It's that time of the day where I decide that I'm going to update everyone with how things are going on the other side of the Iron Curtain. To tell you the truth, everything's going fine. 3 weeks into this mission and it's starting to feel much less like a holiday and everything's starting to look a lot more regular again; regularity being a welcome new addition to my life to be perfectly honest. Even if it does come in a strange flavour.
Since Thursday, the weather has continued to work overtime on making Petrozavodsk the new Atlantis. Apart from a bit of respite yesterday where there wasn't a cloud to be seen all day, it was gorgeous (albeit at 5 degrees). It's definitely shaping up very quickly to be exactly the kind of weather we were previously warned of.
Saturday was an enjoyable day. Having walked around the city once again, checking out the extremely impressive Alexander Nevsky church, something Alexei missed out on his tour, presumably for timekeeping reasons. With its golden domes and sparkly interior, this was about as Russian a church as you are possibly going to get. Its immediate vicinity was in quite a pleasant looking park, which itself was surrounded by a not so pleasant industrial district, once again, how Russian...
Below: The Alexander Nevsky church, with statue in front. At the base of the statue is a memorial to the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team, who were killed in a recent air disaster.
After this, several of us decided to make some more Russian friends by following Jono to a Couchsurfing meeting, which was, again, thoroughly enjoyable, even if we did form a rather large Angliskii corner, forcing many of the Russians to test out their English abilities!
As you may imagine, this made Sunday a complete write off, venturing out of the house only for orange juice and MAXI BACON crisps, just one member of an extremely exotic portfolio of Russian crisp flavours, standing alongside such titans as Mushrooms and Sour Cream, Crab and Red Caviar. On a vaguely food related note, I think I've made the biggest mistake of my life incorrectly admitting to my landlady that I can stand tvarog. Tvarog is a cottage cheese kind of thing daubed in sour cream, and something else, it's not an acquired taste, it's an acquired hatred, and it doesn't take long to acquire either.
Below: Flower arrangement as a memorial to the fallen Soviet soldiers in the great war. An eternal flame stands on the plinth behind.
Currently the university has my passport AGAIN. This is the result of yet another ridiculous bureaucratic requirement, meaning they initially provide you with a visa which falls about 3 weeks short of what we actually need. Reading between the diplomatic lines and stamps, I can only imagine that the fat bastards in Moscow are all too aware of this, and the necessity to give them another shed load of money, but it's fucking annoying. Thankfully my lack of organisation meant that I needed to get passport photos done in Russia, but those organised people who brought colour photos were told they needed to get up on Sunday and get some black and white ones done, they don't accept colour photos for whatever reason...
On a change of topic, this week brings much fun, I feel. Now in possession of a ticket to Carelian Faces, an international music festival, the weekend is shaping up nicely. £8 for a two day festival seems extremely reasonable, I feel that's not going to be my only expense this weekend though, if you know what I mean.
I think that'll do for now. Once again, thank you for reading! :D
Спокойни ночи x
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