Midnight Sun and Moscow things

I've recently had the unnerving discovery that I've been living in Russia for some considerable length of time now. To be precise, I've been here for 7 months, and now all of a sudden, there's less than one month left. I'm certainly not using this as a 'light at the end of the tunnel' style of remark, far from it, academically my time here has been the most useful of any of my previous 16 years of education.

Anyway, the realisation prologue aside, the past couple of months since I've last updated this have been as eventful and action-packed as any since I've been in Russia. The beginning of April saw a brief re-excursion to Sheffield, and as this journey was like each of the previous journeys, it was also punctuated by my own idiocy on at least two occasions. Firstly, my bus over to Riga had been scheduled for an 8:00pm departure, despite having booked it myself, I hadn't actually checked this and had rather obliviously assumed it was 10:00pm. Oh well, a €20 replacement bus ticket for the morning it was.

On my way though I had realised that my migration card, the card that needs filling in on arrival and handing in on departure had been removed from my passport. Instantly on realisation, I was aware exactly where it was, and that there was nothing I could do about it, being in my folder in my room. Time to twist the truth and explain that I'd lost it sometime over the last 4 hours, which incredibly surprisingly brought about a successful reaction from the Russian passport officials. Me 1-0 Russia.

Since that trip to England, John had embarked upon a visit to Russia to sample its numerous delights, in a kind of, sort of, cultural exchange programme after I had visited him in Limoges in my last blog post. Having collected him at the airport, there's nothing like a marshrutka journey from the airport to give him a baptism of fire into Russian life. Said marshrutka (a kind of bus, which is actually just a bloke in a minivan who stops to pick up/drop off wherever people request it) only narrowly avoided crashing into the car in front at one set of lights, this isn't particularly abnormal.

After a brief two day introduction to St Petersburg and the main bulk of its tourist attractions, including St Isaac's cathedral, Kazanskii Cathedral and the Hermitage, we were on our way to Moscow along with Helen, Rachel and Lucy on the standard third class of Russian train travel, as previously described, platskart. I wasn't going to let John come to Russia and not show him it properly now, was I?

The journey from St Petersburg to Moscow took nine hours overnight, which is ridiculous really when I tell you that a high speed rail link is capable of doing the same journey in two and a half hours, but when you consider that for a nine hour train journey, we paid just £15 each way, it's not bad in comparison to the 10 minute journey into Skipton costing £3.50 in Britain, which is also much less fun.

On the whole, the Russians found our British citizenship absolutely fascinating, after much alcohol was dispensed from the Russian's seemingly never-ending arsenal of beverages, they had moved the topic quite neatly from football onto politics, much "yes, I quite agree" ensued before we had arrived in Moscow for my first venture into the capital.

The Russians we met on the train, I'll let you make your own mind up on who's Russian and who's English.

Moscow is an absolutely enormous city. Reading the invaluable Lonely Planet guide on the morning of arrival had taught me that more people use the Muscovite underground system than both the London and New York underground systems combined. This city is a completely different beast to the Petersburg atmosphere I've grown accustomed to.

Nonetheless, weary from the overnight travelling, we checked into our hostel which was extremely conveniently placed in the vicinity of a metro station and just off the main road heading towards Red Square. After a short snooze, we thought we'd check out Red Square, being the thing in Moscow that everyone bangs on about all the time. No. Being a couple of days before Putin's inauguration and a few days before Russia's gigantic victory parade ceremony, there was absolutely no access to Red Square or the Kremlin for us, and this would continue to be the case right up until the day after we leave. Fine, let's see what else Moscow has to offer.

This would be a continuing theme, Izmailovsky flea market was also nowhere to be found; the football match we bought tickets for had been inexplicably postponed for 24 hours; and for Helen, she appeared to be wearing the wrong kind of clothes to access the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. I think I'm just destined to be cursed for any kind of travel plans forever.

We did manage to see plenty to make the trip worthwhile though, the lovely Gorky park was a delight to spend the afternoon in whilst the Moscow heat entertained us. Russians do seem to love their parks; the Summer Gardens in St Petersburg have just re-opened after a 2 year restoration period, I'll do my best to report these to you on my next update, but aside from this, Russia is teeming with parks of all sizes and levels of beauty, which is brilliant when you consider the significant upturn in weather over the past couple of months.

Aside from Gorky park, we definitely saw enough of Moscow to render the trip a great success and a lot of fun. Even with the closure of Red Square, we still managed the obligatory tourist photos outside St Basil's Cathedral (that mental one with loads of colours), wandering down Arbat (Moscow's main street away from the Kremlin) and with temperatures in the mid twenties, acquired an unlikely Russian tan.

St Basil's Cathedral, the mental one with all the colours.

Moscow seems to be an incredible city, and one in which is very quintessentially Russian, much more so than St Petersburg, everything from the extremely well serviced public transport system to the extremely well decorated underground stations to the extremely heavy police presence to greet Putin's eventual inauguration. I'm not altogether sure which city I prefer, but then, I'm not sure that anyone will necessarily be able to answer that with a simple yes or no. St Petersburg has its imperialist charm and is very arguably Russia's cultural capital, whereas Moscow definitely has a higher sense of 'going on' and bustle about it that you just don't really see outside of capital cities.

Once we'd arrived back in St Petersburg, John had 4 hours to catch his plane, so straight to the airport it was to bid him adieu on his voyage back to France. Promptly followed by me realising that I'd left my phone on the train after it had fallen out of my pocket, yep, one final mishap to seal the trip. Not to worry though, a replacement from a Russian phone shop, complete with novelty Cyrilic alphabet keys and a camera, cost me £7, making it the cheapest camera I have ever bought.

Since then, I've been to Peterhof, a huge palace and garden complex on the outskirts of the city which is not entirely unlike Versailles and the Schonbrunn palace in Vienna. Filled to the brim with fancy fountains and gold domed palace buildings, this is Russia at its finest and most imperial. You could spend almost any amount of time just strolling through the gardens and relaxing, especially if, as we did, you go on a hot day.

Peterhof and its fountains (All photos from this post courtesy of Helen, check out her blog about Russia also at http://helenswiressurvivorsguideto.blogspot.com)

The weather in St Petersburg has picked up enormously recently, it seems almost alien to think now that there were points where the thermometer threatened -20 temperatures and walking without falling over was a triumph. These days we're disappointed by temperatures below 20, and one day we even enjoyed having the highest temperature of anywhere in Europe when we experienced 28 degrees in St Petersburg.

Another phenomenon of being here in the summer is the White Nights. It doesn't bother getting dark here until gone midnight, which as you might expect is somewhat surreal. Indeed I'm writing this post at 10:20 and the sun is still shining in my eyes. What's even better is that there is still almost a month of it getting even lighter, which I'm going to take as total compensation for the ridiculously short days of the Petrozavodsk era of my year abroad.

That's about all I can really think of for this post, I apologise that I've essentially condensed two months worth of activity into about 10 minutes of reading, especially when I've done so much, but I guess the two aren't particularly conducive to prolific blog posting, I'll definitely write another one before I leave though.

In the meantime though, good luck to all of you doing exams in Britain at the moment, and I make no such apology for enjoying myself here.

Ещё раз, пока

x

WINTERVAL - Part 2 (Going to France, getting a visa, using the visa)

It's been over a month since I last posted anything, and despite the promises of regular updates, something's obviously misfiring somewhere. Anyway, since that point, I've been doing quite a lot, in fact, up until about a week ago, I hadn't really stopped.

Firstly, finally went and had my third HIV test, made possible by a woman who seemed incredibly pissed off at how I was merely wasting valuable NHS time and needles on providing meaningless proof of my lack of HIV status. Even after explaining numerous times of the actual predicament, I think she just ended up not caring and proceeded to take some of my blood whilst grunting inaudibly. More on the HIV test saga later...

Next stop France to see John, which involved flying into Limoges Airport, also known as a shoebox somewhere in the middle of France which planes like to fly near. Limoges seemed a really nice, quintessentially French town, with weird trees everywhere. I'd suspect it'll get hotter eventually, but to leave to snowfall was a little bit surprising to say the least.

Limoges n' 'ting

Back to the UK and a painfully slow wait for my HIV test certificate, initially they seemed taken aback that I'd actually need my results printed on paper at all, but after explaining that the Russian embassy are unlikely at best to be able to accept my HIV test results by text message, they fortunately agreed. I still left without that certificate though, because "the woman who gives out HIV test certificates was on 'oliday 'til Tuesday".

The Guildford leg of Eurotour

Anyway, eventually, everything had worked out fine, and the all clear to travel to Russia was obtained, the immensely expensive 'urgent' visa application being the final hurdle.

Next stage was flying away from Liverpool for the twenty six millionth time this year towards Estonia, heavy bags in tow, at daft o' clock in the morning. Greeting me was the wall of cold I'd totally forgotten about, and about 2 foot of snow, the other thing I'd forgotten about. Following this was that terrible bus journey from Tallinn to St Petersburg via the fairly insalubrious Tallinn bus station.

Being dropped off in St Petersburg in the dark at 8:00am wasn't particularly ideal in the first place, especially considering that I had heavy bags, no idea really where I was headed, hadn't slept on the bus, and oh yes, classes began in two hours. Time for a whistle stop tour of the vicinity I was living in; except I was tired and consequently once again quite pissed off with everything about Russia already.

I wasn't expecting anything of the hotel I was living in really, some of the things I'd heard about it from the previous inhabitants didn't exactly sell it well. From my experience thus far though, I couldn't really be happier with it, it seems to fulfil every purpose I'd expect of it, and I can also rock out of bed 20 minutes before class, it's just like last year in Broomhall all over again.

Anyway, turning up to school on the first day was always going to be a daunting task given how knackering everything had already been, and a test to put us in sets was not the most ideal of scenarios.

I've no complaints about the school either really, minor gripes like having two half hour breaks a day being neither long enough to do anything significant, nor short enough to just be a quick snack break, but lessons are really good, and in a group of 8, it's much easier to actually engage (read: much more difficult to just switch off).

It's at this point I'm going to have to admit that this post has technically taken me a month to write fully, therefore it's difficult to recall small details properly, and therefore the introduction to this post is chronologically inaccurate. But nevertheless, from here I'll attempt to describe how things have gone so far during my stay. Unfortunately, this probably means this post is going to be quite long again, or you may view that as value for money, who knows.

At first, everyone was tentatively getting to know each other, as it usually goes when starting any course, but obviously a couple of nights out tend to add a reasonable amount of 'social WD40' to these kinds of situations, here being no different. Nightlife in St Petersburg is quite clearly, always going to be vastly different to in Petrozavodsk, with markedly more choice. Being in a hotel, rather than a homestay, also helps to make things better, not having to feel enormously guilty turning up at what was essentially someone else's house at a strange hour of the morning.

The next interesting thing I can remember doing is going to the Gulf of Finland, on the edges of the city, and literally walking about a mile or two on the frozen sea. I can't really explain why I found this such an enormous novelty, and this is perhaps an indictment on how childish I am, but I found this hugely exciting.

Walking on the sea, just like Jesus did that time

We've also had an excursion to 'Kunstkamera', officially the oldest museum in St Petersburg, which was initially quite a dull affair, with the standard models of how Chinese people lived in stick huts, until you hit one room, a quite incredible room. Filled almost entirely with dead babies with hideous deformities which have been pickled in jars for the Russian's amusement. Then returned to exhibitions of really old tables. Definitely the strangest museum I have ever seen, and probably will ever see (that is, if I ever summon the energy to visit the, what sounds frankly enthralling, museum of bread down the road).

There seems to be literally something to do all the time here, it's difficult to be bored at all for more than a matter of a few minutes. This probably goes some way to explain why I haven't bothered updating this for so long, thinking about it. It shouldn't go entirely unexpected in a city the scale of St Petersburg, but it's definitely welcome.

On the bridge over the Neva towards Vasilievski Island

The only thing which is quite hard here, is that everything is more expensive here, it's not as if it's totally wallet busting, but obviously here I'm having to pay for all my own food, which sounds like it shouldn't be too difficult, but when there's a pizza restaurant almost built into the ground floor of your hotel, and a Subway just around the corner, it's a temptation too far most nights.

Mercifully, it appears that the weather is finally, extremely slowly, turning itself around. Gone are the days when it would be suicide to go outdoors without a hat and gloves, it's April now, and you don't even have to wear a jumper under your warm coat anymore if you don't feel like it. Having said that, it did actually snow earlier this evening, snow in April shouldn't be on anyone's agenda. Considering I haven't witnessed anything you could even remotely describe as even mild since last September, this Summer is going to be absolutely incredible.

As it turns out, I think I'm going to be leaving Russia for a week or so next week to briefly return home for Sam's birthday + my Dad's birthday + Gregg's cravings, hopefully it's going to be as warm as everyone's been banging on about constantly since I arrived here, but Sod's Law means that the exact opposite is definitely going to be the case.

That'll do for now, and as I say every time, I'll try not to be so rubbish at updating this, it should be an eventful few weeks anyway with John coming over to complete the year abroad experience exchange...thing.

Пока x

WINTERVAL - Part 1

This has been coming for a long, long time. It's time to (presumably quite hazily) recount what had occurred in the final month of my time in Petrozavodsk; briefly talk about how much different home is to living in Russia; probably narrate some of my thoughts on Petrozavodsk as a city; then do those couple of posts I made before I even set off, again, as I prepare to embark upon the second half of my year abroad in St Petersburg.

It's struck me that I haven't actually let anyone know what I've been doing or what I've been up to since just after my birthday (in the confusingly dated 10th November posting). These days, I'm actually 20% of the way towards being 22, so first things first.

Since my birthday, there hasn't been a HUGE deal to speak of really, which is a bit of a lie. We've had the elections, and the hubbub surrounding the fact that they were a bit of a farce really. Involving mass protests across Russia. Personally, I managed to completely avoid the mass protests going on around the city by visiting a quite nice little market which had based itself inside a factory for a couple of days. This was in fact my last full day in Petrozavodsk.

The picture we got at the market, English people on the right, Russians on the left.

There had been plans to go by helicopter to the island of Kizhi, and this being Russia, it only cost about £8. But alas, they only went on Mondays, and since I didn't have any Mondays left, it was left scuppered. I'm still quite dubious of how good the safety record of a helicopter company who can offer £8 return flights can possibly be.

Since my last post, it was definitely, in my head at least, the beginning of the end of my time in Petrozavodsk. And sure enough, quite a few of our numbers dwindled about 3 weeks later, as the 13 week students drifted off back to warmer climes. Once this had happened, I only had 2 weeks left myself. The problem was that this 2 weeks did absolutely nothing but drag and drag and drag. It wasn't as if I was particularly desperate to leave, but it was definitely a creative block in my ideas of what to do.

Coupled with the fact that by the end, the sun was rising at about 11:00, and setting at about 3:00, meant that it was almost always dark, depressingly dark. A layer of seemingly permafrost also graced absolutely everything outside, funny for the first couple of times someone falls over, but after that it was like actually being Bambi, bereft of the secret 'walking on ice' super-skill that native Russians seem to possess.

So then it came to the time when I had to leave. Having thrown all my things into my rucksack, which was fuller than anything ever, and a pressure met only by that of the centre of the Earth, and boarding the train (scum class again), I pulled out of Petrozavodsk for the last (and incidentally only the second) time. Arriving at the wrong end of St Petersburg with two enormous bags was bad enough, but getting on the bus with no idea where to get off, so missing stops and walking miles to find the airport wasn't ideal either. Nor was the 8 hour wait. Definite hero status though for allowing myself only an hour and forty five minutes to get from T5 to St Pancras and making it in an hour and ten minutes.

So sodden wet through from the typical Northern welcome and tired, I'd arrived. Hooray.

Since then, I've done almost nothing productive. Quite why it's taken me this long to write this I've got no idea. But I have done exactly what I was looking forward to doing when I finally arrived, and that was meeting up with everyone I hadn't seen in months, having a good time and finally relaxing again, a marathon relax some might say. Getting a bit bored of it now though.

And so, full circle, I find myself sat here stressing about how I haven't applied for my visa yet, not had my THIRD HIV test (hoping to make it a hat trick), and all the rest. I have booked my flight out though, obviously something had to go wrong with it so I booked it on the wrong day, but if that's the worst thing that happens, I'll deem everything a fairly major success.

Surprisingly, the first foreign country I visit in 2012 though will be France. Thinking about it, the second will be Estonia, hadn't thought of that. But I'm off to Limoges to see John later on in the month, which I'm sure will be just great, followed by a spate of activity between that point and the day I leave on the 19th February (even bought a Young Person's Railcard). Which should finally mean something to kickstart 2012, which has been a tad dull so far.

Then it's off to St Petersburg, a city I've already spent a bit of time in, and I've already decided I'm glad to be living there. It's as if all the money they neglected to spend on Petrozavodsk, they decided to pump into here as a "window to the West", time to actually enjoy Russia's significant disparity of wealth for once.

An added complication there though is that I have to find somewhere to live. Whilst yes, homestay was a very interesting option, and something I'm not going to get the experience of doing anywhere else, it was fraught with problems. None of them major, but it was at times annoying to finally get used to, and relish, the independence provided by going to university, then having it ripped away, and some more. Currently, my name is down for living in the hotel at Sadovaya, but I have heard some dreadful stories about it, so with any luck, I'm going house hunting as soon as I arrive.

Well....not as soon as I arrive. After landing in Estonia next month, I'll be waiting around another 6 hours for a bus to take me over the border overnight, then at 7:30am it's time to find my hotel, dump my stuff, then be at my new school for 10:00am (cos I'm a cretin and find booking transport exceedingly difficult. Yes, it's another episode of my inability to book anything properly, it's a day late this time, still, it saves me about 68p on my insurance).

That'll be all for Winterval - part 1, apologies for he lack of pictures, but I don't think I have any pictures at all of the Christmas or New Year period. In the next part I'll try and give a more all round account of my thoughts of Petrozavodsk (with LOTS of pictures) and a bit of a review of my time there as a whole. To those of you with exams in the near future, GOOD LUCK, thank you for reading, and those of you who surprised me by telling me how much they've enjoyed reading, thank you even more to you :D.

x

Пока Петрозаводск!

Passageway to...Sheffield (Part 2) + My Russian Birthday

Right, having already recounted the way into England, here comes the (possibly) eagerly awaited second of this blog post.

Having arrived in Sheffield once again, time to reacquaint myself with literally everything which had become a complete impossibility in Russia for the past two months. Sandwiches and bacon being the most obvious things. A couple of awkward linguistic slips of the tongue later, involving addressing people in Russian for a brief period of time, and I was finally reunited with bacon.

The scale of things I just haven't done for the past two months were quickly apparent. I hadn't actually cooked anything for myself in that time, nor had I had anything like a lounge to chill in. Five pound notes suddenly feeling like a novelty. And takeaways, yes, Russia hasn't latched on to this concept yet, let alone Greggs. I obviously won't go into any depth actually describing Britain, as that'd be somewhat pointless, you all know what it's like.

Seeing everyone again was brilliant, I couldn't really have asked for a great deal more to be honest. A good time was had by all. In fact, several good times were had by all. In fact, I'm pretty sure by the end, I'd just got used to being there again.

It was "Dress up" Sunday of course.

Once this time had run, and after witnessing perhaps the most disappointing football match ever witnessed, it was time to make the epic return back to the motherland, this time, via Estonia rather than the disappointing Riga.

When my Dad said to me that he'd take me to the airport, I'm not entirely sure if he realised he'd just signed up to take me to the airport at literally the most inconvenient time of the day, traipsing over the M65 at 3:00am in heavy fog. For that I'm grateful. Anyway, being at Liverpool airport again at such a time was tiring in itself, regardless of the titanic distance I still had to cover.

Wasting time on Liverpool Airport's wi-fi provided an ample way of passing the couple of hours until the flight left. In fact, wi-fi was generally a bit of a godsend all over the place to be honest. And another of Stelios' tin boxes took me to Tallinn this time. Step off the plane, instantly realise how incredibly cold it is in this part of the world...usual drill.

Suddenly, 14 hours to kill in Tallinn, no biggie... Riga had sort of tainted my appetite for the Baltic, so I wasn't really expecting anything particularly impressive this time around. Wrong. Tallinn is absolutely amazing, definitely the most under-appreciated European capital city in my opinion. The old town, which takes up a huge chunk of room in this city, is one of those places you can walk into, and just turn in any direction down its winding, heavily cobbled and narrow streets. Then you work your way gradually uphill towards to various important looking old buildings, wind your way round another few corners and suddenly, the whole of Tallinn beckons before you as you peer over the edge.

This was maybe the best spot.

Whilst 14 hours was a long long time to kill, and, truth be told, was probably too long to be walking round with a ridiculous bag, I definitely want to return to Tallinn sometime to properly do it justice, and to be honest, being in St Petersburg for a whole semester next year, it's more than likely going to be a case of when rather than if.

Another problem soon emerged whilst sat in one of the many bars surrounding the old town, that being that I realised I had absolutely no idea where the bus station was, I'd completely forgotten to actually check. As it turned out, free wi-fi to the rescue once again, and a two mile walk was the net result.

Ready to drop dead into an Estonian bus going in anything like the right direction, I found one. Then quickly became a victim of my own downfall once again as I was turfed out of my own pleasant window seat by some girl who wanted to sit there, requiring me to take the middle back seat. The WORST seat on any bus, so no sleep there, as St Petersburg approached from the other side this time.

8:00am and a pitch black St Petersburg. No idea where to go, so went to Moscovskii train station to book my train home that evening, secretly praying that there were free spaces on the earlier trains going to Murmansk via Petrozavodsk. Not a hope, so ANOTHER 14 hour layoff in St Petersburg, granted, I loved St Petersburg the first time around, but this was a different test, before I even live here.

Somehow, 14 hours were killed, partially finding the British Airways office and changing my flight home date (now the 12th December, if anyone needs to know...), costing significantly more than previously anticipated...

Arriving at the correct train station in St Petersburg an hour and a half early, and about to have my first ever experience of the Platskart class of ticket. For those of you who are unaware of this, essentially, Russian trains have a mysterious third class. First and second class represent more or less their English equivalents, and then they have scum class below these, a barn attached to a normal train if you will, looking like a big climbing frame full of pissed up Russians.

After a surprisingly peaceful nights sleep (probably because I'd been waiting 3 days to actually get any sleep), the train pulled back into PTZ. At 6 in the morning. Finally getting back, and after knocking on the door and waking everyone up because my keys didn't work, time to be brought straight back to Russia with a thud with a bowl of porridge and tea without milk, followed an hour later by going back to school.

After slowly, bit by bit getting less and less tired through the week, and after forgetting this myself numerous times through the week, Friday was time for my birthday, probably the only one I'll see in Russia.

And so starts the second part of my blog. I really wasn't expecting much from my birthday, maybe a few happy birthdays here and there, and the odd Facebook message, but no. My host family went all out for this one, and to be honest it was quite overwhelming. Waking up and walking in to the kitchen to see a huge cake, and numerous banners adorning the room, then the unfortunacy (spell checker is saying that's not a word, but it definitely should be if it isn't) of having my birthday on a weekday. Once this had passed though, back to work, so to speak.

The Russian hospitality I was on about.

It was really nice to know that my birthday actually meant so much to a family I'd only met 2 and a half months previously, but that's what I've learnt Russian hospitality is all about.

Time to go to Neubrandenburg, armed with a table reservation, and an insatiable appetite, which was the start of another huge success, and the large turnout was very much appreciated. After this it was time for FM, although that remains understandably a little hazy.

With such a disregard towards choice of drinks the previous night, Saturday was the biggest waste of time ever. Ever. As much as I tried to persuade myself otherwise, a second consecutive night out was always going to be a ridiculous idea.

I've recently realised that there really isn't very long left on the Petrozavodsk clock, and even though I've been home quite recently (the start of this fairly mammoth blog post), I've still got mixed emotions about the fact that there isn't long left, whilst I do like the place, and it's more than adequate, I wouldn't say I'm not looking forward to being back home again, with all the comfort it brings and everything else. Coupled with the fact that after two years of English university life back home, being here just feels strange, and I find myself unoccupied for huge patches, obviously decreasing motivation all the time. Leaving me in a strange position of actually wanting to do academic things, and even feeling ever so slightly envious of friends back home battling through third year, something I never in a million years thought would happen after last Summers IC marathon. But anyway, for three months back home, I've got a lot of Russian to forget in that time...

After that, I think I've covered everything that I needed to. The temperature has definitely taken a turn for the worse recently, and the days are getting shorter and shorter. I've pencilled in this weekend to buy a hat. Fun times ahead. I'll update as and when news becomes available.

Спокойной ночи :D x

Passageway to...Sheffield (Part 1)

Right, brace yourselves, it's time to do the reading week update. So much has happened in between now and my last update, that I should really split it into three or even four bite sized blog posts. But no, two it shall be, it's a good job I don't have a dissertation next year...

I'm going to largely gloss over what happened between the last post and my journey. Actually. No I'm not. I'll begin with my trip to the Russian hairdressers; this was something I've always known was going to happen, but prolonged and prolonged until I looked completely ridiculous. Armed with a photograph of what I WANTED my new hair to look like, the woman grunted in agreement, and asked me to sit down whilst she attempted to recreate it. As it turned out, my new hair looked nothing of the sort; I'd just been through the Russian Haircut-o-matic 2000 and come out with hilariously short hair. Short hair which suddenly made my ears extremely cold.

Later that day was a great night at Lucy's/Zoya's flat. I'd spent half a week intrigued as to exactly this was going to entail. In the end it was a really really good night. Zoya had laid out a really good spread of proper Russian food and then we spent the rest of the night listening to the accordion player who'd come over for the night. That and a long and heavy karaoke session with Rob's guitar. After we'd done with that, we naturally decided to go to Begemot for to continue the night.

I must admit, recalling everything that's happened so far has been pretty hard, even though it was all on one day. But I'll skip to the good bit.

With as much Russian vodka as Estonian import law would permit (one litre :@), and a fully packed bag, it was time to set off. After a brief visit to the bar to say goodbyes and wish everyone good luck on their respective travels (some very impressive places), I boarded the bus from Petrozavodsk Avtovokzal and departed for St Petersburg. My ambitious plan of purposely getting only 3 hours sleep the night before "to make it easier to sleep on the bus", I can see only in hindsight, was totally and utterly flawed from the outset due to the fact that, as I've learnt, it's impossible to sleep on buses anyway. In short, I'm an idiot.

Arriving in St Petersburg at 6am, and already exhausted was not an ideal start, but I'd arrived into the city I'll be living in from February, might as well see if it's alright.

As it turns out, it's more than alright, it's brilliant. It has everything you could possibly need (including thousands of Subways). Sometimes this can be an issue though, as when the Russians sense that you are English, they seem to forget all of their Russian, refusing to speak to you in any language other than impossible to understand properly English. It's literally like talking to someone from Leeds.

The centre of St Petersburg was absolutely brilliant. I was finding it hard to keep myself and my heavy bag occupied for long enough though. Then I remembered that the Hermitage was free with a student card, kind of like a significantly more impressive IC. It was possibly the single most impressive building I've ever seen from the inside. Chandeliers and golden ornaments all over the place. A pretty good way of spending a few hours.

Journey to the centre of the Earth...on an escalator

After part one of St Petersburg came to a close, and once I'd navigated the St Petersburg metro system to Baltijski station, where my bus left to go to Latvia, I still had a bit of a wait left. The St Petersburg metro is absolutely ridiculous in every way. No underground system in the world has to be that deep, it takes literally five minutes to get from the top of an escalator to the bottom, that's just a waste of time, and by which point, the earth's core is presumably about to melt you, so trains arrive almost every thirty seconds. They're also the most ridiculously decorated metro stations I've ever seen. How about keeping your underground stations as shitholes and making Petrozavodsk mint? One thing I'm adamant about from my time so far in Russia, is that I think Russian and Economics is perhaps the exact degree Russia needs as a country.

The absolutely stunning Church of our Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg...at a stupid time in the morning...

Once on the bus, facing the prospect of my 14 hour journey to Riga, it set off, and I thought "Great, two seats to myself, ample sleeping opportunity". Absolutely not. 5 minutes down the road some hideously fat man took his seat (and most of mine), and all hope was lost.

The most interesting bit of my trip so far happened at the land border with Estonia at Ivangorod-Narva. At the Russian end everyone got off, took their baggage and got it x-ray scanned, all in the presence of numerous guards in winter camo gear and fucking stupid hats. Then when going through passport control, something strange happened.

The mardy woman at the counter took a few looks at my passport picture, me, and my visa picture. Granted, they're all different, but that shouldn't have required a lengthy interview, entirely in Russian for me to somehow try and persuade them that I am all those people on all those pictures. I knew a Russian haircut was a stupid idea, but I didn't think it would have THIS many knock on effects. Slightly terrified, very tired, and wanting to get back onto the bus, I did just that. On the other side of the border in Narva, the Estonian border guards were comparatively very nice. Just one man came round and collected all of our passports, not needing us to even move. Then we were back on our way again.

Arriving in Riga at a ridiculous hour in the morning was probably part of the reason why it was so shit. I was expecting good things from Riga, having heard quite a lot, but I was left thoroughly underwhelmed. Granted, I in the centre of the town for very long, about 3 or 4 hours, but it was probably enough. The English have well and truly taken hold here, for the worse. I can see how it probably WAS a very nice place, but when literally everything is either an Irish bar or a strip club, it's always going to lose a lot of its character.

Feeling very very tired by this point, I arrived at the airport, ready to be shipped into Liverpool on one of Stelios' orangey chariots. The flight felt like it passed in about 5 minutes. The safety announcements were sacked off at about the bit where they said "Even if you've heard this before".

I'm not going to lie, the Scouse accent was quite a welcoming way of reintroducing me to everything after 2 months of Russian. As was the man in his 30s protesting to the non-plussed bus driver that he was only 15.

After a lengthy, and unwanted run from near the cathedral to Lime Street, made the train with about a minute to spare. Then Sheffield beckoned.

I'll leave that there for now. over 1,200 words is far too long for "half" a blog post. More to come later, and I'm sure you'll be on the edge of your seats until then :D

До новых встреч x

Where's the Love and the Passion? Oh I Suppose that's Nothing to do with....Petrozavodsk

WHOOPS...completely couldn't be arsed to post anything for the past two and a half weeks, so time for a huge update on things. In fact, I've just realised that I've got over one third of the time I've been here to update everyone on. Hold on..

Right. It seems the last anyone is aware of was Carelian Faces, this feels like a very long time ago now. Such a long time that the temperature has dramatically dropped to levels that October really shouldn't see. It hit the hallowed level of minus two on Saturday, which even then, is a whole twenty degrees warmer than it's going to be at it's coldest, so I'm not really sure why I'm complaining.

Without actually remembering absolutely everything that's happened in the past two weeks, I'll just update events as I do remember them, so there's not really going to be any sense of chronology involved.

A couple of weeks ago was Marina's birthday, which involved many English people going over, imbibing from the horn of plenty, and having a lot of fun in the process. After eventually strolling back at near sunrise, it was yet another largely motionless Sunday.

It was so successful, that we were invited back the next week, which was then followed by a taxi to a very odd part of town, to an even odder building guarded by a man in a heavy coat with a lot of noise coming from inside it. Having been advised that it definitely wasn't worth the 10 minute walk to a cash machine if i still had 150 roubles (£3) left in my wallet, I most certainly was not disappointed by the ridiculously cheap drinks on offer inside. This also led to a humorous walk home alone, one of those where you start going for about 20 minutes, then realise you have no idea which direction you actually need to go. Needless to say, after an hour and a half, it was deemed a success.

Amongst the sea of weekend activity, there was bound to be one complete write off of a weekend. That was last weekend. I don't think I've ever been so bored in all my life. In fact, I left the house once, on Sunday, to make the long old walk to the GIPER market (sic.) knowing full well that all I wanted was a bag of crisps I could have got from the end of the road... But yeah, last weekend was truly terrible.

I have a feeling that it's the same for a lot of people here at the moment, when I say that we've all fallen into a routine, and it's a fairly monotonous one at that. Up at 9:30ish, lessons at 11:30, a paltry half hour lunch break, then at 3:30 go to the bar for a bit or go home, wash, rinse, repeat. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't starting to grate a bit, because I don't think I've ever really had any kind of routine, or plan for that matter. It's something that's new to me.

Another funny story (meaning I've done something stupid again). Having built somewhat of a reputation for being really bad at booking bus journeys, starting a couple of months ago when, upon trying to board the bus back to Leeds from London, was informed that I'd actually booked my ticket in the wrong direction fortified a couple of weeks ago when realising that I'd booked my bus ticket to Riga on the wrong day. Having rolled out, in perfect Russian may I add, that I wanted to book my bus to St Petersburg for this date, at this time, I was told that I could book it for 9:00 instead of 10:00. Now Russian doesn't have an AM or PM, it's "in the night" or "in the evening" or "in the morning", therefore I just assumed that I'd misunderstood the timetable, but no, I'd only gone and booked it in the wrong half of the day. I'm just going to stick to planes and trains in future.

Below: Don't know if you can read it properly, but if you look closely, this is a truck from Northampton....which was parked at the end of my road, which I thought was pretty decent

Also quite funny was the time a dog decided to board the trolleybus, causing mayhem, the conductor nearly had an aneurysm. I swear the stray dogs here are significantly more intelligent than a lot of the local drunks.

Oh, just remembered, with my cultural side about to split at the seams, I went to the operatic performance of "Евгений Онегин", or in a real alphabet "Eugene Onegin", at the town's main theatre, which was spectacular. The theatre was a work of art in itself, full of little ornamental design features everywhere, and a chandelier which probably replaced the much needed plans for a children's hospital. It was another reminder of how there is a very polarised society in Russia. The performance itself though was really good, if a little difficult to understand.

Below: The town's theatre, in a lot of its glory

As the weather gets greyer and drearier, seemingly so does the town. As the title of this entry refers to, apart from the big things they've clearly smashed their piggy banks with large hammers to afford, such as the cinema, the grey, cold, drizzly weather tends to enhance the negative aspects of the town, producing huge puddles across the city, allowing passing cars to greatly inconvenience you; making it start to go dark at absurd hours of day (I remember remarking yesterday how it was starting to go dark at 1:00...) and generally providing an unscenic backdrop to the more unsavoury parts of town. Unfortunately there seems a lack of love for this town by its people, demonstrated by the question I've been asked on numerous occasions "Why on earth did you choose Petrozavodsk?!", to which I've got to reply "Don't know love, looked pretty in the brochure though".

I appreciate that this doesn't really account for two weeks of not bothering to update this, but that's just the way it is. I've almost certainly forgotten quite a lot, but if it was important, I'd have surely remembered it. Anyway, I'll endevour to not forget this blog as much as I have done recently. It's reading week soon anyway, so there should be plenty to write about there.

Thank you for reading, and спокойны ночи :D x

Play It Coooool

Добрый вечер!

I do apologise for having almost neglected this for a week or so, but such is life. It's been quite a busy week with quite a lot having happened. I've been lurking around here for nearly a month now, which has frankly flown by so far.

As I've found recently, if you stop going to the bar every day after lectures, this has both its positives and negatives. Positively, you don't end up blowing your weekly budget on needless over-indulgence, although on the other hand, there is nothing whatsoever to do. Evenings can seemingly drag on forever and ever, hence why trying to keep as full a diary as possible has been the order of the day recently.

I seem to have left off from last time bemoaning my lack of passport. Surprisingly this was swiftly rectified, and is "safely" back in my possession. Following this, Friday brought the spectacular Carelian Faces. This brought a much appreciated wind down at the end of the week, in the form of an international music festival. Friday was the first day, which hosted a number of very decent acts. Unfortunately I don't know the names of any of them, but there was this one with a moderately attractive front-girl, who were impressive. After this, it was on to the after party, which was roughly where I left my sobriety at the cloakroom and forgot to pick it up on the way out.

Moving on to Saturday, waking up feeling decidedly atrocious, and in need of a monstrous lie in. Patched up, but still shuddery and worse for wear, soldiered on to the end of Sunday, arriving just in time to witness a strange, yet extremely energetic Finnish glam rock band.

Sunday was Rob and Ben's birthday meal, in a nice little restaurant in the middle of town, serving exclusively local dishes. Pricey as it may have been, it was supreme. Having never tasted elk before, I didn't really know what to expect, but it's surprisingly divine.

Yesterday night was also a very good one. We were offered tickets by our English speaking teacher, Sasha, to see a classical music concert. Not one to stay in when there's something vaguely entertaining afoot, I accepted. The concert itself was interesting, a mixture of different pieces, the last of which a very strange medley of styles I wasn't really sure what to make of. The conductor was one of Sasha's good friends, so we went to the bar afterwards for a few drinks. Turns out he's an extremely nice guy, with no shortage of interesting things to talk about (and he's a blue, Gal).

Anyway, enjoy your heatwave in Britain... The temperature here is dropping like a stone, and at the moment it's about 7 degrees, and unlikely to ever get a great deal warmer. I think there was talk of a 12 degree scorcher on the way soon, so I'll keep the moderate weather coat handy just in case. Other than that, I think that's about it for now.

Пока! x