In Which I Draw Broad and Sweeping Comparisons

I have come to the decision that if I were to write solely about “what we did this week” there would simply be no point in updating. That isn’t to say that we haven’t been doing interesting things, as there have been interesting things aplenty, it’s just that it would be very samey. So for this post I’m just playing the role of the comparative observer.

As many of you probably know, most big cities are rife with similar qualities, and despite its inherent “Russian-ness”, St. Petersburg is no exception to this rule. That is to say there are a lot of aspects that remind me of New York. However, there are some noticeable differences and right now, if I had to choose between Petersburg and New York based solely on features of the city (and not the people therein) Petersburg would win in a landslide, even in spite of my inability to communicate with anyone without them either immediately knowing I’m American and rolling their eyes and responding to my pitiful attempts at the simplest of conversation in English, or wondering if I have suffered severe head trauma. Allow me to elaborate:

1.) The Metro: Now it’s certainly not a perfect system. There are only 5 separate lines and a few dead zones that require a fair amount of walking or bus transfers, but hey, anyone here familiar with the West Village or any part of Manhattan west of 8^th Ave. for that matter? So it’s not much of a con. The worst part is that it closes at midnight. This wouldn’t be too awful if it weren’t for the fact that all bridges from the mainland are raised at 12:30 AM and stay that way until 4 AM. If you live on any of the outlying islands (like me) this is kind of a problem, because if you’re not in that station by midnight, you’d better hope you’ve got some friends with you because you're in for one hell of a wait, and even stuff in Petersburg closes SOME time. But, that having been said, the trains come basically every 5 minutes, no matter the hour. God help you if you want to take the subway after 9 PM in NY. It also only costs about $0.75 per ride. Can you say bonus? Plus you get to ride these awesome escalators for what feels like about a bajillion miles (roughly) underground. This is because rather than being wusses and going over bodies of water on bridges, the Russians just built their system to go underneath the largest river in the city. Bad. Ass. I’d take pictures, but I can’t because the metro system is (and I am not making this up) a guarded state secret, as it is their mass fallout shelter in case of nuclear war. And in spite of all this, my cell phone gets perfect reception everywhere in the stations except when the train is in motion. My calls in New York get dropped when I'm thinking about the subway.

2.) Homeless People: As we know, the homeless exist solely to stink, pester us for money, stink, pee in public, stink, touch themselves in public, stink, shout crazy shit in public, stink, and pretend they are not going to spend the change you might throw at them on crack, booze, or crack and booze. Also they smell funny. And in NY, you can’t spit without hitting roughly 8 per block (Although it’s probably the closest thing to a shower they’d ever get). My point is that in all the time I’ve spent walking around the major metropolitan areas in Petersburg, I could count the number of homeless people I’ve seen on one hand. Literally. I have seen 3. I don’t know if housing is just more affordable, or the Militsiya are doing an incredibly efficient "cleanup" job in the 2 hours of actual night time we get per day, but either way I’ve never lived more human-nuissance free. And before you start telling me how hard they have it and how some of them are honest and can’t get back on their feet because of the cruelty of the man, or mental problems, believe me when I say, from the bottom of my heart, I could not care less. All I care about is that my change is staying in my pocket, where it belongs and can be spent on things I want (because change is actually useful here) rather than being used as a bribe to get a smelly hobo out of my face.

3.) All this talk of dirt and cleanliness leads me to my final point, which is… well, dirt and cleanliness. 5 million people live in St. Petersburg, about 4,999,999 of them are smokers (and that one holdout is most likely in a permanent coma), and yet if you walk down Nevsky Prospekt, you’ll see a discarded cigarette butt maybe once or twice per block. In New York, it would probably be easier to use them as material from which one could pave roads. The same goes for assorted litter and general crap. In spite of those “clean up NY” trash cans you see on every corner, let’s face it, it would be an improvement if even half the population ever noticed that they existed, let alone used them. I’m not saying that Russia is perfect, as no place is. My point is that if a country with a government and bureaucratic structure as backwards-assed as Russia can accomplish simple tasks of “not letting their biggest cities slowly devolve into ratholes” then what’s our excuse?

I could go on and on, but I feel like these are the most important points. Another long post, but hey, has brevity ever been my forte? More updates when more stuff happens/occurs to me.

The Homestay: first impressions

Alright, so right now I'm basking in the fast internet glory that is the CIEE study lounge. I bought a "kartochka interneta" to get online at my homestay only to find out that the only thing worse than no internet, is internet via Russian phone lines. Anyway, things are happening at such an eclectic rate that I've already done way more than I can conscionably write in one post. Thusly, I'm simply going to pick up where I left off: Homestay.

So I'm living on Vasilievsky Island, which is to St. Petersburg what Queens is to Manhattan. You know you're somewhere exciting, but can't quite shake the feeling that all the action is happening several dozen miles away from where you are (some students walk to class, I ride public transportation for an hour). All of the buildings are Stalinist era apartments, which means they make lower east side tenements look like luxury suites. That, however is only the exterior. Inside they're actually quite nice. The apartment I'm in is small, but nice. I'll put up pictures... well, whenever I feel like it. I'm living with a woman named Natalya Semyonovna and her daughter Lina (who is a little older than me). Not to brag, but I think my family is the coolest one. They are indominatably cheerful, fantastic cooks, and Lina speaks some English, so if I really can't get points across, she saves my ass. They do seem to be the one family in Russia that doesn't drink (sad face) but you know, somehow, I think I'll manage. This of course made things a little awkward when I came home after throwing back several fairly strong Russian beers after our placement exams to find Lina at home. She immediately smelled it on me, realized I was at least a couple sheets to the wind, and proceeded to laugh at me for about 2 hours as I pitifully tried to string words together. It wasn't judgmental, she just thought it was hilarious.

Still, though, they are very patient as I try to fumble my way through speaking this language and I might even come back a few pounds heavier than I left. This is because I have eaten their fantastic cooking until I felt like I was going to throw up every night only to come to the terrifying realization that I'm only done with the first course. It's kind of rude not to clean your plate in Russia, so I strap my game face on and go to town on that shit. In spite of my desire to be a good guest, however, I have yet to completely consume an entire meal. Fortunately, another reason my family is so awesome is that they don't seem to mind.

Anyway, I'm gonna log off because I'm thinking in English way too damn much right now and that's going to make my life hell when I get home and have to switch gears. Anyhoo, do skoroy vstreche, and I will update soon.

Welcome to Russia! You're All Going To Die!

So I’m not entirely sure when I’m going to be able to upload this. I’m just writing in Word right now. I could have paid for internet at the hotel we stayed in for orientation, but it was 600 rubles for 24 hours, and the day that I pay almost one dollar per hour so I can jack around on facebook will be the day I simply set the rest of my money on fire, because it will mean I have lost all impulse control. I thought it was annoying when Boston Logan charged me 7. Anyway,I’m really getting ahead of myself here.

So my flight to Petersburg went off without a hitch. This is a good thing because as the day progressed and the students started to arrive, I saw that more and more of them were being made the airlines’ prison-bitches. Best case scenario was that bags were lost, worst case involved Heather (the other NYU-er) and her horror story about getting stranded in London for a day, having a credit card blocked, and losing about 600 dollars because apparently European airlines have about as much regard for customer service as soccer hooligans have for public order. Anyway, I was grateful to have arrived on time and with my bags (which still included all of the belongings I left with). The CIEE people took mercy on us throughout the orientation period and did not hold us to the “you only get to speak Russian” rule, which is good because given the jetlag I was capable of remembering approximately as much Russian as is in your average Yakov Smirnoff routine. Anyway, we had dinner at the hotel that night and I got my first exposure to Russian cuisine.

Let me take this moment to point out that if you are a vegetarian, you will wish you were dead if you ever decide to come to Russia. Pretty much everything is centered around meat, especially fish. This was where I got my first exposure to herring. If you’ve never had herring before, imagine eating a rubber salt-lick. On the plus side, I don’t think I have ever eaten healthier in my life, because if you don’t grab whatever happens to be on the buffet, whether you like it or not, you will starve, no question about it. But if you’re not into fish, sour cream, or raw vegetables, life becomes difficult. I have never eaten so much greenery in my life. But man cannot live by salad alone (thank god) so I can get sustenance from the salty, salty, salty meat. The same is not true of the few vegetarians in our group. This is why vegetarianism is silly.

Moving rapidly onward, after dinner the group was dismissed to do whatever. For about half the group that meant sleeping, but you all know me. So I decided to head down to the hotel bar and see if anyone was around. Did you know that looking like a lonely alcoholic is a great way to meet people? All it takes is one to notice you’re from the same group, you strike up a conversation along the lines of “holy crap we’re in Russia” and let the good old fashioned social lubricant do the rest. Of course, this is also how you spend about 1200 rubles in the course of 4 hours, but given the number of people I met, I regret nothing.

The next day and a half was spent on orientation. The main thesis of these presentations seemed to be “Welcome to Russia: Men, the cops are going to beat you down for no reason, and kiss your stuff goodbye, because it is as good as stolen. Women, everyone here is out to Rape you, then steal your stuff too.” When you hear the sentence “We’ve even had a couple instances of guys getting roofied and subsequently arrested,” you start to question the validity of the program. It was basically “Welcome to the breeding ground of all crime and corruption ever, now go enjoy our beautiful city!” To call the messages mixed would be putting it lightly. Anyway, after scaring the shit out of us for about 36 hours, they carted us off to our homestays. That, however, is where I'm going to have to leave things for now, because this post is monstrous and I know your attention spans. Do Svidanya!

Travel Day 1: Having left for Russia, I'm not actually in Russia

As I type this I am sitting at the desk of my dad's friends Dieter and Berit in Meinz, Germany. I said I was leaving for Russia today and that isn't a lie, it's just going to take about... 14 more hours before I'm in St. Petersburg. CIEE left an annoying enough arrival window that the only way I could make their deadline without taking approximately 60 flights was to take a one day layover in Germany. More on that in a bit.

One of the perks (for me, anyway) of my dad having to travel a lot for work is that sometimes I get to reap the benefits of his inordinate amount of frequent flier miles. Thusly, my parents being as awesome as they are, this was one of those occasions (given that it was going to be a real chore to get to Russia from Denver in the prescribed window). Long story short, I got to fly international first class. Now many of you may have flown first class before, but allow me to clue you in to the wonder that is INTERNATIONAL first class. I was immediately served champagne upon boarding the plane, and directed to my seat. It wasn't so much a seat, though, as it was a magical pod that makes all of your dreams come true. You know the part in the Mission Impossible movie (the original) where they come around and offer Jim Phelps small video cassettes to enjoy "the cinema of the Ukraine"? Take out the espionage and replace it with "movies that came out this year" and that's what they did. I selected "Taken", starring Liam Neeson, though in my opinion it should have been called Liam-Neeson-fucking-kills-everything-in-France-that-looks-at-him-funny. That's a story for another time though. The best part? My chair fully reclined into a bed. A fucking bed. I told my parents I wouldn't swear as much as usual in this blog, but holy jesus I had a fucking BED. On the AIRPLANE. I was also served all the free wine I could handle and a 3 course meal (salad, chicken in pepper sauce with quiche and mixed veggies, and a hot fudge sunday) as well as breakfast immediately before arrival. I almost wish I had never experienced this because now I am going to be maddeningly disappointed when I don't get it ever again. That's a lie though, I have never felt more like a celebrity in my life.

Anyhow, I eventually had to leave the luxury of United 932 and get on the train to Meinz from Frankfurt airport. If you've never been to this airport, picture the largest shopping mall you've ever been in, then tack on some terminals and a crap-ton of airplanes. And a train station. That's Frankfurt. Using the instructions my father carefully laid out for me, I bought my ticket to Meinz, headed down to the platform and boarded the train. Europe is a beautiful place. So beautiful, in fact, that I didn't actually realize I was on a train headed in the opposite direction of Meinz for about 4 stops. Fortunately, the trains here are easy once you know what the hell you're doing, so I just turned around and made it no problem.

If I could post pictures I would, but I forgot my camera when Berit and Dieter took me to a restaurant and a winebar in the center of Meinz, because it, like the rest of Europe, is picturesque beyond compare. I was treated to some good Schnitzel, some dark German beer, and a dry Riesling that in my opinion puts all other Rieslings to a crying shame, rectifiable only by running home to the arms of their Riesling mothers. It is now almost midnight and I need to be awake in four hours to make my flight that actually takes me to Russia, so пока и добрый вечер and I shall have more updates soon.

It Begins

Alright, here you have it.  This is where I put all of the wacky hijinks from St. Petersburg 2009.  Right now I'm waiting to go to the airport, so clearly we're not in hijinks town yet, but soon.  I'm just gonna use this spot to say that if I didn't get a chance to see you in the time I've been back, sorry about that.  I'll be back at the end of August and hopefully that error can be rectified.  In the meantime, feel free to check back here every so often and see if I've been pulled into a life of crime/prostitution yet or if I'm swimming for one more day.  Be seeing you!