Before I write anything, I feel that I need to apologize for the lack of update on the blog recently. I really let time get out from under me this past month. The good news is that time has flown because I feel so situated to life in Lyon, and I've had the chance to spend lots of time with friends on the weekends. I'm thankful to not have to spend much time in my room on the computer, but I'm very sorry for dropping off the face of the earth for a month! Obviously quite a lot has happened, and I'll try to give an update on all, but I need to start with my fabulous fall vacation to St. Petersburg, Russia.
I can't remember exactly why, but at some point years ago I decided that one of my trip priorities was St. Petersburg, Russia. While France isn't exactly close to Russia, the trip is much shorter from Lyon than it would be from the United States, so I jumped on the opportunity to spend the week of my fall break in Russia. I also know two guys from Ole Miss who are studying in St. Petersburg for the semester; since I can't even read the Cyrillic alphabet, I don't think I would have been able to get through the trip without some translation help. All this to say, all the stars aligned, and on October 28 I flew to Russia.
St. Petersburg is truly an amazing city. To say that there is a palace on every corner is not much of an exaggeration. The bright color of the buildings stands out against the bleak grey sky and is reflected off the icy water that runs through the canals and rivers that wind through the main part of the city. Stunning bridges arch over the dark water every few blocks to string together the roads of the highly impractical city. Peter the Great picked an impossible place to construct a capital for his empire; the land is so swampy and so riddled with rivers that when he demanded that the aristocracy move from Moscow to St. Petersburg, each family had to buy their way into the city with several tons of stone to be used for fortifying the land. Thousands of peasants died doing the impossible work of making the swamp that was the city's waterfront property strong enough to support the massive buildings that a lavish world capital requires. St. Petersburg was founded in impracticality, so it's only fitting that the appearance today remains extraordinary.
The gardens of St. Petersburg are supposed to be incredible in the summer, but my trip was too late in the year to see much vegetation. I personally really enjoyed seeing the city just beginning to cross over into winter. The late fall landscape was Russia as I had imagined; the black bare tree branches start against a colorless sky, the city itself falling into a subdued tone as the population braced for an icy winter. I can't exactly say how seeing the city made me understand better the tone and grandeur of Russian art, but somehow I can now better feel the anguish of Dostoyevsky's literature and better sense the drama of Tchikovsky's soaring melodic lines. The bleak overtone of the city seemed to beg a massive explosion of arts to bring the culture to life. The highlight of the week (and probably one of the highlights of my life) was seeing Swan Lake performed by the world's leading ballet company at the Mariinsky Theater. The performance of the ballerinas touched perfection, and the music from the full live orchestra blasted through the small theater. I realized part way through the second act that my mouth was gaping open and that I was trying not to blink.
Considering that I only really had four days in the city, I think I did very well with my sightseeing. I'm never one to short change a good museum, so I took out about eight hours to visit the Hermatige, the world's second largest arts museum that is housed in the Winter Palace of the tsars. I paid homage to the great Russian artists, musicians and writers in the cemetery where they are all buried. I stood in front of the desk where Dostoyevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov in his last apartment. I explored the lavish Yusopov Palace where Rasputin was assassinated. I journeyed out to Peter and Paul Fortress to see the tombs of all the tsars and their families. Head covered with a scarf, I wandered through most of the major orthodox cathedrals in the city. The iconography in the churches and gaudy gold and ruby red alters was really fascinating; the cathedrals were unlike anything I had ever seen. In several of them, I never could figure out exactly where the focal point of the church was. Every nook was crammed with a seemingly random series of objects.
There are a lot of things about Russia that I would describe simply with the word "random," in that the coherency of the city and culture lacks some sort of flow. St. Petersburg was a city of contrasts to say the least with the looming palaces and cathedrals still recovering from Soviet possession. The people were not friendly and didn't even seem remotely happy. The streets smell of vodka, which it literally cheaper than water. I decided that Russian people are just really dehydrated, and there's nothing about the rampant depression that a drinkable municipal water system couldn't fix. I myself got a bit unhappy after spending only four days with a very limited amount of liquid. Every single thing I ate had dill in it, which I thought was an odd choice of an herb to make so ubiquitous. I can't imagine how tired Russian people are of that taste. Breakfast at my hotel included such classic fare as broccoli in mayonnaise and picked herring. On another "random" note, I thought another cultural oddity is that no one likes to give change. There are around 32 roubles to a dollar, and I would have vendors tell me that they couldn't give me change equivalent to about ten dollars. Even more surprising, most of the tourist attractions couldn't change anything much larger than what would be about twenty dollars. I have no idea why the Russians are so hung up on exact change.
Being a foreigner in the city was interesting. I had no trouble with getting around, but my system was a bit odd. I had a really good map, and I just had to find everything in relation to where I had been before. I couldn't read any street signs and nothing was translated, so unless I was standing in front of a landmark, I couldn't find myself on a map. Luckily, St. Petersburg is littered with landmarks. On the rare occasion that I needed to find a particular street, I just had to stare and the sign and match the characters to the characters on my map. I felt a bit like a small child reducing all the words to a series of symbols that needed to be matched to each other. In Russia, prices on everything are ostensibly different for Russians and for foreigners. A museum ticket was three times more expensive for me than it would have been if I spoke Russian, and my audio guide in English was four times the price of the audio guide in Russian. I paid double for my ballet ticket and triple for admission into almost everything else. I have no pictures of the insides of buildings, because tourists have to buy special additional tickets to take indoor pictures. The interiors of everything I saw will simply have to live in my memory.
As I walked off the plane in Lyon on November 1, I really did have a good "coming home" feeling. Russia was a fantastic place to spend a week, but the culture was really quite different from any other culture I have ever seen. French culture actually is as well, but I've now spent a good several months getting acclimated to the habits of this people group, and I think I'm only capable of readjusting to one foreign culture per year. Anyway, I think around 2015 I'll try to go back to Russia to see the Nutcracker at the Mariinsky if anyone is interested.
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