemetery on the other side (by which I mean through the alternative exit, not death), I turned down one of the many Linie that run checkerboard across Vasilyevsky Ostrov. And walked straight into the most beautiful girl in the world, ever. Fact. Would that my pen/keyboard and simple vocabulary could do justice to this blonde vision. I'm not even going to try - take my word for it. Now this is the part where I'm meant to say 'Oh, I'm really sorry. Are you OK?', and a fairytale begins. Instead, I mumbled what I thought was 'sorry' in Russian, but what I now realise was 'thank you'. Yes, thank you for allowing me to walk into you, oh most stunning one. She looked up, looked deep into my eyes, and gave me the look. No, not the look, but kind of look that says 'what even are you?' She scowled and pranced off, sparkling nail varnish glittering in the temperamental Russian sunshine. Probably a prostitute, I told myself, brushing this utter fail off lightly, and I refocussed on finding the school.

I found it two hours later. Turns out I walked past it three times on my way up and down Lieutenant Schmidt's Embankment (a strangely German name for a place so bedecked with the Russian tricolour). See, I couldn't ask anyone, as whilst I knew how to say 'where is the school' (or, as Russian has neither a used present tense of 'to be' nor articles of any kind, 'where - school'), I soon learned that this would unleash a volley of Slavic consonants and plentiful accompanying spittle. So I gave up on that and just kept walking, until I found the school. All signs were in Russian. The door was locked. Success. I felt the first drops of rain fall from the filthy clouds above, and hurried off to Metro Vasilyostrovskaya. There'll be more about SPb Metro tomorrow. Worth mentioning is the station at Vasilyostrovskaya: think the Lobby scene from the Matrix, then cross that with the Ministry of Magic entrance from the HP films. It's a strange mix of the two, with massive green leather doors along each side at two or three metre intervals, and funny-looking people in bizarre and outdated clothes hurrying busily to their jobs. You only see the trains when it's time to get on board - not ideal when you don't know which doors lead to which trains...

I got back late to find dinner on the table. Fish and rice. This seemed as though it might become part of a standard meal option of fish or meat with rice or pasta, but I didn't mind - it was well cooked, and certainly did the job after an afternoon on my feet.

After dinner, Irina had a surprise for me. We were going for a drive. I didn't know where, or why, and was, once again, thoroughly confused. So I got in the car anyway. We sped through the evening traffic, occasionally coming far too close to the Lada in front or to the Moskvitch turning into our path for my comfort. Miraculously, I witnessed no accidents on the outward journey. We'd soon left the suburbs behind, with their high-rise apartment blocks and new shopping complexes, and were racing the local train towards the Finnish border. At this point I had no clue where we were going, and began to look up 'I', 'don't', 'have' and 'passport' in my dictionary. I was easily distracted, however. One distraction was the driving. Not of Irina's, but of numerous large black Hummers and BMWs. There's a driving theory and practice test book in the apartment, and I'm fairly sure that none of the maniacs behind the wheels of these brutish machines had ever read it or anything like it. Forgive me, but for the second time in one post I'm going to reference JK Rowling, and this time, it's the cars that the Weasleys and Harry take to the station, those ones that can squeeze through any gap. That's what driving in Russia is like - somewhere between magic and madness. Unless you're in a Lada, of course, when it's just madness. 

The other distraction was the beauty of the lakes we were driving round. A deep blue, with verdant reeds and marsh grasses around the edges, these were peaceful waters. Small dinghies unfurled sails to catch the last of the wind, and the bright triangles of colour flashed happily in the breeze. We turned off the main road just after the lakes, crossed the railway tracks and were soon deep in fragrant pine forests. I was reminded of my summer on the south-west coast of France - it was that sunny, and that warm, and this was at 22h00! Hidden in the forest was our destination (I had by this point ascertained the purpose of our trip, so was unconcerned by the trek into the woods), the dacha of an old lady who looks after Irina's dog, a Siberian hound called Tyke (a fearsome animal). The babushka introduced herself in precise and heavily accented English - her name was Vera, and she lived in St. Petersburg. She fed me tea, biscuits and sunflower seeds by the thousands, and we took Tyke for a walk. It was a challenge to keep him on the lead, but for a ferocious hunting dog, Tyke really wasn't that bad. 

A dacha is a wooden hut, but the word can be used to refer to the type of shed you might have in your back garden, to the holiday lets seen on continental campsites, or even to luxurious ten-bedroomed wooden mansions owned by the SPb rich-list. All sorts were buried in this idyllic forest next to the Gulf of Finland. I was away from my friends and family in a country with a culture surprisingly different and a language I just could not understand, yet sitting under a tarpaulin drinking tea and listening to Vera and Irina natter away, I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather have been. This sounds a bit 'new world', especially for me, but amongst those Baltic pines, with my exams far behind me and my future plans not imposing themselves on my thoughts, I was, for the first time in a long time, completely at peace with myself. It really was a wonderful feeling.

Then we hopped back into the car. Within a minute my panic levels were maxing out as the two-lane highway to SPb somehow became a four-lane racetrack. On the way back I saw 3 cars stopped by the DPC (transport police) and 2 smashes. However, you'll gather from my posting that I did make it back unharmed. Praise the Lord. (Also, racing from one set of traffic lights to the next was pretty fun - we kept a Mafioso Beemer behind us (in a Hyundai), for seven junctions - it was an epic battle). 

It's far too late now for me to start on Monday, especially considering classes start at early o'clock tomorrow, so I'll update that tomorrow.

Well done to those of you lucky enough to have received your Finals results - Поздравляю! (pazdravlyayu!) Congratulations.

Laurence