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.

Next, this most recent past weekend:

Consisted mostly of concerts of various kinds.

FRIDAY night, I went to another classical music concert at the Mariinsky Concert Hall, after enjoying the "Soireé of Cello Music" so much the other night. This concert was a string ensemble called Divertissement, consisting of 16 main members, but then expanding to 24 or so for the second piece they played. The first half of the concert was "Death and the Maiden" (String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor) by Franz Schubert, arranged for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler (Gus's namesake). I absolutely loved this, I got chills and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The second half took a little more effort for me. They played "Concerto Grosso No. 1 for two violins, harpsichord, piano and strings" by the Russian-Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke. It started out as one of those pieces from the 70s with a lot of dissonance and pizzicatto and lacked any real harmony..... not my cup of tea.... but the ensemble was so damn talented, especially the two soloist violinists, that the piece actually grew on me and I found I really enjoyed certain parts of it a lot.

SATURDAY night I went to a more modern concert at a club up on Petrograd. Remember that video I posted for the song "Весна" ("Vesna" -- "Spring") a couple months ago? The depressing, Soviet-nostalgic video of the 1980 Moscow Olympics? Well, the band I saw was the Russian "rapper" (his style is too eclectic to be described as rap at all, in my opinion, but that's how he is known) Дельфин ("Delfin" -- "Dolphin"). His "band" consisted of just him, singing and playing the drums, with one other guitarist and some synth playing behind him. The club was smokey and full of those Russian hipsters with dreadlocks, but the dark and the swelling beats of his songs really got to me and overwhelmed me. And, of course, when he played "Весна" everyone sang along. I'd see him again for sure.

SUNDAY afternoon I had a girly outing with Carrie to see The Magic Flute (finally!) at the Mariinsky Concert Hall. It was the first thing I had seen at the Concert Hall that wasn't just a pure classical music concert, and it blew my mind how they transformed that space for the show. (It always blows my mind the effort they put into each show's deecorations and whole design and scenic situation as it is a repertoire theatre, so it's always a different show every day, sometimes two different shows in one day -- I don't know how they change everything so drastically so frequently.) They added bird noises playing in the lobby, and a strange Egyptian-esque monk-like statue in the front lobby (something out of Sarastro's palace?) and inside the theatre itself they draped fake vines all over the sides of the modern walls. They also completely utilized the space as theatre-in the round. Part of the floor of the stage flips open to reveal a pit for the orchestra, and they added seats -- bleacher like -- all along the sides of the stage. The action and singing was not restricted simply to the stage though -- Carrie and I were sitting in front of a parqué towards the middle of the main section of seats in the theatre, and we had the pleasure of having Papageno sing one of his songs standing on this divider, a mere four inches from my face. Over all the show was super modern, and they did some crazy costuming, such as the three maidens who help the Queen of the Night where basically Russian goths, but it was interesting nonetheless and the singing was great, even if the man who played Tamino was a little older and a little heavier than I ever pictured the handsome prince to be. Oh, and did I mention it was all transposed into Russian? That was certainly a trip, to hear these songs I know and love so well sounding exactly the same, but a little bit off and then figuring out why..... And it was cute because it was a Sunday matinée and it was the Magic Flute, so it was a family affair, with little kids all dressed up in their finest, running around, touching everything and the Mariinsky being ok with them touching everything because they make a point to make the show interactive -- they left the glockenspiel and all of the percussion instruments out on stage during intermission (as the glockenspielist, the percussionist and the flutist were basically actors in the show due to the important roles of their instruments) and the ushers let the little kids touch it and play it and try to play things on it like Moonlight Sonata.

One thing at a time, photos first.

It would be an understatement to say that my life at the moment has been chaotic. My apologies for still not informing you of the details of my Lithuanian weekend (now almost two weeks ago), or the two concerts and one opera I went to this weekend, or my spontaneous trip out to Kostya's dacha with Lauren and Syd yesterday..... I will get to all of that in due time, I promise.... hopefully before more things happen.... like our trip to Moscow this upcoming weekend....

The good thing is that I am finally caught up on uploading photos to my pbase site, and there are a lot a lot a LOT of new ones, so maybe that will keep you busy for a little bit. Photos from Lithuania are up -- both digital and film -- plus other digital stuff from photo shoots for the brochure, mucking around Smolny, the nice weather in the city..... and then self portraits from the past few days, as always, of course......

I know you all want to know about my Russian experience and things I have been doing....

But Bea Arthur -- a.k.a. Dorothy of the Golden Girls -- died this weekend?!?!

Before I have the energy to write any blog posts about concerts I've been to or Lithuania happenings, let's all take a moment of silence for this great actress.

Sigh.

There have been lots of deaths this year while I've been away.

Some items I found on the internet that I think express the greatness of Bea Arthur:


(somebody's creepy fan art, described as "I made this for Bea.")

Yet another cooking attempt:

So, Mom, last night I tried to make your egg-pasta-situation thing.


It was slightly less successful than your pasta -- the egg wasn't very evenly distributed or something -- but it still had that filling, bland taste that reminded me of my childhood, so I pulled that off at least.

Though mostly it just left a huge mess of the frying pan:


Mmm, egg and its sticking tendencies.....

Happy birthday....

... to the man that I will spend 1.5 units studying next semester at Wellesley, Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov!

Today would have been his 110th birthday.




Speaking of next semester, I registered for my classes on Tuesday. It was a surreal feeling sitting on Banner, waiting for the page to load, at 3:30 in the afternoon in the Smolny computer lab, instead of at 7:30AM, still in bed, with Lee across the room from me, both of us barely functioning as we tried to get a place in the section we wanted of Bio 111. Not only that, registration was so stress-free as suddenly I am part of the senior class, the first to register, and everything I am taking is pretty much a 300-level or a Russian class, without much competition to get into..... so. Here is my schedule for the fall. It kind of blows my mind and makes me a little nervous considering the easy sort of slacker schedule I have developed this semester at Smolny.....

MONDAY
09:50 AM - 12:20 PM: ARTS 218, Intro Painting -- Harvey, Bunny
04:10 PM - 05:20 PM: RUSS 286, Vladimir Nabokov (in Eng) -- Weiner, Adam

TUESDAY
11:10 AM - 12:20 PM: RUSS 301, Advanced Russian: Moscow -- Epsteyn, Alla
04:10 PM - 05:20 PM: RUSS 386, Vladimir Nabokov (in Russ) -- Weiner, Adam

WEDNESDAY
11:10 AM - 12:20 PM: RUSS 301, Advanced Russian: Moscow -- Epsteyn, Alla
02:15 PM - 04:45 PM: ARTS 208, Photography II -- Rogers, Christine

THURSDAY
09:50 AM - 12:20 PM: ARTS 218, Intro Painting -- Harvey, Bunny
01:30 PM - 04:00 PM: ARTS 208, Photography II -- Rogers, Christine
04:10 PM - 05:20 PM: RUSS 286, Vladimir Nabokov (in Eng) -- Weiner, Adam

FRIDAY
11:10 AM - 12:20 PM: RUSS 301, Advanced Russian: Moscow -- Epsteyn, Alla

..... it's exciting though to look at these classes and know that I will learn something very every single one, and I, for a change, once again will have work assigned to me that doesn't just feel like busy work but that actually will be interesting to me. So that's something to look forward to.

Blog entry about Lithuania this weekend, I promise!

Preview of coming attractions....

though this is my favorite of all my Lithuanian photos, so why even bother with the others......

Only women? No men allowed? Is this really the Wash Closet in the train station or...... Wellesley College???

A sun burn in April? Really?

Yes! Really!

Lithuania was fucking great. It was warm as hell and sunny, not just cold still-wintry sun, but real, actual, warm, feel-good sun. I got the smallest of sun burns on my nose and forehead, a pleasant pinkish red glow all over my face. But maybe that was just the joy of being in somewhere other than St. Petersburg for a change. When we decided to go on Friday afternoon it was so last minute, all built on a lot of needing to get the fuck out, and it was certainly worth it. I'll write all about it later, but I can't promise any time soon because this week promises to be insane. I've been asked to take some photos for next year's Bard-Smolny Program brochure and so I am kind of busy going to about 798274892374 classes to photograph students "learning and interacting in a cross-cultural environment."

Until then, let this little gem of a news story (found by Cathy Keough) hold you over.... the things that happen in Russia when I leave the country....

TREE FOUND IN RUSSIAN MAN'S LUNG.

Fir Tree Found Growing Inside Man's Lung

1:14pm UK, Wednesday April 15, 2009

Russian media has reported that a man who complained to doctors of severe chest pains was told he had a fir tree growing inside his lung.

Artyom Sidorkin found a fir tree inside his lung. Pic:East2west News

Reports say Artyom Sidorkin, 28, from the Urals region of Russia, is believed to have inhaled a seed which then sprouted inside him.

Doctors were convinced he had cancer after he came to them complaining of agonising chest pains and coughing up blood.

An X-ray showed what was believed to be a tumour, and he was rushed to the operating theatre.

Surgeon Vladimir Kamashev from Izhevsk in the Urals was quoted as saying "We were 100% sure."

"We did X-rays and found what looked exactly like a tumour. I had seen hundreds before, so we decided on surgery."

Before removing the major part of the man's lung, the surgeon investigated the tissue taken in a biopsy.

"I thought I was hallucinating," said Dr Kamashev.

"I asked my assistant to have a look: 'Come and see this - we've got a fir tree here'."

"He nodded in shock. I blinked three times as I was sure I was seeing things."

The 2in (5cm) spruce, which was said to be touching the man's capillaries and causing severe pain, was removed.

Mr Sidorkin, now recovering after the op, said in reports: "To be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me. But I'm just so relieved it's not cancer."

Biologists are sceptical about a plant growing inside human body.

"It is absolutely impossible for a green plant to grow from this small seed inside a man's body. In order for a plant to start growing from the seed, it needs a lot of conditions - light, then water and certain temperature," said Olga Baranova, a university professor.

Click to see a shocking image of the tree inside Mr Sidorkin's lung (WARNING, IT IS SUPER GRAPHIC!)

SPONTANEITY:

not normally something in my repertoire, but tonight, tonight, tonight -- last minute decision to go to Lithuania for the weekend!

My train leaves in two hours and twenty minutes!

Vilnius, here I come!




p.s. there is a small blizzard going on outside!!! wtf!!!

Ah, color film in the Holga, how lucious can you get.

Damn, do I love it. Especially in a St. Petersburg well on its way to the White Nights.

Photo update here, pictures from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and walking home after Misha & Lera's wedding....

Unrelated to anything about my Petersburg experience...

but really cool, still.

Ms. Seelen -- my 10th grade English and 12th grade Creative Writing teacher -- emailed me last week to see how my study abroad experience was going and say hey, and she sent me to her newly established website for her beadwork. Check it out! It's a really beautiful site, mostly just because her work itself is so beautiful.

And, it is sort of related to Russian stuff, because one of her necklaces was inspired by Anna Karenina. So there!

My 11th wedding, but my 1st one по-русски.....

So, as I always do now after I attend a wedding, I try to count how many weddings I have been to in my life. As someone with significantly older cousins and siblings, I have been to way more than the average 21-year-old. My list currently goes as follows:

1. Auntie Christine & Uncle Ed
2. Jill & Eric
3. John & Cher
4. Jeff & Elizabeth
5. Chuck & Rebecca
6. Megan & Dan
7. Gen & Mike
8. Chad & Becca
9. Nina Freeman & her husband
10. Craig's aunt Joy & her husband

While all these weddings were different and memorable in their own ways -- from Megan's red Pakistani wedding dress to playing cello at Nina Freeman's to the rushed combination of Gen & Mike's wedding with my senior prom -- all were in America, and all followed pretty much the same American traditions for weddings...

So, my 11th wedding, which I attended on Friday morning, skipping both my grammar and analytical reading RSL classes for it, was a completely different experience for me. My first, and perhaps only, Russian wedding, and it was great.

You can see all the photos from the event here (scroll down).

I had been given instructions to be at the wedding hall near the Chernishevskaya metro at 11:20am, and I left my house at 11:00am, seeing a #22 bus pulling up to the curb across the street just as I was exiting. It should be known that the #22 bus comes about once every 40 minutes, at least that is what it seems like, and so I ran so hard to catch this bus that one of my little red shoes came flying off AND my Holga camera fell out of my bag. Somehow I managed to recover from both of those things, and get onto the bus, just as it was pulling away, but the driver, for the first time ever, was nice enough to reopen the doors for me just to get on.

And so I arrived right at 11:20am, right when I was supposed to at the wedding hall, but of course, I should not have been concerned about being late because this is Russia and so of course something happened and people were running late and they missed their 11:30am slot for their ceremony and so we had to wait until there was another opening, finally around 12:15pm.

Another thing I should not have been concerned about was if my purple tights and red flats in combination would be too loud and flashy to wear to a Russian wedding. Never before in my life have I seen such a fabulously, motley conglomeration of outfits as I did on Friday morning. Dress ranged from sparkly, fluffy gowns that looked like they belonged in a prom, to some people just wearing nice sweaters or blazers and jeans and sneakers, to the brother of the bride wearing an entirely white suit and a black bow tie, to a woman in a short red halter-top dress and a black leather backpack that seemed to be part of her outfit.... Katya was wearing a black velvet dress with the best bright yellow nylons I have ever seen in my life, that matched perfectly with the yellow stilettos she was wearing. Olga -- who had been concerned before about only having nice clothes to wear that were black -- had on black pants and an artsy, flowy kelly green shirt with accents of gold silky fabric and beads..... everyone looked great. I did not get nearly enough photos of everyone's outfits.

I guess I should explain exactly how Russian weddings -- at least the majority of them, the non-religious ones, that is -- operate. There are two major wedding halls in the city, one not too far from Smolny, and the other near the Chernishevskaya metro stop. These halls basically are wedding factories. They have ceremonies scheduled every 15 minutes, and they are booked for every 15 minute slot available during their working hours for all seven days of the entire year. Weddings only pick up with frequency as the weather gets nicer and nicer.... When you walk into one of these halls, there is a lobby, complete with a small stand with a babushka selling confetti, balloons, cards -- just in case you were a total jackass and forgot to bring anything to the wedding. To the left is a coat check and to the right a waiting room where your party gathers and chats and mingles until it is time for the wedding.

Our party spent a significant time in the waiting area due to the fiasco previously mentioned, where I mostly stood around people-watching a feeling a little awkward because I only knew five people in the room, most of whom were part of the wedding family and so were slightly preoccupied. I stood mostly with Olga's friend Lydia Vitalnova, who I met the very first weekend after I moved into their house last June, and she commented on people's outfits and told me about the history of the wedding hall (it used to be a palace).

Once the woman working the wedding hall came into the waiting room and announced that it was our turn, there was great excitement as everyone clamored up the stairs to the ceremony room. We passed two other weddings on the short way up there -- a huge one with everyone posing on the stairs for a photograph, and a smaller, punk one where the bride had a strange lace, ripped, mini-skirt kind of wedding dress and red stockings and dyed hair to match, and the groom had a mohawk and an entirely plaid suit.

The ceremony was brief, concise if you will. I guess it had to be that way when there was a wedding 15 minutes before and one 15 minutes after -- tight, efficient, быстро -- the guests were not even fully settled into the hall when the doors in the back burst open and Misha and Lera came striding through. It was pretty refreshing to go to a wedding for once that was not drawn out and that was all about getting to the point -- introductions, Misha & Lera signed their marriage certificate, their witnesses signed, they exchanged rings, they made out a little bit (no prude American "church tongue" (Friends anyone?) in this wedding, but full on sucking face), and then, my favorite part, when the justice of the peace announced that the parents could now congratulate the new couple..... and the parents got up and hugged and kissed them.... and then she said now all of you may congratulate them..... and Misha and Lera became posivitely SWARMED with every guest in the room all trying to get close to them and hug them and showering them with flowers and excitement. Eventually some sort of receiving line formed, but as we all know Russians don't really do lines, so general chaos kept up for the majority of the time.

This presented another awkward culture thing, or more just an awkward wedding thing in general..... I had been given advice from various people -- both Russian and not-Russian -- to give a gift, regardless of whether or not I was invited to the reception (turns out I was not, I mean, at the end of the time at the wedding hall, both Katya and Olga told me thank you for coming and to come over and visit sometime again, which seemed fairly concrete. so I could have gone to Novgorod after all. oh well). So I did, and I brought it with me. Everyone else though only brought flowers -- maybe there was some kind of memo in the invitation -- and during the swarming/receiving line/congratulations, everyone handed these bouquets of flowers to Lera, who handed them off to her maid of honor slash witness who quickly turned into some kind of diversely flowered tree. It wasn't long before she couldn't hold all the flowers herself and the best man and the bride's brother had to step in and help. When it was my turn to congratulate them, I awkwardly handed Lera the bag with the present I had gotten them, which later Bryan said was as weird as if I had "brought a present to the church" in an American wedding, but whatever, it was my only option. Lera didn't seem to mind.

There was a migration of the party after the congratulating, downstairs to the café part of the hall, where glasses of champagne and juice were distributed, and small h'odourves were eaten, and Russians kept yelling "GORKA!!!!" over and over, the word for bitter, which when yelled at Russian weddings means that the bride and groom have to kiss to make things sweeter.

Things wound down after that, the bride and groom and their families got ready to go eat dinner together, I said my good byes, everyone dispersed and I sincerely hope I was not invited to any later reception later which I was supposed to get myself to, because I certainly did not go to anything (not that I knew about anything) and that would have been fairly rude if I was invited and didn't go.

So, summary of it all? Quite the cultural experience.

MOM! NUNNI! LOOK WHAT I FOUND TONIGHT IN THE GROCERY STORE!!!

BEST DINNER EVER.

*though missing that magical sauce.

Alexander Nevsky Lavra, take two, but this time with sun.

Sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun!

!!!!!

It is amazing how much better than one little thing makes everything!


I was overwhelmed with joy this evening when I came out of my 16MM film class at 8:30PM and it was STILL bright out, the sun just starting to set over the Neva as I walked across the Lt. Schmidt bridge towards the Vasileostrovskaya Metro. All I could think about how was when I used to walk over the Lt. Schmidt bridge in the other direction -- going to the Bobrinsky Palace, at 4:30PM for my Bakhtin class last semester -- it was already as dark as the middle of the night. And now it is still light out when I am LEAVING class, oh, how lovely, so wonderful. I already feel less tired, and more energetic, if you haven't noticed I've started fitting more into each of my days again because they feel longer simply because they have more light in them.

In the vein of fitting in more things than usual, yesterday, after getting out of разговор class, the sun was out and I decided to go to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra again, having only been once before on that day with Carrie on October when it rained like crazy. It had been beautiful and peaceful even in the grey shittiness that was the middle of October, so take that and multiply it times a billion and you've got how beautiful and peacful the Lavra is in nice weather.

I took photos of that same old graveyard in the main part of the monastery, and then I actually, finally went into the main cemetery part and saw the famous graves of Dostoevsky, Muggorsky, Tchaikovsky, etc..... For more photos from my time at the Lavra, go here. I also shot a roll of color film in the Holga that will be up eventually. It was just so beautiful, I would like to go back when the weather is even better, and the flowers are out. I can't wait. Visitors, be prepared to be taken there!

It's starting...

Sunset over the Gulf of Finland. Primorskaya. 9:30PM.

The white nights are coming....

Cello, cello, cello, cello, cello, cello, cello, cello.

Cellos!

Last night I saw TEN of them, and ten of the best cellists in St. Petersburg -- probably THE best ten cellists in St. Petersburg, as they were the Mariinsky Orchestra's own cello ensemble.

A few weeks ago I bought one ticket for myself (one of my alone excursions to the Mariinsky that I have written about before, you know, pulling a Puppy going to the Lexington Flick) to go to something described as simply a "Soirée of Cello Music" with the only thing listed in the description: "Details TBA." Only yesterday morning, the morning of the concert, did they put up specifics of what would be in the performance that night. So, I bought the ticket on a whim, simply thinking hey, I like cello music, sure, and I went.

BEST 300R EVER SPENT.

As I said before it was just ten cellos, with one trumpet soloist and one vocal soloist, and god, I love cellists so much (not to be egotistical). They all seemed like such cool, laid back people, and it was not one of those concerts where you feel like you are there simply to stroke some virtuoso's ego for a couple hours. They all were having so much damn FUN, especially in the second act where they played mostly modern, fun, almost silly pieces -- they exchanged looks and clearly had inside jokes about things and because they were having fun everyone who was listening had fun to.

This was the program they played:

Arcangelo Corelli, Variations on the theme La Folia
arranged for 4 cellos by Nikolai Vasilev

Johann Sebastian Bach, Pastoral
arranged for 5 cellos by Vyacheslav Kruglik

Henry Purcell, Sonata in D Major
arranged for 4 cellos by Nikolai Vasilev

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras № 5

George Bizet, Fantasy on the Themes of the Opera Carmen
arranged for 5 cellos

Sergei Rakhmaninov, Vocalise
arranged for 8 cellos by Svetlana Nesterova

Antonín Dvořák, Humoresque
arranged for 8 cellos by Vyacheslav Kruglik

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Prelude from Bachianas Brasileiras № 1

Svetlana Nesterova, Invasion of the Tamagotchi from the suite In A World of High Technology, piece for 8 cellos

Duke Ellington, Creole Love Call
arranged for 4 cellos by Vernera Thomas-Mifunye

Vyacheslav Kruglik, Joke and Small Rondo
pieces for 8 cellos

Henry Mancini, Moon River
arranged for 8 cellos by Svetlana Nesterova

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Introduction from Bachianas Brasileiras № 1


The performers were:
Oleg Sendetsky
Oxana Moroz
Tamara Sakar
Yekaterina Travkina
Fyodor Kirillov
Daniil Bryskin
Vladimir Yunovich
Mikhail Shkolyarov
Alexander Peresypkin
Yekaterina Lebedeva

One of the women -- I think it was Yekaterina Travkina, by process of elimination -- was also pregnant, and all I could think of was Mom giving recitals back in the day, oh, about 21 years and nine months ago, and was so impressed by this cellist's level of skill despite her big belly vaguely interfering with how her cello rested.

Oh, god, I enjoyed it so much. My favorite pieces were probably Humoresque, because I have such a soft spot for that piece having played it on Suzuki violin, double bass and cello, and the Duke Ellington which was so cool on 4 cellos. I also loved the very first piece they played, the Corelli, because I was just flooded with an overwhelming feeling of joy of being at that concert and hearing that many cellos play together. That very first moment, and listening to the whole concert in general, made me ache with longing to have music in my life again. I know I severely neglected cello during my first two years of college, frustrated because it is so hard to be part of any casual music group at Wellesley if you are not a music major, feeling I had to make decisions about what things I was really going to focus my time on.... but the thing was even during all those two years, the cello was there if I wanted it. It was always in my closet, just waiting, every now and then taken out and played around with, a couple of variations of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, some scales, an attempt to remember the Ashokan Farewell..... I always had it if I wanted it. Now this year, my cello is still in my closet, but my closet is 3000 miles away from me. Suddenly physically not being able to have that if I want it has made me miss cello an ubelievably huge amount. Not only that, it makes me really sad to realize that people do not associate me with any musical instruments here. In high school my identity was solidly made up of four main things: writing, theatre, photography and music. At Wellesley, I switched my main focus to photography and writing, but analyical, literature-reading kind of writing.... I did some theatre last year, and even though I didn't really play cello in any public way at Wellesley, all my friends still knew that was a part of my identity. But here, the other day in conversation class, our teacher asked us if we played on any musical instruments, and when I said I used to play violin and double bass, and now I play cello, all the girls in my class were completely surprised and said afterwards that they hadn't ever thought of me as a musician type. This basically broke my heart, as it has been a huge part of my identity for my entire life, and all of this, plus being inspired by that beautiful, wonderful, amazing concert last night has made me really want to take up private lessons with Shay again next year when I'm back at Wellesley.

Back to the Hermitage, finally, TWICE.

So, as I embarrassingly confessed a month or so ago, in all my... now 11? months in St. Petersburg, I had only been to the Hermitage once the whole time -- on the mandatory excursion in the summer which was hot, crowded, miserable, and I was hung over to boot. Not a place I had happy associations with, and not a place I was eager to head back to.

But then someone made the valid point to me that I should go back sooner rather than later because the longer I wait, the more tourists are going to start showing up, and the more crowded and hotter it is going to get. So I finally decided I needed to stop being an idiot and go back to the Hermitage several times before I get out of this city mid-June.

Anyway, so this weekend, to try to make up for lost time, I went to the Hermitage TWICE.

Well, sort of.

On Friday, I went into the main part Hermitage to see two special temporary exhibits, both of which were awesome, awesome, AWESOME.

The first was a collection of 200 prints from the German avant-garde, a lot of political stuff, all done with techniques I had learned last semester in printmaking class, which made looking at the works so much more interesting to me as I could appreciate how they were done (kind of like my feelings after taking Painting Techniques last spring with Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz). Here is one of the prints from the exhibit, by Karl Holtz, circa 1920. It's a Lithograph print, called "Unemployed":


The only bad part of the exhibit was that special exhibits at the Hermitage close a half an hour before the rest of the museum does, so we were rushed towards the end of viewing as the babushka hurried us along and out so she could leave. It was really nice going to the Hermitage at that time of day though -- it was so peaceful and empty that I might make it a routine. I definitely need to go back to look closer at this exhibit before it ends.

The other special exhibit I saw that same Friday afternoon was the Hermitage's collection of rare and artist books. It's kind of a silly, funny exhibit -- they chose books to put on display by kind of hilarious criteria: they have the largest book, the heaviest book, the smallest book, the oldest book..... but it was really interesting to me, especially as someone who used to be so into reading books about used and rare book collecting (think: Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone's books). Here is a pendant-book that was in the exhibit, an almanac for the year 1821:


The most exciting part of the exhibit though was the fact that my printmaking professor -- Yuri Shtapakov -- had one of his own artist books on display in the collection. It was, once again, a book I have seen many times in the studio, Yuri chucking it to the side to get it out of the way, and then there it was in a glass case under beautiful lighting looking so professional and valuable all of a sudden. The only shitty part about books being on display is that under glass cases, you only get to see one page, or just the cover. Maybe if I go back they will have changed which page things are open to.

And then, on Sunday, I went and saw another temporary exhibit, this one a restrospective of the photographer Boris Smelov. Oh my god, I loved this exhibit. It was exactly the kind of gritty, silvery, black and white photography, geometric, contrasty, that I love so much. It was beautiful, and three whole rooms full of gorgeous prints of St. Petersburg from 1970 - 2000.





See? Aren't they beautiful? What I loved the most about them was that they are images of this city that I have grown to love so much and become so comfortable in, but not glossy, over the top, too-beautiful postcard shots. His photos of winter make it look like winter in St. Petersburg -- gray, gross, cold, shitty as hell -- but somehow they are still gorgeous and intriguing images. They are also not of the typical iconic places, but that image of the dove on the roof, I could not find roof tops like that in any other city than St. Petersburg.

So, there you have it. I returned to the Hermitage, but not really the traditional Hermitage. I need to go back again to wander the permanent colleciton at my own pace and enjoy the impressionists on the 3rd floor, check out the Prodigal Son by Rembrant, the usual..... one thing that I did do though was walking back to the exit from the room where the German print exhibition is, we walked through the room where the two infamous DaVinci works are on display. And get this, as it was 5:30PM and the museum was going to close in a half an hour..... there was absolutely NO ONE in those rooms, save the museum babushka doing her word puzzle in the corner. I got to go right up to both of the paintings, standing as close to them as I could without setting off the alarm, and study them intensely without having three different tour groups of retired American mid-Westerners and Japanese businessmen mobbing in front of me. It was really, really great.

And the best part? All three of these exhibits will be up through the end of June so any and all of my future visitors who want to see them, can!

DOCUMENTARY FILM STUDIO: BEST PLACE IN RUSSIA

Okay, so maybe that is also slightly hyperbolic, but it is a seriously awesome place.


On Thursday last week my 16mm film + video class had a field trip to the Documentary Film Studio in St. Petersburg, right by the Mariinsky Theatre. The trip was to learn about how they put together old 35mm documentary films in St. Petersburg back when it was Leningrad, but as one of the Russian girls in my class exclaimed, the trip was more like "a field trip back to Soviet times."


Absolutely nothing in this studio looks like it has ever changed since it was built in the CCCP. First, we met the man who runs everything there, our professor's friend, as you really can't get in there for our kind of a tour just walking in off the street. He took us to an old projector room, and showed us an hour's worth of documentary film clips -- news shorts, the kinds of things they showed at the beginnings of movies -- spanning from 1930 to 1994. Two minutes of a man making a schwarma in a kiosk in the square, footage of hot air balloons hovering over St. Isaac's Cathedral, clips of Che meeting with Russian officials, all kinds of things. They were all black and white and gritty and choppy and beautiful, god I love that kind of thing. What was most funny to me was the tone of the voice of the narrator, though speaking Russian, was exactly the same kind of narrator voice they have in the same kinds of old documentary clips done in America back in the day. I don't know if that is because of the quality of the sound, or if that is just how they got narrators to talk during that time period...

So after we watched the clips, the man who runs everything kind of shrugged, as if to say that was it, and our film professor asked if he would show us around. "What is there to show?" he asked her, everything being so ordinary to him, not really understanding what we would be interested in seeing. "Well, what about the machines where you sync up the sound and the visual images?" He skeptically agreed and showed us....

.... and gave us the most fabulous tour of the entire place, all of us, including the Russian students, felt like we were suddenly taken into the CCCP in the 70s or something. They use the same old use Soviet tables to sync up the movies and the audio tracks, they have stacks and stacks of the old film tins, the place is full of dust and sunlight and potted plants, and was a photographic haven for me. I wanted to move into that place and just photograph the hell out of it for the rest of my life.



It was funny to watch how our tour guide gathered speed, finding more and more things to show us and getting more excited as we expressed our enthusiasm at seeing all the old equipment and how things are done. We ended up staying about an hour longer than we planned on there, running out of class time, forcing our professor to make our mid-term exam we were supposed to take after the field trip a take home. OH WELL.

The best part was at the end though one of the more fiesty, outgoing Russian girls in my class got up the courage to ask our guide if she could have one of the spare old rusting film tins lying around. He said of course, sure, would anyone else like one too? Well, of COURSE, we all wanted one, and it became like New Year's or Christmas, our tour guide shuffling through old cabinets and pulling out tins, reading off the years on them, trying to match birth years and giving us the oldest tins possible.



I got two tins that actually still have unexposed old 35mm color movie film in them, which I can wind off in portions and load into my regular 35mm still film camera. It'll be an experiment to see if left over Soviet film from 1981 and 1991 will still work. I might get some cool, distorted colors.

Interesting how...

it is April 6th, and it is snowing. A lot. Again.

The biggest photo update in the WORLD.

Okay, so maybe that is slightly hyperbolic, but it's true, I present to you one fucking enormous photo update.

I've been behind on things because there have been so many photo-worthy occasions of late (and only more will follow as the weather gets better and better), and so the photos just accumulate and accumulate....

ANYWAY, the updates are:
-- some new digital stuff from various events.
-- about ten days worth of self portraits.
-- roll of color film shot with the Holga, after the jammed lens was repaired by the nice man at the Phototechnika store for 200r, commuting to school.
-- roll of color fish eye photos from the GLAM ROCK party.
--roll of black and white film shot at various social occasions over the course of several weekends.
-- roll of black and white film shot all in one go at the Smolenskoye Cemetery with Louis that one, beautiful day.
-- plus, some of the more hilarious gems have made their way onto facebook.

SO YOU'RE ALL SET FOR A WHILE.

An update on everyone's favorite lady.

Don't worry, just because I haven't updated in months with some of Ludmilia Petrovna's great antidotes and comments does not mean she has not ceased to exist or make me laugh every Friday from 11AM - 12:30PM. Here are some of the ones I have collected in my grammar notes from the first half of the semester:

In explaining how to create short-form adjectives:
"Just castrate the ends off those long-forms!"

In explaining how to use the verb тошнить ("to be sick"):
"Sometimes Dostoevsky makes me sick."

In explaining to use the difference between "pretty" and "smart" and how you can't be both in Russia:
"My papa would always say, 'We have a very smart daughter,' and I would say, '...and?' and Papa would say, 'That's it.'"

In explaining to use the difference between an ice cream cone and a little edible cone-like cup for ice cream:
"An ice cream cone is called an 'envelope' and whenever I ask for my ice cream in an envelope some sarcastic lady says, 'Go to a post office!' Ahh! I just want my ice cream!'"

In explaining to use what the world любовник ("lover") means:
"Well, there is a husband and a wife and then there is a third...."

A sunny day for a dark poet.

[OOPS thought I published this entry when I wrote it on Wednesday, guess I forgot. Sorry you've been deprived of reading material for so many long and, I'm sure, tedious days...!]

Walking to school this morning in the gray, vaguely sleeting weather, I made plans with myself to head home right after class to finally edit the whole new mass of photos I have yet to upload. But then, at the end of conversation class, in the last three minutes, suddenly the sun showed itself on the embankment and the room warmed and brightened and I was filled with inspiration to actually go do something after class for once, knock something off my very long list of Things To Do Before I Leave St. Petersburg In June.

So I chose to finally check out the Anna Akhmatova museum, in the Fountain House, feeling vaguely guilty for choosing an indoor venue when the weather had suddenly become so nice. But I found out today that you absolutely cannot go to the Anna Akhmatova museum on a day with shitty weather. The atmosphere created by the sun and the blue sky in the former apartment of Anna Akhmatova is absolutely essential for the experience.

The entrance for the museum is through a dirty, poorly marked dvor off of Litenii Prospekt, a noisy, chaotic, sooty, busy and perpetually traffic-filled street not too far from my house. I did not have high hopes entering this dvor, expecting any other apartment-museum -- small, cramped, cluttered, dusty, the kind that St. Petersburg has so many of thanks to its many famous writers. But after I walked through the archway into the courtyard of the museum, there was a sudden explosion of sun reflecting off of the warm yellow and white paint of the old palace in which Akhmatova's apartment is located. The courtyard of this museum is the most beautiful courtyard I have ever seen in St. Petersburg -- there are trees and benches and the warm yellow paint and women with strollers. For all the dirty, loud chaos that is Litenii Prospekt, this courtyard is a little bit of Eden. Perhaps my opinion of this place was severely hightened by today's brilliant weather, but I fell in love instantly with this spot.


The weather also clearly enhanced my experience in the museum itself. I really enjoyed the exhibits of old black and white photographs, the many artifacts, the fact that the metal name plate of Akhmatova's husband -- Nikolai Punin -- was still on the door, as if they still lived there. There was one excellent wall with layers and layers of the different wallpapers and newspapers and paints that had covered that wall over the years. It was also interesting to learn that apparently Akhmatova and Punin lived in that house with Punin's ex-wife and their child, all together under the same room. And people are impressed by how amiable the divorces in my family are.... But just in general, the over all atmospheric feeling was what I loved the most about the museum -- the high ceilings, the small windows up on the tops of the walls, showing only the blue, blue sky, the warm sunlight everywhere reflecting off of the creamy green paint. All I could think the whole time was damn, if I lived in a place this beautiful I would be inspired to write poetry as well.


Over all, the Anna Akhmatova Museum gets a solid five-star rating in terms of museums for me... I fully plan on going back, even if just to the courtyard to sit. Besides, it's free with my Russian student ID!