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

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