Russia

What an experience. I had a great time, and so many crazy things happened. I'll start from the beginning, but honestly, so much stuff happened, I definitely won't be able to get it all down. I' sure you will all hear about it though, and I welcome questions.

We flew Scandanavian Airlines to Moscow. That is unfortunate because I was hoping for some rickety ghetto Russian airline that shook the entire time. Oh well. Upon arrival we checked into the Hotel Kosmos, which had a big statue of Charles De Gaulle in front of it for some reason. There was also a space ship statue. It was a huge and was basically a little city. There were multiple restaurants and bars and other crazy things like massage parlors. The security was pretty tight and they stored our passports. We explored the neighborhood and to my delight there were many delicious street vendors with kebab and chicken and bread. Moscow is considered the most expensive city in the world(mainly due to expensive housing), so I was happy to discover my student budget would get me by.

This program was through my study abroad program and they did a great job. That night, we met up with Russian students studying in Moscrow and they took us to Red Square. Red Square was beautiful at night.

Me in front of the Kremlin:

Me in front of St. Basil's Cathedral:

Then we had dinner with the guides. It was 11 American students and three Russians. It was really interesting hearing about their daily life and seeing where they live. We talked about school, the internet, standard college student stuff. Eventually politics came up. We met with the Moscow students twice, but I will briefly explain everything I learned politically from them here. They do not like not having a choice. Since they had no one to vote for, they ripped up their ballots or put exes through it. What was interesting was that, despite their discontent for the regime, they still had Russian nationalism. They believed Chechnya was part of Russia and were skeptical of U.S. military aggression.

The next day, we had a guided tour of the Kremlim. It was so amazing standing in the spot where the Bolsheviks came through the walls in 1917. We also saw some cool cathedrals(a common theme of the trip). Then we had a traditional Russian lunch and had free time.

For free time we went inside St. Basil's Cathedral . Unfortunately, even though Lenin's body was in Red Square, the museum was closed for renovation. I guess they were giving him botox or something. Then we went to a museum. We couldn't find the museum, but ended up seeing a Russian military demonstration/practice. We got caught taking pictures, but I still got a few. It was interesting that this was so standard and they were so proud, just demonstrating in the middle of the street. It was also crazy seeing soldiers who are younger than me, but that is not unique to Russia. I learned later that being in the military is somewhat of a right of passage for anyone in Russia who does not go to college, kind of like becoming a man.

We finally found the museum. Another theme about Russia is everything is huge. The museum is MASSIVE. After getting through all the portraits of inbred royalty, there was cool Christian art and cool military art. One artist I like portrayed the pride of Russian military history which was cool.

The next day we went to a modern art museum with our Russian student-guides. It was really interesting seeing the portrayals of Russian daily life. The main exhibit was this painting that was all black and represented a transition in abstract, since it actually meant nothing. It was called Black Square I believe.

After saying goodbye to our Russian guides, we went to meet with the producer of Russia's number 1 morning tv show. He basically told us that most Russian people were pretty stupid so anything serious did not get good ratings. Most of the stories they feature are like how to find a four leaf clover to make your husband beat you. It was also interesting that he could not have any political opposition on TV. He said he gave up politics because it frustrates him and is basically futile.

Then we took an over night train to St. Petesburg. It was cool because we got our own private sleeping cars. Everyone who didn't go right to bed hung out in ours. We met some shady Russian business men and we invited them to hang out with us(before we realized they were shady). Only one spoke Russian and would attempt to translate for the others. However, sometimes he did not have the opportunity, but they would speak Russian anyway, even if no one understood them. I think they were in the mob because they wouldn't tell us what kind of business they did aside from that it was engineering. When everyone decided to go to bed, the one who spoke English asked if we wanted his number. Being American, we were about to just take it and never call him. But, our Danish tour leader just said no straight up. It was a great Danish - Russian interaction; Danes being so blunt. One of the Americans tried to say that it was so expensive for us to call internationally and the Dane mumbled under his breath "not for me." It was pretty funny.

A few thoughts on Moscow:

- I've heard people refer to cities as dirty and I just assumed it had to do with emissions or something. In Moscow, I legitimately could not take a deep breath. It was pretty gross. I guess I know what dirty really means

- Red Square was unbelievable, but the rest of the city was a dump. Most of the buildings were falling apart, really modern.

- It was huge. It took more than an hour to go to the student's place for dinner.

- The metro was packed. It was crazy going from the cold outside, to a deep underground passage when you couldn't move. They were so deep because they were also meant to serve as bomb shelters.

-Throughout Russia, a cool thing is the old Soviet statues that are not a big deal to the Russians. It's interesting because it shows the continuous stream of Russian history and these guys were mass murderers.

Many ask to compare Moscow and St. Petersburg and usually it is pretty divided. Let me tell you, St. Petersburg was cool. It was like Amsterdam or Venice on steroids. Huge buildings, huge canals and lots of snow.

We checked into our hotel, which was a dump. It smelled funny and was dirty. The water stunk too. Some people said theirs was brown, but mine was just dirty. You can't drink the water in Moscow, but in St. Petersburg the water is known for being particularly full of bad things. In Moscow, all our rooms were near by. In St. Petersburg, we were all on different wings. There were lots of little kids at the hotel in St. Petersburg. We would see lots of little kids and they would say "hello how are you" and when we would answer, they would start laughing. I guess that's just kids being kids and knowing a little English. One interesting thing about Russia is everyone speaks Russian. Not just in terms of a lack of understanding English, but you know how when you are anywhere you usually hear other languages? Like you are on a bus in the U.S. and you hear Spanish or something? In Russia, you only hear Russian. Everywhere.

From the hotel we went to the Kremlin in Moscow and saw some amazing cathedrals. Kremlin means fortress, and every city has one. So, even though the Kremlin in Moscow is the Kremlin, many cities have one. It was pretty spectacular. We also saw a bunch of statues of Peter I, who built up St. Petersburg to match Europe and try to bring Russia into the west. He did a great job building the city. It's beautiful. I'm sure tons of peasants died in the process. But, Russia is certainly not part of the West and has never been.

Afterwards, we just walked around and went inside one of the amazing cathedrals,Church of Resurrection(see above in the canal pic). What was funny was that Stalin made it a warehouse.

That night, we wanted to go out, missed the last metro. So, we decided to find something near the hotel. When we finally found an empty bar, there was a cop at the door and he just yelled at us in Russian. I am still curious what exactly he wanted. Was it a private party? Did he want a bribe? So, we settled for some Japanese food that was opened and had cheap cucumber rolls.

The next day we went to Norvgrad(sp). It's Russia's oldest town and was about 3 hours away by bus. We saw its Kremlin and a WW2 monument. WW2 is still a big deal among Russians. Apparently Russian women of that generation treat men very well because there were so few men around after the war. Russia still swears it won the war.

We drove a little longer and met with a monk who lived in solitude. He told us how religion is growing in Russia and wished us all well. He also told us how everyone has an exam with God and we need to start preparing. Afterwards we stopped off at another cathedral real quick . This one had beautiful crome roofs, but was actually quite dilapidated .Apparently, it was meant to look good from far away, but they hadn't bothered to restore the part that you could see from close up.

When we got back to St. Petersburg we had dinner with some students from there. I was happy because the one I was sitting near just wanted to talk politics. Pretty standard Russian -student political views. Didn't like the government, feared US missile defense etc. I think he did not understand that the bases shot down missiles, not shot them. An interesting question one of them asked me and I was asked again later by some drunk guy was if it was true that all Americans have no friends and see therapists all the time.

One of the guides took us to a bar. A few interesting things happened at the bar. This girl we were with dropped her glass and the bouncer came over and started speaking in Russian. Some bystander who spoke English tried to tell us we owed 100 rubles($4) to replace the glass. My other friend and I did not know that the girl we were with broke the glass, but either way we said we didn't do it. Then some worker cleaned up the glass and the bouncer left. The guy still persisted that we owed the bar money, but it became obvious he just wanted us to give him money. Luckily a few more American guys came over and the guy got scared off. But, yeah, lots of drunk Russians.

We took a few cabs at night, including that night, so I should probably explain the Russian cab system. The actual taxis are really expensive, so when you held your hand out, you actually want an unmarked vehicle. Then you negotiate a price. We called these "sketch cabs." One of my friends on the trip spoke Russian, so I always stuck close to her when it was cab time because we would get a better deal. She would always talk Russian while we were driving. On our last night, she told us after the cab ride that the driver tried to buy her company for the night.

The next day, we had a walking tour of St. Petersburg "behind the facade." We went a half hour outside of the center. We saw typical Russians walking around and a park. They had some grand snow men and cool sledding - one advantage of living in such a cold place. I also finally saw someone passed out in the street (one of my expectations of the trip).

We then went to this really crowded market. One of the girls I was with saw a guy selling a gun.

After lunch, we went to the Winter Palace and the Hermitate. All I have to saw is WOW. Beautiful grand outside. So much history. Such a vast art collection. So, much beautiful interior architecture. We were only there for 3+ hours and I could have spent days there. Here's one picture, but I took about 100. ..


A few other interesting things about Russia:
- On two separate occasions I was asked if all Americans have no friends and see therapists all the time.


I will probably add more Russian details later on. I have more to add about Copenhagen, especially my community service, but I will do that later.