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!
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