Back from good old Yaroslavl (Ярославль), thoroughly exhausted (well, actually, not that exhausted because I slept really well on the trains) but satisfied I went even just briefly to reunite with my favorite members of the Wellesley Russian Department.
The final statistics were: 30.5 hours of travel to spend 30 hours in Yaroslavl, less than 24 hours worth of which were with the Wellesley girls.
The timing wasn't exactly ideal, as the only train that got me to Yaroslavl (that wasn't sold out) on the 5th in time to see the, didn't get me there until almost 5pm, and then, on the 6th, my train didn't leave until 11pm that night, long after the Wellesley girls had gone back to Moscow.
It was a really good time though. Excellent, even.
Yaroslavl is a weird little place. My initial impression on the bus from the train station to the city center was that if I had spent my year abroad there I would have already killed myself, but then I felt guilty for this thought and retracted it and gave the city a second chance, and actually really began to appreciate how much quieter, calmer and snowier it is than Petersburg or Moscow. It is really small though. Literally small, actually. Even though Yaroslavl is much, much older than St. Petersburg it felt like it was trying to be a miniature version of Petersburg, with its embankments and squares and things.... but actually miniature, meaning not just the area of the city is smaller, but all the buildings and everything just seems smaller too. For example, in Petersburg the highest building is maybe 6 stories, 7 stories, I don't know, pretty small -- in Yaroslavl, I saw nothing higher than 3 floors. There are also about a billion beautiful little churchs in the city, really little though -- nothing really taller than 4 stories. And the squares themselves are smaller, the streets are only one or two cars wide instead of three to five.... I felt like the world had been shrunken or something. It was highly bizarre.
The whole time was actually fairly bizarre, as I didn't really feel like I was in Russia. First of all, there was the fact that I was hanging out with Carly, Abby, Malina and Alla L'vovna.... and then we spent the rest of the afternoon and night of the 5th just hanging out in the hotel, eating in the лобби-вар downstairs and catching up on life and things (messing with my head because Wellesley was suddenly in my Russian life, but Carly already knows everything about this life because she lived it last year, but Abby and Malina know some things about it too because they were both here this summer, and then them asking about how Janna and Meri and people from other walks of life were.... I have no idea how I keep all these things straight....), the whole hotel being this little island of Western culture floating in the Volga (literally the hotel is floating on a barge of sorts on the Volga, it's actually a pretty classy place. check it out if you're ever in Yaroslavl, you know, and I got to crash there because one of my friends on the trip ended up not being able to come last minute so they actually had a bed for me. thanks, Wellesley!).
Yesterday morning, the Wellesley group had an excursion planned to a New Year's theatre production and, due to the extra ticket situation, I got to tag along. Well, first of all, this theatre production was at 10:30AM and intended for children. Sadly, the clear pronunciation and easy vocabulary of the show is still just about at the right level for our Russian, and even then some stuff went over my head still. The show was of two of fairy tales by Alexander Pushkin: The Fisherman and his Fish and The Tale of the Dead Princess (essentially Snow White). I was surprised by how well designed and executed the show was, and how professional the choreography and acting was as children's theatre isn't usually known for that kind of thing; it was also done in the old state theatre which is a really interesting building. I did really enjoy the actual theatre-watching bit of the excursion -- and the whole atmosphere of the event was fun, this time of year seems to be like Christmas, New Year's and Halloween all rolled into one as all the little kids were dressed up in costumes, there was a little boy dressed like a dalmation that I was obsessed with -- even though it was a little age-inappropriate.
What was slightly more age-inappropriate though was the New Year's gift that was part of our tickets for the production. If you paid a little extra for a ticket (which I guess Wellesley had it in their budget to do), you got to recieve a new year's present before the show. We were all thinking, oh it'll probably be a chocolate bar or maybe a christmas ornament or something small to tuck away in a pocket and forget about.... not quite. Everyone was given a bright orange, plastic bull (the Russians are quite into the fact that it's the year of the ox) -- the exact size and shape of a small soccer ball -- filled with some stale Russian candy and a smaller bull ornament inside either dressed like a flamenco dancer or playing the balalaika. So then, we were not only a) the only foreigners at this event and b) the only group excursion and c) the oldest non-parents in the place but d) the oldest people carrying around the orange plastic bulls that were not holding them for their child. Some kids were even looking at us enviously. We all generally just felt a little weird. Especially when we were walking on the street outside after the production on our way to lunch, bulls in hand...
So I had lunch with the group, but then sadly we had to part ways, earlier in the afternoon than we'd though. The group was going to a museum of matroshka dolls and then dong a master class of painting matroshkas which I had hoped to tag along on as well, but the museum and class was located 2 hours outside of Moscow, so I couldn't come along. So they left on their four hour drive, and I was left to my own devices in Yaroslavl.
First I hit up the Yaroslavl Art Museum, which was oddly full of tour groups but surprisingly awesome. It was full of 18th to 21st century Russian paintings, right smack in the time period I like, and there was also a special exhibit of illustrations of Degas, mostly of naked ladies in compromising positions on beds, but also a whole collection of photographs he took which I really enjoyed. Who knew I'd go to random Yaroslavl, Russia to see Degas? What the hell?
I then walked for a while along the embankment of the Volga before it got too dark, which was really gorgeous. The whole river was frozen pretty solidly in most places and people were ice fishing. I photographed some of the five billion little churchs, etc...
Then I tried to go to the Museum of Music and Time -- mostly just because I was intrigued by the name, less so by the old clocks and things that my Lonely Planet book promised me were inside -- but all the tour groups had moved onto that museum and single the whole museum is a one-room house, I nearly got trampled trying to go inside and gave up.
So I actually returned to the hotel, which felt vaguely pathetic, but it was right near where I was on the embankment, and the food had been so good the night before, and enjoyed a really long meal (there was some issue with the chef, but I got complimentary chocolate out of it that I ate later on the train) and nearly finished reading Catch-22. It was also a good period of warming up.
And then I ended my time in Yaroslavl by finding the one movie theatre in town (with the help of Abby and the hotel consierge and a small map), arriving just in time to see th 7:50pm showing of this new Russian movie Стиляги which some people I know had seen and hated and so I felt compelled to see what all the fuss was about..... also, it killed just the right amount of time for me to exit the film, get on the bus back to the train station, board my train and go back to St. Petersburg. Probably the nicest part of my night was when the woman checking my ticket to get on the train looked at my passport and said, " Wow, what a nice picture. I look at so many of these and they are usually all so horrible. I think this is the first good one I've seen. Are you pre-Baltic?" And when I said no, she asked, "Are you sure?"
So, I arrived back in St. Petersburg mid-day today and met up with Carrie for lunch, and then we went to Smolny Sobor to check out a production of The Snow Queen that Carrie had heard about. Carrie and I had both read the story as kids and I remember watching that animated film of it at Nunni's house and so we thought that seeing a play of it would be nice.... except it wasn't exactly a play..... the set up was the same kind of theatre-thing as the Pushkin fairytales had been in Yaroslavl -- a 5 to 1 kid to adult ratio, lots of costumes, a Christmas tree..... Carrie and I did not opt to pay extra to get the present this time (I warned her about the bulls) -- but it was.... a ballet interpretation of the tale.... done entirely by children of a ballet academy....... it was highly bizarre. It was actually kind of disturbing, in that same way out of that scene in Little Miss Sunshine where they show all the little girls in the beauty pagent. There was a little girl in the show who could not have been older than 5 years old, probably more like 4, who was on point. You can do that at such a young age? That is phsycially possible? I was kind of freaked out. I really felt like I was at the circus when at one point they danced a dog across the stage in a tu-tu. That was just weird. They also used excessive video projections utilizing just about ever photo-shop style and technique possible. I felt kind of tripped out afterwards. It was.... an experience though. Not what we expected, but very little here is ever what I expect.
And now, home finally. I'm packing up my things and getting ready to leave on Friday night, and it's really starting to freak me out. I've been here for almost seven months. I'm getting really sad actually to move out of this apartment with my family. Not that I am not looking forward to living with Abman in our beautiful, amazing place.... but this has become home..... and it's really insane that I am moving out and going back to..... America of all places..... and this isn't even halfway, this isn't even for good, this is just a visit! What the hell!
Well, I'll keep myself busy. I certainly have enough shit to do before I leave.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment