Adventures in Russian Food #3

Lol Wut?

Tasty though.

Adventures in Russian Food #2

Сырок (syrok) is a type of curd snack that is commonly found in pretty much any store which sells food in Russia. It tastes kinda like cheesecake, but possibly a milder flavor. They come in multiple flavors (like vanilla, chocolate, raspberry...), with biscuit or without, and are covered in chocolate.

Vanilla Flavor

They cost 5-10 rubles a piece (less than 50 cents).
I'm not gonna lie these things are the most delicious things on the planet. Like gastronomical rapture. My best days start out with one of these guys. I know, cheesecake for breakfast. Kinda weird, definitely a little #eatingmyfeelings but my host mom seems to think it's normal to consume these so early. I'm not going to argue.

Click for Full Effect

Сырок is better than Lobster Shack. Just sayin'

PS- I definitely found a recipe for these. It's gonna be dangerous.

Trapped: How I Managed to Survive Imprisonment Within a Russian Apartment

Russians seem to like doors, like, a lot. For my apartment alone, not only is there the door to the building, but two sequential doors for the entrance to the apartment. I have heard that the number of doors can double if you have an older building as there are twice the entrances (one for people and guest, one for trash and servants). With these doors come many keys. Right now, I have a fob for the outside door, a key for each apartment door, and a key for the deadbolt. Also, the keys don't look like keys in America. Rarely will you have the flat, grooved key with ridges for the pins, but you will have either a dungeon-y key, a four-sided ridged key, or a circular key with holes in it for pins.

So on Monday morning, I woke up, had breakfast, and got ready for school. By the time I actually got around to leaving, the other two in the apartment had already left. Ready to leave, I unlocked the inner door and pulled the handle. Nothing. It wouldn't even turn all the way. Confused, I checked the deadbolt to find my key wouldn't turn (yeah, use the key on the inside and outside). After that I was sure that the deadbolt was unlocked as it had never been locked before.
I began trying every combination of door usage I could think of: lock door, try deadbolt, move lever-thingy (I still don't know what it does), lift door handle up. For a while, I thought I had forgotten how to use a door.
After about 20 minutes of playing this game, a slight feeling of panic set in. My hozyaika was at the dacha and everyone else was at work and I sure a hell wasn't going to call them to explain in pseudo-Russian that I was locked in the apartment. My first thought was, "Is being locked in the apartment an excusable absence from school?" My Russian friend from Kazan said 'probably'. Relief.
I called one of the program coordinators to describe my predicament. She then called my host-father (could have skipped the middle man), who then called me.
Problem #2--I don't understand Russian over the phone, not at all. So about 5 minutes pass with what sounds like frustrated yelling over the phone, and I am no closer to escaping.
My host mother then calls, and I can at least understand her a little bit, usually, but today it sounds like more frustrated yelling. After negotiating with this for about 5 minutes, I finally figure out the secret to operating the door.
Freedom. And I only missed one class.

Pavlovsk

The next program sponsored excursion was to Pavlovsk, which despite being a REALLY cool place, I guess I just wasn't feeling it that day. So I present to you: WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlovsk_Palace

Read up. It's got some pretty cool history, all of which we learned on the tour. Picture permits were 70 rubles and I purchased one even though I have yet to actually be checked for one. I have a feeling you don't ACTUALLY need to buy one. Nevertheless, I took pictures of everything to the point of probably annoying the tour guide.
Cool story though: We took an elektrichka to Pavlovsk, that is to say a commuter train. This means the types of transportation I have taken in Russia now include:

Bus
Trolleybus
Metro
Marshrutka
Elektrichka
Boat
Cruise Ship
Hydrofoil
Airplane

I hear there are helicopter tours for rather cheap. Hmmmmm.

Orientation Redux

So I probably forgot the most important part of the entire orientation experience: Meeting your Host Family. My host family consists of a Host Mother, her husband (I never see him), her son (rarely see him), and her granddaughter, who is visiting for a semester before going back home. So on the last day of orientation, they loaded us onto a bus and away we went. I was part of the last group to get dropped off and while they said the bus would be ready for us at 5, it didn't pick us up until 7ish due to 'dacha traffic'. Dacha traffic is a wonderful phenomenon that happens on Friday as people get off work. Basically everyone who has a dacha in the country gets the hell out of Piter at the same time. This causes all major and even minor roads jam up. So 7-ish rolls around, and off we go. There were around 25-30 people on our bus with luggage; it was a tight fit. We dropped off some people who lived close to the hotel first and then made our way to Petrogradskaya Storona. I do not live here so I settled in for the long haul, little did I know how long it would actually be.
It took us a while to realize that this process of dropping people off was taking far longer than it should. We also started noticing the same businesses and streets moving past us. As it turns out, we had been driving in circles for at least 3 hours. By this point we had just about finished dropping off half the group. After a few more trips around the same city block, we made our way back to the city center to drop off the rest of us. Luckily for us, we had a heritage speaker on board and she filled us in on what was happening. Apparently the bus driver had no idea where he was going, hence the circles. Also, the bus we were on was scheduled to go to Finland at midnight (yes it was that late).
A little before midnight, we pull in behind the October Hotel and the driver kicks us off. After 20 or so minutes of waiting street-side with our luggage, a replacement bus shows up. As a group, we were all still quite jet-lagged and the 6 hour bus ride was not helping things. We were all pretty delirious near the end; laughing at just about anything, most likely stupid things.
I was third from the last to get dropped off at a reasonable 1:30am. Upon entrance to the apartment, my host mother promptly fed me, which was greatly appreciated as I hadn't eaten dinner before the hell-on-wheels fiasco. Dinner consisted of soup--mmmmm. And after I had eaten everything, she then made (read: force fed) me 8 blini with black current jam. Those were delicious and I now have the privilege of saying that I have double-fisted pancakes.

Sweet Church OMG CATS

Last weekend, we all went on our first excursion – a trip to Valaam. Valaam is a grouping of islands on Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe. Primarily, it is one of the holiest sites in Russia. We set out on the Alexander Suvorovsky, a cruise ship-like thing. The boat had a restaurant and two bar/club things. The trip involved overnight transit there, a day on the islands, and overnight transit back. I thought I would have gotten motion sickness but the ride there was incredibly smooth. The cabins were small and the toilets were those weird German shelf-toilets (didn't handle toilet paper either).

In the morning we went on a hike of the big island where our tour guide showed us the various churches on the island. Our tour group was in Russian and I understood everything up to the point when I stopped paying attention. The hike reminded me how much I like being outdoors, away from cities. Having spent most of my time over the last five years in Minneapolis, this was a refreshing escape.

The scheduled item for the afternoon was an excursion to the actual monastery on Valaam. The monastery is one of Russia's oldest and to my understanding, is pretty well populated with monks and temp monks. We took a smaller boat from the bigger boat over to the monastery and the ride was nauseating. Not only was the rocking sickening, there was an audio-tour happening over the speakers in Russian and English. The Russian sounded like the the Metro (think, teacher from Charlie Brown) and the broken Runglish did not help the nausea.

Believe it or not, visiting monasteries and churches is not one my favorite things to do. Sometimes I feel like once you've seen one Russian Orthodox Church, you've kinda seen them all. I know there are the iconic ones that you MUST see, but in general, iconoclasts are iconoclasts. Plus, there were people actually praying and lighting candles and kissing glass-covered icons while we were there, and I feel that our three groups of 30 people were interrupting what was probably a rather important experience for them.

Regardless, there were cats on the island, and cats fix everything. Every time my group passed a cat, our attention immediately fixated on the cat. The tour guide could have been spinning plates on a unicycle, but there was a cat, and that was more important. And because there was a cat, all warnings and advice from orientation flew out the window as many people pet and picked up the cats. I did not, because ring worm and fleas suck.

That night on the way back home, I went to the nightly discotheque on the ship. A pint of Tuborg for 50 rubles? Yes, please! Woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and went home. Rush hour on the metro=never again.

Scary Scary

A week ago on Friday, I got to school super early and decided my time was better spent going for a walk. I started out by touring the embankment; seeing lots of nice apartments and some not so nice ones. After about an hour of that, I headed back to the campus along Шпалерная Улица (Shpalernaya Ulitsa). On the left is an open square of sorts with a monument in the center. Thankfully during the bus tour, the tour guide introduced this statue as Felix Dzerzhinsky. Behind this statue is a rather run-down looking building with no obvious signage or labeling.
On that particular day, a woman happened to be taking pictures of the building, not the statue. She was also really close to the building; taking a picture and then feeling the surface or inspecting a crack in the cement. It was then that I saw two armed personnel exit the building, approach her, and escort her inside. After returning to the campus, I talked to one of the program coordinators about what just happened. As it turns out, that building is a branch office of the FSB.
I took pictures of both FSB buildings in Kazan last year...And I want a picture of that Dzerzhinsky statue.

SCHOOL

I'm a week in to school right now and it's going swimmingly. The results of the initial placement test put me in group 3 which, considering group 1 is only heritage speakers, is pretty good. At least my host mother was rather pleased. I can pretty much understand everything that is said although I often have trouble responding without a good deal of 'ummms'. Each group is 7-9 people strong and pretty much stays in the same room all day; there isn't much moving around. All of the language students take Conversation, Grammar, Phonetics, a class on Vocab, and СМИ, which is a class on methods for consuming mass media. We also get two electives. I am in a class on culture and a class on civics (Russian political and social life). They also offered a class on comparing the US and Russia and a Lit course (ugh).

Classes take place in one of the back buildings on the Smolny Campus of Saint Petersburg State University. It's also the Smolny Cathedral. The building itself is fantastic. It's a light blue with white trimmings, and demonic cherubs everywhere. Inside, the walls are peach and it always seems to be on the cold side, somewhat like a cave. CIEE has its own lounge with free wifi, which I have yet to get working on my computer.

To get to school, there are apparently some buses or marshrutkas I could take, but why would I waste 20 rubles when I could have a nice 40 minute walk? Good news: I haven't gotten lost yet!

In the school there is a cafeteria which is said to offer a cheap, albeit tasteless, lunch for 110 rubles. I have yet to try it. There is also a building across the street which has a banana machine in it. I will report on that later.

Homework seems to depend on which group you're in. My group hasn't had too much homework, maybe a couple hours worth if you were to spend some time on it.

And here's to beginning week 2 in school.

Arrival and Orientation

After purchasing a SIM card at the airport, the program coordinators took us to the hotel where we would be having orientation. The hotel was super nice, nicer than many American hotels I've stayed in. I should have stolen some toilet paper. The rooms had 2 twin beds and a TV with some Russian channels on it. I didn't watch much other than part of an episode of Russian “Married with Children” but I did see one fantastic commercial for plastic bags, if I remember correctly. Basically a fridge-ninja uses his blade to get rid of bad odors. Fantastic.

Orientation was a lot of fun. We had various lectures over safety issues, classes, transportation, differences in culture, the program, and Metroface.

Safety in Russia can be summarized as follows:

Roads: Fast, scary death

Crossing Roads: Never safe, Death

Shwarma: Frothy death on a stick

Winter: Icy death from above

Gypsy Cabs: Fiery death/mugging then death

Stray dogs: ring worm death

Tap water: more frothy death/death by illness featured on House

Alcohol: Cheap Death

No documents?: Death

Elevators: Claustrophobic Death

Totally kidding, people actually live here and it's just as safe as any big city with a couple of quirks thrown in. They just wanted us to be more aware of our surroundings, how to take care of ourselves, and avoid getting sick.

By the way, Metroface is what I have previously referred to as Russianface. It's an expression devoid of all emotion, but if one were to label it something, it would probably be closest to disappointment or boredom. When on the Metro, or even in the streets, it's best to wear this face. Why? Because the people around you will think you're up to something or they'll think you are crazy if you don't.

As a break from the orientation lectures, they took us on a bus tour of the city. It's amazing to think of how many awesome things there are in this city. I can't get over the fact that I can, as a student, visit the Hermitage Museum anytime I want, FOR FREE. The student ID card we were given apparently is gold because it gets you into places for a significantly reduced cost. Spas Na Krovi? Free. Hermitage? Free. Russian Museum? Free (I think). SO COOL.

Anyway, lots of cool stuff in the city and the canals are absolutely beautiful. The downtown center is full of streets and canals lined with buildings and apartments which to me, just screams Europe. I will be taking/posting pictures soonish, which will hopefully keep Mom happy.

During orientation I purchased a cell phone, and let me tell you, they are the coolest here. They run off the GSM network and SIM cards are really quite cheap. Mine was 200 rubles and it had an initial value of 150 rubles. Doesn't sound like much, right? Keep in mind that a text to someone in St. Petersburg on my network costs .20 rubles, and a minute of talk time to someone in St. Petersburg on my network costs .20 rubles. 150 rubles will last almost forever, unless you call land lines or are roaming as the fees are quite high then.

During the first two days of orientation, probably 90% of the students bought cell phones. Most of them cost around 750 rubles and are a basic candy bar style phone. Mine cost 910 rubles and was so worth it. It has an FM radio, AND A FLASHLIGHT.

In order to call home, you can either call just from your cell, which will cost 100 rubles a minute, or you can purchase any number of phone cards which will cost in total around 6 rubles per minute.

The city is breathtakingly beautiful and ridiculously busy. I'm pretty sure it's going to be impossible to complete everything I want in a year, but I think it's going to be a good one.


[Edit]

On HIV tests-

In order to extend our visas, we had to undergo another HIV test. This just so happened to take place in the sketchy basement medical room in the hotel. We all gathered in the lobby of the hotel; I personally thought they'd bus us to a clinic or something. The coordinators took small groups of us, five or so, into a back hallway where there was a secret elevator. The elevator led to the longest hallway every. It was dim, the doors were all heavy-duty, fallout shelter steel, and it was a little musty. We then, one by one, entered a room where, as promised, we got stabbed and bled.

Adventures in Russian Food #1

Ok, so this isn't really food, but it's tasty stuff and that counts right?
The other day I was in a grocery store of sorts and I came across some interesting looking sodas. Only costing about 75 cents each, I decided to try.

 This one is flavored like Груша or pear. I had a pear soda last year so I knew it would be good. And it was. Definitely getting this again.

This one I purchased without knowing exactly what Тархун meant. This was something I didn't remember seeing in Kazan, but the color was so enticing; I couldn't resist. As it turns out, via google translate, Тархун means 'Estragon', which is the French word for Tarragon. This is tarragon flavored soda. It tastes interesting, but I can't really describe it as I don't know what tarragon tastes like in non-soda form. I might get it again.

Flights and New York

One of my last days in the States, I had a get-together with my friends at a pretty decent Chinese restaurant. We exchanged addresses and I hope to send them all postcards at some point in the semester if I ever get over my fear of the post office. Postage for a postcard to America is apparently only 50 rubles.

Anyway, I left Minneapolis at 8:50 after having my last Caribou Coffee. Minneapolis Airport is probably the nicest airport I flew into or out of. The next stop was New York. My layover in New York required me to travel from La Guardia Airport to JFK. Flying into LGA was probably the coolest thing ever. My flight flew in right over the bay and I got some great, but quick, views of downtown NYC. I remember flying over the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building. I also remember seeing the building believed to be the inspiration for the Stalinist Skyscrapers of Moscow.

After landing and realizing LGA is a dirty, sketchy place, I made my way to baggage claim to meet the driver. My best friend's mother got me a driver in New York as a going-away gift so I was able to use some of my layover time for something other than drinking coffee in JFK. Spending an hour on Times Square was a much better use of my time. Thanks, Roxanne! I walked around for an hour mostly just seeing what was there. I knew New York was busy, but holy crap, SO MANY PEOPLE.

Times Square

Indulging in my Mormon Fascination

True Story

JFK is a nice airport. I wish JFK wouldn't let jets taxi for over an hour. Finnair is not a comfortable airline for a trans-Atlantic flight. The seats are small, the food sucked, and the entertainment system kept crashing (thanks Linux). I sat next to a very nice Estonian woman who also spoke some Russian. Helsinki airport would have been fun to explore if my flight from JFK didn't sit on the tarmac for over an hour after scheduled take-off. Thankfully the flight from Helsinki was only an hour and I got in a nice nap. Pulkovo in Saint Petersburg was similar to the other Russian Airports I've been in. Passport control was a lot of fun. The woman kept stamping my passport and looking at me. The airport apparently had free Wifi and I probably should have updated the Facebook regarding my safety. Whoops.