ALIVE AND HOME.

We even made it back all in one piece!

THE END..... for now.

Next stop: home.

Finally.

It's been a great trip, but it's time.

ALIVE IN SYDNEY.

Yeah, so I lied. Turns out our next stop was Sydney after all..... after a slight change in plans due to headaches and finances, we opted to take the bus directly to Sydney instead of the scenic two-day drive.... another trip for another time...

So we arrived this morning, bright and early, 6:30AM at our hostel to meet the man who works there who is named..... BRUCE. Yes! Gen! Mike! (He doesn't bear a resemblance though...)

The bus we took was good, a nice, family run Australian company, cleaner than Greyhound, that's for sure, but there wasn't much sleeping to be had on there, so all we've done so far in Sydney is nap.

But, in other weird news and occurances, yesterday, during our extra day in Melbourne that we had instead of driving (we walked around more, looked at more of Melbourne's world famous graffiti, ate cupcakes Ami Li would love in a cafe, etc) we ran into (or more they yelled my name) Melina Chadbourne and Gordon Eccles from Nobles?!? ...... ??? This world is too, too, too small. That blew my mind.

Anyway, I'll let you know how the aquarium is since I think that is going to be our first stop obviously as all good Nashoba girls love a good aquarium.

Next stop: Sydney (sort of).

Via a random town along the coast of Meri's choosing whose name I forget at the moment because I am tired.

Melbourne is cooler than people give it credit for! It also has incredible coffee and chocolate cafes, so we spent the past few days in a caffienated sugared haze. Went to the top of the Eureka Skydeck last night, and yesterday went to the special Dali exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria and later saw "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" last night because we were so excited to be in a country with English language movies again. It was good, though leaving the movie theatre last night later, tired, confused, I could have sworn I was at the Framingham AMC. No, I am on the other side of the world in Melbourne. Oops. My bad.

ALIVE IN MELBOURNE.

Well this is certainly a mind fuck.

First of all, I haven't travelled anywhere by plane since February, so it felt fairly bizarre to instantly arrive somewhere completely different all at once... it seemed too easy, especially at the Narita airport in Tokyo which has to be the most easy, wonderful, calming airport in the world.... basically, just like all of Japan, which, I have decided, is pretty much utopia and the best country in the world. They have their shit together, that is for sure. And it was so simple traveling by planes and in airports that it was kind of funny.... it seemed like it should have been harder to get all the way to Australia...

Anyway, now we are here and we are super confused because it is their "winter" here which all the Australians are complaining about because it is soooooo cold and soooooooooo dark -- today was the most beautiful crisp, clear fall day which was a hugely welcomed changed after sweating our asses off in China and Japan for two weeks. I can wear my damn fake leather jacket and scarves I have been hauling around again! Wonderful!

That's it for now, but it looks like Australia is going to be great. Right now we're still just mainly confused though.... it feels a lot like being back in the U.S. but in a parallel universe kind of way.... everything is familiar but just a little bit different, a little off, a little cleaner or a little weirder.... not quite sure yet, but we'll see.

Next stop: Australia...?!?!

And this is where our trip gets really ridiculous.

The plane journeys begin!

We had a really great time in Tokyo -- we met up with not only Sam but also Coley last night, a little Nobles-in-Tokyo reunion -- that must be told about in greater detail later on as we are going to go get on the airport train now to get to Narita!

ALIVE IN TOKYO!

We made it to the pinnacle of our travel completely on the surface!

From SAINT-PETERSBURG, RUSSIA to TOKYO, JAPAN!

Using every form of transportation except for an airplane (and we'll soon add some of those into the mix starting on the 18th when we fly out of Narita!):

-- metro
-- bus
-- tram
-- trolleybus
-- minibus (marshrutka)
-- car
-- taxi
-- horse
-- bicycle
-- ship
-- ferry
-- little dinky rental boat
-- our feet
-- and trains of every kind, of course.

Speaking of trains of every kind, ours last night from Osaka (yesterday alone we took four trains: Kyoto --> Nara, Nara --> Kyoto, Kyoto --> Osaka, Osaka --> Tokyo) was by far the most beautiful -- the Sunrise Express! We had our own individual room-compartments we never wanted to leave. It was clean and wood and everything seemed new and smelled good and they gave us blue and white striped bathrobes and slippers and basically our lives have become the polar opposite of Russia. It's insane.

INSANE.

And Tokyo only promises to be crazier as soon as we can check into our hostel (it's 8AM and reception only just opened right now) and go out and explore.

ALIVE IN KYOTO.

But soon to be alive in Nara.

I don't even have time to check nmy email, we are about to scamper off, but we had the best day in Kyoto yesterday -- we rented bikes and went all over the place and then hiked up to the top of this gorgeous shrine -- so needless to say I was exhausted and fell asleep immediately upon arriving back to our hostel.

So, Nara today, train to Tokyo tonight, seeing Sam Dean tomorrow??!

ALIVE IN JAPAN! (Osaka specifically)

And using the most difficult keyboard of my life so if there are a lot of mistakes please ignore them, I am quite tired. The heat makes me a zombie at night, I need to go to bed in the next ten minutes.

So, first off, the boat was amazing. AMAZING. We were in 2nd class "Japanese style" which meant we were in a huge, spotlessly clean blue carpeted room (no shoes allowed! slippers provided!) meant for 16 people but there were only 3 of us in the room! We had so much room to spread out Meri did yoga and I repacked my entire backpack! Yes!

The boat also included FREE breakfast and FREE laundy! It was great to do laundry for the first time in over a month now, my t-shirt smells so good right now. Actually, no. It smelled better earlier before I sweated off my weight in water today (JAPAN IS EVEN MORE HUMID AND HOT THAN SHANGHAI, WHO KNEW), but that is besides the point.

We also met the NICEST JAPANESE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD on the boat. A girl named Marina who was teaching Japanese in Uzbekastan and an elderly man with a pet toy poodle named Ellis and a 30-something year old guy who was a hippie who had studied abroad in Seattle. The niceness continud through finding our way to the train station (another old man navigated us personally, leading us there, even though he spoke no English) and buying the actual train tickets (compare to buying trans-Siberian tickets in St. Petersburg) and dinner, served in a little grandma/grandpa place where they gave us wonderful peach for dessert and complimentary soup. Ahh, the nicest people. It:s such a good BREAK after dealing with so much rudness and pushing and aggressive behavior in so many countries. People actulaly care here. People actually want to help you here. I am at much more of an ease here than I ever was in Russia. It is wonderful.

Today we walked around mostly )thus the sweating) and went through a park and two temples, one of which had a huge pond of ONLY TURTLES. A hundred at least! It was the best day. The BEST day. A pond full of my spirit animal. Wonderful. I finished a 4GB memory card taking photos of the little guys. And what a day for turtles, look at the article Ms. Janna Herman shared with me via Facebook (which I have access to again in Jpaan, woohoo! as this blog too! updating it myself!).

Anyway, it:s been past 10 minutes and I need to sleep majorly, but our plan, for those of you concerned slash tracking our progress....

TOMORROW (7/14) -- early morning train to Kyoto
night of 7/14 in Kyoto
day of 7/15 going to Nara and back
night of the 15th we'll be on a train to Tokyo
nights of 7/16 and 7/17 we:ll be in Tokyo
7/18 -- FLIGHT OUT OF JAPAN IN THE MORNNINNNG TO FURTHER ADVENTURES.


as you can see I am losing it, so, good night.

Next stop: Japan!!!

"It is blowing my mind how we are already going to Japan tomorrow on our 2-day ferry. That's really nuts. I still can't fully believe we got all the way across Eurasia and are almost to our farthest non-airplane-flying point of our trip already. It seems like it should have taken us 6 months to cover that much distance. But it hasn't, thank god, and tomorrow we get on a boat to Japan, and we will be on it for two nights, arriving the morning of the 13th in Osaka.

As for Shanghai, it has been good, but I won't be that sad to leave. The heat here is unbearable. Meri is more used to it from living in DC for three years, but I have become used to colder climates, especially after Russia. The air is so hot and humid you can feel it sitting on your skin. It's pointless to shower because you sweat so much the minute you get out it's like you didn't even try. We've had a nice time walking around though -- there isn't a ton much else to do in Shanghai besides shopping.... it's a very Western, European/American kind of shopping, materialistic city full of expat business men..... but it's beautiful and flashy and colorful and last night we went to the top of the Jin Mao Tower (home of the highest post office in the world) and saw the view of all the lights. So that was snazzy.

Anyway, you'll hear from me next in Japan where hopefully I can update my blog myself again!"

-- e.b.

e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t

ALIVE IN SHANGHAI

Meri and I almost had a heart attack last night, certain we must have died somewhere along the way from Mongolia to China because the train last night was heaven. It made my head explode, the stark comparison to the Russian trains we'd been riding on. THE TRAIN LAST NIGHT WAS NICER THAN MOST AIRPLANES I HAVE TAKEN. Everything was WHITE and CLEAN and NEW and smelled good and was synthetic duvets and not 8,923,979,238 goose feather mattresses that smell of the babushka who slept on it before you and it was COOL and they a gave you complimentary water and slippers and there were MINI TVS WITH HEADPHONES...????? We were in a state of hysterical shock. China is nuts. But I love it. We've met a couple of people -- one guy from Maine, about Genny's age -- who have just up and moved to China without knowing any Chinese and they love it..... new life plan for after Wellesley??? I could probably use my Russian in China somewhere, right? We've now seen a total of SIX Russian tourists here and each time it blows my mind -- two women in a nail salon, one of whom was of Chinese descent, then an old man climbing the Great Wall by himself, and then a younger shirtless (of course) Russian man on the top of the Great Wall who asked us to take his photo for him and then we got him to take our photo (ON TOP OF THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA AND OUR PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY A RUSSIAN, HOW APPROPRIATE) and before doing so he didn't know where to put his empty water bottle so he just chucked it over the side of the Great Wall (typical) and then three women in the Summer Palace, strolling and chatting in Russian.... anyway, now we are in Shanghai, as I said. It's different from Beijing -- fewer Russian-Soviet vibes, much more vertical, much more like New York or a big Western City, while only parts of Beijing were like that while the rest was one storey small houses like Irkutsk or Ulan-Udye -- and full of banks and seems less artsy, but it should still be good despite the fact that it is even HOTTER and even more HUMID than Beijing. After Russia, this is a huge huge HUGE change. Anyway, that is all for now. Thanks again to Mr. C.R. Bartels, Jr. for posting again... soon enough I'll be out and then can post again on my own, seeing what they are like in Japan...

-- e.b.

Next stop: Shanghai!

After three wonderful, busy, insane days in Beijing, we are leaving on a train for Shanghai in an hour -- I have to go soon! But we had a great time -- just some activities included seeing the Great Wall, Chairman Mao (as part of our tour of "Dead Communist Leaders Whose Bodies Are On Display"), the Summer Palace, chinese massages, and the Forbidden City. There was so much more we wanted to do as well but ran out of time. I guess I'll just have to come back to Beijing. Until tomorrow night in Shanghai --

--e.b.



e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t

ALIVE IN BEIJING

So, funny story how China has this thing called "censorship" which seems to prevent you from reading news articles online like "tibet, story of tragedy" or go to free-speechy-websites such as..... blogs.So let's all thank my tech-savvy father, Mr. Rich Bartels, for posting this for me via-email.BUT BESIDES THAT BEIJING IS SO COOL!We got here this afternoon after spending 30 hours on a train from Ulaanbaatar. Getting out of Mongolia was an experience, including our (and by "our" I mean "my") one major fuck up so far which was having my wallet fall out of my pocket when were were in a slightly chaotic rush getting to the train station.... at least there was only about $5 of Mongolian currency in it... and my debit card.... but my lovely parents have already taken care of canceling that shit for me and I have a back up. So, it pays to plan ahead. Getting out of Mongolia was also interesting because Russia and Mongolia have special train tracks that are slightly wider than the rest of the world's, so we spent easily about 6 hours of our train "ride" just sitting at the border as hammers and things slammed and our wagon was crashed repeatedly into the one before it and after it to reconnect it after changing the wheels (you would think they would let us get off for that experience, but apparently not).... when we finally reached the Chinese border at 1:00AM (1:00PM your time, still exactly 24 hours ahead) there was strangely nationalistic muzak-like music being piped through speakers and a weird dark calm. But arriving in Beijing today was NUTS. We stepped off the train and it was like getting off of a plane to the Carribbean. This wall of HEAT and HUMIDITY smacked us in the face and we sweated off about ten pounds of water weight just getting to the taxi that navigated us to our hostel. And compared to Beijing, Ulaanbaatar was all Russia. Beijing is just a whole different story.... huge and modern and CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN and bicycles everywhere and green and trees and another huge fucking rain storm we got caught in (now our 3rd, one for every country so far) and everything is just so DIFFERENT. I love it. It's great. And it's so crowded and crazy! This whole city is St. Petersburg at rush hour, or on any given holiday. Anyway, Meri and I had a great first evening. We just wandered a bit, had a really delicious dinner of Peking duck (seemed appropriate) as recommended by this awesome Indian man who we got to know as he and his extended family were on both of our trains to and from Ulaanbaatar, and we ran into them at a pizza place at Ulaanbaatar on Friday night. It's going to be great though. CHINA. I can't believe we made it all the way from ST. PETERSBURG, COMPLETELY ON THE GROUND. NUTS. Man, and Mongolia was awesome. Mongolia seems all Russia now in comparison to this crazy, amazing place. SO EXCITED.Ok, that's all for now. Another post via-Rich before we take off.-- e.b.e l i z a b e t h a n d e r s e n b a r t e l sr u s s i a n l a n g u a g e & s t u d i o a r t

Next stop: China!!

Our train to Beijing leaves tomorrow at 8:05AM and we arrive at 2:05PM on July 5th. So we will be celebrating our nation's birthday by wearing red, white and blue on the train. Maybe drinking an American brand beer if we can find one. We'll see.

ALSO, a time update: Lonely Planet, that sucky book, LIED to us. Ulaanbaatar is Moscow time plus 4 hours, meaning we went back an hour from Ulan-Udye and are exactly TWELVE hours ahead of you now! Who knows what the time will be in China though! Lonely Planet certainly hasn't a clue!

ALIVE IN ULAANBAATAR.

Happy (almost!) 4th of July! We will be celebrating on a train to China, woohoo!

Meri and I had a great few days outside of Ulaanbaatar in the country. Mongolia is fucking GORGEOUS. It basically looks like Lake Baikal minus the huge lake. We stayed with this great company (really just one big family that owns a bunch of yerts and horses) called STEPPERIDERS in their yert camp about 40 minutes outside of Ulaanbaatar. We didn't make it all the way out to the Gobi Dessert or the National Park, but there is no need. Mongolia becomes insanely and completely rural maybe 10 minutes outside of the city. It's nuts. Our guides told us that everyone in Mongolia is either a nomad or lives in Ulaanbaatar. Anyway, everyone who works for Stepperiders was wonderful, we had the best time. We spent one night in one of their yerts and two nights camping out in the steppe and in the forest. And they even taught me how to ride a horse! I was led 90% of the time on a rope by another guide, but they were great. I even got up to a fast-paced run for maybe 2 seconds! Be proud! (AND nothing fatal happened, so be unworried!) We had a great, great time and were very pleased that it turned out we couldn't get our tickets for the train to Beijing for the 3rd but the 4th instead so we got an extra night out in the steppe and country. It was great. Everything works out for a reason, that is for sure.

So, in summary: GO TO MONGOLIA! Most highly underrated country in the world! The people are friendly, wonderful, and it is the most amazing combination of China and Russia together in one!

Next stop: Mongolia!!

Also, Farrah Fawcett AND Billy Mays died too???? What is going on???

But in other news, we leave today on a train to Mongolia, arrive tomorrow, and then will be in non-internet-accessible places until Thursday night July 2nd. Have no fears!

And another thing -- has anyone heard of the movie "The Proposal"? There are signs for it all over Russia and we are confused. Was it even released in the U.S.?

ALIVE IN ULAN-UDYE.

Yes, here we are. Got in last night, staying at a place called "Homestay of Valeria" which is just a woman's apartment with a room she rents out. She made us delicious kasha though from her traditional recipe and we fell in love, especially with the tiger-print bedspreads in our room. We got in later so by the time we went out to walk around things were closing (like Irkutsk, Ulan-Udye is basically a small town in disguise as a city) but we got to see the LARGEST LENIN HEAD IN THE UNIVERSE (Lonely Planet told us it was the largest in Russia... and where else would they possiby have a larger Lenin head?). So that was cool. And we had breakfast out this morning at a Safari (???) themed coffeeshop. Well, their omlets were good.

Next stops: Ulan-Udye and then into Mongolia...

... before my visa (finally) expires July 1st!!!

We're in Irkutsk again for one more night tonight, then tomorrow morning we take a day train to Ulan-Udye (to see the views of Baikal one more time!). So tomorrow night we'll be in Ulan-Udye (probably one more internet check there), and then the next night we'll be on the train leaving Russia and going into Mongolia. On July 30th we'll be in Mongolia, arriving in Ulaanbaatar, but then Meri organized a guide/excursion situation to show us around and then take us outside of the city to spend one night in a yurt, and then one night camping, but the night of July 2nd we'll be staying in a hostel in Ulaanbaatar and we will (hopefully) have internet again there, so that should be the next update. Just FYI, SO DON'T WORRY.

Oh! And a time update: Omsk was 3 hours ahead of Moscow time (11 hours ahead of EST) and now Irkutsk, Olkhon Island, Ulan-Udye, Ulaanbaatar, Beijing & Shanghai (love how China is all one time zone) are all 5 hours ahead of Moscow time (13 hours ahead of EST). So if you're wondering what time it is where I am ever, the easiest thing to do is switch the am to pm or the pm to am and then add 1 hour. For example, 11:45PM here = 10:45AM where you are.

ALIVE IN IRKUTSK (again).

I go to Olkhon Island for two days and Michael Jackson dies??? What the fuck?!???

What is the world coming to??

Well, as I digest and accept this news, let me tell you what we've been doing that has kept us so out of the loop of celebrity news.

Let's go back in time a little, shall we?

EKATERINBURG: Last you heard of that city, I was alive in it and we were off to explore. If I judged Irkutsk too harshly last time, some of that was within reason because Irkutsk is a little, well, seedy, as the guidebook suggests, and has its quirks, and I had reason for being judgemental due to the timing of the program, etc. But I definitely was way way WAY too hard on Ekaterinbug, probably due to jetlag (we flew in there from Germany) and due to the fact the only other place I had been in Russia before that was St. Petersbug which, of course, nothing holds a candle to in my mind. But after the disappointments of Nizhnii Novgorod, Ekaterinburg was WONDERFUL. It helped that we stayed at such a lovely hostel, but also Meri and I just had such a nice day. The weather was gorgeous (which always helps), and we went first to the photography museum which wasn't just a history of photography museum like all of the ones I hit up in the Baltic states last August, but a real photo gallery with these gorgeous, gorgeous photographs by photographers from all different countries all focused around the themes of immigrants and people living on borders in Europe and Asia. Basically: awesome travel photography. I went nuts. My favorite ones were about people who break up old ships in Bangledesh and people who live on the Chinese/Russian border. An awesome exhibit. We walked around more, saw the place where the Romanovs were shot, wandered through Geological Alley (some big unlabeled rocks in a dirty park), and then, most importantly, got our final fill of Stolle as the only other Stolle location in Russia that isn't in Petersburg or Moscow is in, none other than, Ekaterinburg. We had our little selection of perogi and felt wonderful and content as we wandered off to our next train.

GETTING TO OMSK: Painless overnight train ride in the luxuries of kupe (not really that different or better, actually) as it was the only ticket I couldn't get platzkart for. One other person in our cabin, a 26 year old man who said he was a doctor who wanted to chat a lot because he'd already been on the train for two days and was bored. But he drank tea all night and left us alone which is all that matters.

OMSK: We got to Omsk the next morning after leaving Ekaterinburg with basically low to no expectations. Therefore, unlike with Nizhnii Novgorod (which has become our basis for anything vaguely shitty, which, fortunately, we haven't had much of since then) we were in no way disappointed. In fact we were pleasantly surprised and quite content when we found an only-slightly-dirty beach by the river in Omsk to sit on (and, yes, I put sunscreen on my face and shoulders but neglected my legs and feet...?? and got a burn?? of course??!!) and drink iced coffee and then get back on our train.

GETTING TO IRKUTSK: We then spent a very long time on the train. Two nights and a full day. I finished reading Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides -- highly recommend it (thanks, Gen, for loaning me your copy. Meri has it now, then it will be abandoned somewhere in China, probably.) Our platzkart car was good, full of pleasant people who didn't harass us or judge us but who were friendly. Lots of cute sneezing children though, so lots of Meri's hand sanitzer was used.

IRKUTSK: I already told you about our first day there. It was good, despite not getting to Bolshie Koty.

OLKHON ISLAND: And then, the majesty, the wonder, of Olkhon Island. The original plan was to camp.... but our tent was too heavy and got left behind in.... Moscow. So instead we stayed at this WONDERFUL place called Nikita's Homestead (run by a former tennis-table champion), SO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. They give you a room in a little cabin with quilts and homey wonderfullness and the cost of the place includes three homecooked meals every day by sweet Russian girls who must only be 17. It was great, and it's about three feet from the famous Shaman rock. It takes about 6/7 hours to get to Olkhon from Irkutsk by a minibus, so we arrived in the early evening of our first night, and after dinner Meri and I wandered around the rock, sitting on the pebbly beach, in awe that we had made it all the way there. That was when I started to feel like maybe I have actually learned a fair amount of Russian this year. Compared to the last time I was at Baikal, I could barely introduce myself and count, let alone organize buying train tickets to get me all the way from St. Petersburg to Mongolia, on our own, without Wellesley College chaperones. So I felt fairly accomplished, and kind of overwhelmed with happiness that I had actually made it back to Baikal, but also sad that we didn't get more time there because of my visa expiring and all that.... but I know now that if I made it back once, I can certainly get back there again. So on our full day at Baikal, we wandered mostly on the beach, and I christened my morzhika bathing suit by dunking into the freezing, freezing, FREEZING Baikal waters (see below).


That was pretty much the extent of our day, wandering in the partially sunshine blue and clouds, but it was wonderful, and I can't wait already to go back to Baikal again. It's such a beautiful place. We spent one more night at Nikita's and then came back to Irkutsk today.

AND BACK IN IRKUTSK: By the time our minibus got us back into the city today we had missed the 2:45PM ferry to Bolshie Koty, so alas, that was the one thing we did not get to do in our time around Baikal. But we've been wandering more around Irkutsk, enjoying the juxstaposition (spelling??) of the little wooden houses next to the Soviet skyscrapers, drinking coffee, preparing to get back on trains again.

ALIVE IN IRKUTSK.

Yes, that's right. Back to everyone's favorite "Paris of Siberia." I must admit, I was a little too hard on Irkutsk the last time I was here. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we visited at the end of our Siberian Odyssey and we were tired and sick of each other and stayed in a weird dorm, etc, etc, etc, it got a bad rap, but I've actually been having a nice day today in Irkutsk despite our failing attempt to get to Bolshie Koty on the hydrofoil today. By the time we got off the train, got to the hostel where we are staying tonight, dropped off our stuff, figured out where the hell we were, took a marshrutka to the hydrofoil station, realized we had gotten off about 3 miles too early and walked a wee bit (including the entire length of the Angara Dam which is no less than 2km long), we had, clearly, missed all the hydrofoils for the day to Bolshie Koty. But we hope to catch one on our other day back in Irkutsk, the night before we go to Ulan-Udye. Anyway, after doing all that and being hot and disappointed about our lack of a day trip, we realized we were right next to none other than a Mexican restaurant, not recommended by Lonely Planet and therefore actually still operating and delicious and wonderful called HOLA! MEXICO (remember Baikal kids??) and had a great little lunch. And then, check this, adding to things I never had the time to do in Irkutsk the last time I was here, Meri and I went and saw the LIVE NERPA SHOW of the amazing duo -- Tito and Nessie! (Yes, like the Loch Ness Monster.) So, pretty much, the best day ever in Irkutsk. We paused temporarily at an internet cafe where we now are but about to leave because it is so so so hot in here, off to explore Irkutsk further before heading up to Olkhon Island tomorrow for two nights. But first, one last very important thing....


HAPPY BIRTHDAY NUNNI!!!
I LOVE YOU!
SORRY I MISSED IT TWO YEARS IN A ROW!
(Meri says happy birthday too!)

Next stops: Omsk, Irkutsk, and the infamous Lake Baikal...

Oops. Meant to post this before leaving Ekaterinburg. Nevermind because I am now....

ALIVE IN EKATERINBURG.

We made it alive to Ekaterinburg after three nights in a row on the train!

Each of our train rides was special in its own way.... our train from Moscow to Nizhnii Novgorod was brand new and quite fancy and full of quiet, serious Moscovites reading quiet, serious books. Our train from Nizhnii Novgorod to Kazan put us in a platz-kart wagon nearly entirely full (minus two little girls and their parents and about three old women) of 18 year old Russian soliders who had clearly been lectured by their officer to leave us alone and be quiet because they certainly did. Our train last night from Kazan to Ekaterinburg was hot as hell and Meri and I had two top bunks with three judgemental babushki below us who didn't want the window open for fear of a draft, so Meri and I -- in order not to pass out from heat stroke -- had to wait until they were all asleep to reopen the window.

We made it to our hostel in Ekaterinburg though finally, at long last, or should I say "hostel" because it is actually just a Russian apartment with two sets of bunk beds and one twin bed, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a clunky PC from the 90s (which I am currently on) run by two adorable Russian women who speak in cute, accented English who can't be more than 5 years older than us. It's actually really wonderful because Meri and I feel like we are just getting to relax in our own little apartment for the night before carrying on. We don't have to deal with one of those typically hostely-hostels full of gregarious Australians who want to chat and go for a bar crawl. We made coffee in the kitchen and have been using the wonderful shower (despite the fact that all the water in Ekat smells like sulphur, after not showering since Moscow we really don't give a shit) and watching Russian TV and figuring out our plans for tomorrow and when we get to Baikal.

As for our last two stops...

Nizhnii Novgorod, I had heard, by some person, that it was the "most beautiful city in Russia." Either we hit the completely wrong parts (though we walked along the main pedestrian street and around the Kremlin) or the weather really didn't do it justice, but I have a slightly different opinion of that city.... it was also just one of those "Russian" days where everything goes wrong. Things that we thought would be open were closed, the Mexican restaurant we wanted to find that had been recommended by Lonely Planet was closed for remont, the pizza place recommended by Lonely Planet was bad, we couldn't find postcards that didn't come in packs of 10 or have writing all over the back, the park we wanted to go to was actually just a pile of dirt and a tree, it started to rain....

But for everything that was lame about Nizhnii, Kazan was even better. We waited out the rain in the morning and spent some time reading and drinking tea in the local McDonald's (the only thing open at 6:30AM when we arrived on our train) and then spent a beautiful, sunny, cloudly blue day in Kazan just walking around. Kazan also has a pedestrian street and a Kremlin, but for whatever reason it is just SO MUCH COOLER than Nizhnii. No offense if you like Nizhnii. Kazan is the capital of Russia's Autonomous Region of Tartarstan and so all the signs are bilingual in Russian and in the Tartar language which is cool. The city is also full of mosques due to the Muslim population and has a Middle Eastern kind of vibe which was a change from the typical Russian cities we'd been inhabiting. We didn't even go into any museums (we've been feeling kind of burnt out of museums) but just walked around looking at everything and enjoying ourselves thoroughly.

As for Ekaterinburg, I already saw and said hi to the hotel we stayed at on the Wellesley trip two years ago but that's about it. After we take some time to shower and reorganize our lives, we'll go out and explore.

Time update: Ekaterinburg is two hours ahead of Moscow time, meaning I'm now 10 hours ahead of most of you reading this blog. Good morning!

Next stops: Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan and Ekaterinburg.

After two full days in Moscow, we'll be spending the next three nights on trains.... tonight we go to Nizhnii Novgorod, tomorrow night we go to Kazan, and the night after we go to Ekaterinburg. That means that the next time we will hopefully have access to both the internet and a shower (божи мой!) will be on the 20th.

It poured today, but was gorgeous and in the 80s yesterday allowing us nice weather to sit by Patriarch Pond and feed baby swans and then wander all over the city into Red Square. The weather today didn't deter us though from seeing Lenin's dead body (we're looking forward to more dead communist leaders on display in China) and going to the New Tretyakov Gallery (love of my life -- they had a whole exhibit of propaganda posters from the Soviet Union all the way through now, plus the Russian Immigrant Artists in America show that I saw with my parents and Louis at the Russian Museum) and discovering the wonders of the STARLITE DINER the kind of American diner I have been fantasizing about for over a year now.

Anyway, we're off to get our train.

FAREWELL FOR NOW.

ALIVE IN MOSCOW.

Back at the Godzilla's hostel for the third time. WOOHOO.

One leg of our journey down!

Last of e.b. actually in p.b.

But not the end. Definitely not.

I've been really crazy busy in the last two weeks.... before June 10th it was all about saying good bye to Louis and the semester ending and doing things Louis wanted to do before he took off and preparing for Meri to come. It never felt like I was actually leaving, or at least I didn't let myself think about the fact I was. I was focused more on the people I am closest to leaving and arriving (within 36 hours of each other, that was an emotional mind fuck).

Now, over the past five days, it is starting to really sink in that I am going and so I have made myself incredibly busy trying to do everything, yes EVERYTHING ("I think you hold yourself to too high of a standard of things to get done" -- Meri), before we take off. We've been so busy I haven't had time to write in my REAL journal (you know what kind of busy I must be if that is the case, I was freaking out about it for a while but finally gave up and decided to just catch up tonight on the train. Meri has been talking me down about it being ok if I miss a day or a week of journaling because I have been too busy actually living my life) let alone on this blog, though I actually haven't been able to anyway because for some reason the internet at our house works fine except on all Google-related sites (gmail, blogger, youtube, basically the most important things).

I've been taking Meri to all my favorite places -- because I want to share them with her but also because I want to go to all of them one last time. We've been to the Russian Museum, the 3rd floor of the Hermitage (the French impressionists), the Boris Smelov photo exhibit, we've eaten at Stolle twice, we had Georgian food, we bought shit at Udelnaya that we will have to now carry around the globe with us, we saw Don Quixote at the Mariinsky, we've hung out with Katya and Olga and Misha and Stas a bunch, we've drank champagne while sitting by the Fontanka, we've walked through the Summer Gardens, the Smolenskoe Cemetery, and basically all over the entire city. All my favorite things.

We've also been doing a lot of things I have been meaning to do but hadn't yet -- we took a boat tour but at night (12:30AM - 2:30AM) to watch the bridges actually go up (I'd only seen them when they were already up), I actually go up the nerve to have my photo taken with the creepy racist character that hands out fliers for the sushi place near my house, and to ask the man who sells cigarette extension-holders if I could photograph him as well, and I bought flowers from the woman who always sits near my house.

I also finally did my fake wedding project, something I dreamed up at the end of last semester -- we started it with Louis on the one day that he and Meri overlapped, and Meri and I finished it ourselves the other night. We paraded all over the city with two Russian rip-off Barbie dolls in bridge & groom garb, Louis and Meri sprinkling rice on them as I took pictures of them in front of all the major sights: Church of Spilled Blood, St. Isaac's, the Bronze Horseman, Kazanskii Sobor, the Strelka, Peter & Paul's Fortress, etc. The pictures turned out even better than I thought they ever would (thanks to my helpers, I am certain) and really wanted to post them up here before I left but I definitely will not have time. Our train to Moscow leaves tonight at11:00PM which is in exactly six hours from now.

I will also not have time before I leave to post the last 11 self portraits from my project. Friday June 12th was my one-year anniversary of when I went to JFK, Saturday June 13th was my one-year anniversary of arriving in Russia, and Sunday June 14th was my one-year anniversary of when I moved into my host family, met Olga and Katya and Misha, and began my self portrait project. We had a "party shot" for my 365th photo (I somehow, by some miracle, despite the insanity and frequent lack of a routine for my life in Russia, never missed a day) of me, Meri, Adams and Lauren (all the current residents of my apartment, plus Louis's shirt so he was there in spirit) popping champagne and sipping mimosas.

But do not worry, in good time you will see all of these photos. And this entry is not the end of my "e.b. in p.b." blog. Even though I no longer will be "in p.b.", I will continue to update the blog as Meri and I travel when I can, just to let you all know I am still alive and we are in one piece. And then, when home again in August, bored and nostalgic and editing through thousands of photos, I will be sure to write some retrospective entries about Petersburg.

But this will be it for entries from Petersbug. I can't believe I am leaving tonight, I can't believe it has been a year already. Parts of it were amazing, parts of it really sucked, some parts dragged, but most of it completely flew by and I am sad to be leaving, but not that sad because I know I will be back one day, probably not that long from now. It's funny to me that the two places I know best in the world are now the Greater Boston Area and St. Petersburg, Russia. How random is that, but I love this city and will make a point to come back at least for visits for the rest of my life.

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, CREATION OF PETER THE GREAT!

Back! Alive! Apologies for the huge internet FAIL.

So, yeah, my "ALIVE IN ________" posts while traveling totally failed due to a lack of working internet at various hostels slash boats, but know that I am safely back in St. Petersburg as of Tuesday night and have been busy ever since doing things such as going to the FREE DURAN DURAN CONCERT ON PALACE SQUARE last night.

Check that shit out, oh yeah, I saw Duran Duran in the pouring rain in.... St. Petersburg, Russia.... by the Hermitage??? It was a very strange experience in general, then the weird combination of Russians either dancing frantically by jumping straight up and down or simply standing very still and looking completely bored made everything just pretty surreal and strange.... a fairly decent-sized group of Smolny people plus Bryan and Yulia came, but due to the rain everyone left one by one until it was just me, Louis and Bryan left dancing to the encore of "Rio."

As for the trip though, it was really really great. I hadn't been in Scandinavia (not counting my brief jaunt in Helsinki in August with Emma) since the trip with Nunni, Puppy & Mom in 2005 -- the same trip when I first went to Russia and St. Petersburg -- and it was great to go back. We covered more or less the same route: St. Petersburg --> Helsinki --> Stockholm --> Oslo --> Stockholm --> Helsinki --> Vyborg --> St. Petersburg. Over the course of the week we traveled on two ferries (from Helsinki to Stockholm and back), one long-distance train (Helsinki to Vyborg), one commuter train (Vyborg to St. Petersburg), three long-distance buses (St. Petersburg to Helsinki and then the route between Oslo and Stockhom), numerous local urban buses (in Oslo), a metro (in Stockholm), and a whole bunch of local city trams (in Helsinki and Stockholm). 

Louis and I did a lot of things that relived the trip with N&P&M -- the ferry/booze cruise we took between Helsinki and Stockholm I think was the same exactly ship company, Viking Line, as last time; in Stockholm we spent the day walking around the zoo on the top of the hill, gazing at bears and reindeer like we did that night; we kept finding places where I had taken photos before on the last trip, like with the statue of the little boy sticking his tongue out and his hands in his ears; we ate breakfast and lunch in the fish market in Helsinki, where Emma and I also went in August; in Oslo we visited Frogner Park multiple times which was a huge highlight for me -- I was so excited to be back there, I had loved that park when I first visited it in 2005, and I had shot at least two rolls of black and white film there on that trip, but then all that black and white film got ruined when I tried to develop it with old developer upon arriving home.... all year I had hoped I would make it back to Oslo (as it isn't very far from here at all, though it is in the same time zone as England!) to reshoot those rolls, and did I ever.... I shot 8 rolls of film on the trip and I think that 6 of them were in Fronger Park alone. Hopefully these rolls will come out! We'll see on Monday if the women at the Kodak store don't let me down...

We also did a lot of things I hadn't done before though which was great. Louis really wanted to see the Sibelius monument in Helsinki, and we ended up spending most of our day in Helsinki just sitting in the beautiful park there watching hilarious tour groups of retired Americans probably from Palm Beach flood the scene in waves. We also rented bikes on our last day in Oslo and biked all over the city to Frogner Park again and then around the grassy paths of the park (and no, Mom, I did not fall and kill myself in the least). On our way back to St. Petersburg from Helsinki we stopped and spent the night in the elusive Vyborg, Russia -- the town where there had been TWO cultural excursions, one this summer and one this semester, both of which Louis and I missed and felt compelled to make up -- I think we had much more fun in Vyborg on our own then we ever would have on the excursion, we went to the top of the castle and enjoyed the view and then rented a row boat and paddled around for an hour. And then, perhaps the best part of the whole trip, was the day in Oslo we took the ferry out to one of the many little green gems of islands in the Oslo Fjord and hung out on the beach and christened the морж and моржиха swimsuits in the freezing water (though, clearly, not as freezy as the Neva in March).

There are a shit ton of other hilarious and great photos from the trip, if I may say so myself, over 2000 of digital alone and then those 8 rolls of film, but alas, you'll just have to wait until August to see them all. PATIENCE, MY FRIENDS (myself included). Until then, here are the self portraits from the past ten days or so. 

Over all it was a great fucking trip. So beautiful, so much fun, so clean, so expensive (Oslo! Is! Out! Of! Control! if you go to Oslo keep in mind that TGI Friday's is NOT as cheap as you think it is!), the travel company was excellent, and all and all.... a wonderful time despite one mild sunburn on my left shoulder from that day of biking. Being back now in St. Petersburg though is a little overwhelming. It is already Friday, June 5th.... Adams arrives today to start his internship on the Bard-Smolny Summer Program, Meri gets her ass to St. Petersburg on Monday, Louis and the group flight leave on Wednesday..... and then Meri and I leave on the 15th, exactly ten days from now, on our crazy, crazy adventure.... 

TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

I BETTER GET OFF THE COMPUTER AND GO ENJOY MY LAST FEW DAYS.

Finishing up the semester...

So, it's that time of the semester for all of those Smolny traditions that come at the end.

On Friday we had our Awards Ceremony. Much less exciting for those of us who attended last semester, as we all know what the "award" will be (a packet of Soviet propaganda posters, apparently the same "award" they have been giving out since at least Lauren was on the program). But I was called the "dependable Norwegian photographer" and given the packet of "SOVIET MEANS EXCELLENT" advertising posters. We ate chicken and greasy potatoes and that trademark 3rd floor café salad and had Choco-Pies and packaged ice cream for dessert and I felt nostalgic thinking of the summer program and last semester and that this would be the last time I'd be graced with this if not super delicious, at least filling and memorable kind of Smolny meal. Anyway, I, of course, once again got roped into helping organize the end of semester gifts for the teachers, and Katy Lafen and I handed out 3 roses to each of the 6 RSL teachers and clusters of 3 zinnia-like flowers for the 2 advisers and I gave a mini thank-you speech in broken Russian/English because I got confused about which language I should say it in....

On Saturday we had our last official excursion (only one of the few I actually went on this semester) to the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery outside of the city, where all of the victims of the Siege of Leningrad are buried. The place is highly groomed and green, looks like the National Mall or something out of D.C., and is very somber in the fact it is mostly mass graves of the 1.5 million people who died during the 900 day siege. It was peaceful, though the recording of Pachabel's Canon which they had playing through speakers tied up on poles throughout the cemetery felt vaguely tacky to me. Otherwise it was somber and calm and peaceful and sad and beautiful and seemed fitting. 

As for today, we had our end of semester dinner, though unlike the chinese food shenanigans of last semester, we had our dinner of Stolle pies on a boat, just like we did at the end of the summer program. It was cloudier than the summer program, and due to a lot of recent rain the water levels were so high we couldn't go up on the deck except for when we were out on the open water of the Neva. The food was delicious though, and Katy and I handed out the remaining gifts for the tutors (flowers), Elena & Yulia (flowers and a collage Cathy put together of photos from the semester) and Bryan (a travel kit of tanning oil and such for his vacation to Israel), which seemed to be successful... Also, perhaps the most key moment of the boat festivities was when all of the 9 students plus Bryan who swam in the ice back in March posed for a group photograph in Speedos and bikinis that Louis, Bryan & I put together. We stenciled "SMOLNY INSTITUTE" on the butts in Cyrillic, and then below, on the Speedos we stenciled "МОРЖ" ("morzh") meaning walrus and on the bikinis, "МОРЖИХА" ("morzhukha") meaning a she-walrus, as that's what ice swimmers are called in Russian. Anyway, these photos were too good for you to have to wait until August to see:

*NOTE: Vlad got a clear Speedo we made out of plastic as when he went swimming originally he went in nude, so we figured it was more of a symbolic thing for him....

After the boat trip, Louis and I went for a walk through Mikhailovsky Sad in an out-of-the-way-way to the bus stop, and Dad, just as you thought, all the flowers were finally in bloom. There were violets and lupins and those weird drippy yellow flowers you were so excited about.... the grass was green and lush and the 8PM sunlight was just perfect.

Anyway, the semester really seems over now. Next week everyone is kind of off doing their own thing. Louis and I are taking off again on one more "spontaneous" trip out of the country. This time we tried to plan more, and were all set on trying to go up to Murmansk and see the Northern part of Norway, but traveling in that area ended up being a tad too difficult and expensive and we didn't have enough time, so we, spontaneously, decided today to hit up the Scandinavian capitals (repeat of the NORTHERN CAPITALS TOUR '05 with N&P and Mom) next week instead. We leave tomorrow night on a bus for Helsinki, and I'll post "ALIVE IN _______" updates when I can.

Until then, self portraits are up-to-date again.

Very small photo update:

Self portraits are updated through the 15th and in the spring digital section I have photos up from some wanderings around St. Petersburg before the Moscow trip....

But I have some unfortunate news.

Well, not really. Nothing tragic happened. I didn't lose any photos, but it looks like I was an idiot (or just really distracted, I was doing all this during the insane two days after getting back from Moscow and before mom & dad arrived when I was trying to get the pictures all done for Bard) and after I sorted through and straightened and rotated and edited all of the photos from Moscow, I forgot to save about half of them (375 or so) into my final Moscow pictures folder. No, this does not mean I do not have photos from that portion of the Moscow trip -- they are all still there in my back up folders where I just copy all the photos straight from my camera -- it just means that I have to go back through and sort and straighten and rotate and edit them all over again before I can upload the Moscow photos. Either I forgot to save them or my external hard drive is some how getting fucked up when I use it at school and such, but either way, it means I have more work than I thought before I can upload the photos.

And so here is what I have decided....

After feeling really dejected and frustrated about this, behind on all of my photos, barely with time and the means to upload them at all, let alone go back and re-do work I already did, and now with even more and more pictures being taken every day and not having taken those off my memory cards and editing and sorting and rotating and straightening them too..... I've decided that my "travel period" starts NOW.

I'm sorry if you're all disappointed, but I don't want to spend my last three weeks here before Meri and I embark on our journey, sitting at Smolny on the computer uploading photos or borrowing Lauren or Louis's computer late at night to edit and sort photos for hours and not sleeping. I want to just enjoy my time here, take a lot of pictures, accumulate a huge fucking collection of them, and then when I am back at home in August, sitting around, exhausted, kind of dejected, I can go through and sort them all with enthusiasm, reliving all that shit when it will be fun for me to do it instead of an exhausting, overwhelming chore like it is right now.

So, basically, this is the end of photo updates until I am home in August. The only thing I am going to keep up on (or at least try to) will be my self portrait project as I am still hoping to do the second part of my 365 DAYS SHOW during the end of the week before Meri arrives (June 8th). But that's only one photo a day. That's not too bad. And maybe every now and then if I have a second I'll pull a couple of my key favorites from a photo-ing session on here to go with an entry.

Otherwise, suck it up and let me enjoy my last little bit of time here without stress or guilt.

Feel free to email comments, complaints, questions, concerns to my gmail.

Out of touch....

.... but not so much that I would forget my big sister's 32nd birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SARA!!!

I hope you're having fun today!




Some general updates:

Even if I did have a computer at home I probably wouldn't be updating much anyway because this week is sheer insanity..... four RSL exams, finishing my final video for my 16mm film class, trying like hell to finish my artist book, other random end-of-the-year projects and gifts, of course ending up help coordinating buying the flowers for the RSL teachers..... ahhhhh shoot me. Though I do feel accomplished because yesterday I did perhaps the hardest thing I have done all year in Russia -- I spent just under 3 hours at the train ticket kassa near Kazanskii Sobor buying 18, yes, that is right, 18 train tickets. Somehow I did not fuck up buying 16 tickets for me and Meri to get all the way from St. Petersbug to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia (with stops along the way, clearly) and then 2 more tickets for me and Louis to go up north, to above the Arctic Circle, to check out Murmansk and the very tip of Northern Norway next week after classes end. It was stressful, there was fights between Russians about the order of the lines, I made the strategic decision to wait at one of the closed kassas that was on lunch break an hour and until she reopened so I would be the first in line, and then even so it took 35 minutes for her to book 16 of the 18 tickets (I bought the 2 international ones from Ulan-Udye into Mongolia first, upstairs at the international kassa). In the end though, I did it, my hands were shaking at the end from exhaustion and stress and nerves (that I would somehow fuck it up) and also significantly low blood sugar and I am DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE with that train kassa, possibly forever, which is a relief, but which also makes me kind of nostalgic and sad. There are a lot of things lately that I am both glad to be done with and still sad they are ending..... I guess that is how life here goes.......

My last day of RSL classes. Forever.

And it totally snuck up on me, and it hasn't even sunk in yet. I have RSL exams next week. This is so weird. The end of the semester is coming so fast it is out of control. We had our last grammar class today with Ludmilia Petrovna, and she gave a touching little speech at the end about how we were so nice and sounded like we were Latvian when we spoke Russian (a compliment) and then she almost started crying and I thought I was going to cry and..... so the semester is ending.

Yet, the weather here is clearly trying to fuck with my head and confuse me further. All of that springy nonesense I wrote about in the Moscow entry is gone -- it was +1/+2 degrees C this morning and there is a good chance it is going to snow this afternoon.

ALWAYS KEEPING ME ON MY TOES, PETERSBURG!

Actually,

I got more done than I thought I would.

FILM SECTION UPDATED.

Excuses, excuses.

So when the parents left bright and early at 6AM on Tuesday morning, they took my computer with them (for travel purposes). I am currently using one of those "germy" computers at Smolny to update these things here, but be aware that now my updates will be even more infrequent, on both the blog and the photo site. I am severely behind on updating my photos -- my apologies -- I have photos from Moscow still to put up, some others from brochure shoots and stuff, and then all the photos from when my parents are here....

I guess I am going to have to get used to being generally behind on photo updating until August, and I am finally home and can catch up on everything from the end of Russia, traveling with Meri, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.......................

But the self portraits are up-to-date at least. Sort of. Well, up to the 11th. Eh, I'm trying.

About the parents' visit:

I'll let them tell you all about it, but all I am going to say is this:

Clearly we had fun, maybe some of us more than others.

About Moscow in May:

It's really fucking nice. Don't listen to anyone who might tell you it will be vastly colder than St. Petersburg and you should definitely bring your winter coats and boots and fleece-lined pants. No, don't listen to that person. It will beautiful and sunny and everyone on the program will come away a little tanner and a little pinker than they started off....

Moscow in May, being slightly further South than St. Petersburg, was also fully and completely in spring. There was lots of lying on green (!!!) grass in the sun (!!!), with trees in full bloom and budding all over the place. This also, of course, means that my allergies were out of control the whole time. On the train ride back to Petersburg on Sunday night, my left eye was so red people on the program tried starting rumors that I actually had pink eye. And, of course, it appears that spring came in St. Petersburg during the weekend we were away, because as soon as we were back it seemed there was pollen all over Petersburg as well. Luckily, there are fewer trees in St. Petersburg, so my sneezing fits are significantly less, though the drippy nose is a constant. Spring is definitely, finally, sort of, arrived in Russia -- now it's not just sunny but warm warm warm warm WARM as well, I sweated more in Moscow this weekend than I did all summer in St. Petersburg -- it gives me hope that summer will eventually come back too. I especially had hope when I saw that the beer garden where Adams and I passed so much time this summer was finally back installed outside of the metro. My life is coming full circle, yes it is.

So. Moscow. We did a lot. Here's a summary of my activies that I particularly enjoyed:

NOVODEVICHY CEMETERY:
This is the cemetery behind the Novodevichy Monastery where we went last semester. Emma and I ditched the monastery excursion briefly last semester and wandered through the cemetery, but it was pouring rain about about 10 minutes before the place closed so we didn't spend much time there. So I made a point to make the cemetery the first thing I did when back in Moscow. It's a really beautiful place, much like Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris that I loved so much, and, like that cemetery, is chock full of famous Russians who are buried there. I saw the graves of Chekov, Bulgakov, Gogol, Mayakovsky, Shostakovich, Yeltsin, Eisenstein and Nikulin. And, of course, as I love old cemeteries and this one was particularly gorgeous with moss and wild flowers and cobblestones, I shot a roll and a half and a shit-ton of digital pictures there. To be up, eventually, on my site.

SPARROW HILLS:
Really cool place in Moscow, the highest point in the city with great views of everything. I went with Zach and Louis and we wandered up the hill through the park which was so clean and pristine it could have been Berlin. Any parks like that in St. Petersburg would have had at least a couple beer bottles. Not only that, in the park they had trash cans with RECYCLING sections. They probably just throw it all out together anyway, but it blew my mind. Where was I?? Germany?? And then, at the top of the hill, is where the Moscow State University is located -- a huegly Soviet, a hugely huge, a hugely intimidating building. It is an enormous city university, of course, but unlike most other city universities with buildings spread out all over the place, all of the departments are in this one GIANT structure. We wondered how long it took you to get to class once you enter the building itself...

THE CIRCUS AGAIN:
So, we went back to the circus. Not as good this time on a whole, in my opinion. No beautiful trained white dogs, but the cats were even better this time. They didn't mess up jumping into their buckets or anything. There was one act in particular which (sadly?) didn't even phase me as I have been here for so long, but which offended a large number of fellow program participants.... I managed to take some pictures, but in short it involved a man dressed up as a rabbi and several chimps wearing yarmulkes acting out a Jewish wedding. And then the chimps dressing up further in different costumes acting out stereotypes of various other countries of the world. Oh, what to do. If I had gone to this when I was twelve or thirteen, those days when I would get on my soap box and lceture members of my family, I would have been outraged. But after this year of hearing some of the most racist comments of my life, I've learned that you just have to let these things roll off you. There really isn't anything else you can do.

OLD TRETYAKOV GALLERY:
I went back to the Old Tretyakov. Nothing really different this time, just went back to check on some of my favorite paintings....

PUSHKIN ART GALLERY:
This gallery is Moscow's equivilant of the Hermitage -- all of the city's Western and European art collection. We had a tour, but of course I skipped out after the first ten minutes to wander on my own. I hate those tourguides that get upset if you're not paying 100% attention to them and looking at them at all times, when all I wanted was to come to the museum to look at the PAINTINGS of course.... Anyway, I was surprised by how much I loved this gallery. The first floor wasn't very interesting to me, all that dark, still-life, 19th century portrait stuff... But the bright explosion of the second and third floors made me so happy. They have a huge collection of Matisse, including that great goldfish painting of his. If you like French impressionist stuff, this is the place to go in Moscow. It's almost an entire museum of just the 3rd floor of the Hermitage.

THE ARBAT:
I never made it to the Arbat last time, but I wandered on it this time. It's not that exciting if you're not into shopping, it's just a big pedestrian street, but there were a lot of street musicians and dancers and a lot going on. Also the only two Starbucks in Russia are both located on the Arbat, and even though in the U.S. I rarely go to Starbucks (unless I'm with the Erins in Milton) it was a homesickness comfort kind of thing to get an iced mocha and sit out on the street drinking it. I also loved looking at all the graffiti walls, including the huge wall of graffiti of the band Kino, that was in Malina's facebook profile picture for so long.

PATRIARCH'S POND:
The pond where the opening chapter of Master & Margarita takes place! I meant to go there last time but never got a chance, so I went this time and was thrilled. Louis went with me and we went right at sunset and it was eerie and oddly peaceful, the absolute exact way I pictured it when reading the book. It's also generally just a nice little park, full of baby strollers and dogs, much like some park on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. But you're in Russia. Weird.

RED SQUARE AT NIGHT, FINALLY:
Yeah. I made it to Red Square at night finally. This time it wasn't closed for a Nashi demonstration the next day. It's beautiful as hell, that's all I can really say about that. Much better up close than far away from behind a fence.

KOLOMENSKOE MONASTERY & PARK:
We had a big excursion out to the bottom of one of the metro lines to this huge huge park and monastery. The monastery itself was closed because of the holiday (the 1st of May), so we wandered the rest of the park, but it was gorgeous. I shot about 800 photos for the brochure just on this excursion, I went kind of nuts. Some members of the program were even inspired to go swimming in the dirty Moscow River. As for our guide, it was the same quirky man from last semester, and I think at one point he started just making up stuff to tell us. He told us at one point that the ravine we were walking through was famous for its teleporting tendencies. Good to know.

NEW TRETYAKOV GALLERY:
This might just be my favorite museum in the world. I wish, wish, wish I had had more time there, and whether Meri likes it or not I am dragging her back there in June. Take the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum, my favorite part, and make an entire museum of it and you get the New Tretyakov. It is all of the 20th century Russian art, all of the avant-garde that I love from the beginning of the 1900s, a whole fucking museum of it. Not only that, with all the Filonov and Goncharova and Altman and Kandinsky that I love, but they also had ALL of the Rodchenko photographs that I wrote my research paper on last spring for my history of photo class at Wellesley. I swooned on site. Really. There were witnesses.

Over all, my feelings about Moscow are still weird and mixed. Last time I was sick of it after the weekend and was positive that I preferred St. Petersburg to Moscow, but this trip Moscow grew on me.... I mean, Moscow is bizarre to me because I frequently forget that I am in Russia when I am there. It is such a typical, big, clean, global, not Western but international kind of city now, it's easy to feel like you could be in New York or London or wherever... St. Petersburg, despite supposedly being "less Russian" than Moscow and "more European" seems to have more of a Russian vibe, in terms of my interactions with people. More weird, random things happen to me in St. Petersburg, in Moscow people dress more normally and seem calmer and, in some ways, duller. More put together. Bryan once said that St. Petersburg is more of a provincial Russian city in disguise as a bigger city. I think that's true in terms of the general atmosphere of the cities, definitely. St. Petersburg is just kind of nuts, and while it was a good break from that craziness, I must admit I missed it. The consist factor in both of my trips to Moscow though was a general feeling of being overwhelmed, there being just TOO MANY THINGS that I want to do in that city, so in a 2 or 3 day trip, why even bother to try.... you really need to live in Moscow to get to know it at all or see much of anything, and last time I was there I was certain it was a place I could never really want to live in, but now I'm not so sure. It certainly grew on me during this trip, and made me think more and more about doing the Wellesley Wintersession program there next January.... WE'LL SEE.

I'm glad I get to go back to Moscow one more time though before leaving Russia, with Meri when she comes. It will be the first stop on our journey.

Found by Malina Dumas:

Nothing more needs to be said.

Wait! Timati! The coolest hip-hop artist ever!

How did I not know he was Russian????

Ahhh!!!

TIMATAI, who recently collaborated with the one, the only, Snoop Dogg, on the below video, was born and now lives in Moscow....?? His dad is a Tartar??



THE COOLNESS FACTOR TRIPLES BY A MILLION.

From back in St. Petersburg, with love....

Happy 10th Birthday,
Gwendolyn Anastasia!

Oh, how I miss that little face:

photo credit: JMH

Of course the one year I remember her birthday, I am in Russia. Oh well.

From Moscow, with love....

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY,
KAREN ANDERSEN BARTELS!

CELEBRATE IN STYLE, AND THEN WE WILL CELEBRATE FURTHER NEXT WEEK WHEN YOU ARE IN PETERSBURG!!!



love, e.b.

Fourth and last for now, mid-week escape to the dacha.

So on Tuesday, Lauren, her friend who is visiting, Syd, and good old Kostya, invited me to go with them to Kostya's family's dacha for a day trip. I was needing to get out of the city again, at least for a few hours, after having been overwhelmed by photo projects and the week before, so I took them up on the offer.


Kostya's dacha is located not that far from Olga's dacha, just outside of Kirovsk, where I went in the summer. His is slightly more out of the way though and woodsy. We took the metro to the last stop on the yellow line, going south, and then took a shaky, wobbly bus for abou 35 minutes out along the highway and then on a road that wound through woods. After Kostya met us at the bus stop, we walked through the woods (with some really beautiful birch trees) and along train tracks for about 20 more minutes to finally get to the little dacha village by the mouth of the Neva and right at the beginning of Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe. Looking at a map we where here:


Kostya's dacha itself is great -- not just because the house is my favorite color, but because he has his own little pond which was full of eggs and frogs mating loudly, because we ate lunch outside at blue and white tables, because Kostya cooked us shaslik with his mother's recipe on a woodsmoke fire that smelled just like being back at Lake Baikal again. Smells are always the most powerful memory triggers for me, and the smell of cooking on fire, and Russian woods and wilderness, really made me feel like it was August 2007 again, and I was at Baikal and my life was less crazy, but on its way to becoming more so..... I don't know, it was just a good feeling to be there again. All of my pictures are up on my site, but here is one of my favorites, of our host making us lunch:


After eating ourselves sick, Kostya took us for a walk along the mouth of the Neva, and explained to me the history of the fortress there, right at the mouth of Ladoga, that was built by the Swedes (he told me and Lauren that we should go back and visit the dacha again later in May or June when the boats to the fortress are running so we can go in it and poke around), and also how this area was key in the siege of Leningrad. According to Kostya the Guide, the part of the Neva we were on was the very end of the blockade, and the part that was still Soviet, and on the other side of the river, where Kirovsk is, is where the Nazis held control. I found it all quite interesting, relaxing, calming, it gave me a place to clear my head, we skipped some stones, had one more cup of tea, and went home. The perfect day trip.

Third, that weekend 10 days ago past:

When I was out of the country in Vilnius, Lithuania and its surroundings.

As the pictures have already been posted, you can see the kind of things that I was up to while taking a break from the hectic chaos and exhaustion that is St. Petersburg and Russia in general. But, as way of explanation of those photographs, let me list the things that kept us busy during our weekend away:

FRIDAY 4/17/09:
-- Rather spontaneously, during my 1PM - 2:30PM RSL class I finally could not take it anymore and decided I needed to get the hell out this weekend, and so at 2:31, right as soon as I was out of my class, Louis and I checked the availability of tickets for trains to Vilnius, Lithuania. By 5:00PM I had purchased the tickets, and by 8:00PM we were on our train, on our way out.

SATURDAY 4/18/09:
-- We arrived in Vilnius at 8:30AM (Vilnius time, which is an hour behind St. Petersburg) and were greeted by sun and not just cold, wintry, St. Petersburg kind of sun, but actual, real, warming sun.
-- We obtained a map at the train station, and walked an out-of-the-way-way to our hostel, but the city is so small, that everything is sillily close together so even our roundabout route took only 10 minutes. What a joke of a city.
-- During our roundabout route, we found a nice little out of the way park and sat there and ate some breakfast and marveled at the fact that there were buds on all of the trees and how blue, blue, blue and cloudless the sky was.
-- We checked in to our hostel, dropped off our stuff, and went out again.
-- We ate lunch (ham sandwiches) in the main market square, people-watching.
-- We walked up to the top of Gediminas Hill, the medevail fortress in the city, one of the highest points and looked out over the orangey roofs and white walls.
-- There was wandering through the beautiful, huge park, where we marveled at seeing a stream (and a clean one at that!) for the first time in months.
-- We hiked up to the top of the tallest hill in the park (it was funny being in such a hilly place again, you forget just how flat St. Petersburg is until you think about how you can see down straight streets for so far) which has three crosses on the top, a memorial to some monks who were executed back in the day.
-- While sitting in this park, we could not believe what we were seeing as organized groups of people wandered about picking up trash. We then remembered that the 20th of April was Earth Day, and it baffled my mind to see people actually not only not littering, but picking up litter to celebrate Earth Day. What the hell.
-- We sat the Cathedral Square, watched a little girl feed pigeons and almost get carried away by them.
-- Then Louis, who is into historical events, got me to go to the Victims of Genocide Museum with him which is located in the former KGB headquarters of Vilnius. Vilnius is actually an extremely historical place, and the city and Lithuania in general played a pretty important role in both WWII (as Lithuania separates Poland and Germany from Russia) and in the Soviet Union. The former headquarters has been converted into one of those vaguely tacky Russian-style museums that are just rooms full of weird lights and old newspapers articles glued to the wall in an overwhelming, too-many-to-actually-read kind of style. We didn't have much stamina for that part of the museum -- Louis explained to me all that basic history himself in a much clearer, concise way -- but we went down to the basement of the museum where they have left the cells where the KGB would bring its prisoners. This part was extremely and disturbingly effective, and I felt completely overwhelmed and upset by it, and all they had done was leave the rooms exactly as they had been and label them as what they were. Such as the padded cell that was probably used for torture. Or the cells with pools on the bottom where water torture took place. Or the execution cell where 45 people were killed every single night during the worst part of the Stalin years. You could see the bullet holes in the wall. The bullet holes. And then the exercise yard outside, with a chained fence over the top, and beautiful blue sky, the only thing peering through, giving any hope. After we left the museum we had to walk for a while through a park in the sun for me to regain any hope about life and people. It made me sort of ashamed to be a Russian Studies person seeing the kind of thing the Soviet government did to the Lithuanian people. What was most disturbing to both me and Louis though was the fact that headquarters exactly like this exist all over Russia, in St. Petersburg and everywhere, but they are not museums or anything of the sort but still used as real, operating, police and government buildings. Who knows what they use the old cells for now....
-- Our weekend in Vilnius could pretty much be summed up as strange juxstapositions of something dark, historic and depressing, followed by something completely beautiful, happy, sunny, and in the case of what we did immediately after the KGB museum, ridiculous. One of the major reasons that Louis and I wanted to go to Vilnius specifically of all places (besides it being the only Baltic capital Emma and I did not make it to this summer), was that we read that in Vilnius, Lithuania, there is the first and the only monument to Frank Zappa in the whole world. No, Frank Zappa was not Lithuanian, no, he did not spend any quality time in Vilnius, but simply that the Lithuanian Frank Zappa Fan Club was so upset by his death from prostrate cancer in 1993 that they petitioned the government to approve the monument, raised the proper funds, and Frank Zappa's head was cast in bronze and mounted on a pole.
-- After this we tried to do the one thing that I really wanted to do in Vilnius which was check out the exhibit at the Union of Lithuania Photographers, but after much trouble finding it (it was located in a small, strange little dvor), it turns out that the exhibit was currently closed and they were working on installing a new one to be open next year. Oh well.
-- We were tired at this point, and found a great coffee place called Coffee Inn where the coffee was actually delicious, and not that expensive. In our mere weekend in Vilnius we became regulars at this establishment.
-- Walked arond a little more, saw St. Anne's Church which is all made of brick, we saw the sun setting at the river.
-- We found a nice place called Piles Mene to try Blonde Baltika Beer, and then we went home and slept, exhausted, as we both hadn't woken up at 8:30AM in years. Well, since the summer program at least.

SUNDAY 4/19/09:
-- First we had to start out our day with coffee again at Coffee Inn. I had a mocha, the best mocha I have had since Mocha Java or Diesel, for about $2.00.
-- Then we went to the train station and caught a 1:10PM (we arrived there just in time, at 1:07PM) out of the city in the direction of Trakai, the old Lithuanian capital.
-- We got off first though at the Panerai stop, to see the memorials in the woods to the place where 70,000 Jews and political prisoners from all over Eastern Europe where shot and buried in mass graves and then later burned. It was a harrowing experience, this beautiful, beautiful, green and lush and mossy wood, full of this dark awful history. There were monuments of several kinds in the main part of the memorials, right when you first walk in, but the rest of it is just winding, looping paths, connecting huge pits that used to be mass graves, with Soviet-era stone plaques talking about the "Soviet Citizens" who were destroyed by Hitler there. Only on the more modern monument, installed by friends of Israel or whoever, did it specifically mention that they were Jews who were shot and killed there. Perhaps the most disturbing thing to both me and Louis though was the fact that the train tracks -- the same train tracks we had just been happily riding along in our commuter rail train -- run directly past these woods, of course they do, of course a place of mass execution of Jews from the Holocaust would be near train tracks, I mean, why would the Nazis have made things difficult for themselves? What was nice though was how clean and trash-free and clearly respected the place was. If it had been in Russia, not that that kind of memorial would ever be in Russia, the place would have been full of Baltika 7 cans and cigarette butts.
-- We then waited, a little nervously, for the next train, not sure if the schedule posted on the window of the closed train station in Panerai was correct, but right at 3:52 the next train pulled up and we jumped on (not having to pay again) and went all the way out to Trakai.
-- Trakai is located on a peninsula surrounded by three gorgeous, lushious, blue blue BLUE lakes. All we did there was walk up and back along a dusty, windy bike path along the edge of the lakes, but it was so beautiful and calm and peaceful that I had never felt more relaxed in my life. There are old castles out in Trakai, and those were pretty cool to look at, and this floating bridge-dock-like structure that was kind of fun, kind of scary to walk across. We fed some ducks the last of our picnic-food bread. We sat and watched little kids ride bikes and play admist birches. We then caught the 6:50PM train back into Vilnius without any problems.
-- Back in Vilnius we decided to splurge on going out to dinner at the Piles Mene place, and tried some "Lithuanian" food which was basically the same as Russian food -- blini that went by a different name, tvorog cheese that went by a different name, fried black bread garlic sticks that went by a different name, smoked pig ears that.... were just gross.
-- And, you will be pleased to know, that upon returning to the hostel and looking in the mirror, I noticed that I did indeed get the slightest, slightest of sun burns from our day outside. It was thrilling.

MONDAY 4/20/09:
-- Ah, yes, Hitler's birthday, a great day of violence towards foreigners in Russia, the perfect day to still be out of the country in peaceful, friendly, nice-to-tourists Vilnius.
-- This was our most uneventful day, basically spent wandering around the city, doing last little things we wanted to do in Vilnius.
-- We had coffee one more time at the delicious, reasonably priced Coffee Inn.
-- Coffee Inn also sells muffins and sandwiches, and we bought two sandwiches (after having their great muffins for breakfast) and sat by the stream in the park with the hill with the three crosses and had a small picnic, watching three twelve-year-old Lithuanian boys run across the stream in their shoes and socks and get completely wet but seem happy and carefree.
-- I found a present for Agnes, the only souvenir I bought in all of Lithuania.
-- We had one more Blonde Baltic Beer at Piles Mene.
-- We found a produkti, tried to use up exactly the last of our Lithuanian change on groceries for the train.
-- Sat in the same park we first sat in so early on Saturday morning, eating an ice cream bar before leaving.
-- And then, by 5:50PM we were on our train, leaving Vilnius behind after a nice, restful weeked. Exactly the thing I needed.

TUESDAY 4/21/09:
-- Our train got back in at 8:30AM (St. Petersburg time, so it felt like 7:30AM to us), just in time for me to haul my ass to Smolny and photograph a bunch of classes for the brochure and have an exhausting, back-to-reality kind of day. At least though, after our weekend, I felt sufficiently rested and ready for it.