| Second first impressions |
[18 Sep 2007|04:44pm] |
There were never any good old days,
They are today, they are tomorrow.
It’s a stupid thing we say,
Cursing tomorrow with sorrow.
--Gogol Bordello, “Ultimate”
I used to laugh when I would hear,
“May we meet next year in Jerusalem!”
But here I am walking through the gates
Of Jerusalem!
--some hymn
I sat in the airplane and watched the animated map as we took off from Dulles. The geography of my life flew by in a matter of minutes: Philadelphia, New York, Boston. And, several hours later, Bavaria, where we touched down and spent a few hours. We took off again and flew over Poland and the Baltic States; I watched the ground, but unlike in the cartoons, the borders and names of countries aren’t visible from the air in real life,and I couldn’t tell where the Polish villages ended and the Lithuanian ones began.
Finally, we made our descent to Petersburg. The disadvantage to approaching from Germany (as opposed to Finland, through which I’d always flown before) is that you don’t get to see the city from the air. No matter. As soon as I stepped off the plane and into the terminal, the flood of memories began: there was the table where I’d chatted with Bard administrators as I waited for the plane to America. There was the passport control booth I’d last passed through.
When we finally made it through passport control and retrieved our baggage, we were met by Lena, a twentysomething high school teacher who moonlights as our housing coordinator. She informed us that our bus was running late. I really didn’t care. I was unwashed, unshaven, discombobulated from the flight, and sitting with heavy luggage in the unlovely outskirts of southern Petersburg, but as my classmates observed, I was practically bouncing. A giant poster in the parking lot read “St. Petersburg: the city where dreams come true.” The fact that it was a Toyota ad didn’t make it any less true.
Finally the bus came, and we took the obligatory trip up Pulkovskoe shosse and Moskovsky Prospekt. The ugly-beautiful industrial outskirts turned into Brezhnev-era apartment blocks, then The bus dropped us off, one by one, with our host families. As the second to last, I had a bit of a wait, but finally I stepped off into the bus and into the rectangular dvor (central courtyard) of a 1970s Soviet-built housing complex, all concrete and tiles. My hostess, Mariya Alekseevna, met me outside the front door, and we headed up to the apartment.
Mariya Alekseevna turned out to be a very interesting person. She’s 67 or 68, a pensioner and former military engineer. Although she was born in Leningrad, she spent some time in Barnaul, working at a weapons factory (although, for security reasons, the workers were required to tell anyone who asked that they made frying pans). She has a great repertoire of political jokes.
So far I’ve seen much less of her husband, Oleg Andreevich. He’s very friendly and personable, from what little I’ve seen of him. He’s the head of his sadovostvo, a collective of dacha owners, and has spent most of his time taking care of all the inevitable business that accompanies the end of dacha season.
Mariya Alekseevna and Oleg Andreevich have two daughters, Ira and Natasha, both of whom live in Moscow. Ira studied art and then entered a monastery, where she paints icons. Natasha lives with her husband and three children, with whom she visited the apartment the other week.
The apartment itself is pretty nice. Although it’s in a Soviet building, it’s been well cared for (Mariya and Oleg have lived here since it was built in 1975) and renovated. My room is small but not tiny, with large windows that overlook the dvor and playground. The view is nice; I always associate Russian playgrounds with pictures from “A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union,” one of my first tastes of Russia, so the associations are positive. It’s also very lively, with cars dodging between potholes and other cars, children playing on the playground, and adults and teenagers sitting on the playground benches and doing things that are probably best not done around children. All around, birch trees grow, just as they have grown here since the time of Aleksandr Nevskii, just as they grew in ancient Novgorod, and that makes me happy.
My first night, I took a walk around to acquaint myself with the neighborhood. I admit that it was a bit of a shock at first. I was spoiled with my first host family in St. Petersburg: right in the historical center, less than ten minutes from the university. Now, I live in a Soviet concrete block by the Pionerskaya metro stop (near the top of the blue line), about forty minutes from the university and a good fifteen-minute walk from any architectural splendor. I’ve always loved the Soviet concrete blocks; they’re as much a part of Russia as any birch tree or onion dome. But it took a little while to get used to the idea that I was living in one.
My concrete block was surrounded by other concrete blocks, and it’s a convenient five minutes from the Pionerskaya metro stop. All around were kiosks selling pretty much anything you might want. I didn’t have any money, or a cell phone, or even a metro token—nothing, really, but my passport and my keys to get back into the apartment. I wasn’t sure where to find an ATM that I would be comfortable with using—two years ago, in my youthful recklessness, I would have pounced on the first anonymous freestanding ATM I found. The isolation and helplessness were a bit of a surprise in a city that I had come to regard as my own.
The next morning I headed out to meet Lena and the rest of the group for a tour of the city. I felt like this was a bit of an insult to my intelligence, and something that couldn’t possibly communicate anything new to me, aside from the location of the program office. As I walked along the familiar streets, I felt a strange mix of feelings: every square meter of the city had some happy memory connected to it, but I still didn’t feel entirely at home. Finally, after tea at a café off of Nevskii, we were free to go. As I hopped on the metro, all by myself, I felt a certan weight lift. I made my way back to Vasilievsky Island, my old stomping grounds, and strolled around. There were lots of new stores in the pedestrian street on 6th/7th line, but the street was essentially the same. The biggest shock was that where my favorite shaverma kiosk had once stood (along with several other kiosks selling alcohol, tobacco, techno music, and all the other finer things in life), there was nothing but empty sidewalk and a truck full of watermelons. So much for my promise to come back.
I was afraid, at first, that I’d built the city up in my mind too much in the past two years, that its attraction was more a matter of circumstance and that my new experiences could never live up to my old ones. Few things can live up to nostalgia: the grilled chicken at Brook’s House of Barbeque is the only one that comes to mind. And it’s always difficult getting adjusted to a new place. Starting new classes, negotiating space and food with a new host family, and getting sick from dehydration and jet lag are never fun, and it’s important to understand why you feel a certain way, and not jump to conclusions. As I made my way back to the apartment, fighting nausea on a seemingly endless metro ride after falling ill at school, I repeated to myself, like a mantra: “This could happen in Boston. This did happen in Boston.”
Now, a few weeks into the program and much more settled, I’ve calmed down. Petersburg is still Petersburg, for all its changes. It still has its beauty, magic, and mystique. I may be a bit older and more cautious, but I love St. Petersburg, and not a day doesn’t go by that I don’t take a moment to marvel at the sheer ubiquitous beauty of the city, the language, and the people. No matter how bad a day may be (and I haven’t had a really bad one yet), I know that I can walk out of the university and see St. Isaac’s and the Admiralty spire. Or, failing that, at least the birch trees outside my window. I can watch movies about St. Petersburg, and instead of painful longing, feel a sense of smugness and satisfaction: “I could step out the front door and be in that very spot in forty minutes.”
You can’t step in the same river twice, but damn, the water still feels good.*
*NB: the “river” is an abstract, rhetorically convienient river, not a reference to an actual river. I wouldn’t want to step into the Neva even once.
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| Back in the USSR (well, the RF) |
[18 Sep 2007|04:42pm] |
We promised ourselves not to stray from the straight path,
But it was our fate to do so.
And, if we’re honest, everyone is afraid of change,
But here it is anyway.
--Mashina Vremeni, “Povorot” (“Turn”)
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn, will be our delight,
‘Til by turning, turning, we come round right.
--“Simple Gifts”
I’m back.
It’s been a long two years since I left St. Petersburg. I left in a flurry of last-minute travel, museum visits, graduation festivities, and a certain mishap involving the St. Petersburg police and my digital camera (may it rest in peace). At the time, leaving the city just seemed like the logical next step in my college career: I would return to Hamilton, life would continue as it had been for the past two years, I would graduate after a year, and I’d see what would happen next.
I didn’t count on the fundamental changes in my life and the lives of those around me that would follow. When I arrived at Hamilton for my senior year, I wasn’t the same person that I had been before. The transition from the freedom of the world’s most beautiful city to the confines of a tiny liberal arts college was rather a shock to the system. Fortunately, my closest friends had all spent at least part of their junior year abroad, so we weathered the confinement in a place we had outgrown together. Moreover, my work ethic suffered greatly; I wanted to walk the streets of Petersburg and gallivant around the Ukrainian countryside, not read about them in dry history books. But after much procrastination and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I graduated, on time and with my academic record intact.
I spent the summer recuperating, and made my first tentative steps into a job search. This produced a part-time job with Bard College, promoting Smolny at colleges in the US. While this was an invaluable opportunity, it was short-term.
In January I moved up to Boston, my friend Karen having convinced me to join her for the second half of the year at City Year. Finally, things were looking up—I was on my own, young, and in the city. City Year was a great experience; although I was nervous about working with kids, it turned out to be a lot of fun. I made good friends and learned a thing or two. Boston was delightful, and I spent many enjoyable weekends partying in Allston, lounging on Copley Square, bicycling through the streets of Southie and the seaport district, and walking along the harbor.
But as much as I loved Boston, I kept seeing the reflection of St. Isaac’s Cathedral in the Charles River and wishing that the sun would set over the water instead of the land. The first few weekends invariably found me in Brighton, buying pel’meni or checking Russian DVDs out of the library. Although I was satisfied with my life and what I was doing, I still felt confined and frustrated when I read about my friends abroad. And although no one ever complained about my work at City Year, I still felt I wasn’t giving one hundred percent.
In April I learned that I had been accepted to the Flagship Program, a program for advanced language study, and that my studies would be fully financed by a fellowship. There were still minor hurdles, such as scrambling around the city to get a physical, and finding a summer job, but these were trifles. Finally, my life was back on track.
As I sat in my room in Pennsylvania and packed my bags, I realized that I was happier than I had been since I left Petersburg. For the first time in a long time, I listened to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in its entirety. I only do this when I’m truly joyful about something, and that hadn’t been the case for a long time. This feeling only grew as I rode the train down to Washington and met my classmates. Finally, here were people who spoke the same language as me, literally and figuratively. Who not only respected my passions, but shared them. Who understood my Russian-language jokes without explanation. And as I listened to the goals of the program and compared them to my goals and preparation, I felt that I was in the right place.
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| Soccer and the Well-Ordered Police State |
[14 Jun 2005|12:25pm] |
The restless, unwashed crowd pushed forward, squeezing me on every side. Below, a police officer shouted “Twenty more!” and the crowd pushed me through the narrow opening in the tall metal gates. Along with the rest of the group, I walked between two rows of glaring policemen in full riot gear, batons at the ready. There was nowhere else to go, only a bus sitting in front of us, ready to take us...who knows where? I sat on the bus, with visions of the Chechen deportation I’d just read about flitting melodramatically through my head. But, I thought, they don’t ethnically cleanse people for their soccer allegiance...right?
Last week, my classmate Erik suggested that we go see a soccer game—neither of us is that interested in soccer, but we figured it would be a good Petersburg cultural experience. Even more so, since the weekend’s game would be St. Petersburg’s Zenit versus Moscow’s Spartak—a rivalry at least as serious, if not more so, as any American sports rivalry you could think of.
However, we acted rather late in getting tickets, and all the home seats (the vast majority of the stadium, all but two or three sections) were sold. Erik learned that tickets for the away section would be on sale from 10 AM the day of the game (the game would start at 2). So we decided that he would go get tickets at 10 and that we’d meet at 1 at the stadium.
I overslept my 10:00 alarm on Saturday and woke up at 11:13 to a call from Erik. He informed me that to buy tickets, we needed our passports, so I had to show up in person.
“You must be kidding,” I said.
Cursing the ridiculous demands of Russian bureaucracy, muttering that I was just about ready to leave this country, I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed, and walked up 8th Line, down Srednii Prospekt, and across the bridge to the Petrovskii Stadium. The stadium itself is situated on a small island off the Petrograd Side, and most of the bridge leading to it was blocked by St. Petersburg police, most of whom looked younger than me, wearing riot gear: padded vests over their uniforms, with a nightstick tucked in the back and a helmet hanging on the chest, ready to be donned at the first sign of trouble. There were a few officers from OMON, the Special Purpose Section of the Police, the hard-core, no-kidding riot police, wearing black full-face helmets with visors. This might have seemed like overkill a few months ago, but by Russian standards, it’s pretty much par for the course. In a country where you might see a cop on the street carrying an assault rifle, saturating a high-stakes soccer game with riot police seems perfectly appropriate.
It began to seem even more appropriate as I turned my attention to my fellow attendees. It was a predominantly young, male crowd. Lots of the guys looked like they had suffered defending the honor of their team: I saw black eyes, missing teeth, cuts and bruises, and bandages. One young man’s hands were crisscrossed with stitched wounds and stained green with “zelyonka,” a Russian anti-infectious substance that falls somewhere between medicine and folk remedy. Many of the Moscow fans, distinguishable by their red and white clothing (Zenit’s colors are dark blue, light blue, and white) had undoubtedly arrived on the overnight train that morning, and were tired, unwashed, and hung over (or perhaps still drunk) from the ride.
Erik and I bought our tickets in the Moscow section, unwittingly committing ourselves to our foolish course of action. Erik wanted to get a Zenit scarf, but wisely decided to wait until after the game. As it was, neither of us was wearing anything that would betray an allegiance to one team (or city) or another. Finally, the gates opened and we walked in.
Beyond the front gates we were immediately stopped by more riot police, who patted us down very thoroughly and questioned me as to what I had in my pockets (cell phone, keys, sunglasses case, and student ID). Satisfied that I wasn’t dangerous, they let me proceed to Section 4, where I was sitting. There I walked through a metal detector and was patted down and questioned about my pockets again. I stopped to wait for Erik, but a policeman yelled at me to continue. So I climbed the stairs, where a third policemen made me show him the contents of my pockets, and finally made it to the grandstands, which consisted of concrete bleachers with metal bench seating and plastic seats bolted on top of the benches. The seats were divided into three tiers, yellow, orange, and red, and we were told to sit anywhere in the red (highest) section.
Erik and I picked a couple of seats in the first red row, right next to the fence separating it from the adjacent section. They weren’t the greatest seats: some distance away from the field, directly behind one of the goals, and directly under the (therefore illegible) scoreboard. It didn’t really matter, because in the end, the anthropological experience turned out to be far more interesting than the game itself.
Our bleachers filled up with pugnacious-looking young men as all the other sections filled up with a sea of blue flags, scarves, and clothing. A few men in blue uniforms ran out onto the field and started warming up, and our crowd began whistling—here, that’s equivalent to booing. When the Spartak players ran out, the Muscovites went wild, chanting, cheering and clapping. At about this point, Erik and I decided that we would cheer for Spartak. To do otherwise would have been unwise. We would have died. In pain.
Aside from the myriad fans, Zenit was supported by a flag-bedecked car, modified to look like a steam engine, that drove around the track periodically and carried the Zenit mascot, some sort of big cat. There was also an interesting compromise between a marching band and color guard: a group of about twenty young women wearing uniforms and carrying drums (mostly snares), who marched around the track and performed a drum cadence in front of various sections of fans. A couple of them also rode along on the train. I was expecting problems, but as they marched by our stands before the game, the Moscow fans cheered, in appreciation of the attractive girls if nothing else.
Finally the game began, with little fanfare—no national anthem or anything, they just seemed to segue into the game. I paid more attention to the fans. They dramatically turned their backs or made obscene gestures as the opposing players’ names were read. One charming young man behind us spouted an impressive stream-of-consciousness string of obscenities in response to any Zenit-related stimulus: the sight of the players on the field, the “Good Night, Dear Leningrad” song being played over the loudspeakers, or the announcement of the players’ names. There were occasional explosions and fireworks flying over the field. The crowd also had a very extensive and spirited collection of cheers, including numerous songs, sung without any sense of pitch but with great enthusiasm, and a long and involved call-and response cheer that they performed between two sections of Spartak fans. Some other selections:
Мы Спартак, а вы говно! (We're Spartak, and you're #$%*!)
Судья—говно! (the referee is #$%*!) (or worse)
Раз, два, три—Зенитушка, соси! (I won't even translate this one)
The game proceeded steadily. The ball spent a lot more time near Spartak’s goal than Zenit’s, and there were some close calls on both counts, but no one managed to score a goal. About halfway through the first half, a very large detachment of soldiers emerged (along with a few firemen), wearing camouflage fatigues and helmets and carrying batons, and stood in a long rank in front of the entire Moscow section. More came out and stood behind us. The comic incompetence with which they dressed their lines didn’t exactly cancel out the weirdness of being surrounded by armed soldiers.
Halftime came unexpectedly. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, a large proportion of the crowd produced flares that produced a loud pop and then spewed a long tongue of bright-red flame for about a minute (as well as a shower of ash onto anything and everything near it, including me). Others lit smoke bombs in a variety of colors and smells. The various pyrotechnics were held until (I infer) the flames became uncomfortably close, at which point they were thrown down to the track, at the feet of the waiting soldiers. Firemen ran around collecting them and putting them in large metal barrels.
Just as the crowd seemed to calm down a bit, the Zenit train and drum girls started making their way around the track. They obviously weren’t going to stop in front of our stands, but they couldn’t avoid passing. As they went by, I heard the clink of coins and other small objects being thrown at them. The smiles of the girls on the train were replaced by the middle finger as they sped away, and the drummers marched on by as quickly as they could. Erik said he saw something bounce off one of their shakos.
The game started up again and procceded as before. Then Spartak scored, and all hell broke loose. The Muscovites cheered, waved their arms, bumped into each other, and jumped up and down, instantly breaking loose or simply smashing dozens of plastic seats. Amazingly, they hadn’t exhausted their armories, and a whole new wave of flares (I don’t know how they got those in in the first place) lit up. They took up a new cheer:
Мы приехали чтобы победить! Чтобы победить! Чтобы победить!
We came here to win! To win! To win!
I was just happy that someone had scored a point; I didn’t feel like sitting through overtime in the hot sun with these nuts for any longer than necessary. They made the 700-level at...whatever that Philadelphia stadium is named, I don’t follow sports, look like a church service. I sank back into my half-hearted observation of the game and more enthusiastic observation of the crowd. But eventually, Zenit scored a point, and the remaining nine tenths of the stadium stood up and cheered like ours had done earlier. The Spartak fans were angry. They tossed more flares on the track, as well as fruits, a loaf of bread, and dozens of the broken plastic seats. I just despaired of ever getting out of there.
Yet for some reason, when the end of the game arrived, there was no overtime, just a tie. Suddenly, the Zenit stands began emptying out. Erik wondered aloud if Russians just don’t stay to watch overtime. But the players didn’t come back out, and soldiers started cleaning up the remaining stands. Now empty, the bleachers across from ours, at the other end of the stadium (read: the other cheap seats), had visibly suffered as ours had: they had as many gaps as the teeth of our fellow spectators. The rest of the stadium was empty, it was just our sections remaining, surrounded by armed guards, not going anywhere. What were they going to do? Were they going to lecture us on “our” behavior? Try to prosecute the troublemakers? Not let anyone out until there were confessions?
Erik and I guessed what was going on, and conceded the logic of keeping the fans separate. But we sat there for fifteen minutes, then a half hour, then an hour. In the meantime, the crowd got restless and threw more things down. Some of them, in the neighboring section, built a tower out of broken seats. The referee occasionally ran across the field, provoking loud comparisons to excrement and assertions about his sexual orientation. Two Zenit fans, presumably husband and wife, came out onto the track. Their very presence enraged the Spartak fans, and the man took a picture of his wife standing triumphantly in front of the caged beasts, who were shouting unprintable things and making obscene gestures. Then, fortunately, security led them away.
There was movement, but we couldn’t tell where to. Finally, we made our way to the section exit in the middle, where a big crush of people was forming. They were pushing up against the tall metal gates of the entrance, which were being periodically opened by the cops.
As we got closer, we saw that the fans were being loaded onto buses at the bottom of the stairs. Where were they going to take us? This was a bit more than we’d bargained for. Finally Eric and I pushed/were pushed to the front, squeezed through the gate, and boarded a bus, which sat in place for a long time before departing. We went on a long circuit around the city, avoiding the center and areas of heavy traffic. We crossed the Petrograd Side and went north along the Pesochnaya embankment, then crossed over to Kamenny Island and again to the north bank of the Neva, where we contined east along the embankment. The crowd was pretty tired by this point, but still maintained the spirit to hold their Spartak scarves out the window and make obscene gestures (which the local crowd enthusiastically returned) or, if we drove by women, to smile happily and wave. When we turned a corner, I realized that we were part of a whole convoy, with a police car, bus full of riot police, and several vans. I was less worried by this point and much more upset—after all, I’d been held for a whole hour and forced on a long bus ride to...well, I wasn’t sure where yet. It was, by no means, anything horrible, but nonetheless, it’s a technical violation of human rights, I think.
We crossed the Liteiny Bridge back into the center but continued our tortuous route past the Tauride Palace and the Smolny Cathedral and, finally, to Moscow Station, whence depart all trains to Moscow (funny how that works). This was pretty close to the center, with lots of Zenit fans yelling and waving flags out their car windows, and I started to wonder at the wisdom of the police in bringing us here. But they had plenty of reinforcement, blocking traffic in the Square of the Uprising to let us through. One by one, the buses stopped in front of the station to discharge us. Finally I climbed off the bus, but I wasn’t free yet. There were literally hundreds of police officers (again, many younger than me, and this time largely female) standing shoulder-to-shoulder in two rows and wearing riot gear. I glared at them as I walked between the two rows and through the arch into the narrow walled courtyard alongside the station.
“Okay, great,” I figured, “they’ve got the situation contained, now I can hop on the Metro and go home.” But they’d roped off half the courtyard for the Muscovites, and weren’t letting anyone go farther. Furthermore, the entrances to the station were blocked. I’d had enough. I walked up to one of the officers standing by the rope and said, in the most righteously indignant voice I could muster, “Excuse me. I live here, and I just need to get to the Metro and go home.” Then I had to produce my passport and show the cop my Petersburg registration, at which point he told me to climb under the rope and go. So I did.
Finally free, I stopped at a kiosk and chugged a bottle of water to rehydrate, then finally got on the Metro. As we descended the escalator, Erik checked his watch and commented that it had been two hours since the game ended.
I don’t know what happened after we left...maybe they just held the Muscovites in the courtyard until their trains left in the evening. I have no idea. On one hand, the whole situation was ridiculous—the city government shouldn’t be able to abduct a whole section of spectators just for being from Moscow and essentially run them out of town on a rail. On the other hand, the spectators hadn’t exactly helped their own case with their behavior. And you shouldn’t have to show your passport to get into a soccer game, much less to get out again. Ah, Russsia...
I suppose that, in writing this, I risk propagating the image of the “barbaric, uncivilized Russian.” Please don’t read it that way. Remember that I’m writing about sports fans, and I don’t think any country, people, or region should be judged on the basis of its sports fans—I certainly wouldn’t want to be judged based on ours. Nonetheless, there are serious differences between their sports fans and ours, which may be telling, but (disclaimer) I’m not a professional sociologist, so that’s beyond my purview.
As I write this, I have two weeks left in this country. I can’t wait to get back home, but Wallingford will definitely be less...interesting, in every sense of the word, than Petersburg.
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| Стихи/Poetry |
[29 Apr 2005|02:28pm] |
Если вы бываете на Набережной Лейтенанта Шмидта и смотрите на теплоходы там, может быть, вы заметили что в последние дни там стоит «Нарком Пахомов». Название это, будучи таким сплошным советским пережитком, очень забавлял нас с преподавательницей в протяжении прошлого семестра. Разумеется, что я радовался возвращению Пахомова. Оно так трогало меня, что я был побуждён сочинить стихи в его честь. Я вообще редко пишу стихи, но почему-то мне легче делать это по-русски чем по-английски. Может быть благодаря тому, что русские слова склоняются. Или, пожалуй, просто благодаря тому, что почти никто из моих близких и родных не понимает русский язык.
(v. 2.0: поправил ошибки)
Наркому Пахомову
Из всех имён истории нашей
Ни одно не так блестяще—
Ни Онегин, ни Обломов—
Как наш любимый друг Пахомов.
По поверхности Невы-реки
Плавают всякие корабли,
Лодки, медленный паром,
И почтеннейший наш Нарком.
С красной на носу звездой
Водя его вон за прибой,
Не яичница, а божий дар
Есть наш Народный Коммиссар.
Имеет роскощей избыток
Сей советский пережиток.
Славнее буксиров и паромов—
Да Здравствует Нарком Пахомов!
For those of you who don't speak Russian:
Last semester there was a cruise liner, the “Narkom Pakhomov,” or “People’s Commissar Pakhomov,” moored off of the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment in front of Smolny. This name, a blatant throwback to Soviet days, amused my professor and me to no end. A few days ago (on my birthday, no less) Narkom Pakhomov returned, much to my delight. I was so moved that I wrote a poem (humorous, naturally) in honor of its return—only my second poem in Russian. I don’t feel like translating it, because it will come out badly. If you’re really interested you can try feeding it through an internet translation site, then blame the site instead of me when the translation isn’t funny, or even comprehensible. That’s fine.
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| 21--a very Russian birthday |
[27 Apr 2005|06:51pm] |
Yes, as of today I've spent twenty-one years on this earth. Not too shabby. Of course, the main legal significance of this milestone is, for me, moot, since I've been in Russia for about 8 months now. I'm not planning anything in particular, although perhaps I'll get together with some friends tonight. I definitely plan not to follow the path of some (or one, at least) of my friends here on their twenty-first birthdays...that path leads to the dark side. Or, at least, the bathroom.
The cruise liner "People's Commissar Pakhomov" was moored in front of Smolny today. That ridiculous Soviet name amused us to no end in grammar last semester, and I was glad to see her (him? Russian grammar and ship terminology are complicated) again.
In other news, I'm working on a trip to the Baltic States over the three-day weekend that's coming up, in honor of May 1, the "Holiday of Labor and Spring" as it's politically-correctly known in these post-Soviet days. Along with three other students, I plan to visit Vilnius, capital of Lithuania (one of my ancestral lands!) and Riga, capital of Latvia (where I'll go to a western-style restaurant and have a decent hamburger to celebrate my birthday). Hopefully I can make it to the Ethnographic Museum again, and get some good walking in around the old city.
Today I went to buy tickets for the train back (it's complicated) from Vilnius to Petersburg. This time, unlike my first go-around with the tickets to Ukraine, I checked carefully to make sure that the train didn't run through Belarus. The information desk assured me that it didn't, and I went to get the tickets. I was planning on buying them for my three friends as well, to make life simpler. Right.
To buy a Russian train ticket, generally, you need your passport. This is an old Soviet practice, I'm sure, not to mention the obvious benefits against TERRORISM. I've seen enough exceptions to this rule to believe that it's not carved in stone; I've bought tickets with my student ID before, or with a spravka (document substituting for my passport, which was being registered). On such short notice, I hadn't had time to collect my friends' passports.
I went to the ticket window (after a long line, naturally) and asked for four tickets from Vilnius to St. Petersburg on May 2, third class. The first question was "Where are the other passports?" I argued for a minute, hoping for some stupid-foreigner sympathy, but the woman at the counter was insistent. She did say that I could get my friends' passport numbers and buy tickets with them, so I stepped aside and pulled out my cell phone.
About ten minutes later I had everyone's passport number written down. I went back to the window and prepared to read the information that I'd collected, but the cashier motioned for me to hand her the paper. A bit frazzled and not consciously realizing that my note-taking priorities, scribblings, handwriting, and the Latin alphabet would hopelessly complicate semiosis, I handed it over.
She laughed disdainfully.
"I'm not going to make these tickets," she declared, for the first time. She had some kind of pathological aversion, it seems, to the possibility of a misspelled name. I had to yell twice that I would read the information aloud. "Okay, try," she told me, handing back the paper.
After putting my information in, she typed in the information for Vlad, a Russian-American. Although his name is Russian, and fits perfectly into Russian phonemes, she read it aloud a few times. Then I gave her the passport number of my second friend, Erik, and started to spell his name. I got as far as the first letter: "E oborotnoye."
"What?" It was, apparently, inconceivable that any name could start with "e oborotnoye." I had to repeat it about three times, with the woman next in line helpfully shouting along with me. Having successfully comprehended the first letter of Erik's name, the cashier announced, inevitably, "I'm not going to make these tickets."
"Because of one letter?" I asked, angry and incredulous. She explained, again, that a spelling error would have some sort of dire consequences. I don't remember exactly where the conversation went from there, but for some reason she acquiesced and I went back to dictating my friend's last name. That wasn't helpful, since it contains sounds ("j," for instance) that don't exist in Russian and have to be simulated with strange letter combinations. After hacking our way through the dark forest of Erik's last name, I read off the information for my third friend, Richard. This was simpler, but still far, far harder than it really needed to be. When all the information was there, she told me how much it would cost, and walked away.
This isn't the first time that that's happened to me: at some juncture in the purchase of a train ticket in Russia, the cashier just walks off. I don't think it's a coincidence. I just stood there, money in hand, leaning exasperatedly on the shelf in front of the window and trying to let the people in the ever-growing line see that, yes, I was angry, too! Finally, after an unreasonably long interval, the cashier came back with her boss, who played good cop and informed me that, unfortunately, train tickets for foreign passengers could only be sold in the presence of the actual passport, or a copy thereof. Naturally, this was to prevent misspellings. It would have been nice if they would have invented (or decided to enforce) that rule a few minutes earlier, it would have saved everyone a lot of time. I collected my passport and left empty-handed.
So, in conclusion, I've finally found the one aspect in which Amtrak is better than the Russian railroad. Back home I would have done that online in about ten minutes. And no one would have laughed at me. Let me just conclude by saying that, if the Chechens couldn't spell, there would be no terrorism in Russia.
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| Lviv, Part II (end of January) |
[22 Apr 2005|12:51pm] |
Sunday, my second day in Lviv, was very busy. I got up relatively early, while the hot water was still running, to take a shower. However, I discovered that, towards the end of hot water time, the term “hot” is relative. The water didn’t carry the cold of the Ukrainian winter in through the pipes, but it certainly wasn’t hot. The logistics of the situation were further complicated by the absence of a shower curtain—given the strength of the water flow, it wasn’t a huge issue, but the floor still got wet.
I headed out in search of breakfast around 10 AM. The restaurant that supposedly served breakfast wasn’t open, so, feeling shameful, I went to McDonald’s. I didn’t actually buy anything there, but must admit that it was the lack of a breakfast menu, and not my own moral strength, that kept me from doing so. I went to a place down the street and got a hot chocolate and a really bad “Big Mak,” and then continued wandering about the city and looking at the beautiful architecture. Some of the more interesting things I saw were a park with two whole rows of trees adorned with Yuschenko ribbons, and a wall where worn-away paint revealed Polish signs. Near the main square I saw a pair of old-school Soviet soda vending machines, supposedly selling drinks with syrup for 25 kopeks, or wiithout for 10. Given the age of the machines, and the fact that I had no Soviet currency on me (besides which, 25 Ukrainian kopeks today is worth less than a nickel), I didn’t even try them.
Drifting over to the east of the center, I found a craft market, and wandered around for a bit looking at the crafts. I ended up buying a Ukrainian peasant shirt, made from white linen with hand-embroidered collar and cuffs, from an old woman. We negotiated in a broken Ukrainian/Russian mix, but figured it all out eventually. Carrying my prize, I walked over to the Arsenal Museum, located in the old city fortifications. Again, not being too up-to-date on my weapons terminology, I could only guess or infer the identity of a lot of things. There were a lot of swords, spears, old guns, and even a few cannon. I saw a few maces, made out of glass, apparently intended for display and parade use by the Cossacks. There were weapons from the Middle East and Japan, which seemed odd and out of place in western Ukraine. Towards the end, there was a bizarre display that used holographs to show military medals in three dimensions, suspended in a ghostly green ether. Leaving the museum, I saw the gift shop next door, where you could have your picture taken with various weapons and in various military uniforms, including, I was amazed to see, an SS officer’s uniform. This really underscored the fact that “political correctness” is a very new concept in this part of the world; it surprised me to find that sort of thing in a city that was occupied by Nazis, and even had its own Jewish ghetto.
I wandered back through the center and to the Apothecary Museum, one of the most engaging museums I visited. It’s connected to an actual, working drugstore, which has been working as such continuously since the eighteenth century. The front room, the actual drugstore, has a very modern glassed-in counter with brightly colored corporate promotion posters and drug boxes, incongruously situated among wooden drawers labeled with ominous-sounding Latin names, mortars and pestles, and various antique implements of the trade. I bought a ticket and walked back into the museum proper. The first room looked like the laboratory of a mad scientist, with rows upon rows of balances, mortars and pestles, test tubes, pill presses, bottles, flasks, and vases. The next room displayed various documents and photographs from the pharmaceutical history of the region, including diplomas granted on the authority of both Nicholas II of Russia and Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary (or, as the diploma had it, “Franciscus Iosephus I”). Walking past more bottles and machines, I ended up outside on a walkway over the central courtyard, along a wall decorated with paintings of the city’s apothecaries in their heyday and famous men of science, such as Hippocrates and Avicenna. Walking back inside, I entered a room that was apparently designed to illustrate an earlier stage of development of pharmacology: alchemy. Here, the effect wasn’t so much “mad scientist” as “Harry Potter.” Flasks sat on a simulated fire under a chart of signs used by alchemists, while a stuffed owl, blowfish, and lizard stared at me from their spots on the ceiling. I walked down into the basement, where pharmacists once stored ingredients, and looked at more barrels, tools, and bottles, as well as a scary-looking mannequin of a medieval Igor look-alike churning some chemicals. I walked back through the museum and out onto the street again.
Back on the main square, I paused to take pictures of a few of the homes there, then walked into the city historical museum, which was a display of various valuables and exiquisite objects of applied art, housed in what used to be the rooms of one of the city’s first families. The best thing I saw there was a medal of the “Order of Franz Josef.” I actually shelled out one hryvna to take a picture (the musuem charged per frame) of the bejeweled golden star with “FJ” written in enamel in the center.
Leaving the museum, I went to lunch at one of Lviv’s delightful cheap pizza joints. I stumbled through my order in Ukrainian, much to the amusement of the cashier, but got my food. I sat and read my guidebook as I ate, warmed up, and rested my feet. Finally I headed out again, this time towards the Dominican Church and an organ concert.
The Dominican Church is so called because it was built by the Dominican order before becoming Uniate. It’s very ornate, full of gold-painted wood. I walked in, bought a ticket, filed past the painting of the Pope, and took a seat with a good view of the organ. The other seats around me filled up, and soon the concert started. The selection was excellent—the organist played, among other things, Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” (albeit in abbreviated form—it was, after all, a one-hour concert), Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor,” and the “Trumpet Voluntary,” complete with a trumpeter. There were also a couple of songs with a vocalist. Overall, it was very beautiful, and brought tears to my eyes at moments. After an hour, the concert ended. There must have been a service immediately afterwards, because a whole new wave of people flooded into the church; I took a couple of pictures in the midst of the chaos before leaving.
From the church I walked up to the “High Castle,” the highest hill in Lviv, and site of its old fortress. It was pretty slippery, but soon I got to the top, where a threadbare Ukrainian flag waved in the middle of a circular platform. Beneath, the whole city spread out around me. I could see the buildings in the center, most remarkably the towers of the Latin Church and city hall, and the dome of the Dominican Church. On the other side, I could see the train station, and beyond that, a whole Lviv that I hadn’t explored, one made up not of beautiful baroque buildings, but Soviet blocks and factories.
Coming down from the hill, I tried to take the trolley to the train station to arrange transportation to my next destination, but got on the trolley going the wrong way. I didn’t realize that for a long time. Meanwhile, I sat across the aisle from an old man, not entirely in a sound state of mind, whose enthusiastic monologue (half Ukrainian, half Russian, wholly unintelligible) soon became a one-sided dialogue with me. If I looked away, he’d tap me on the arm. Finally, we got to the end of the line, and I tried to move away as I got off, but he followed after me. “Young man! Young man!” About this time I realized that I’d gone the wrong way. I took stock of the situation: as far away from the train station as was possible on the trolley, off in some unknown corner of Lviv, stuck listening to an apparently endless life story that I didn’t even understand. I didn’t want to hurt the man, and I wasn’t going anywhere fast, so I stood and listened to him for about ten minutes. He actually stopped at a couple of points, to ask if I understood Russian or Ukrainian, and to ask if I knew what the Communist Party of Soviet Ukraine was, but other than that, he just talked continuously, about the Great Patriotic War, about Odessa, and about his first, favorite teacher, Alexander Kirillovich Rumyantsev. I slowly arrived at the conclusion that this story had no real beginning, end, logical stopping points, or even internal logic, so I just waited for a moment when the man seemed happy enough, and told him that I had to go. To my great relief, he wasn’t upset. He just shook my hand and told me not to be in a hurry to get married. As he walked away, he blew me a kiss and yelled something to the effect of “One hundred years without renovation, and after that, what happens, happens!”, then walked off into the night. I wandered around for a bit, then got on the next trolley to the train station.
Unfortunately, when I got there, I couldn’t figure out in the darkness what was what, couldn’t figure out where the station was. I was cold, hungry, and a bit lonely, so I just headed back to the center for dinner without doing anything. This later turned out to be a mistake. Anyway, I went back to the center and had a lovely dinner in another Ukrainian folk restaurant: bread, borshch, and chicken Kiev, all for about 5 bucks. After that I went to a different, more professional internet cafe, where I called my parents, then wrote a few e-mails. After that I walked home through the dark streets and went to bed.
I got up Monday morning, showered, and checked out. Lugging my bags with me, I searched for the marshrutka that runs to the bus station—it took me a while to find it, but I grabbed it farther south, and got to the station. This is where my not-so-carefully laid plan started to fall apart. Lviv is not Moscow, Petersburg, or Kiev, where you can show up at any given moment and hop on a bus or train to any given city; the provincial capital of Lviv is nonetheless not quite so well connected as the first, second, and third cities of the Soviet Union. Moreover, my destination, Kamyanets-Podilsky (despite the fact that it is the cultural capital of its own particular region) isn’t exactly a major city. So I shouldn’t have been so shocked when I showed up at the bus station (located well outside the historical center and in the Soviet-blocks-and-factories sector) at 11:00, only to find that the only bus to my destination leaves at 10:00. Oops. I spent the next couple of hours scrambling around on marshrutki and trolleys, going to the train station (where I was equally out of luck), back to the bus station, where I bought a ticket for the next day’s bus and checked my bags, and back to the center for lunch, and an attempt to salvage something from the day. I should have just gone back to the hotel and gotten a room for another night, but didn’t, for various stupid reasons—I’d already pulled up stakes in Lviv, I wasn’t too confident in my ability to get from the hotel to the train station by 10:00 the next morning, didn’t want to admit to a mistake, stupid stuff like that. So I decided to just spend the night at the bus station. I had a lot of time to kill before then. It was early in the week, and already somewhat late in the day, so lots of museums and the like were closed. I wandered around the city for a while, then went to the most literal “internet cafe” ever—it was an actual cafe with a couple of computers and Internet access. Unfortunately it was really slow, but that helped me kill more time. Eventually, I headed back to the train station, where I spent a long, boring, lonely night. But that’s life. Some days you’re the hero, and some days you’re the goat. The previous two days in Lviv had been delightful. It’s an exquisitely beautiful city, with something to recommend it to everyone I know—and among my diverse family and friends, that’s really saying something. I hope I’ll return someday, in warmer weather, and firmer travel arrangements.
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| From Kiev to Lviv |
[16 Mar 2005|03:06pm] |
From the opera house I walked past the Great Gate one more time on the way to the metro station, where I transferred to the neighboring station on a different line: the “Zoloti Vorota” (Golden Gates) station. That was one of the nicest metro stations I’ve seen; the ceilings and arches were decorated with mosaics in the style of Russian icons, and the metal letters spelling out the station name on the wall were in an old Slavic script rather than the usual Soviet one. I paused to take a couple of photos, since that didn’t seem to be as strictly prohibited in Kiev as in Petersburg. Nobody complained.
At the train station I picked up my bags and headed for my train. I got there about the same time as my coupé neighbors, and after stowing our luggage and changing, we settled in and got acquainted. Volodymyr (Volodya) was the general manager of a window and door company in Lviv, which he ran with his wife Ulyana and friend Nikolai (Kolya). The three were returning from a trade show in eastern Ukraine (they showed me, with amusement, a poster they’d gotten from one of the vendors, that turned out to be pornographic). Ulyana pulled out the basket of food and made sandwiches with sausage, ketchup, and mayonnaise, and we chatted as we ate. Like everyone in Lviv, their first language was Ukrainian, and although they spoke Russian with pleasure, they weren’t used to it; occasionally they’d have to search for a word, and Ulyana spoke with a definite Ukrainian accent, prouncing “g” as “h.” They had a lot of the usual questions about America: the standard of living, how much money people make, whether people are religious, and so forth. As an extreme example of the wealth differential in America, I told them about West Virginia and the Appalachians, something I found myself doing repeatedly throughout my travels. I asked them about their language education: I’d heard that Ukrainian was looked down upon during Soviet times and pushed aside, but I’d seen much more than I’d expected, even dating to the Soviet period. They said that they’d spoken Ukrainian at home and at school, but also had to take Russian-language classes. In retrospect, I wonder how much that had to do with the simple fact that they were from Lviv. They also seemed to be fundamentalist Christians—they mentioned the Mormons, although I don’t know if they belonged to the faith. When we lamented the state of the world and the fact that most “Christians” don’t really live by the teachings of Christ, Kolya said that the only way to understand them is to attentively read the Bible.
We chatted until around 2 AM, then decided more or less by consensus to go to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later, it was already light out. We gathered our sheets up and sat down again, then Volodymyr pulled out a little shoeshine kit and applied polish to his shoes. He offered it to me and I followed suit. I gave them Liberty Bell pins from my stash of American souvenirs, and Volodymyr handed me his business card—Ukrainian on one side, English on the other. When the train pulled in, we piled out (leaving the poster behind) and walked to the train station together before saying our goodbyes.
In the station, I got my bearings. It was immediately obvious that I was dealing with a different scale from Kiev—although Lviv is THE major city of western Ukraine, the station was much smaller and older, and the lists of arriving and departing trains much shorter. Slightly nervous after what happened in Kiev, I bought a phone card and set about calling the hotels in my guidebook. Hotel Lviv, probably the cheapest, didn’t answer, but when I called the Hotel Kiev, the lady at the desk told me that there were rooms available, I should just show up. Thrilled just to have found a hotel room, I didn’t bother following up on the Lviv. I grabbed a city map at one of the kiosks and headed out along the main street—on foot, past the waiting taxis and their very solicitous drivers—and to the hotel, which was located in a stark Stalinist building. Singles there turned out to be acceptably inexpensive. I filled out the registration card, and the receptionist showed me three rooms. I picked one and settled in—it was small, but the TV worked, and it was right in the center. Unfortunately, it was already about 10 AM and there was no hot water anymore, so I briskly washed my face off and headed out into the city.
On one hand, the list of things to see in Lviv is relatively short. On the other hand, pretty much everything there is worth seeing—in the center and surrounding area, you can just wander through the old city and stare up at the buildings, marveling at the beautiful and detailed architecture. I walked past a park, where children were sledding. I was impressed with their boldness—on a rather large hill, they’d worn a sled run into the snow, repeated use scraping the snow down to the layer of very slick ice below. They built up some serious speed.
The first major sight I visited was St. George’s Cathedral, a bright yellow Uniate church built in a baroque style. The Pope visited this church when he traveled to Ukraine recently. Having never seen a Uniate church before, I entered curiously. There was a picture of the Pope, and pews, and the layout of the church seemed rather Catholic, but other than that it seemed quite Orthodox. There were icons, with rushniki (traditional Ukrainian embroidered cloths) draped over them, and as in an orthodox Orthodox church, there were smaller chapels located about the church besides the main one; a man knelt and prayed in front of one to the right of the altar. Although there is no iconostasis dividing the congregation from the sanctuary in Uniate churches (or so I’m told), there was still a large decorated panel at the front of the church.
I left and walked past Ivano-Franko Park and a graffiti-covered statue and found myself in front of the stately premises of the University of Lviv. The peach-colored building was adorned with Corinthian columns and statues, apparently embodying the various arts and sciences studied there (one was holding a gear). There were obviously lots of students walking around the area. From there I headed into the city center, and soon concurred with the assertion that the city was the most beautiful in Ukraine (given that it was only the second city I’d been in, this is perhaps not the most sound conclusion, but further experience supported it).
I was going to say, when I first contemplated this account, that Lviv is not a very Ukrainian city. However, that would be false; even though it’s only been a part of Ukraine for about 60 years (in terms of modern state boundaries, for what that’s worth), Lviv’s citizens consider it the most Ukrainian part of the country, and it was the only city I visited where everyone spoke Ukrainian and only reluctantly (if at all) reverted to Russian. Then I was going to say that it’s not a very Slavic city, but I have to reconsider that, too...after all, the Poles, who until recently ruled Lviv, are Slavs too. Admittedly, the Austrians and Hungarians, who also held sway for a long time, were not, and their influence is perhaps the most visible.
Suffice to say that Lviv isn’t what you would expect in a predominantly East Slavic nation. What this means in practical terms is that, instead of winding streets and onion-domed churches, the center is laid out in something of a grid radiating outwards from a square, and the buildings are built in baroque style (most date to the 1600s and 1700s). Although subdued, and just a bit run down, the buildings often displayed quite a range of color. The most amazing part of all was the detail with which they were decorated...again, my architectural vocabulary fails me, but there were beautiful facades, cornices, archways, and balconies...if it’s not exactly true that no surface was left undecorated, then one can at least say that nothing was overlooked. Although there were signs for businesses on many buildings, in the bright colors of capitalism, even they were relatively discreet—I didn’t see any of the garbage that sadly adorns buildings in other cities, like billboards, giant illuminated signs with flashing lights, or large panels of color-changing LEDs. Even the McDonald’s was relatively inconspicuous, occupying the bottom floor of an innocuous modern building with only a couple of signs hanging off the side. All in all, the city is the way I imagine Petersburg to have been a few years ago.
I made my way to the center, where I encountered yet another statue of Taras Shevchenko...this one had a large metal piece of art swooping out behind it, emblazoned with scenes of Ukrainian history and faith, and topped by an angel. Closer to the main square I saw the imposing Latin Cathedral, a neo-Gothic Roman Catholic church. Its steeple towered above the neighboring buildings. Most interesting was the memorial plaque on the side commemorating the Pope’s visit—beneath the life-like relief of the Pope, the text of the plaque was in Latin, Ukrainian, and Polish (the name “Lviv,” which comes from the Ukrainian word for “lion,” was rendered in Latin as “Leopoli”).
Finally I made it to Market Square, the center of the city. In the middle stood a square building with a tall square clock tower—the city government building. Alongside stood dry fountains decorated with statues of Roman gods. A small lawn lay outside of that, and then a cobblestone road. Around the square stood numerous and diverse baroque buildings (44, according to my guidebook), built wall to wall, most of them of equal width (as encouraged by taxes for wider buildings).
After poking around the square for a little while I continued east, and after picking my way through a picturesque back alley found the dramatic, green-domed Dominican church (as the locals call it), built by the Dominicans but now Uniate. I noted the times of the organ concerts that are held on the weekends. Near the church there was a small flea market selling books and random junk, but I didn’t buy anything. I continued south along remnants of the city fortifications and wandered back to the Market Square, then back out again, simply delighting in the architecture. Eventually I stopped for lunch in a small pizza place,decorated with pictures of American cities, where I got a soda and a personal pizza—bigger than I could finish—for about two dollars.
Back out on the street I saw an equestrian statue of King Danilo, after whose son the city is named. It looked fairly recent, with the Ukrainian trident proudly emblazoned on the front of the pedestal (and a “Yushchenko for President” sticker below that). Then I headed past more elaborate churches and beautiful buildings on my way south, past the Hotel George, to Copernicus Street. One of the attractions there was the Pototsky Palace, which was attractive, in a style very typical for Lviv, just larger. Across the street from that stood a building, nice, but nothing special in Lviv, except that the author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (from whose name the word “masochism” is derived) was born there, about 170 years ago, when the city was called Lemburg and located in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Although the citizens of Lviv supposedly take pride in this distinction, there was nothing to mark the spot, not even a memorial plaque.
It was getting a bit late, and a tad darker, and I was tired, so I headed back to the hotel. Like most hotels, hot water was not constantly available—it ran for a couple hours in the morning and a little over an hour in the evening. The rest of the time, you can open the hot water faucet and nothing comes out (just make sure to close it again; an acquaintance of mine flooded a Ukrainian hotel room when he checked for hot water, didn’t close the faucet, and left for the day). I felt infinitely better after a warm shower, although the lack of a shower curtain made things a bit tricky. At least I could hang the hose from a holder on the wall.
I headed out to find dinner. The city was very dark and quiet, especially for a Saturday night, emphasizing both the provincial nature and the lack of tasteless mass-produced capitalist garbage. I walked to Oselya, a Ukrainian folk restaurant that was highly recommended in my guidebook. I almost missed it, walking past it a couple of times before seeing the simple sign hanging above the street, carved out of metal and illuminated by a single lightbulb. Even then it wasn’t clear that it was open—there were no customers in the front room, but I opened the door and walked in. “Is the restaurant open?” I asked the waiter, in Russian. “Yes,” he answered, in Ukrainian.
I settled at a table next to the very real and very welcome fireplace. The restaurant was very authentically decorated like a Ukrainian peasant hut, in a more rustic and believable way than the place in Kiev. The lighting was subdued and the atmosphere was nice...and since I was the only guest in the room, it was quiet. It was the sort of restaurant where, if it were in America, you’d wear a jacket and tie, and couldn’t afford to eat with any frequency unless you’ve got pretty deep pockets. However, as I paged through the menu, I saw that it was quite inexpensive. I went for the whole shebang—borshch, bread, and some kind of chicken dish—which only set me back about ten dollars. The dinner was delicious, warming, and filling.
After dinner I went to look for an Internet cafe—I’d seen many during the day. I found one through a courtyard and on the bottom floor of a building. It was a bit sketchy. I stood at the desk for a minute, waiting for the clerk to show up, until the only other customer shouted at another guy—sitting at one of the common computers, and thus looking like another customer—to pay attention. I sat down and read e-mail for a while, ignoring the shouts of the recently arrived teenagers playing their computer games, and then headed back along the dark streets to the hotel, where I enjoyed the functioning TV and the warm bed for a while before hitting the sack.
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| Kiev, Days 3 and 4 |
[03 Mar 2005|02:45pm] |
For Thursday, I decided to check out Podil, a now-fashionable, gentrified neighborhood (once a less attractive, more commercial, but nonetheless cosmopolitan area) set on a former Dnepr floodplain. This time I got on the marshrutka going the right way and took the metro out to the Poshtova Ploshcha (Post Office Square) station in the northwest. That was set a little out of the way—I arrived somewhat southwest of the area, next to an attractive baroque church that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in St. Petersburg. Beyond that I saw the funicular, the one-car tram that climbs up and down the hill from Podil to the main city, on the hill below the imposing white Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. Finally getting my bearings, I started walking down a long street, one of many streets named after one of many Cossack leaders, lined with even more graceful pastel baroque buildings.
After a few minutes I arrived in the central square. One one side was “Hostinyi Dvir”—an enclosed 19th-century shopping arcade in the same vein as St. Petersburg’s—this one was white, but very similar in terms of architecture. Across the square was a small market, with the usual stands selling food and other necessities of everyday life. Off to one side loomed the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, founded as a university in 1615 and recently reopened as a liberal arts college. The building itself, with its grand yellow facade and white pillars, was quite impressive.
Wandering around a bit, I saw a very Byzantine-looking Orthodox church (in contrast with the rest of the quarter, this church wouldn’t have looked out of place in Novgorod)—it was relatively compact, with unadorned walls, tall, narrow windows, and a simple convex dome (a typical Byzantine style from which the famous “onion domes” of the Orthodox Slavs developed). Aside from some crosses and other details near the top, the only ornamentation was a painting of the Assumption over the entrance. My excitement at finding something so old was blunted a bit when I read the inscription on a marker near the door: stumbling through the Ukrainian, I read that it had been built in 1135, only to be destroyed eight hundred years later (the cause wasn’t specified, but the date falls well within Stalin’s reign of terror and destruction). The church had only been reconstructed by the city of Kiev in 1998. Nonetheless, it was a very impressive reconstruction, and really gave one an accurate feel for the age of the building, unlike many reconstructions which reek of dirty money and political sycophancy and look cleaner and sharper than the originals probably ever did.
After a bit more wandering, I stumbled out of the cold and into the National Chornobyl Museum (the o/e spelling confusion, I think, is not a matter of poor transliteration so much as a matter of preference between the Ukrainian and Russian names). Although worthwhile and well-executed, this museum falls squarely into the category of politically motivated musuems I mentioned earlier. I’ve been noticing a pattern of these in the former constituent republics of the Soviet Union, at least the two I’ve visited: enjoying their independence for the first time in decades, centuries, or perhaps for the first time ever as such, they feel the need to assert their national character, history, and wealth while pointing out how they have been wronged by others. The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga is a prime example of this: walking through the museum, you get to see how the brave, virtuous Latvians and their culture resisted, suffered, and persevered under invasion, occupation, and persecution by the Nazis and the Soviets over a period of sixty years until they heroically liberated themselves. What such museums have in common is that they have a worthwhile and generally true story to tell, which they proceed to besmirch with a Manichaean attitude and unnecessary propaganda in an attempt to create a specific emotional impression. For example, the GULag display in Riga featured an effective essay demonstrating the humiliation and inhumanity of life in the GULag (the word itself is actually an acronym for “Main Administration of Camps”), using the filthy toilets they used (basically just fifty-gallon drums cut in half) as a focal point. The essay worked quite well until the last line, something to the effect of “Despite this humiliation my comrades and I persevered thanks to our pride in our Latvian culture and returned to our homeland.” That ruined the rest of the essay. Not to say the museum was worthless or without substance, it’s just unfortunate that they feel the need for something as low as propaganda when the story really speaks for itself.
The Chornobyl Museum was, in general, pretty informative and even emotionally moving. Walking from one room to another, I saw the story of the nuclear accident and ensuing nightmare portrayed through photographs, text, and artifacts (mostly letters and personal effects of the victims, but also equipment used in the cleanup, including even jeeps and an ambulance). There was also an animated diorama that depicted various stages of the incident. As a whole, the exhibit really did bring home the horror of the event, and the sadness of the Soviet Union’s cover-up (among the letters were several official Party letters, marked “secret,” explaining the situation and offering sadly optimistic estimates of damage containment). Like many museums of its type, it employed certain devices to try to depict the scale of the damage—for example, walls covered with photographs of the victims. Somewhat more effective were the myriad highway signs, each bearing the name of an evacuated town, hanging in the main entrance and stairway. The final hall, however, was a bit too much propaganda for my taste; the hundreds of photographs of children affected by the explosion would have been enough, as would the examples of mutated wildlife and pictures of deformed livestock. Instead, the museum resorted to modern art that was rather disturbing and in some cases more noteworthy for its sentimentality than for its skill. In the center of the hall, on a raised platform, was a small structure inside of which hung a small boat, full of children’s toys. Somewhat more effective was the Orthodox iconostasis, simply a bare frame with all the icons removed, except for one icon of an angel, its pose mirrored by a liquidation worker’s safety suit hanging from the framework. The royal gates, instead of opening to a sanctuary, had a “RADIOACTIVE” sign hanging between them. The museum designers were well aware of how ghastly the radioactivity suits and gas masks look, and employed them in the installations with little restraint. As sad as the aftermath of the explosion and the human suffering were, and as legitimate a complain Ukraine has against the policies of the Soviet Union that exacerbated it, I found myself towards the end mentally “nodding vigorously,” as if to someone who was utterly bent on gaining my agreement and wanted as much assurance of it as possible.
I left the museum and strolled along to my next goal, Andrew’s Descent. “Descent” here is a translation of the Russian “spusk” or Ukrainian “uzviz”—I don’t think there’s really an English equivalent, but it belongs to the same category as “street,” “road,” “alley,” et cetera. Andrew’s Descent is a road that starts at the top of one of the hills near the center and winds down into Podil; it supposedly follows the footsteps of St. Andrew. I didn’t feel like walking up a descent, so I walked back out a ways towards the funicular, bought a poppyseed roll outside to tide me over until I could get a real lunch, and went inside. I got a ticket for 50 kopeks and walked onto the platform (which was actually a staircase), then watched while the car descended. Following the shape of the hill, the car was built slanting upwards, with each set of seats and doors higher than the last. I took my seat, feeling like I was in the Paradigm Corporation building from “Big O” (you know you’re a nerd if you get that), or at the very least in Pittsburgh. I waited for a few minutes and ate my roll while more people came in and took their seats, and finally the doors closed and the car started upwards. It was a short ride, not dramatic, but definitely pleasant. I walked out of the upper building and found the top of the descent. Nearby stood a beautiful baroque cathedral designed by Rastrelli, the favorite architect of the Russian empress Elizabeth, who designed the Winter Palace (which houses the Hermitage Museum). Unfortunately, in the dead of winter, the famed souvenir stands of Andrew’s Descent were few and far between. However, I walked past lots of attractive and distinctive buildings, particularly one near the bottom that looked like a castle. I saw the home of the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, famous for his works “The Master and Margarita” and “A Dog’s Heart,” among others. Against my professor’s recommendation, I didn’t go in—since I’ve never read anything by Bulgakov, only seen a movie version of one of his books, I didn’t think it would be too meaningful. Instead I headed for the Museum of One Street, a bit farther down. This small (4-room or so) museum showed the history of Andrew’s Descent from the founding of Kiev on—given the nature of the street, it was essentially a microcosm of Kiev. The overall feel of the museum was very cosmopolitan and gilded-age, or at least early 20th-century; there were lots of musical instruments, fancy dresses and tuxedos, and books, and jazz and other music played in the background (much of it in English), including one song I’d never heard before whose familiar tune had evidently been borrowed by Monty Python. A section on the castle-like building amusingly suggested that it had been plagiarized from an architectural journal, and told how the heating and cooling systems were reversed by accident during construction, making it unbearable in any season and forcing its wealthy owners to live elsewhere. There were quite a few fascinating residents of the street: besides Bulgakov, the museum portrayed the lives of a famous Ukrainian legislator, writer, and cultural figure, a rabbi, a doctor, and a Syrian-Russian professor who responded to the Communist government’s query about his loyalties by saying “I am a good Christian and a bad Communist citizen.” Another room was dedicated to winter holidays, and addition to a Christmas tree and “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” playing in the background, had a lot of Soviet-era New Year’s cards, including one from 1953 with a poem about how all the children of the Soviet Union can sleep safe because up in the Kremlin Stalin is watching over them. This museum was unique among those I saw in Kiev, in that it was neither politically motivated nor, even though it followed the history of the street up through the Second World War and Soviet periods, depressing.
Having descended and arrived back in Podil, I walked back to the metro and rode back to the Arsenalna stop, near the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. I took a bus the rest of the way and walked down towards the giant Rodyna-Mat’ statue—the museum is located in her pedestal. It was mid-afternoon, but I had around two hours until closing—plenty of time to get in and look around.
This museum turned out to be the most Soviet place I’ve ever been. I walked down a path towards a series of arches made out of angular concrete, emblazoned with Soviet slogans in equally angular Cyrillic letters, metal bolted onto concrete. Within the arches were relief sculptures of heroic soldiers and workers moving forward to victory. There was even a loudspeaker blaring “Holy War,” a great and dramatic Soviet song of the Second World War: “Arise, enormous country, arise to deadly battle/With the strong, dark, damned fascist horde. Let your noble fury boil up like a wave—the people’s war, the holy war, goes on.” Hearing that song, one can’t help but want to go shoot fascists himself. This feeling was heightened by a nearby exhibit of Soviet military vehicles—tanks, trucks equipped with various weapons, armored personnel carriers, and even an Mi-24 attack helicopter, just like I remembered reading about in Tom Clancy as a boy. I tried to go into the Museum of Foreign Wars, but in spite of their alleged closing time, they were already closed. A bit farther down the path was another collection of military vehicles, this one even more impressive: the tanks and trucks were complemented by airplanes, a missile, and, most impressively, a truck-mounted nuclear missile launcher. This is what the Soviet Union always meant to me: columns of unadorned green military vehicles, parading through Red Square on May Day. This collection, I supposed, was as close as I’d ever get to that. After perusing that exhibit thoroughly, I went to the main World War II museum, but (unsurprisingly), they’d also closed ahead of schedule, thus completing the Soviet experience. I walked around the surrounding park for a bit as it darkened, then headed back into the city for my evening plans: “Swan Lake” at the National Theater of Opera and Ballet.
First I had other business to take care of. It was my last night in Kiev—I’d have to leave my apartment and move along the next day, but I didn’t have transportation plans yet. So I hoofed it to the train station to get a ticket to Lviv, the largest city and cultural capital of western Ukraine. I was beginning to despair of ever getting through the line when I saw the foreigner desk. Feeling rather guilty, I nonetheless took the opportunity not to stand in line... I didn’t want to be late for the show. Although I had to show my passport to get the ticket, the ticket saleslady had probably prepared the ticket envelope beforehand, and had mistaken my accent: the ticket was printed with the railroad rules in Ukrainian and German. This was the first of three mistaken national identities on the trip.
Ticket in hand, or more specifically in my secure zipped pocket, I hopped back on the metro and rode to the theater, at the Golden Gates metro station. This station is named for what is probably Kiev’s most internationally known (albeit reconstructed) feature: the Great Gate, in fact one of the entrances to the pre-Mongol city walls. Destroyed long ago, the gate has since been rebuilt, and although it’s not as dramatic as the music it inspired, it’s still impressive. I grabbed some cheap khachapuri at the first food stand I came to pacify my stomach until the end of the performance.
The theater was very impressive, architecturally, atmospherically, and otherwise. The interior is very ornate—lots of fancy chandeliers, lush carpeting, and intricately carved wood covered with gold leaf. Everyone seemed to be as dressed up as they could afford to be, in anything from expensive suits and evening dresses to sweaters and blouses. In my black sweater, black trousers, and black leather shoes, I blended in pretty much invisibly. In hindsight, I suppose it was unsurprising that I heard more English spoken there than anywhere else in Ukraine (not counting American songs on the radio, which are ubiquitous). On the way back up the stairs after checking my coat, I found myself among a dressed-up, affluent-looking American family—mom and dad in their suits, and two little daughters. I didn’t break cover. I wondered what brought them to Kiev...were they diplomats? On business? Or just tourists with good taste? I made my way up to my seat in the balcony—not first-row, but close enough to the center, and certainly not bad—especially for five bucks (and that was from a scalper!). The other 7 people in the box hadn’t arrived yet, so I went to the front and checked out the view. The hall was as grand as the rest of the interior suggested...a great crystal chandelier was the centerpiece of a majestic ceiling, and everything from the proscenium to the railings was trimmed in gold leaf and red velvet. Hearing the familiar and welcome sounds of the orchestra warming up, I looked down and found the trombonists in the pit. I also saw the posh-looking American family sitting in the very first row, among what looked to be other Americans.
I wasn’t especially happy during the first act...hearing the orchestra reminded me how much I miss the trombone, and everything associated with it (including college, high school, and so forth), and seeing the happy American family out for a night on the town together in Kiev reminded me of going to see “Phantom of the Opera” with my dad as a kid. It all drove home that fact that, no matter how much I wanted to be in Ukraine, however much I wanted to travel independently, I was, for the moment, alone.
But I’d pretty much recovered my emotional stability by the end of the first act. The show itself was pretty good. I’m not a huge ballet fan, but I can definitely appreciate the skill and beauty, and if I understand the plot, then I’m good to go. I enjoyed “Romeo and Juliet” a lot more than “Turandot” on my first trip to Russia largely on the strength of the fact that I’ve had to read the former at least twice in the course of school, and was thus able to enjoy good music and dancing within a familiar framework, whereas I had no clue what was going on in the latter (the jet lag that caused me to repeatedly nod off didn’t help, either). So, unfortunately, I didn’t really know what was going on, although the music was really good. Furthermore, I couldn’t help wondering if the orange ribbons and sashes on the costumes of what I assumed to be courtiers were a political statement, or merely decoration. Fortunately, to use semiotic terms, there was plenty of redundancy and mimic exaggeration—black leotards versus white ones, the character of the music, and the dancers’ behavior—and I managed to more or less follow along.
Finally, the show ended, and after much applause, everyone finally started filing out of the hall. I went downstairs, claimed my coat (listening to the chatter of yet more Americans) and headed out to the pizzeria I’d scouted out earlier. I grabbed two of the last few slices and had a decent, filling dinner, then took the metro back to the train station where, after a few nervous moments, the 198 marshrutka pulled in and I rode home quickly.
Friday was my last day in Kiev. It was also the most beautiful: blue skies and sunshine. This always affects my mood out of all proportion to its importance, so I was rather cheerful as I packed, gathered all my trash into one bag, and waited for Elena Fyodorovna to show up. There was already a new tenant coming; as I walked into the kitchen to make sure I hadn’t left anything, I happened to glance out the window and saw a portly man with a suitcase climbing the stairs to my entrance. The connection was pretty obvious, so I defied the conventional wisdom and opened the door to him when he arrived (after he confirmed that he was staying there and knew Elena Fyodorovna’s name. He sat himself on the bed and we chatted as I finished packing. Georgi, as he was called, was quite an interesting guy. He was a former sailor from Odessa, now a professor of literature, and he had translated some of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Russian; he showed me a copy of his book. We talked about languages, and he complained about the absence of good diminutive suffixes in English. A few minutes later, Elena Fyodorovna showed up—it turned out she’d deliberately come late so that Georgi and I would get acquainted. Georgi complimented my Russian (“with an accent, but without mistakes”), and we chatted for a few more minutes before I bid farewell and headed off. Elena Fyodorovna told me that, if I was ever in Kiev again, to give her a call and I could stay at the apartment again: “Don’t go to the company at the station, it’ll be cheaper without middlemen.”
First I headed off to the train station to deposit my luggage and eat my usual borshch-and-varenniki brunch. Then, since I had enjoyed the theater so much the previous night, and it was so cheap, I decided to go there again. The evening’s performance was “Aida,” which I’ve been aware of since fifth grade, when I played one of its songs in band. After checking to make sure that the scheduled end time was compatible with my train departure, I bought a ticket from a scalper who bore a significant resemblance to Mr. Bean. After pausing for a moment to get a better look at the Great Gate in daylight, I headed back to the Museum of the Great Patriotic War—there was no way they could be closed if it was still morning.
The inside of the museum was just as Soviet as the outside. I pulled open the giant metal door and, after paying for my ticket and checking my coat, I walked into a subdued granite room with a statue of a soldier at the rear. On a bed of rocks in the center lay a Nazi eagle with broken wings. Unsurprisingly, given its Soviet nature, this museum was utterly and unabashedly politically motivated, portraying the victory of the righteous Soviet people against the Nazi aggressors. And, unsurprisingly, it employed the same motifs: walls of photographs, flags of all republics (or military units, or fronts), military uniforms swooping from the sky. Most of the labels had been changed to Ukrainian, where possible (the metal map of the Ukrainian SSR still read “Lvov” instead of “Lviv”), but the substance of the exhibit was essentially unchanged. It was chronologically arranged, each room dedicated to one important period or aspect of the war (with a Ukrainian focus, naturally). It was particularly strange seeing the Siege of Leningrad—all the sights that I walk by every day in St. Petersburg, but surrounded by debris and fortification. The most chilling room, unsurprisingly, was the room dedicated to the Nazi occupation of Kiev. The centerpiece was a guillotine, not an 18th-century curiosity but a very functional modern tool, with a canvas basket for the head (the way it was constructed, the victim would have to be lying face-up). A gallows and noose hung from the wall. There were posters announcing that all Jews had to report to the Nazi authorities on a given day in 1941; when they did, they were taken to a ravine outside Kiev called Babi Yar and shot. On one day, over thirty thousand—one fifth of the pre-war Jewish population, many of whom had already fled—were killed. Many others had already fled into Siberia and Central Asia. Kiev, like other Nazi-occupied areas, had concentration and death camps, and other displays showed some of their ghastly products: soap made from human fat, and gloves made out of human flesh.
From the dark rooms of the exhibit, I walked up to the final room, a bright, airy space made out of white marble and large windows. Representing the final triumph of the USSR, this room sported a giant replica of a medal on the ceiling, and the names of all Heroes of the Soviet Union carved into the walls. As nice as the place was, the message it was meant to convey was rather hollow, given the fact that the USSR was no better than the Nazis and the horrors practiced on both sides, not to mention the simple fact stated in the previous room: “In 1940, 41.3 million people lived in Ukraine. In 1945—27.4 million.” The typical scale-demonstration devices of the “Memorial Room”—the empty cups, telegrams, and musical instruments of the dead—didn’t even begin to capture that.
I walked out of the museum and strolled a bit in the park surrounding it. I walked up to the dish of the eternal flame, a large torch on a pedestal set on a nearby hill. The eternal flame was either burning low or had become a misnomer, but there was a spectacular view of the Rodyna-Mat’, the Dnepr, and the Lavra. I enjoyed it for a little while before heading back. Unfortunately the Foreign Wars museum was closed indefinitely, but for forty cents one could buy a ticket to sit in the attack helicopter outside, thus turning a memorial to a particularly bloody war into a funfair. I obliged, nonetheless, and climbed into the rear compartment and then the cockpit. There was another family there, and the father was discussing the helicopter with the museum worker, but I didn’t join in—I don’t exactly have the vocabulary to discuss air-to-ground weaponry in Russian. Yet.
Relaxed, with time to kill and nothing pressing left to see, I rode back to town and just wandered around the center for a while. I bought some cookies and then an orange “I Love Ukraine” plastic bag to carry them in—ironically, this made me fit in pretty much perfectly when combined with my wardrobe. I found an internet cafe and had the proprietor copy my pictures to a CD so I could clear my camera’s memory for another round. While I waited, I watched all the neighborhood kids come in after school to play computer games. I went back to the Maidan Nezalezhnosti and shot pictures of some of its monuments in better light, then walked back up to the Brotherhood of Peoples statue and the outlook over the Dnepr. I saw a teenage girl with orange Yushchenko ribbons tied around the ankles of her jeans, and the word “TAK!” written on a dumpster in orange price tags (“Tak,” Yushchenko’s campaign slogan, means “yes” in Ukrainian. In Russian it means “So.” Yushchenko’s campaign would have seemed far less persuasive in Russia). Back downtown, I saw a Toyota Landcruiser drive up onto a formidable snowbank and park with no problems, and heard one of my fellow pedestrians remark to his friends “Tak khorosho, imet’ Landcruiser” (“How good to have a Landcruiser”). I eventually settled at the underground mall, where I ate a fast-food-style but nonetheless traditional Ukrainian meal of varenniki and holubtsy (ground meat wrapped in a lettuce leaf and cooked). Then I went back to the theater.
As much I love the music from “Aida,” it wasn’t looking too good for comprehension. I remembered hearing a plot summary long ago, which time had reduced to vague impressions of a setting in Egypt, a love story, and an unhappy ending. The titles of the songs I know also provided some hints—obviously there was a triumphal march, a returning victor, and someone who wasn’t too thrilled by the victor’s return. The subtitles, on an LED screen above the stage, were in Ukrainian, which meant I understood about ten percent, when I paid attention.
Even though I didn’t exactly follow what was going on, I enjoyed “Aida” greatly. Lots of variations on themes with which I’m familiar floated in and out, and it was fun anticipating when they would sing certain songs. The show was also visually spectacular—the highlight was, unsurprisingly, the triumphal march itself. Acrobats (well, ballet dancers playing acrobats) paraded in front of the chorus—ranks of priests and priestesses—and, best of all, an onstage wind ensemble in full costume. As silly as it was to think of ancient Egyptians playing trombones, I was impressed. The opera ended quietly, as befits an unhappy ending, but ahead of schedule, and, bidding farewell to Kiev, I set off for the train station and Lviv.
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| Caves Monastery Pictures |
[01 Mar 2005|03:44pm] |
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Pictures of the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra, or Caves Monastery--specifically, just the Upper Lavra, where photography is allowed...the Lower Lavra is a working monastery, so I could only photograph it from afar. Included are a few tidbits from another walk around the city, and a shot of my apartment.
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| Kiev, Day 2: The Caves Monastery |
[21 Feb 2005|06:37pm] |
My second day in Kiev started out relatively slowly. I got up, noticing for the first of many times how cold it was once I got out of bed, showered, and (for the first and last time) tried washing some clothes in the bathtub with the bottle of Woolite my mother had sent me. It worked well enough, but after I left Kiev, I never again had a stopper in a sink or bathtub, nor did any hotels offer laundry service (no matter what their price list said).
I then began my less-than-efficient movement into the center. Outside my apartment, I caught the 198 marshrutka that I’d taken there yesterday...unfortunately, I took it the wrong way, and I had to get out and switch to another at the end of the line to get back to my base of operations, the train station. At the station I grabbed a relatively tasty brunch of borshch, varenniki with meat (sort of like ravioli), black bread, and orange juice at Shvidko, the ubiquitous Ukrainian fast-food restaurant. As I ate my varenniki I read my guidebook and planned, deciding to head to the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra, a major monastery and one of Orthodoxy’s holiest sites. I took the metro then hopped on a marshrutka, which was once again going the wrong way. I ended up somewhere on the outskirts of the city by a cemetery and a hospital (one of the tombstones had an orange Yushchenko ribbon on it, even though the deceased had died sometime in the 1980s). I walked back to the nearest bus shelter and waited with a group of babushki. Looking at the schedule, I saw that the buses came rather rarely at that time of day, and just as I was despairing of ever getting out of there, let alone to the Lavra, another marshrutka with the word “LAVRA” on its route placard stopped. I happily hopped aboard and rode back.
The Lavra is divided into two parts, the Upper Lavra and Lower Lavra. The Upper Lavra is a government museum and includes several small museums of a secular nature, although churches still abound and you don’t have to look too far to find a monk. The Lower Lavra is still a functioning monastery, and its main attraction consists of two networks of manmade caves, first dug by St. Anthony in the 11th century. The caves were occupied throughout the years by monks, and also used by the Vikings to hide treasure at one point. Now they’re mainly used as catacombs, holding the bodies of many Orthodox saints, which mummify naturally in the atmosphere of the caves (or are preserved by a greater power, depending on your view). There’s a popular story about the Communist attempt to dismantle the caves: supposedly the authorities had already cleared many of the saints’ bodies out, but their truck into which they loaded them would not start. When the patriarch of the monastery was informed of this, he simply said that the saints’ bodies would never leave the monastery. The authorities gave up after three weeks of trying, the bodies were replaced, the truck started, and life continued as usual. I personally wonder if there wasn’t a monk walking around with a few spare parts in his pocket, but it’s a good story in any case.
I went to the Lower Lavra first. I have no pictures, since it’s a functioning monastery and a holy site, and photography is forbidden. After a bit of searching, I found the entrance to the Near Caves. At the small shop there, I bought a beeswax candle, the same type that is used in Orthodox church services, as a means of illumination and to be polite; this way, the church got a few kopeks, and walking around with my flashlight would have been quite gauche. I lit my candle off of another and descended into the caves.
I’d missed the words “man-made” in my guidebook and was at first slightly disappointed to find, instead of stalagmites and stalactites, simple narrow passages and whitewashed walls. Nonetheless, the caves were awesome. The candle turned out to be very necessary; often, the only light came from the small oil lamps hung over the saints’ bodies. These were kept in recesses in the walls, about a foot deep and a few feet long in width and height. The bodies themselves were covered with elaborate, colorful cloth shrouds—occasionally, one or both brown, mummified hands protruded from the shroud—and rested in small glass coffins. They were no larger than children—a testament to the effects of mummification. On one side of the recess was a portrait of the saint buried in it, and at the other was a placard showing the saint’s name and date of death (indicated by Cyrillic letters, which used to have a numerical value as well and were replaced by Arabic numbers in the 15th century). Unfamiliar with the Cyrillic numeral system (and wishing I’d paid more attention to it in my Slavic Antiquities course), I could only make educated guesses as the ages of most of the saints. Some were quite old. The placards also indicated their rank or role within the church, and many had epithets: “The Taciturn,” “The Pious,” and so forth. There was a significant quantity of martyrs; one had to wonder about some of the stories behind them, such as the two brothers, martyrs, lying side by side in the same recess. Although the caves were generally devoid of worldly influence, one recess bore a plaque explaining how the reliquary contained only some relics of the saint, since Nicholas II had ordered her body carried to another city to alleviate some disaster there. There were additional recesses in the wall, simple glass doors backed with colorful fabric. I didn’t realize what they were until I saw one that was uncovered, revealing a skeleton. But by far the most fascinating moment was seeing the body of Nestor the Chronicler, the author of Povesti Vremennykh Let, which in the language of the time means “Chronicle of Bygone Years” (in modern Russian, one can translate it as “Short Stories of Temporary Years”). This 11th-century chronicle is one of the fundamental sources for the study and reconstruction of the Old Slavic language, and was a constant point of reference in Slavic Antiquities. Unfortunately, the hand that penned such prose was hidden underneath the shroud.
I tend to be a pretty unobtrusive person, and after a semester in St. Petersburg, I tend to fit in pretty well in this part of the world, even more so with my black parka and wool cap. However, for all my cultural camouflage, and for all my silence and respect, I was patently out of place in the caves. As I walked around, trying to see all the saints and read their names and titles, others paused at length before certain saints, praying, making the somewhat more elaborate Orthodox sign of the cross (involving bowing and a specific number of fingers), prostrating themselves, and kissing the saints’ coffins. It didn’t help when I hit my head (whose altitude, I suspect, would have been in the third standard deviation in the 11th century) on a chandelier that I’m sure was much, much, much older than I am. The caves include a number of underground churches, chambers that are slightly larger than other spaces, containing an iconostasis (the icon screen at the front of an Orthodox church) and other necessities of Orthodox ritual. In some of these caves people had gathered to sing prayers, which sounded very eerie. They often blocked traffic, but who was I to complain? I simply turned around and looked at other saints for the time being.
When I had seen everything I was going to see, I headed back to the surface, extinguished my candle, and put it in the box marked for candle stubs—although to me, it was just a source of literal illumination, in the Orthodox church, the candle signifies a prayer and an offering, and if I understand correctly the remnants would be burned later by the monks.
Back outside I explored the Lower Lavra a bit. There was an elaborate, if not particularly original, nativity scene and some beautiful buildings. There was a “Pilgrimage Office” with information for pilgrims posted on a bulletin board outside. There was also a snack stand—even pilgrims need to eat, I suppose, but nonetheless I’m always fascinated and amused by the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane. I bought some chips and juice and consumed them before looking around some more. Down a long stone staircase there were some areas that were probably gardens, just not in January, and a couple of bell towers. They contained nothing too interesting, just typical shops selling icons, crosses, holy water, and the like. I climbed the stairs again and set off through the long covered walkway that connects the near and far caves. I arrived at another section of the monastery and spent several minutes looking around before finding the church where the Far Caves entrance was located. It was under renovation, but there was another entrance in the icon workshop, so I headed in. I approached the lady selling religious items and asked where the caves were. Before I even finished the question, she said “Caves?” and pointed, and I felt my foreignness even more sharply. I made my way down yet another long staircase to yet another shop, bought a candle, lit it, and entered the far caves.
These caves were essentially in the same vein as the first, but older, and even more extensive and complex (at least, a more extensive and complex section was accessible). I didn’t get very far before running into a large congregation, singing and praying. I stood with them for a few minutes, although I’m sure it didn’t make me fit in any better. One woman relit her candle from mine. Next to me was a small chamber, closed off by wooden gates, where glass and metal containers held the skulls of saints—later I walked by to find it open and saw a priest holding one such container over a woman’s head in the course of a ceremony. The highlight of these caves was an even larger and very elaborate underground church, wherein lay several saints, including Nestor the Un-bookish (Nestor Neknizhnyi)—a relative of the Chronicler, I wonder?
After wandering for some time I resurfaced and headed to the Upper Lavra. The fact that it’s a state museum meant I had to buy a ticket, but also that I was allowed to photograph. As I walked in (admittedly, with my nose in my English-language guidebook), a man approached me and asked, in English, if I needed a guide. Almost automatically, I responded “No, thank you,” in Russian, and another man nearby laughed at the would-be tourguide. Very rewarding. I continued on my own. The first place I headed, while there was still light, was the Great Lavra Bell Tower, supposedly the tallest Orthodox structure in the world, standing 96.5 meters (or almost 317 feet) tall, and constructed in the first half of the 18th century (“Try your luck!” the English-language sign announced). I bought another ticket for the tower, and climbed—it was nothing compared to Pilgrim’s Tower in Provincetown, for instance. Nonetheless, it afforded a great view of the surrounding onion domes, and the view became better as I climbed higher. Finally, I got to the top floor, 47 meters above the ground, and looked out between the pillars and bells onto Kiev and the Dnepr. My photos don’t do it justice...perhaps photos can’t do it justice. From the top I could see all the ornate and stately buildings of the Upper Lavra, the winding fortress walls of the monastery, and the churches of the Lower Lavra. Outside the walls the view changed abruptly—next to the colorful towers and domes, the visual bathos of the uniform Soviet apartment blocks was dramatic. Even more dramatic was the giant titanium statue of a woman with a sword and shield standing just outside the monastery; this was the Rodina-Mat’, or “Nation’s Mother,” the Brezhnev-era monument to the victory in World War II. I won’t repeat the local nickname on a family-friendly journal. The view over the Dnepr was, as always, impressive.
After that I wandered the grounds for a while, looking at the beautiful exteriors of buildings. I ventured inside one building that served as a chapel and a refectory. Then, since it was getting a bit dark (not to mention the temperature), I dropped into one of the handful of secular museums, the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine.
This museum turned out to be very disappointing. In fact, I think I can fairly state that it was the worst museum I’ve ever visited, one of many politically-motivated museums now popular in the post-Soviet space. On one hand, the museum was brand new and very polished, looking and smelling of fresh paint. As I entered, I was excited about seeing Scythian artifacts, remains of a culture that I’ve read much about. However, the museum was almost completely devoid of any edifying substance whatsoever. Ascending the stairs, I saw an elaborately reconstructed grave sitting in the middle of the room, but there was not a shred of interpretive text. Nor did I find any text in the following several rooms, only a single map in each room showing what culture had created the artifacts in that room and the space they had occupied in Ukraine. The organizing criterion seemed not to be greater cultural value, but intrinsic material worth and aesthetic beauty—I don’t think I saw anything that wasn’t made out of precious metals. All in all, very little history and a lot of treasure. I walked through the rooms and stared at the pretty Scythian, Sarmatian, Byzantine, Russian, French, and German artifacts (towards the end text started to appear) without gaining much in the way of knowledge. Overall, I got the impression that the point of the museum was simply to wow Ukrainians and foreigners alike with the nation’s glorious past, craftsmanship and material wealth, whether the peoples and objects in question had any ethnic or chronological ties to Ukraine or not.
By the time I left the museum, it was getting truly dark, so I left the Lavra. I walked up and down Hrushevskoho Street a bit, and saw the building of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s legislative body. It was surrounded by a stately courtyard and a nice park. I hopped on the Metro back into the center, and scanned my guidebook for places to eat. I decided on Kobzar, a Ukrainian restaurant with “cozy tables and cozy food”—just the thing after walking around in the cold. It lived up to the description, complete with kitschy faux-folk decor—think “T.G.I Friday’s goes Ukrainian countryside.” For the novelty, I decided to try Chicken Kiev in Kiev—touristy, yes, but I’m told it’s an authentic Ukrainian dish. Fortunately, the butter wasn’t as overpowering as I’d expected, and I enjoyed the meal greatly. After dinner I headed out to walk some more. I went back up Khreshchyatyk, continuing to marvel at the orange clothing on the storefront mannequins, and then switched over to Volodymyrska, which runs parallel. I ended up at the statue of the Ukrainian folk hero Bogdan Khmelnytsky, quite a controversial figure—he killed Jews, destroyed Catholic churches, and established ties with the Russian empire, but as a Cossack general and defender of Kiev, he is revered by Ukrainians; a city and innumerable streets bear his name, and his picture is on Ukrainian currency. Beyond the monument was St. Sophia’s cathedral, whose bell towers and domes are quite impressive. On the walls surrounding the gates were painted images of Heaven, showing Kievan kings and saints mingling with archangels amid the clouds. From there I walked out into a park, where I saw the statue of Vladimir that I’d glimpsed the previous night...luckily, the park was almost empty, and very quiet. I carefully walked down the steep Andrew’s Descent, one of Kiev’s most famous streets, and back to the center. I’d read in the guide book about a “Czech beer hall,” an idea that fascinated me. The term “beer hall” for me has always invoked images of cavernous brick buildings where men in Tirol hats and lederhosen swing beer steins to the strains of dramatic songs. However, I’d never been to one, so I decided to check it out. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a rather ordinary (and empty) bar. I sat back and read the Kyiv Post, the local English-language newspaper, and ordered a Czech beer (which didn’t impress me much) and peanuts. Finally, I took the metro back to the train station, where the marshrutki had already stopped running for the night. I pulled out my newly purchased city map and trekked home on foot, which wasn’t much fun (especially given the heavy snow that had just begun to fall), except for the glimpse of Kievan teenagers sledding on a hill. Finally, I got back to the apartment and, having quickly prepared for bed in the cold, lay down to a very welcome sleep.
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| Ukraine, Part 1: Petersburg to Kiev, and Day 1 |
[16 Feb 2005|06:26pm] |
It was about 11 PM, time to leave for the station. I had my tickets—Petersburg-Moscow and Moscow-Kiev—tucked into my zippered pocket, right next to my bank card and my passport with its freshly-glued Ukrainian visa. My room was cleaned out, my bags were packed, and in my new black parka and black wool cap, I looked much more Russian. I said goodbye to Sasha and Nina, who made me sit in the chair by the door; according to the Russians it’s bad luck to rush out onto the road. Then I stood up, hugged Nina goodbye, and waved as I walked out the door and down the street to the Metro station. After all the weeks of dreaming, planning, and running all over Petersburg, I was on the way to Ukraine.
At the station, I browsed around the stalls outside, finally spending about two bucks on a small tool of Korean manufacture and questionable quality, consisting of a fork, knife, spoon, and bottle opener set into a plastic handle that was supposed to be red. The price tag called it a “dorozhnyi nabor,” “road set,” and despite the plastic bag around it it looked like it was used. I resolved to wash it before using it.
Then I waited on the platform as the train pulled in, found my car, and climbed aboard. Russian trains are set up differently from American ones. Traveling across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union (of course, they’re still vast today in Russia) takes a bit longer than getting from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., so the Soviets designed their trains around sleeping: get on the train in the late evening and wake up the next morning at your destination. There are multiple classes. SV is “first-class,” with each car divided into two-bed cabins—these cabins are set up perpendicular to the train, opening onto a corridor that runs the length of the car. Second class, “coupé,” has four bunks—two upper and two lower—in each cabin. Third class is “platzkart”—here there are no closed cabins, just bunks arranged in more or less the same pattern, with additional columns of upper and lower bunks running along the side of the train (thus fitting six people in roughly the same space that four occupy in a coupé). Generally coupé is the way to go, since SV is too expensive and platzkart is widely considered intolerable, aside from the risk of having your things stolen by one of the many people in the large, open space. In a coupé you get to make friends with up to three other people, and you can close the door and turn the lights on and off as you please. Each class has a samovar at the end of the car, and for five rubles (or one hryvna, the Ukrainian currency), you can get a mug, teabag, sugar packet, and spoon from the conductor and have tea. There’s also a bottle opener on the bottom of the table in each coupé—as out of touch as Soviet leadership may have been, someone in the design process knew his or her people well.
My train was scheduled to get into Moscow at 9:22 AM, meaning that it left at 12:45 AM. Consequently we didn’t have the usual chatting in my coupé, we just got our sheets from the conductor, made our bunks, and went to bed. Before lyinig down to sleep I managed to slice myself a few chunks of sausage with the rather blunt knife of my dorozhnyi nabor.
I arrived that morning in Moscow and went to explore the city a bit, since my train didn’t leave until after 4 PM. Having checked my bags, I wandered out to where an old bridge had been covered in a metal-and-glass shell, making a fancy pedestrian crossing. Across the Moskva river, I saw the Turkish embassy, wandered around on the hill above the highway, and looked at the billboards of the government’s daring and innovative new campaign: “Say No to Drugs.” A bit farther into the city, I saw one of the “Seven Sisters”—here, not the colleges for women, but the seven dramatic, outsize skyscrapers erected under Stalin. This one happened to be the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, still emblazoned with numerous hammer-and-sickle motifs. A bit farther along I saw the White House, the seat of the Russian legislature, and tried to imagine it surrounded by tanks and anti-Communist protesters as it was fourteen years ago. I also walked by the towering modern building that houses the Moscow city government before finally sitting down to lunch in the shadow of the Foreign Affairs building.
Having eaten, I returned to the station and bought a pre-packaged chicken and french fries meal, some khachapuri, and a soda for the train, along with the Russian edition of Newsweek. Downstairs I claimed my luggage from the storage room, where the attendent complimented my Russian. Then I boarded the train, quickly, so as to get the best storage space. At least this time, I had a lower bunk, which is more convenient, since you can store your baggage in a locker that can only be opened by lifting the bed on which you’re sleeping...very secure.
It turned out that there was no need to rush, since my coupé wasn’t even fully occupied; aside from me, there was only a woman from Moscow named Tatyana, who owned her own perfume store and was going to Kiev to take care of some sort of legal matter. We talked for a while, then the conversation gradually faded as we started moving. Unfortunately it was too dark to see much out the window, so after eating my cold dinner, I pulled out Newsweek and read about the situation in Iran and about Chechen video games. Then, in the absence of anything better to do, I made my bed and went to sleep.
Sometime in the morning the train stopped at the Russian/Ukrainian border. As we waited, a man walked up and down the hallway, breaking the silence with his offer to exchange “gryvny” (as the Russians pronounce Ukraine’s currency) at what were certainly inflated rates. Finally the border guards came to my coupé. They checked my passport and took my migration card, and asked to look in the locker under my bunk. They actually searched Tatyana’s bags, then left, and we went back to sleep.
A while later we came to the Ukrainian border station, which was essentially the same process in reverse. No one really checked anything this time, but the border guards tore my newly filled-out migration card in half and returned the bottom, for my return journey. They put an entry stamp on my Ukrainian visa and went on their way, as I finally went to sleep for the last time.
I got up at about quarter to five, local time, got dressed, and gathered all my stuff. The train pulled into the station, and, climbing out and up some steps, I found myself in Kiev’s central station. It was a bit surreal—early morning, still dark, not totally awake, classical music playing in the background on the station loudspeakers, and bright green letters on the train schedules cycling through Ukrainian, Russian, and English. I exchanged fifty dollars for hryvny at one of the ubiquitous booths, then wandered the station trying to get my bearings. There were a lot of people there, sleeping, waiting for their trains. A bunch of teenagers, who looked like they’d been there all night, were just starting to drift out from an internet cafe. I saw a sign with a bed, pointing to the small hotel at the railway station, which was one of the places I’d considered staying. I climbed up a flight of stairs to the hotel, where the lady at the desk informed me that they had no rooms yet—I should try back around ten or so. With nothing else to do for the moment, I went downstairs to check my luggage, and headed out into the city.
I had rather melodramatically dreamed of watching the sun rise over the Dnepr River, and this seemed like a chance to do just that. From the train station I walked to the nearest metro stop and bought a few tokens. The metro remains one of the Soviet Union’s more positive legacies—it’s convenient, and actually works—and if you’ve used one, no matter what the city, you can use any other (although I admit I’d have problems reading the signs in the Tbilisi metro).
The Kiev metro isn’t as intense as the St. Petersburg metro (which is itself not very intense)—it only has three lines (compared with Petersburg’s four, or Moscow’s eleven and counting), and each train only has four cars. I noted the differences and similarities between the Kiev metro and the St. Petersburg one—the escalator distances seemed more or less comparable (very, very deep), but instead of the pale blue and white of Russian metro cars, Kiev’s were brightly painted in Ukrainian blue and yellow. Shoving my way into the car, along with the rest of the crowd, I saw that it was essentially identical to those in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The main differences were the TV screens hanging from the ceiling, which showed a map of the nearest stations during stops, and advertisements the rest of the time, and the plastic handles hanging down from the handrail, providing additional convenience as well as an additional advertising canvas. But even the standard warning about the doors closing was there, except that the famous Russian “Ostorozhno, dveri zakryvayutsya” was replaced with the Ukrainian “Oberezhno, dvery zachinyayutsya.”
I took the metro a few stops to the Dnipro station (the Ukrainian name for the river), figuring that from there I could find a good vantage point to see the sunrise. The station turned out to be one of the most interesting I’ve ever seen—rather than running underground, the train emerged from the side of the hills over the river and stopped on a platform high above the right bank (the western bank) before continuing on a dramatically curving bridge across the Dnepr. I got out and, as the train pulled away, simply stood for a minute, admiring the two Soviet-era statues that stood on pedestals there, hands thrust dramatically towards the triumphant socialist future. Then I went down the stairs, figuring I’d walk around and see if I could cross on another bridge, and see the sunrise from across the river. But it quickly turned out that, in addition to fact that the other bridge was actually quite far away, the area wasn’t terribly conducive to foot traffic...lots of highways there. So I went back to the station and climbed back up to the platform, and took the train one more stop over the bridge to the Hydropark station. From there I realized that I had gone so far that I’d never find a good spot, so I just hopped on the next train back (you can do this on Soviet metros, for no extra cost) and found myself on the other side of the platform, where I waited.
It soon became clear that I wasn’t going to see a sunrise as such—the weather was too overcast. However, the gradual lightening was hardly less dramatic. As the minutes wore on (counted by the clock on the metro platform) more and more things revealed themselves: the coves and inlets across the river became visible, as did the ice floes, trees, and the top of an Orthodox church on my side of the river. The other bridge gained structure, becoming more than just a string of lights. I could see the great blocks of Brezhnev-era apartment buildings in the residential areas on the left bank. It was all quite beautiful, but I was getting cold, so I hopped back on the (very crowded) metro and went into the city.
I came out somewhere close to the center, I don’t remember exactly where, but I wandered around for some time. I was surprised to find a Lenin statue still standing, and even more surprised to see his name and a quotation of one of his works written in Ukranian. Less surprising were the homages to the poet and artist Taras Shevchenko, who is to Ukraine what Aleksandr Pushkin is to Russia. A statue of Shevchenko sat in the middle of Shevchenko Park, while across Shevchenko Street stood the Taras Shevchenko National University. There were also monuments to and streets named after the historian Hrushevskii and others. I didn’t quite get into the heart of the city, but I saw Bessarabian Square, at one end of Khreshchyatyk—Kiev’s main drag. Under the square there was a very new underground shopping mall, which I investigated to get out of the cold and scout for future food opportunities. Everything was still closed, but it looked interesting. Back on the street, I dropped into the St. Petersburg hotel, another cheap spot that was on my short list. However, I was curtly informed that they had no rooms, and went back out, starting to worry slightly about housing.
It was getting to be around 10 AM, so I headed back to the train station. At the station hotel, the attendent informed me that there were still no free rooms, and wouldn’t be until around evening the next day. Now I wasn’t feeling so well—stress was definitely taking over. I tried calling another hotel that wouldn’t break the bank (but which was well out of the way), but they didn’t answer the phone. Finally, I remembered seeing a little tourist agency on the second floor advertising rooms from sixty hryven. Resigning myself to the reality of what would doubtless be a ridiculous commission and more than I’d planned on paying, I walked on in.
The people there were pretty nice. They said that hotel rooms were more expensive, but for 60 hryven, I could live in a room at someone’s apartment. I figured that would be tolerable, but a round of phone calls revealed that no such rooms were available. The lady at the desk said that for slightly more I could rent a whole apartment, and I told her to go ahead. She finally found one, and gave me an address, a name, and instructions, telling me that the landlady would meet me there. “It’ll be a Soviet apartment, nothing special,” she warned. I responded that I didn’t need all the bells and whistles, employing Russian Mafia slang, to the great amusement of the staff. Then I paid the commission, went downstairs to claim my luggage, and left.
I walked out to McDonald’s, which was the staging area for marshrutki—a “marshrutka” is a privately owned but city-licensed minibus (anything from a large van to a small bus) that runs on a predetermined route but stops anywhere along it. I found marshrutka 198, as I was told to, and dragged my luggage on board. It started off, and in a little while it came to the Solomensky Market (one of my fellow passengers advised me of this) and I disembarked. Behind the post office I found the building where I was to live—a drab, white Soviet block. Walking alongside, I found entrance 4 and went in, then located my apartment on the second floor.
Given the amount of time it had taken to get there, I assumed the landlady (or rather, her daughter, Antonina) had made it there long ago. But when I knocked on the door, I was answered by a deep male voice. “Do you live here?” I asked. “Yes,” came the reply. I started to worry. “Is Antonina here?” “She hasn’t arrived yet.” I tried asking more questions to confirm that this was, in fact, where I was supposed to live, but the person on the other end stopped responding. I was just rummaging through my pockets for the phone number of the tourist agency when a harried-looking middle-aged woman came running up the steps. She greeted me, obviously recognizing me by my suitcase and shell-shocked expression, and it became clear that this was Antonina. “I’m sorry, there’s some confusion, there’s still someone here,” she said. I gathered that it was some relative or other who hadn’t expected to have to leave the apartment.quite so soon. She asked me to wait outside, and I heard sounds of frantic cleaning and heated discussion. I wondered what I’d gotten myself into...this could easily have been the beginning of one of those true-crime stories from the Moscow outskirts that I read occasionally in expat newspapers. Antonina periodically emerged, promising “ten minutes,” and finally invited me into the kitchen, where I sat while she cleaned out the bedroom. The previous tenant, a rather non-descript and Slavic-looking young man, wandered in and stared at me for a moment. Shortly thereafter, the landlady herself showed up. Her name was Elena Fyodorovna, and she was a typical-looking babushka, complete with headscarf. We talked for a few minutes, and I paid her. She gave me the slightly unsettling instructions “If anyone comes, tell them to wait in the corridor,” and left.
Finally alone, I checked that the door was locked, and took stock of my situation. The apartment wasn’t too bad...it was actually clean now, with clean towels and sheets, and a full bathroom with hot water. There were three rooms: a small entranceway opened onto the bathroom, the small kitchen, and the main room, which had two beds and a large television that only played one, very staticky, channel. There was a glassed-in balcony, but it was cold, so I quickly closed its doors...which did not keep the rest of the apartment from being cold. The window looked out on a small playground with simple equipment.
I put things in order a bit. I opened my luggage and got out fresh clothes. I pulled the promised extra blanket from the cupboard and put it on my bed, along with the blanket from the other bed. Then I hopped in the shower, which had a plastic hose, a shower curtain that was slightly thicker than a plastic shopping bag, and lines for laundry strung above it, which my head touched. This, it later turned out, was one of the best showers I would use in Ukraine. It was quite welcome, at any rate, and, freshly showered and feeling human again, I went out to explore the already-darkening city.
I walked around the center, seeing the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square, where all the Yushchenko protestors gathered) for the first time. It’s a pretty nice space, although capitalism runs rampant there now...there are lights, billboards, and McDonalds. There are also hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, and several monuments, including a giant white-and-cold victory column, a monument to independence that was only erected a few years ago. It sported an orange Yushchenko flag.
Indeed, orange was pretty much everywhere. The crowds and tents had long since dispersed, but the traces of the campaign were ubiquitous—an uninformed person might think that Kiev had just hosted a Syracuse game. The souvenir stands on the Maidan were full of orange scarves, shirts, pens, flags, and so forth. Flags hung from many balconies, orange streamers were tied to drainpipes and flagpoles, and watching the crowd on the metro escalator (always a good representative sample of the population in a large post-Soviet city), you were liable to see at least a couple of people with orange hats or scarves—these could be teenage girls, serious-looking businessmen, or senior citizens. The more stylish had eschewed the official merchandise, simply wearing their own orange clothing. I took another walk through the underground mall, and was amused to see the prominently displayed orange merchandise—orange earrings in the front of a display case, orange socks or an orange windbreaker on a mannequin, orange boots, orange toys, and orange signs advertising bargain prices. I made a game of guessing which were a show of support for Yushchenko, and which predated the campaign. The orange “Shoes” sign and the orange walls at the decorative junk store, I supposed, had been there for some time. On the other hand, I doubt there’s much call for an orange men’s suit, even with the over-the-top fashions in this part of the world.
I walked up Khreshchyatyk, checking out all the sights listed in my book, and finally making my way along a wooded walkway into a park where the Soviet “Friendship of Nations” statue stood—strong young men, allegories of Soviet Russia and Ukraine, marching forward together under a dramatic arch. Behind them was a scenic overlook with what promised to be a beautiful view over the Dnepr. Unfortunately, the very dramatic space was tainted somewhat by some sort of carnival ride, brightly lit and blaring loud American music despite the fact that no one was working or playing there. I walked out onto the overlook, and was greeted by a dramatic nighttime scene: along the Dnepr, lights from bridges shone, and two large roads converged and diverged, with headlights streaking along them. On a nearby hill stood a statue of St. Vladimir, who introduced Christianity to the ancient Slavs, holding a cross. Naturally, there was a group of loud, drunken teenagers, the human equivalent of the obnoxious carnival ride, simply being loud and annoying. I nonetheless enjoyed the view and got some good pictures.
Feeling hungry, I went looking for a restaurant. Arriving at the address where I hoped to find a good barbeque place, I discovered that it was not only located elsewhere, but closed for renovation. I climbed back up the hill that I’d just descended and, around the end of Tolstoi Street, chanced upon a self-described “rock-and-roll cafe.” It was late and I was hungry, so I went in. It turned out to be an odd mix of American and Asian cuisine, with a menu in English, and a chef who spoke English. It was full of Rolling Stones memorabilia, and the owner spoke with a strange accent (California? Britain?) but in English. Who moves to Kiev to start a Rolling Stones theme restaurant? The tasty food soon quashed my qualms about supporting globalization, and having filled my stomach, I hopped on the Metro back to the train station, then took the 198 marshrutka back to the market, and walked up to my cold apartment, where I went to sleep in my warm bed. Plans or not, I’d seen the Dnepr, I’d seen the city, I’d eaten, and now I had a place to sleep. Things were proceeding well.
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| Holidays, Finals, and the run-up to Ukraine |
[15 Feb 2005|07:14pm] |
Sorry this comes so late... I finished this the night I left for Ukraine and didn't get a chance to post it. It'll fill you in, and soon I'll start posting about my trip. That'll come in installments, since it would take forever otherwise. I've begun writing the Kiev installment already.
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Mornings here are usually a pretty quiet, nondescript time. I stumble out of bed, step over the reams of class reading piled next to it, and turn off my increasingly annoying alarm clock. Then I walk down the hall, light the stove, and boil water for tea, while I pull out the bread, cheese, and butter and ladle myself some kasha from the pot that Nina has left on the stove. Usually, by the time I do this, everyone else is either already out of the house or still not planning on getting up for a good long time, so I sit and have a quiet breakfast by myself. I generally don’t expect to see Sasha holding a dead suckling-pig over a gas burner.
Long after “my” Christmas had passed, St. Petersburg was still gearing up for New Year’s eve—everywhere you could see the trees, the lights, the stages, the stands selling fish and honey-beer and decorations and cheap toys from China. I hadn’t made any firm plans for celebrating, but I had a general idea that I wanted to go see the big party on Palace Square. During the afternoon on Christmas Eve, I called my friend Arslan and we agreed to meet at 12:30 AM and head out together.
In the meantime, I waited for dinner. Nina and Sasha were preparing a feast—plates and plates of chicken, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, olives, cheese, fruits, and the aforementioned suckling-pig. My contribution to the event was limited to helping put the extra leaves into the dining-room table. The television played tapes from past New Year’s Eves—Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin—while Nikita and I chuckled along. Then I watched a Russian comic named Maxim Galkin doing a New Year’s special; he talked quickly, so I didn’t understand a whole lot of what he said, and I’m sure there were some cultural elements I was missing, but I found him amusing nonetheless. Watching a man in a spandex cat-suit howl cacophonously to “The Beautiful Blue Danube” while another man twists his tail is the sort of thing that transcends language and cultural barriers. We watched Galkin until he started saying something offensive, I don’t know what, and then changed the channel.
At 11 PM we sat down for dinner. We were joined by Roma, Sasha’s cousin, although Nikita had left to go party on his own a while ago. We took a few pictures and started feasting, drinking the obligatory toasts to health, peace, family, friends, and so forth. The TV remained on in the background, and a bit before midnight Vladimir Putin appeared, giving the standard New Year’s address before the towers and walls of the Kremlin. He spoke for a couple of minutes, then the camera cut to the Spassky Tower, the faces of its clock showing midnight as its bells rang out. The new year had arrived. We stood and toasted with champagne as the national anthem of the Russian Federation began to play, lyrics and all. I started singing along with the current lyrics, then Roma joined in with the Soviet ones, so I followed him—the Soviet lyrics are more powerful anyway. After we had sung to the end, Sasha stood up again, saying “Grandfather Frost has come!” We headed off together to the master bedroom, where Nina and Sasha had erected a tree, replete with presents underneath. I opened mine—a Russian folk-style lacquered sugar-bowl and spoon, filled with candy, a chocolate Grandfather Frost and chocolate pine cones, and a stuffed fabric watermelon slice, to remind me of all the evenings we sat in the kitchen eating watermelon. I brought their presents, and then we returned to the kitchen. Nina made me a cup of tea as I put on my coat and hat, and then I ran out to meet Arslan.
We walked first to the Strelka. A few hundred feet from the spit, they’d blocked off the roads, and there was a giant party going on between the Naval Museum and the park. Music blared from the stage, the giant digital-style “2005” sign behind the stage glittered, and the torches atop the rostral columns blazed. We lingered for a minute before walking across the Palace Bridge (also temporarily reclaimed for pedestrians) to the Palace Square. There it was pretty much the same situation, except even bigger and crazier—these weren’t just residents of Vasilievsky Island, but of the whole city. It was one of the most heartwarmingly friendly, comradely, egalitarian gatherings I’ve ever been to—everyone was there, and everyone was there to have a good time. It was definitely a young crowd, dancing and partying, but there were plenty of kids with their parents, probably dreaming of the day when they would do the same, and a goodly number of older people, undoubtedly thinking of the times when they had.
Arslan and I just walked around getting our bearings for the first few minutes, watching the crowd surging around the Alexander Column. The fireworks were pretty impressive, too, and also very egalitarian—it wasn’t a show, just individuals shooting things off. Mostly, they had the sort of fireworks that are only available to professionals in America—we’re talking streak-into-the-sky-and-explode-in-a-shower-of-light fireworks—and they were launching them to altitudes that would be illegal in America. I was surprised at the end of the night not to find holes burned in my coat. Arslan informed me that last year someone set the Bolshaya Morskaya street arch on fire by accident, which explained the master’s of ceremonies request to aim fireworks AWAY from the arch. Arslan himself almost suffered a similar fate when someone launched a rocket at too low an angle, but fortunately nothing came of it.
A crowd of about five young Russians were dancing around near us, and they waved us over. We introduced ourselves; they thought it was cool that I’m from Philadelphia. Then we danced around, in a circle, Russian folk style, or whatever came to mind. We played soccer with an orange. Meanwhile minor celebrities graced the stage while more famous ones appeared on the giant screen. There were singers and dancers, and some sort of deputy-under-assistant-to-something-to-the-mayor took the stage and was greeted by boos. This all went on for several hours, and was still going on at around 4 AM when Arslan and I bid farewell to our fellows and headed home. We hung around on the Strelka for a few more minutes on the way, watching people dressed as Russian cartoon characters dance on stage, and witnessing a reasonably impressive fireworks show.
When I got home at around 5 AM, I entered the apartment quietly, not wanting to wake anyone up. The table was still set in the kitchen; I figured Nina and Sasha had left it for the next day. But no sooner had I put on my pajamas than Nina, Sasha, and Roma returned with about five good friends, repaired to the kitchen, and started dinner anew. After a few minutes I went in to say goodnight, and in keeping with what I’d observed that day, I started wishing them all health, success, happiness, and good fortune in the new year. But Sasha stopped me, saying, “If you want to say things like that you have to sit down and have a drink.” So I sat down in my pajamas, Nina poured me a glass of wine, and I piled some more chicken on my plate and sat for about another hour, enjoying the congenial spirit, until everybody left. I finally went to sleep around 6:20.
New Year’s Day was pretty nondescript. That evening I went over to Arslan’s apartment to try to fix his computer. Besides being a Windows machine, it was beyond any help I could offer. So we sat and watched TV, first some more New Year’s specials, then “Triple X.” Dubbing is never that great, but I think car chases and explosions transcend both linguistic and cultural barriers. With us were Arslan’s friends Ai Beg, a taciturn guy from Kyrgyzstan, and Alexei, who’s a member of some sort of Communist Youth party, and showed me an article he’d written in the group newspaper/party organ. We had some interesting discussions about life and politics in our respective homelands. I left around 3 AM.
The next few days were pretty quiet. Because, as Nina wisely pointed out, I had a whole month to write research papers and prepare for finals, and I can’t stress out for a whole month, I’d given myself a moratorium from the time of my Nomads final until after New Year’s. But, New Year’s having come, it was time to get back to work. I also went back and forth once or twice to the Ukrainian consulate to see about getting a visa, but it was closed. The lesson here is that there is no point whatsoever in trying to accomplish something in the ten days after New Year’s in Russia. Everything shuts down.
Orthodox Christmas was a bit more interesting. As I’ve said, New Year’s occupies the “big winter holiday” role in Russia that Christmas occupies in America, and Russia is in many respects a very secular country, but the holiday is nonetheless codified to a greater or lesser degree in the long vacation (it falls on the seventh) and it’s important to the faithful. I wasn’t planning anything in particular. As a matter of fact, when midnight came on Christmas Eve, I was in my room trying to read about the Cyrillic alphabet for my paper. But on account of the warm winter, it was hot in my room, and at midnight I heard the bells of St. Andrew’s Cathedral on 6th Line ringing through my open window. Eager to see how the Russians met Christmas, and always happy to hear the bells, I threw on my shoes and coat and ran outside. The bells stopped just as I got to the church, but everybody was standing around outside, and people were going in and out, so I waited to see what would happen. After about twenty minutes, a man approached and asked if I was going into the church. I told him I wasn’t. He heard my accent, asked where I was from, and we started talking. He turned out to be a very interesting man—a former radio operator turned psychologist, now retired. His name was Vasily Grigorevich, and in his world-view he managed to combine Marxist and Freudian thought with pantheism. He was a dedicated Marxist, and said repeatedly that the only cure for all the ills of the world, from rampant neoconservative globalization to increasing mental illness among young people, was socialism. Our conversation ranged from history to politics to psychology, and everywhere else. Vasily Grigorevich asked me about my ancestry, and upon hearing about my Lithuanian roots, guessed that I have a Lithuanian nose—apparently it resembles the noses of some of his Lithuanian acquaintances. It’s good to have an ethnic justification for what I’ve long considered one of my less becoming features. All in all, we talked for three hours before parting ways. He gave me a lot to think about and some good advice.
On Christmas Day I did some work in the morning before going out for my obligatory walk. This time I went north to the Smolensk Cemetery. I did have work to do, so I couldn’t spend hours wandering among the tombstones and reading names, but I happened upon the former burial site of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s greatest poet (who now rests in Ukraine on a hill over the Dnepr), and the grave of one of the founders of the Russian soccer tradition. I saw a beautiful historical church. Most interesting was the grave of Ksenia the Blessed, a real St. Petersburg saint who lived in the late 18th century. I don’t recall exactly what she did to become a saint. She was widowed and survived for many years after the death of her husband, during which time she secretly carried stones at night to help build a cathedral. Ksenia is interred in a small chapel on the cemetery grounds. I approached and saw a large line of people and stood behind them, assuming that it was the line to go in. As I waited, I watched what others were doing. Many walked up to the chapel with small pieces of paper, on which they’d written prayers, and stuck them into the building—into cracks, windows, drainpipes, anywhere—then rested their heads and hands against the building and prayed. As it turned out, the line I was in was not to get in. It was to a small box next to the chapel in which people were lighting candles, an important part of Orthodox prayer. I had no candles, but the women in front of me gave me a couple for saving their spot in line, so I lit them and stood them in the ashes among the others.
When I finally did get inside, I didn’t spend much time—apparently the crowds are always heavy here, but on Christmas day the place was packed. I just saw the white marble sarcophagus lying at the front of the building, as a priest walked about and recited prayers.
I went home and worked some more, but I took the evening off and relaxed. It was, after all, Friday.
I worked diligently over the weekend. On Sunday, the day before my Slavic Antiquities paper was due, Nina told me to go have a look at the river. There was a big storm on the Baltic Sea, and in Petersburg it translated to strong winds, rain, and a seriously swollen river. I don’t estimate distances that well; you can judge from the photos, but it was well over ten feet higher, I think, perhaps much more.
I walked to the embankment and my first impression was of the river seemingly flowing backwards. Usually you’d have a ways to fall from the sidewalk into the river, but the river was within a few feet of the ledge. As I walked along the embankment, I realized that I’d never really had to look up to see the ships before. The most astounding comparison was the landing where the road (not a main road, naturally) dips and curves down to the water’s usual level; I’ve mentioned this spot in a previous entry. Usually I walk down the sidewalk and down to the river on my way across. But that wasn’t an option, since the water was across, and well above, the road. Massive chunks of ice floated and washed up onto what was now the shore. I walked over to the landing next to the bridge, which was completely underwater, as were many of the steps leading down to it. I felt sorry for the ducks, still floating on the cold, turbulent waters. But, I suppose, I shouldn’t impose my human viewpoint—after all, I don’t have an insulating layer of soft feathers. I shouldn’t be so down on that idea.
That night I stayed up late finishing my Slavic Antiquities paper. Some schedule confusion the next day gave me a bit of free time, so I wandered around the embankment again. The water had gone down again—perhaps it was a bit higher than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. I spent a good bit of time looking at the huge ice fragments lying everywhere. It’s hard to believe how thick they are. They have quite interesting and varied structures as well—some have well-defined layers and are very clear at the bottom but become whiter and snowier towards the top. Others are murkier and have odd angles everywhere, remains of the many different sheets that were mashed together to form one.
I spent the rest of the week doing a lot of running around. At some point, I finally managed to get to the Ukrainian consulate and obtain a visa application. My final paper on Semiotics was due on Saturday, but I had a lot of other things on my mind. First and foremost, I had discovered that Americans do, in fact, require a letter of invitation to visit Ukraine on a tourist visa; you can get a private visa without a letter of invitation if you indicate who you’re visiting, but unfortunately I know no one there. So a frantic internet search to find someone to give me a letter of invitation was followed by a hasty e-mail, a run downtown to a bank to send money to Kiev, and a confusing phone call to figure out what bank to send it to. Furthermore, I needed to find another bank to pay the consulate—the only place guaranteed to accept payment from foreigners for such a service. Looking for that bank, I got lost and wandered all up and down an embankment in the south of the city, from Moscow Avenue to Baltic Station. By the time I got to the bank, it was closed. It wasn’t all for naught, though...I got to see a milk factory, a dramatic but ugly twentieth-century Orthodox church, and a trolley breakdown that resulted in a three-trolley jam.
On Thursday and Friday I wrote my Semiotics paper, and on Saturday I sent it off to the professor. Now I had a whole week before my last battle, the final. So I decided to relax a little bit. After stopping off at an Internet cafe to send said final, I took the metro north to the Petrograd Side, where I saw St. Petersburg’s first historical monument: the cabin of Peter the Great. It’s rather large as cabins go, though tiny compared to other residences associated with Russian emperors. The cabin consists of a dining room, bedroom, and office, which were accessorized with some of Peter’s actual possessions, including his pipe. On the outside, there were traces of paint—Peter had the cabin painted in a brick pattern to look Dutch, in an act very characteristic of his love of all things Western (not to mention his childish, whimsical personality). Next to the cabin (now enclosed in a protective brick structure) sat a small boat, supposedly built by Peter himself, with its linen sail spread and (appropriately) a toy cannon mounted on the gunwale. Nearby exhibits showed models of early Petersburg and described the battle between the Russians and the Swedes in which the former took the land on which the city lies today.
That didn’t take too long, so I headed farther west along the embankment, soon arriving at the Aurora, permanently moored on the Neva and anchored by giant, hinged metal arms. Construction of this cruiser began in 1897 and she was launched three years later. Although she traveled widely, even (I believe) taking part in the Russo-Japanese War, she is best known as the ship that, with a blank shot from her bow, signaled the start of the October Revolution in 1917, in which the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace and toppled the provincial government. The Aurora continued to serve actively through the Civil War and onwards, through the Second World War. During the siege of Leningrad she was scuttled to prevent damage or capture by the Germans, then raised 950 days later. In 1948 the ship became a museum and was permanently moored. Like many other Communist symbols—the red stars on the towers of the Kremlin, countless statues throughout Russia, and Lenin himself—the Aurora survived the regime change, and flies the modern Russian Navy ensign (the blue and white St. Andrew’s Cross of the Russian Imperial Navy) in spite of its inherently Soviet significance.
Happily, entrance was free. I climbed up the gangplank, pausing for a few photos, and climbed on deck. I walked past the gun turrets, pointing out dramatically and ominously over the city, stared at the great blades of the propeller (now mounted on the deck), looked up at the gaping air intakes and the rigging, and eventually made my way to the bow, where the famous cannon itself sat, emblazoned with a massive brass plaque. Then I eased my way down the steep later and into the museum. The first room was a typical living space for the sailors: bunks, hammocks, and tables hanging from the ceiling that could be folded away when not in use. Two heavy anchor chains lay in grooves along the floor. Just as I had taken all this in and was turning to leave, a young man slipped on the steep staircase and slid noisily down the last four or so stairs before catching himself. As he stood at the bottom of the staircase regaining his balance, the museum attendant (a man of advanced years) yelled at him “Don’t break the staircase!” “Yeah, the staircase,” replied the young man ironically.
The following rooms showed more or less typical displays: uniforms, guns, paintings of the ship and its sailors in various milieux, and so forth. The ship itself was more interesting; in the second room there stood an Orthodox iconostasis, the icon screen that divides the sanctuary from the congregation in an Orthodox cathedral. It was rather plain compared to land-bound ones, but still contrasted sharply with the gray military interior. The final room was a spectacular display of Soviet kitsch: display cases housed all kinds of gifts made by various Soviet organizations to commemorate the Aurora. There was a garish metal plate engraved with an idyllic tableau of the Gorky Automobile Factory (GAZ), which commissioned it, and numerous “artistic creations” that looked more appropriate to a desk than a museum, mostly more or less creative interpretations of a hammer and sickle. Off to the side there were models of the ships of the Soviet fleet. I was particularly pleased to find, nestled between the various cruisers, destroyers, and Kiev-class aircraft carrier, a Typhoon-class missile submarine. It lacked the mysterious doors of the silent propulsion system and I didn’t count the missile tubes, but nonetheless it harked back to the great movie “Hunt for Red October” that fed my childhood interest in Russia.
Savoring my temporary freedom from work, and since the Ukrainian consulate was closed on the weekends, I spent Sunday relaxing. On Monday, it was back to business. I got up and took the metro down south, where I skipped the milk factory and went straight to the bank to pay for my visa. In the process I received about four official, purple “Moskomprivatbank” stamps. This is a phenomenon I’ve noticed in Russia—everything revolves around these stamps. They’re circular, of a uniform size, a bit more than an inch, and always made in blue or purple ink. Every university, company, office, directorate, or other significant body has its own, and while they mostly consist of text, many companies have taken to putting their logo in the middle. No document is official without one; I have one on my student ID, my money-exchange receipts, my invitation letter from Ukraine, and about four on my visa. In any given building, the fire-evacuation diagram usually bears one, right next to the chief engineer’s signature and the general manager’s countersignature. Even the little cards on the buffet window at Sbarro, next to the name of the pizza and the ingredients, have the stamp, signed by the manager and general accountant. The history of such stamps, in fact, goes a long way back. If you spend any time around Russians and alcohol, you will inevitably see someone hold their hand up to their neck and flick the latter with their middle finger (my professor tells me that the ideal result is a hollow, resonant sound); depending on the context, this can be an invitation to drink or an indexical sign commenting that someone else has had too much. Apparently this is a direct evolution of the stamp tradition: in the Russian empire of a certain era, one had to receive a special stamp in order to buy alcohol (I assume, though I am not sure, for tax purposes). One particularly hardy individual was such a frequent customer that he received special dispensation to simply have the stamp tattooed onto his neck, and would simply call attention to it by flicking it whenever called upon for documentation.
I digress, but I’m sure you’re far more interested in such an aspect of Russian culture than in anything that goes on inside a bank. Suffice to say that, amid much stamping, my money was converted into a stamped receipt for the consulate. I couldn’t turn in visa documents until 5:00, so I wandered around the city for a while, doing a dry run on the metro to assess my travel time for the next day’s adventure. When I finally arrived at the consulate, I turned over all my documents to the vice-consul, who told me that my visa would be ready on Thursday—a few days earlier than I’d expected. It is, I suppose, good to have one’s papers in order.
Feeling rather accomplished, I walked back out onto the cold street and past the green-lit sign of the Communist-era grocery store across the street. It’s much easier, I thought, to run around the city when you’re actually accomplishing things, than when you’re simply finding out what needs to be accomplished. Since I now knew when I would get the visa, I headed to the train station to buy my ticket. I dropped by the touch-screen computer to confirm that there were still seats left on the train I’d found earlier; there were plenty. After a quick stop at the cash machine, I went to the ticket window, presented my passport, and received my ticket. Done. Couldn’t have been easier. I thought of the words that had been printed on the ticket folder for my first airline tickets to Russia, almost two years ago: “Tickets in hand, you can begin to dream.” Corny, sure, but it’s true...with my visa and tickets taken care of, I felt happy and peaceful. As I walked towards the bust of Peter the Great and the exit, I happened to glance up at the diagram on the wall showing the routes of trains. I found Kiev in the lower left-hand corner. Its dot on the diagram was blue, signifying that it left from Vitebsk Station—well, right, that’s what the ticket lady had said. I followed the line from St. Petersburg to Vitebsk, and Gomel...which are cities in Belarus.
Belarus is an interesting nation. It’s only existed since the end of the Soviet Union; before that, it was always part of one Union, empire, commonwealth, or other polity, and its people have never governed themselves. Now it’s the last dictatorship in Europe, under President Alexander Lukashenko, a former farm manager who’s famous for his statement that “Not everything associated with the famous Adolf Hitler is bad.” The Belarusian intelligence agency is still known as the KGB. Even worse than that (as regards my personal situation), Belarus strictly requires a visa for Americans visiting or even traveling through Belarus, which is supposedly expensive and difficult to obtain. I didn’t feel like paying for another visa, or (even worse) dealing with another bureaucracy that probably wouldn’t get anything done in time for my trip. I groaned and walked back to the ticket counter.
Being in train stations is always fun. There’s an air of excitement, of people leaving for faraway and exciting places. I feel this even more strongly in Russia, where New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Washington, and Miami are replaced by Moscow, Kursk, Togliatti, Orenburg, or even Vladivostok. So, for all the pain of buying new tickets, I didn’t mind too much. I wondered what adventures the couple in front of me would have as I watched them buy tickets for the next train to Pyatigorsk, the Caucasian mountain resort that appears in Lermontov. When my turn came, I simply said that I wanted to be in Kiev on the twenty-fifth and couldn’t go through Belarus. After a bit of planning, and personally checking the map, the ticket lady booked me on a train that left from St. Petersburg at 12:45 AM on the twenty-fourth, arrived in Moscow at 9:25 the same day, and then on one from Moscow at 4:39 PM to Kiev at 5:21 AM on the twenty-fifth (accounting for local time, one hour behind Moscow). I exchanged my other ticket, happily for full price, and went home.
Tuesday was almost as exciting as Monday. In the morning I met with my Russian professor and we painstakingly corrected my Slavic Antiquities paper. She’s kind and constructive, but it was nonetheless a long and bloody process. I’m rather proud of my writing, and as pleased as I am that I can write in Russian, I’m not sure if I’d want to hear what my Russian prose sounds like to native ears. Following that I went home and tried in vain to study for Semiotics before heading off to my first professional hockey game in approximately thirteen years.
As you might have heard, the NHL lockout has made quite a splash over here in Russia. Russian and European players have jumped at the chance to make a few bucks over here and visit their family and friends in the meantime. I’d read a few weeks beforehand that Jaromir Jagr, the highest-paid player in the NHL, had signed a contract with the Omsk Avangard team. A major condition of the contract was that he keep his number—68—which he wears, ironically, in memory of his grandfathers, killed in that year when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. I generally don’t care about hockey, but when I saw the poster for upcoming hockey games, listing St. Petersburg’s SKA vs. Omsk Avangard, I jumped at the chance to see a truly great player in action, in St. Petersburg, for a Russian price. For four bucks I got a ticket in the sixth row from the ice, towards the end of one side, near the goal. On the appointed evening I arrived at the stadium via the metro, which was heavy with the game-night crowd, and headed in. I was pleasantly surprised—it was a very new, modern stadium, the “Ledovyi Dvorets.” Although this literally translates to “Icy Palace,” there must have been someone on the staff who realized how stupid that sounds in English, since the English-language signs simply read “The New Arena.” The one downside to the newness and prettyness was that I couldn’t bring my soda, sandwich, and chips to my seat—I had to wolf them down outside.
The pre-game announcements confirmed that Jagr was, indeed, in the lineup for the evening. He got some cheers and polite applause, but it was definitely a hometown crowd—the reaction to the names of the St. Petersburg players was much louder. All the players skated out onto the ice and formed two ranks. Jagr was the leftmost in the first rank, less than fifty feet from where I sat. Then the national anthem began and the flag rose into the rafters. I don’t care what nationality I am, with that national anthem, it’s a very impressive moment. Then the game began.
It was clear early on that Avangard was in better form; #70 scored the first goal within a few minutes (breaking his stick in the process), and shortly thereafter Jagr scored the second. Frightened, SKA began to play dirty—I saw a lot of pushing and sticks shoved into shins—and a couple of their players ended up in the penalty box. They soon brought the score up to a tie, but Avangard pulled ahead again, and the game ended 5-3. The Petersburg fans remained spirited, tooting the “Let’s Go!” rhythm on their small but improbably loud plastic horns, and doing “Volna”—The Wave. Indeed, watching them was half the fun. When the Omsk goalie began rhythmically striking the ice with his stick as the others swarmed around the opposing goal, the Russian in front of me loudly shouted “STOP BANGING YOUR STICK ON THE ICE.” It sounded impressive to me, although to a Russian it was probably as prosaic as my rendition sounds to you.
The crowd filed out as the players lined up to shake hands. I’d had a pretty good night; not the least because I’d paid a mere four dollars to see something that would be worth far more to many Americans, who can’t even see it right now. I considered buying an Avangard jersey with Jagr’s name in Cyrillic, but it was fifty bucks, and that would have blunted my schadenfreude a bit.
Over the next couple of days I tried studying for semiotics, but there was a lot else going on. “Radio Hermitage,” a St. Petersburg station, broadcasts a one-minute segment called “Art News” twice a week. The segment is written in English by one of my Semiotics classmates, and generally Bryan reads it. Since he’s out of town right now, he asked if I—as a native English speaker—would record in his absence. So on Thursday and Friday, I went to the radio station and recorded three segments. Apparently, they now want me to continue recording, since I have a better radio voice than Bryan and don’t have to be coached so much.
Thursday was also noteworthy because, on Thursday afternoon, I finally got my Ukrainian visa. After waiting unnecessarily in the cold for ten minutes, I was finally admitted to the consulate, where the vice-consul took my passport and stuck a page-size sticker into it—sadly, not quite carefully enough, since it sticks out over the edge, but it’ll get me into the country. It’s a nice document, too, green, with a hologram and plenty of Cyrillic lettering.
I spent most of Friday afternoon reading Semiotics and realizing how little I knew about some of the topic matter, largely thanks to my more limited language skills at the beginning of the semester. I stayed up Friday night reading until it stopped making sense, then got up at 7:00 to start again. Luckily, when I arrived, the professor let us choose our topic for the first question, and assigned us a topic for the second. I messed up the second, writing about humans instead of animals as I should have, but a quick discussion cleared it up. I also got a good grade on my paper, although I had treated one theory of metaphor as the be-all and end-all, rather than one man’s opinion. Such is life. I can’t really complain, since I got a B+ in the class overall.
Finally, for the first time since late August, I was free—no more classes, no more assignments. By way of celebration, I stopped for lunch at my favorite shaverma stand, then went to Udelnaya, where I got a Soviet desk set—a little plastic stand emblazoned with a hammer and sickle and places for three pens—and Russian bathroom signs. Then I went home and relaxed.
I spent today cleaning up my room—trash piled into one bag, boxes carried out to the trash, course material pulled off the floor, sorted, and packed away in one box. The shelves are still reassuringly filled with my stuff, but the rest of my room looks disturbingly bare, very unlike any room that should be mine. I’ll fix that soon enough when I get back. After cleaning, I went to buy a warmer jacket; my current one is barely suitable for the current weather in St. Petersburg, and it won’t be any better in Ukraine, down on the steppe. I found a very nice one, with a fur collar, for a very good price, so I decided to indulge myself. I carried it to the cash register, which showed a price about four hundred rubles higher. The manager was called, and it was determined that they couldn’t sell it to me for the price marked. I protested with as much indignation as I’m capable of, but the prices are set in Moscow...nothing doing. I found another one for the price I’d budgeted, with more pockets, but without the collar. Maybe it’s a message—against indulgence, for vegetarianism...or maybe it’s just Russia.
And now I’m heading off to Ukraine, on the night train. Wish me luck...whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll be an adventure, and there will be stories when I get back.
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| New Pictures |
[19 Jan 2005|02:36pm] |
Photos from over the past two weeks. An update is coming, I promise! Seriously, it's on my computer, half-written already.
Here are pictures from New Year's, dinner and the ensuing party:
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWLZm3bOGz2Q
The "flood" (no ruined homes and rooftop rescues here, just a really high river) on January 9th:
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWLZm3bOGz4o
The Aurora, the ship that signaled the start of the October Revolution:
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWLZm3bOGz6g
The hockey game I went to last night, SKA (St. Petersburg's home team) vs. Omsk Avangard. Lots of pictures of Jaromir Jagr, #68.
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWLZm3bOGz84
Not a whole lot of commentary there, I don't have much to say about hockey, except that I paid $4 and got within 50 feet of Jaromir Jagr, one of the greatest and highest-paid players in the NHL (or so I hear).
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| And so this is Christmas... |
[29 Dec 2004|01:35pm] |
*Preliminary Stuff*
I've tried to make this entry "multi-media." I put numbers in the text that correspond to photographs, which you can view here:
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWLZm3bOGzyA
I also tried to describe my route in detail, so if you've got a map you can try to follow along.
You can see pictures of some of the junk I've accumulated here:
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWLZm3bOGz0Y
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On an ordinary Christmas eve, I don’t spend several minutes standing next to a traffic jam, camera ready, awaiting a shower of sparks from a passing trolley. Generally I don’t register for classes, either. Even more rarely do I find inspiration from strangers’ snow graffiti on a granite railing. Then again, I’ve never spent Christmas in St. Petersburg before, so I didn’t really know what to expect.
Things finally got “Christmas-y” around here in the few days before the holiday. Or, I should say, “New Year’s-y,” as an increasingly inaccurate calendar and eighty years of youthful experimentation with socialism have rendered the latter much more important than the former in this part of the world. But the overall effect is pretty much the same—trees, lights, shameless commercialism, and the buildup to what looks like quite a party.
For me, the change was mostly connected to the appearance of the trees—I’ve already mentioned the Interstate Tree on Labor Square. Then Nina kicked me out of the house one day this weekend to clear my head and take a walk, telling me to go see the tree outside the Vasileostrovskaya Metro station on 7th line (there were soldiers there giving out free oatmeal, but I was too late to get any). Within the next few days they were all over the place—it seems every public square has its own. Furthermore, upon coming to my final Nomads of Northern Asia class on Thursday, I discovered that most of the room was occupied by a truly enormous tree, even clashing with the high ceiling of the once-majestic 18th-century Russian palace that now belongs to Smolny Institute.
The incipient holiday mood didn’t stop the late-semester institutional drudge of Smolny. I stayed up until six on Wednesday night finishing my Nomads paper, which raises the question of what exactly constitutes an all-nighter in a city where the sun doesn’t come up until ten. Thursday was more relaxing—the other American students, Bryan, a few Russian friends, and I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Then, on Friday, it was time to register for classes.
I’m not exactly sure what the system of registration is, but pre-registration is apparently designed just to gauge interest in classes and drop those without enough students. Registration day is crazy—the entire student body and faculty of Smolny descends on the one floor of the Philology School building that Smolny occupies. Each department has its own room, and each professor sits with a blank list for each class. Meanwhile, each student gets a “registratsionnyi list,” a form with spaces for all the required and non-required courses. There’s quite an assortment, and it was an eye-opening insight into what I’ve managed to avoid at Hamilton. Each student needs to take courses in history, Russian history, mathematics or computer science, English, and a few others, as well as however many other classes are necessary to get a full courseload for the semester (normal classes are four credits, students must take between sixteen and twenty a semester). Every class year has its own sheet of requirements—since they weren’t important to me, I grabbed the first-year sheet. Having obtained that, I then had to find the professors of the courses I want to take and have them sign my sheet, while they put my name on theirs.
This was slightly complicated by the fact that I wasn’t sure what classes I wanted to take. I won’t bore you by detailing the Byzantine requirements of Hamilton’s history department, suffice it to say that I had to take two history courses at the 200-level. I had already decided to take one history course about the Russian experience with empire, nationalism, and so forth. Most of the others were either “general courses” (surveys attended by about forty first-years who don’t want to be there), two-credit courses (not enough credit), or courses on American history (which my advisor from Hamilton said not to bother taking in Russia). That left historiography, a 300-level course. I was a bit leery of that, but I talked with the professor (also the dean), who talked it over and made it sound manageable, so I signed up. I also signed up for Intro to Sanskrit, which is apparently being taught by a distinguished visiting scholar of Asian studies. My advisor here seemed worried that it would be too much, but language classes are always the least of my problems. And, after about seven months straight of intensive Russian grammar, I have all the “language” vocabulary down pretty well at this point.
Registration took until three or so, and then I spent much more time than should logically be necessary trying to print out some Semiotics reading. I never managed to do so, and headed home around seven for dinner.
After dinner I set off to salvage some Christmas/New Year’s spirit by taking a walk around the city to see and photograph the decorations. I figured on a rough plan, but left plenty of room for wandering—I didn’t care about any exact route but knew what I wanted to have seen by the end of the night. First I set off down 8th Line (1) to the embankment, where the city erected a truly fascinating device (2). It looks like a streetlight pole, but the top is adorned with little sticks poking out in all directions, covered with flashing lights. It looked like a missile striking a target—lights on one stick would pulse inward, then all the others would flash outward together in all the colors of the rainbow. It’s very pretty. I’ve never seen anything exactly like it before, it struck me as slightly Soviet.
Having spent several minutes trying to do justice to that contraption with my camera, I headed onto the Lieutenant Schmidt bridge. As usual, I tried to get some lovely nighttime photos of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and as usual they came out blurry (3). Luckily the night was relatively warm and I didn’t freeze on the bridge. I continued across and down the road to Labor Square to photograph the Interstate Tree (4). Pausing to consult my map, I chose to go a bit farther south and then head east along the Moika Canal. I found a nice spot with a boat landing and a decent view of the Cathedral, and spent a few minutes taking self-timer photos (5). I continued down the road to Decembrists’ Square (6), where Nicholas I sat with his back to yet another giant tree. There were some more of the light contraptions there, including a couple outside of the Marinsky Palace where the government is housed, but they weren’t as fascinating.
I continued along Gorokhovaya street, pursuing my vague goal of Nevsky Prospekt and the center. I made a wrong turn but ended up on Sennaya Square (this translates to “Haymarket” Square, which American/labor history buffs might find amusing). This square figures prominently in Crime and Punishment, but it’s changed a bit since then. The church is gone, replaced by a Metro station, something else is gone, replaced by an ugly post-Soviet shopping center, and it’s no longer a slum (7). I didn’t have any religious experiences, either, just took some more tree pictures and headed back towards Nevsky. I went along Sadovaya, finally ending up next to Gostiny Dvor, the famous shopping mall (8). The cold drove me inside, where I marveled at the selection of creatively bottled alcohol, including “K-19” vodka in a submarine-shaped bottle that I might have bought for the sheer novelty if it hadn’t cost over two hundred dollars. Back out on Nevsky Prospekt, I saw a trolley waiting at the intersection. I eagerly grabbed my camera—trolleys going through intersections, particularly when turning, tend to detach themselves momentarily from the power lines, causing a momentary blackout within the cab and a dramatic shower of sparks. I stood there for a few minutes before realizing that I was actually observing an infamous St. Petersburg “probka,” or traffic jam (appropriately, the word literally means “cork” or “stopper”). The traffic lights had gone out and there were no police in sight (9). I waited for a few minutes before choosing to exercise my advantage as a pedestrian and actually move.
First, I photographed yet another giant tree in front of Gostiny Dvor. Then, down Nevsky a ways (10), I took a walk around the Church of St. Catherine, St. Petersburg’s oldest Catholic church (11), set back from the street and surrounded by a nicely lit walkway with modern sculptures (12). Unfortunately the whole church, aside from the dramatic entranceway, was under scaffolding. A bit farther down, I stopped for another self-portrait (aided by a concrete barrier) in front of the Kazan Cathedral (13). I took a detour to see the Church of the Savior on the Blood again—for all its gaudiness, it’s quite photogenic (14). In the relative calm of the late evening and with no particular schedule, I paused to read the plaques around the building, which commemorate events of Alexander II’s life. This task was complicated by the faux-medieval font and the pre-revolutionary orthography: before 1917, Russian used several letters that no longer exist, and used others in ways that are now obsolete. Think “ye olde shoppe,” “Iehovah,”“purfuit of happinefs,” and you get the point. Once I managed to decipher that, I read “17 April 1863: Limitation of Corporal Punishment” (15). It seems an odd thing to praise someone for, and certainly an odd thing to hang on the side of a church, but I suppose it was really something in its time and place (If I recall correctly, it was Alexander’s successor Nicholas I who praised himself for banning capital punishment, though he encouraged the practice of “running the gauntlet” in which the victim was struck several thousand times with an invariably fatal result). Given the focus of my recent research paper I was even more surprised by the next plaque, “Conquest of Central Asia,” with the names of cities and the dates when they were conquered. An even odder thing to hang on a church, one would think, but you’ve got to civilize those savages, I suppose...
I chose to take the impressive route along Bol’shaya Morskaya (Big Sea) Street (the “big” refers to the street; there’s also a “Little Sea Street”) into the Palace Square. Like the cave city in Indiana Jones, or the hallway at the Twelve Colleges building, it’s designed to make you feel insignificant by its sheer scale and majesty. You walk under a series of high arches, past an elite restaurant with sports cars parked outside, and suddenly it just opens up into an enormous square. Straight ahead are a giant victory column (the tallest free-standing monument in the world) and the Hermitage, former Tsarist palace and one of the world’s premier art museums, and two huge, curving wings of another building seem to swallow you up on either side. The Russian flag waves proudly from the top of the museum. Moreover, one has to imagine the footsteps that have fallen on those stones—taking snapshots of a museum seems like a trifle compared to running across the square, rifle in hand, to surround a palace and topple a provisional government. (16-20)
Having walked past the Hermitage and found a break in traffic, I dashed across the embankment, where I stared across the jagged river ice at the golden spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Strelka, the spit of Vasilievsky Island (21). The granite railing was powdered with snow, and people—I don’t know how many, if they were together, or any other details—had written a series of messages across the top. These started with the commonplace but heartwarming “K loves P,” the vaguely disturbing three broken hearts pierced by an arrow, and so forth, but soon ran into a series of ruminations on life, the universe, and everything. After walking about fifty feet, I read “I think everything will be alright.” The response was, “No. But it’s worth believing in that.” And that was all.
I walked across the Palace Bridge and down the landing to get a closer look at the ice field that was the Neva (22-23). The Winter Palace looked particularly beautiful from that point (24). It looked almost as if one could walk halfway across the river to the narrow channel along the center. I didn’t try. I settled for testing one of the closer and more vertical shards with my foot, calling it quits and hopping back sharply when the top broke off—had I fallen in the river, there would have been very firm grounds indeed to believe that everything would not be alright.
I climbed the stairs back to the street and walked to the Strelka. The last time I was here was in September, I believe; late at night in late December, there were a lot fewer wedding parties (none, by my count) and a lot more snow. And, naturally, another giant New Year’s tree.
I was getting towards the end of my circuit, and, long underwear or not, it was getting cold, so I headed home. I took my favorite route along the University Embankment (not that there was another logical route), going through the heart of Peter the Great’s Petersburg. First, the Zoological Museum, then the Kunstkammer/Ethnographic Museum, the Twelve Colleges building (made only slightly less awesome by the lamentable Gorky Library), the palace of Peter’s friend Menshikov, and the historical Academy of Arts. I paused for pictures of the Admiralty, the Bronze Horseman, St. Isaac’s cathedral, and the Senate building, all reflected beautifully in the Neva (25-26). Then I made my way towards 6th/7th Line, my final stop.
Unfortunately, by that time (it was around one) all the lights were already off. But I see them every day, so it wasn’t a great tragedy. I was feeling a little hungry, but most places were closed. Then I saw McDonalds.
I’ve pretty much avoided McDonalds in Russia. I haven’t exactly been morally consistent or ideologically pure on this point—I’ve been to Pizza Hut and Sbarro’s, which, even if they are evil in and of themselves, don’t personify evil. I spent twenty rubles at McDonalds once—I bought a cherry pie, which turned out to be flavored with the same artificial flavoring as some medicine I had once as a child. It also burned my tongue. I accepted the incident as a manifestation of instant karma and cheerfully avoided the place from then on. But I was hungry. I hadn’t had a hamburger since mid-October. And it was Christmas Eve. I rationalized, pondered my stomach, swallowed my morals, and stepped in line.
The two people inside the takeout window ran the counter with typical Russian efficiency, meaning that I had more than ample time to choose my food. I ordered a hamburger, ketchup only (as a result of which I waited longer still), fries, and a ketchup packet (for seven additional rubles). When the window opened, I took my bag and set off for home, furtively avoiding my favorite shaverma stand next door. Inside, I unwrapped it all, squeezed out the Heinz ketchup (an additional taste of a place I once called home, even if this particular packet was made in Holland), and ate. It was everything I remembered it to be, in more ways than one. Finally, I lay down to sleep.
I woke up on Christmas Day and headed to the kitchen for breakfast. After a few minutes a strange woman walked in—as it turned out, the woman buying my host family’s old refrigerator. I sat and drank my tea and ate my bread as she and my host mother discussed the merits of various refrigerator brands. Then my host family’s friend arrived with the truck—he has a bad back, so my host father asked me to help him carry the fridge out. Eager to please, I complied.
We got to the door with no problems, at which Nina yelled at me for starting to walk outside in my indoor slippers. We put the refrigerator down and she passed me a pair of shoes, which I slipped on. Then Sasha and I carried the refrigerator down the stairs, out the front door of the apartment, and into the waiting truck. I stood for a few minutes, fascinated, watching them secure it. Then Sasha told me to go inside, since it was cold.
I’ve always tried to keep a low profile in Russia—I haven’t tried specifically to look like a Russian, but I’ve made an effort not to be the glaring American I was last time, with my yellow parka, cargo pants, and sneakers. However, I suspect that on that Christmas morning, standing out on the street in my green plaid pajamas, wearing white socks and someone else’s shoes, watching people load a refrigerator onto a truck, I failed utterly. I didn’t really care, though—despite the fact that it wasn’t the most fun task, you really feel accepted when someone asks you to help them carry their refrigerator.
I showered, put on some warm clothes, and headed out for a second visit to the Udelnaya market. Forty-five minutes and one line transfer later, I forced my way through the crowd between the tables of hats, cosmetics, and candy, and walked out onto the snow-covered field along the railroad track. The place wasn’t as crowded as last time, but there was still a good bunch. I even recognized some of the same things I saw last time—the big wood-carving of Lenin, in profile, was still there, as was the Soviet radiator. My first purchase, for fifty rubles (about $1.66), was a small red flag adorned with a yellow star, in the middle of which was a picture of Lenin as a five-year-old child. It turns out that this was the flag of the “Oktyabryonki”—the Soviet “Tiger Cubs,” whose name was a clever fusion of “Oktyabr” (October) and “rebyonok” (child). The woman selling it seemed glad to get fifty rubles for it, thanking me and wishing me a happy new year.
I wandered for a long time before I found anything else, at least anything I was willing to pay for. There are people there who have specialized in a certain product (banners, silverware, military gear, and such), know their wares, and have raised their prices accordingly. I’m most impressed with the guys selling military helmets and gear from WWII, along with guidebooks about helmet designs and books on how to use a metal detector. It’s still a lot cheaper than what you’d find in American catalogs selling Soviet stuff (around $6 for a banner, as opposed to $20-$30, for example), but Russia has made me a bit of a cheapskate. Watch me freak out about food prices when I get home.
My next acquisition was dirt-cheap. Nestled among various pieces of junk I found a bright-orange hardhat bearing the words “Ministroi SSSR” (in Cyrillic, of course, meaning “Ministry of Construction USSR”). This was only twenty rubles. I put it in the bag that I’d conveniently received with my flag purchase.
I looked around a bit more but didn’t really see anything that struck my fancy—no more national flags of Soviet Socialist Republics, Soviet documents, other Soviet kitsch, or anything like that. So I started walking back to the metro. Then I spotted a pretty little flag lying across a box (this seemes to be SOP for displaying flags at Udelnaya). I wasn’t sure exactly what it was—with a white field and a blue stripe at the bottom, it was definitely a naval flag of some sort. The central device was the arms of the Soviet Union. The rope loops on the hoist and the extra stitching on the corners also pointed to its maritime provenance. I approached the vendor and asked him about it. He told me it was a “High Commander of the Naval Fleet” flag, and pointed out the year of manufacture on the back—1954. There was some sort of story about Stalin’s death connected with it, which I don’t remember clearly—I was too focused on getting the flag. It was at the very least connected in a broad chronological sense. I asked the vendor how much he wanted for it and, hearing my accent, he asked how much I wanted to pay. I ventured a lowball guess, based on my previous flag purchases. “Fifty rubles?” He guffawed, repeated part of his story, pointed out that the flag was made from linen, and asked for five hundred (between $17 and $18). I told him I couldn’t pay that, and he said, “Well, we can agree on something.” I proposed two-hundred fifty, and he agreed, folded the flag, and handed it to me. I handed him the money and walked to the metro, feeling much more satisfied now with my presents to myself.
I went home and opened the presents from my parents and brother—lots of nice and useful things. Nina also gave me a beautiful wooden candle holder, painted black, gold, and red in traditional Russian folk style. I spent the rest of the day poring over a map of Ukraine, cackling at the wit of David Sedaris, and watching “A Christmas Story” while synchronously mouthing my favorite lines.
Sunday was something of a return to reality—a long day reading a boring semiotics text. The next couple of days were occupied with final classes and strokes of luck. My semiotics final paper, theoretically due before New Year’s, was moved to the fifteenth, among other things. I would have spent the rest of the day slacking off, but I diligently headed home to prepare for my oral exam on the Nomads of Northern Asia. Today I went to my final Slavic Antiquities class, then sat in the student cafe and studied for my exam some more.
The circumstances surrounding the exam turned out to be the perfect ending to that class, in more ways than one. Around 4:20 I put on my coat and dashed out the door for the Bobrinsky Palace. As I walked through Labor Square, I saw a group of Roma (more commonly but less politely known as gypsies). My professor had discussed them last Thursday, pointing to them as one of the last nomadic peoples, so it was an oddly appropriate coincidence. True to form, one of them came up and asked me for money. I didn’t give her any—first of all, I was in a hurry. Second, it wasn’t my first experience with the Roma. A couple of months ago I gave one a five-ruble coin when she begged for money “for bread.” She thanked me and asked me to give her another coin so she could bless it and make it into a lucky talisman—for me, not for her, as she emphatically pointed out. I pulled out a one-ruble coin. She told me to think of a wish, said some words, and repeatedly made a cross sign over my palm (I hasten to add that, during this time, I was keeping an eye on my surroundings and a hand on my wallet). Then she asked me to take out some paper money, ostensibly for the same reason. I had pretty much figured out what the deal was at that point: lucky talisman or not, I wasn’t going to see my ruble again, and if I pulled out any more money, I wouldn’t see that again, either. I started walking off and she followed me for perhaps thirty yards, frantically and repeatedly shouting “PAPER MONEY!” She finally gave up and walked away with my lucky talisman. I had felt a little bit used, but for six rubles it was a cheap lesson, and I wasn’t about to play their game again, even in the name of preserving the nomadic way of life.
Turning the corner onto the street behind the palace, I ran into my professor, walking in the opposite direction, and asked him about our exam. Pulling down his hood to reveal his stylish new haircut, he told me that there wouldn’t be one—he’d already assigned a grade, and everything was “zamechatel’no”—splendid. I asked him about the paper and he said that it was generally good, although I’d followed Tolybekov’s pseudo-Marxist reasoning too closely at times. I responded that I’d expected as much, and he said it was reasonable given the sources (or lack thereof) I’d used. Then I told him about the Roma on Labor Square, and we had a laugh over the “Conquest of Central Asia” plaque on the church, and parted ways. Thus the class began very much as it started, amid administrative confusion and changing schedules.
I’m not sure if I’ll actually get my splendid grade anytime soon—the professor was a bit confused about that. Russian students are given a little booklet upon enrolling at a university that contains enough spaces for all their classes throughout their college career. During the finals period, they bring them to their exams, which have traditionally been oral. The professor listens to the student’s final and writes his or her grade in the book. At the end of finals, the students turn their booklets in to the dean’s office. But I don’t have one, so who know what will happen?
The other day (well into finals) I observed a touching tableau. In the cafe, I saw a girl sitting alone, staring at her open grade booklet, and smiling to herself. I know exactly what was going on there.
After heading back to Smolny and checking my e-mail and the latest news from Ukraine, I walked home. I took a detour up 6th/7th Line, where I paused for about half an hour to watch a show on the stage erected for New Year’s. There was an impressive dance performance by the “Little Theater of Big Dolls,” where a little girl lip-synched to a song called “Fairy-Tale Forest” as other kids wielded puppets of various animals—a fox, a bear, a badger (I think), and a saxophone-wielding billy-goat. Fortunately I was too old to be called upon for audience participation, and I headed home when I started to freeze.
So I’ve got two classes completely out of the way, with what promise to be good grades, with two more papers and a final to go. The strokes of luck with the extension and the final cancellation were certainly welcome. Even if I wasn’t home for Christmas, I’ve got New Year’s in Russia, the Udelnaya market, and international phone cards to ease the pain. No matter what has changed in Russia, it seems that the forest homeland of the primeval Slavs still holds a place in the Russian spirit—the dancing children are proof of the pudding. And I’ve done my part to uphold the historical animosity between the nomads and the settled people. Life moves, changes, goes on, but the important things stay the same. It’s worth believing in that.
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| Christmas Just Ain’t Christmas Without the One(s) you Love |
[17 Dec 2004|07:46pm] |
Christmas is still a ways off, but this seems like as good a time as any to write a holiday update. I suppose I might as well, while I’m thinking about it and I’m in no mood to work. I got a wonderful package from my parents today full of candy and presents for me and the people around me, as well as more mundane but equally welcome things—a couple of shirts that will give me a bit more flexibility in between washings and some more warm, wool socks. It also included a very touching letter that brought the whole “holiday” reality home. I was very happy to get the package, but it’s also a reminder that, no, for the first time, I won’t be home for Christmas.
So, I’m writing today. Being in a foreign country has given me a certain perspective on the arbitrary nature of the whole business. Hanukkah has already come and gone, and Ramadan floats around all over the secular calendar year. Even within the Christian tradition, for those who partake in it, there’s some flexibility. The date of Jesus’ birth isn’t even certain, in terms of years if not necessarily days. I’ll admit my ignorance as to the dates of Kwanzaa, though that’s more cultural than religious.
Orthodox Christmas isn’t until January 7th, if I recall correctly, all because about a thousand years ago a bunch of priests quarreled about some arcane cosmological/ritual issues and the church split apart. As a consequence, the Orthodox Christians weren’t around a few hundred years later when Pope Gregory tried to fix the calendar. (The fact that one can buy Christmas or Easter candy later, when it’s already on sale in Western countries, is a positive side effect and not, as David Sedaris asserts, the fundamental cause for the schism.) Russia, despite the deep influence that Orthodoxy has had on its history (not to mention the ubiquitous crosses, religious references in everyday speech, and of course the onion domes), is generally a secular country. That, combined with the fact that Christmas isn’t until January, means that New Year’s is a much bigger deal here.
The effect is generally the same—decorations, lights, and Christmas trees (in the city at large, if not within my apartment). Some of the streetlights near my house have brightly lit snowflakes hanging from them, and there are strings of lights hanging over the street. The Palace Bridge, up the river from me, has lights hanging across its entire length, which is very pretty at night. When I was in Moscow a few weeks ago, the big shopping malls there (GUM and TsUM) had already hung lights everywhere; since the Russians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving either, they lack the natural chronological boundary of good taste regarding installation of Christmas decorations, not that a mall would care about such things anyway. There’s a big, shiny “2005” hung between the trees on 6th/7th Line. Downtown, there’s a big Christmas tree (“yolka” in Russian) outside of Gostiny Dvor, and the famous Kazan Cathedral has a string of lights hanging between its semicircular wings.
As the famous saying goes, “If you think your family doesn’t have traditions, spend the holidays at someone else’s house and see what they do wrong.” This is particularly true in a foreign country whose predominant religious tradition is different from that in one’s home country. The Russians don’t particularly care that Christmas for me has always been on December 25. True, there will be a winter break, and everyone will get to celebrate New Year’s and Orthodox Christmas in due course, but on December 25th, I’ll be sitting in my room, frantically reading boring academic articles and trying to write my Semiotics final paper to hand in on the 30th. At least it’ll be a Saturday.
In this context, even the stupid, banal, commercialistic, and oft-maligned aspects of Christmas take on a certain poignancy. When I looked at the two strings of white lights pulsing up the tree on Labor Square today, it reminded me of the rows of headlights on the Interstate, heading south as I head north (back north, in recent years) to Upstate New York. Seeing the Christmas decorations hung far too early (and, this being Russia, I won’t be surprised if they don’t come down anytime soon, either) makes me think about my mother, complaining about some people’s poor taste in neglecting to dismantle their lights in a timely manner. Or the Towne House restaurant in Media with its year-round Santa and eight tiny reindeer. Or of the Griswoldian lawn palaces around the neighborhood that resemble international airports at night with their long rows of bright, colored, flashing lights, running down Providence Road to home and all that it means.
I’m a very lucky person, a rich person. For our assignment in Conversational Practice last week, we translated one of those texts that goes around the Internet, talking about the state of the world. Corny and melodramatic as it was, it made me think. If the whole population of the world were reduced to a single village of one hundred people, eighty would live in substandard housing, seventy would be illiterate, fifty would suffer from malnutrition, only one would own a computer, and only one would be college-educated. Most of the people I know in St. Petersburg—not all—live in more-than-adequate housing, are literate, own computers, have access to higher education, and eat quite well (oh, do they eat well). Yet their whole economy operates on a much lower level than ours, enough that I sometimes feel uncomfortable about the wealth differential between them and me —not to mention their uncertain rights, internal passports, and greater difficulties in traveling to other countries. Or the ragged pensioners and limbless soldiers that beg for money in the Metro. I have everything I could ever reasonably want or ask for—not only do I have clothes on my back and food to eat, health, a computer, a progressing college education, and so forth, but I’m living in a truly fantastic, gorgeous, historical city. I have a loving and supportive family, both immediate and extended, a wonderful girlfriend, great friends—one good one is all I need, and I have many—and excellent teachers. Next to all of that, nothing that my professors can assign and nothing that the Gorky Library can dish out seems like much of anything.
I’m not sure exactly where I’ll be a few weeks from now; I’m making travel plans at the moment, and Ukraine looks like the most likely option—watch this space. Whatever I end up doing, it will be fun, I’ll see some beautiful and exciting historical places, and fascinating things. But it doesn’t really matter how beautiful, exciting, or otherwise worthwhile a place you’re in—it’s still not home (unless you happen to live in the most beautiful, exciting, and worthwhile place in the world, in which case you’re all set). Take care over the holidays, relax, and enjoy being with the people that you love (I know I said pretty much the same thing on Thanksgiving, that doesn’t make it any less true).
I need to get to work now...my history paper is due in a week, and I’ve still got a lot to read and write before finals. ‘Tis the season.
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| Christmas Carol Quiz |
[16 Dec 2004|07:14pm] |
You are 'Adam Lay Y Bounden'! Ah, you appear to be
something of a Christmas snob. Whether you are
a musician who has sung one carol service too
many, or merely someone with very highbrow
views on music and culture, you shudder at the
thought of piped music in lifts, wince at
endless repetitions of Jingle Bells and have
put out a contract on Rudolph. While you agree
that some of the well-known carols are lovely,
you are more drawn by the really obscure
medieval carols, or the ones arranged by Bach.
You also know parodies of several carols - a
legacy of excessive carolling, or perhaps just
the product of an enquiring and slightly cynical
mind... Try to enjoy Christmas, anyway.
What Christmas Carol are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I don't actually know this carol, but the general thrust of the description, I think, is pretty true. I can definitely see the Brass Ensemble influence there. The parody part is true as well, but I'm not going to put forward any examples in a family-friendly journal...
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| Latvia Pictures |
[09 Dec 2004|07:56pm] |
Sorry I've never gotten around to writing about Latvia, and that I haven't posted much recently. I've been very busy with papers, and while my life has been chugging right along, it hasn't been terribly interesting, Petersburg or not. Here's a flashback to a happier, more carefree period when I had a lot more time on my hands. It follows my trip from arrival Friday morning and seeing the sights of Riga throughout the day, to Saturday's trip to the Northwestern beach town of Jurmala, and Sunday's trip to the Open-air Ethnographic Musuem of the peoples of Latvia.
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