We stepped out of the bus on a brisk morning and began our trek to the Hermitage. Along the way:
Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. This church was built over the place where Alexander II was assassinated by small bombs.The Winter PalaceWe’re in the courtyard! About to go inside the palace.The Main Staircase of the Hermitage.Another shot.Peter the Great’s Small Throne RoomThe Armorial Room. That’s a lot of gold.Pretty Elegant DoorwayStatues of Russian Warriors from ancient Russia.One Huge Golden Goblet. Makes Harry Potter’s Tri-Wizard Cup look like a toy.The centerpiece, a bowl made of Aventurine.War Gallery memorializing the Russian generals from the war of 1812 (against Napoleon).Three hundred and thirty-two of them…Alexaner 1, who lead Russia to victory against the tyrant Napoleon. Or maybe it was the cold weather.St. George Hall: Large Throne RoomThe Double-headed Eagle, on this chandelier and many others, represents the Emperor’s dual sovereignty: secular and religious and/or dominance of the Byzantine Emperors (way back when) over the East and West.
Exquisite CeilingAnd the matching floor. That’s how big the gold pattern on the ceiling is, as big as the pattern on this wood floor.Peter’s Large ThroneThe Lapis-lazuli VaseOn the other side of the door, the Malachite VaseThe Pavilion Hall. Check out the Peacock Clock on the left.When the clock goes off the birds move and chirp. To keep it working, they only let it chime once a month.An incredible Mosaic floor in the same room.Another ClockThe Council Staircase. Called this, because during Soviet time the administration on the upper floor would communicate to the lower level by yelling to secretary.Really cool table at the top of the stairs.Next we walked through the Da Vinci Room where Benois Madonna sits along with Little Madonna. They are originals.The Doors to the Da Vinci Room. It’s sort of gross how they get the deep red color on these doors and other wood furniture around the palace. Blood. Tortoise blood. They boil the tortoises alive and the blood seeps out and stains the liquid.Entrance to the Hermitage Theatre. We didn’t go in though, unfortunately.The Large Italian Skylight Room. An Amazing ceiling.The Gallery of History of Ancient PaintingsThe Main Staircase of the New HermitageYet Another ClockA shot of the marathon finish celebration. Loud music accompanied us through these parts of the Hermitage.Blurry, but nevertheless a clock.A beautiful Strasser ClockClose-up of the face.Cool CenterpieceAustin, Natalie & I pausing as we exit the Hermitage.
Now onto St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Personally, I think Church of our Savior Christ Jesus in Moscow has nothing on this cathedral. St. Isaac’s seems larger, and is definitely more impressive.
The Pillars out front. Pretty impressive. To see it in its entirety from outside, scroll down to the first day of St. Petersburg.Natalie’s excited to go into Isaac’s.My favorite photo from St. Isaac’s. I was awestruck by the inside of this building and St. Isaac’s Cupola.Our tour guide “explains us” (this is how they say it in Russia) how they constructed the pillars using this model. This invention allowed them to put one pillar up every 45 minutes.The four different stages of this church. The third version was never actually completed. They tore it down to build the fourth and current one.The Cupola, and the dove with a 6ft wingspan. During Soviet time Stalin removed it and replace it with a Foucault’s pendulum to get rid of any religious connotation, instead of demolishing it…thankfully.Check out the zoom.Mistah JC himself depicted as a white dude almost everywhere in Russia, who woulda thought? Except for once, in Suzdal we saw him as a Spaniard. He’s truly a talented dude; I’ve never met someone who could change his appearance so drastically and so often.The altar, saints, disciples, and Mary. No chairs anywhere as in Russian Orthodox churches everyone stands for the entire service. I bet it’s to prevent people from sleeping. (Even though this building is no longer an active church, which is why Christ the Savior Church in Moscow gets to be the largest ‘active’ church)And now we get to go upstairs and walk around the outside of the Cupola.Natalie & I on top of St. Isaac’s. This photo would have been a lot better had I smiled more. Unfortunately, the one where I smiled came out blurry: LAME. So I’m gonna have to photoshop this. Check out the university in the background.Overlooking the University and Neva River.Another view of Petersburg
Then the tour ended and we headed over to my favorite building in all of Russia thus far. I had only seen it from afar while driving on the bus, but I definitely wanted to see it up close. Andrey Voronikhin modelled it after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. So I guess I will like the Vatican. Two statues stand guard over this cathedral:
Barclay de Tolly: Minister of War during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.Mikhail Kutuzov: Commander in Chief of Russia during the Napoleon invasion. His body is interred in the cathedral.Columns along a curve lead to the Sanctuary.The Sanctuary
And finally, Kazan from the front:
Kazan Cathedral in all its magnificence and glory, dedicated to Our Lady Kazan. It still looks great even though the top is covered in scaffolding.A bookstore across the street which sells books in English. I couldn’t find them though, but I didn’t look very hard.An amazing globe on the top.When I saw this I knew the end was inevitable. The machines will take over, maybe not in America but here in Russia they already have begun, with St. Petersburg as their headquarters (as I’ve never seen this in Moscow). Luckily, we were on our way back to the hostel to grab our stuff and get on the train.Our trip ended with us caravaning to St. Petersburg’s Moscow train station and waiting for our train. To end it, I read about Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Father Callahan. Unfortunately I did not sleep well this train ride and shifted in and out of sleep the whole way. I think it’s because our window would not open and so it got uncomfortably hot. Back to Moscow!
Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside Peterhof. This is quite a bummer as I can’t say I remember what any of the inside looks like. All I remember is that there were 3 architects and so 3 different styles. The first was Peter the Great’s architect, and his style was mostly wood and the most conservative in ornamentation. There is only one room left now in that style, and it is my favorite style out of the three. The second style was a Baroque style made by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli for Elizabeth of Russia between 1745 and 1755. During this phase, the upper gardens were added and two wings were added to the palace to make it massive. It looked better as a quaint summer palace with Peter, but Elizabeth wanted more I guess. The last style was overseen by Catherine the Great and was in a Classical style.
I remember everything looking exquisite and amazing, but no details. The funnest part was that because it was raining/sprinkling, we had to wear these booties over our feet which were alike to the exercise board that simulated skating and you watched that workout video that led you through the workout. As a kid though I would just put the cloth booties on and slide across the 6 foot plastic board, which is exactly what we did all through Peterhof. Which reminds me, there were a lot of hardwood floors. This is probably why I don’t remember too much as we were skating the whole time.
But after we finished with the indoors, we got to take photos of the outside:
The grounds from the palace upper level. Yes the white guard rail is supposed to be a straight line and the two vase things are directly to my left and right. But I didn't feel like fooling around with Photoshop to get it exactly right. It kind of has that impressionistic feel this way I think, k maybe not.Looking back up at the palace. The gold statue is a man opening some fish's mouth so the water can shoot up. He's pretty strong.Continuing down the waterway.Heading to the left in the previous photo we arrived at this fountain. Since Peterhof is the Russian Versailles, the grounds were huge and we in no way covered a majority of them.The grounds looked like this for the most part. If I lived here I would wake up every morning and run the perimeter or zigzag through it. The air was super clean and I was jealous. It's not like this in Moscow. Realistically though, I would probably run twice a week as a recovery. The day before each run I'd probably ride my bike along the coast trying to see Finland. I'd fill in the other days with huge capture the flag games. Mowing these lawns could be pretty fun with a tractor.It's even got little creeks trickling through the forest.Pipers! Or Russian Horns! I'm not really sure, but we caught the last bit of their show when we walked up. They were playing the Haydn Lo Speziale Overture, or a piece of it.The Stair Fountain, as I call it. After we walked to the upper level and looked around but it was mostly forest and a pond, so we came back down to look for the trick fountains.
We had heard there were trick fountains all over the grounds but we had yet to see one. After deciding to find one, we realized we didn’t know what to look for as it probably would look like a normal fountain. Luckily we stumbled upon one by accident:
After running across to check the response time (man it was laggy, I would hate to LAN with this latency), I decided to man up and get wet. I had a rain jacket after all.Look your enemies in the eyes when they attack. It freaks 'em out. It apparently worked. I delayed the gold head from shooting water at me until I was already running out of the strike zone.I got very wet. But it was worth it. Clothes dry.Looking out past the distant ship, trying to catch a glimpse of Finland, I pondered what Peter thought when he decided to build his fortress and Palace here. No not really, but it seemed like a good caption.It's night time and we are hitting up all the malls and shops in Petersburg because Austin and I want new shoes. I scored with some slip-on leather shoes with cyrillic on the inside, a rarety even in Russia I've been told. Then we walked back along ulitsa Lenina (every city has a street named after Lenin), and Moscow's got his body. This is a hotel along that street, I think. We stopped in Mango, Zara, and of course the Puma store before heading back to the dorm, stopping to notice the Carl's Jr. We ended up eating there the next day because we were all craving a Western Burger after seeing Carl's in such odd circumstances. Guess what? In Russia Carl's Jr. serves beer on tap, and it was the first food place that allowed free refills (of soft drinks)—or at least had no sign saying "No free refills." 🙂
That’s it for the night. We hung out inside the hostel for the rest of the night and took it easy. I read a bit more about Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake listened to some music and got some shuteye (something I’m craving at the moment).
We entered the palace and walked into this round room with the white grand piano in it. After sitting down (most of us anyway), our tourguide, Alisa, gave the intro talk. This is a photo of almost all of us in the program. The only people not in it are the people sitting in seats number 2, 3, 4, starting from the left. The girls in those seats are the Russians who help us out in the program, and Nikolai, a french student here. So of course, after I finished pictures of this room I took my place at the piano (the only empty chair). But I was not allowed to touch the piano.I was there too.Next we went downstairs to see how the assassination of Rasputin took place. This man was one of few who shot Rasputin. Him, and Felix Yusupov set up poisoned wine for Rasputin but it didn’t kill him. So later, Felix shot Rasputin twice in the back.The guy in the first photo and Felix Yusupov set up poisoned wine for Rasputin but it didn’t kill him. So later, Felix shot Rasputin twice in the back.This is where Rasputin lay after he was shot by Felix. But he didn’t die. Felix noticed this when he came back about an hour later for a coat. Rasputin lunged at him and Felix yelled. The other men came downstairs, shot Rasputin three more times, wrapped him in a rug, and threw him in the Neva River. The autopsy at the time said Rasputin died of drowning because water was found in his mouth and that his arms were above his head like he was trying to get out from underneath the ice. “New” studies say he was fatally killed by the third shot. I prefer the drowning, as he seems more legendary that way.On our way back up to see the rest of the palace.The official staircase entrance to the palace. And the chandelierFrom a different angle. The carvings in the ceiling are made of wood. How detailed is that? Wow. The statue directly to the back represents one of the continents. There’s almost 2 in every corner and they represent each of the continents. North America was standing on somebody’s head…dunno why we’re pretty nice.This was at the head of a feasting table. We need the table for Thanksgiving. But we would need a bigger room; it’s huge. But this chair is pretty cool too, literally being a “head” chair.Moving along, we entered a room with tapestries covering three walls. This is one of them.These are the women’s quarters. The bed is shorter than normal because they believed sleeping completely on your back was unhealthy. So they packed pillows underneath their heads and slept at a diagonal. Plus the hairstyles of the day were hard to make everyday, so women often left them in. And they wore these little vials over them to collect fleas and to ward off mice, which often lived in their head. GROSS. If any girl wears their hair like this today I stay away.Pretty chandelier above the chairs.The first clock. There will be many of these as my mom and I are fond of clocks.Next room…what’d I tell you? Clock #2.The ceiling in the above room was completely flat but the paintings on it made it look curved around the edges. Hope the effect is still visible. It’s visible for me but could be a placebo.Yes that is Malachite. The entire fireplace. There does not exist a piece of Malachite in nature this big (as yet to be discovered) so they glued hundreds of pieces of Malachite together to create this fireplace.This is the mini ballroom that Lady Romanova would invite people into for socials. The chair in the center looked really comfortable when we were there; partly because we had walked a lot.This quintet sang a Russian folk song for us in harmony. It was absolutely riveting. They were very, very good. Note the C. Bechstein white grand to the left. Nice pianos. Too bad it’s white.Another favorite Tapestry.A photo of a painting of some famous Russian on a horse. Enlighten me with its title and person if you know, because I forgot.Check out the harpsichord on the left, and the old piano on the right. To the left on the opposite wall of the these instruments stands an organ. The music room I guess.Just a painting I liked. I know photos of paintings/photos/pictures/watercolors/etc are faux pa but it’s a cool painting.The Yusupov’s Library. It seemed pretty legit and I was getting envious until I noticed that there wasn’t a sliding ladder. Without that, no library can impress.The Library Clock. Sorry for the bluriness.One detailed Painted Glass Window. I was awestruck.Especially by this one.The Russians thought it would be exotic to put statues of Arab’s near their swimming pool room. As we walked through these next two rooms Adeel, who can read Arabic, noticed that the writing said, “Allah, all powerful.” We wondered if the Russians knew this.The original staircase here was exactly the same except it was made entirely of glass. The French made it and then shipped it to Russia. Apparently today it’s too expensive to remake the staircase after it got destroyed in WWII or somewhen.Wardrobe in the male quarters. Unfortunately, the bed had been destroyed and so they just put a table in here.Our tour of the Yusupov Palace ended. Here is a look down the Neva River. St. Isaac’s is visible in the distance.A metro station in St. Petersburg. The metro was smaller than Moscow’s and the trains were shorter. But the cleanliness and decorations were just as fantastic. Plus it smelled better and the air seemed cleaner, fresher.
That’s it for today. But after these credits I’m a pull a Hollywood and give you a preview of the next post:
Peterhof, the Russian Versailles. Borders the Gulf of Finland.
Oh, just because I’m going to forget when I eventually post stuff for the current week: Have you all seen Kanye’s “I’mma let you finish…” speech where he interrupts Taylor Swift receiving her award at the MTV Music Video Awards? If not, go search it. Then understand that this has become an internet meme and is now the best line to use in any conversation. It even reached the ears of Obama, and Obama gave Kanye West a suitable name. We use the line practically in every conversation; it’s the best way to politely interrupt someone. Anyway, the one in last night’s conversation was top notch. In fact, it’s the best I’ve ever heard. So this is how it went:
Lenny and I are going off on the second statement in Sylow’s Theorem and are talking about orbits and stabilizers. I say something about the size of the orbit_N (giS) just as Adeel is walking by the door and he leans in just before I finish my sentence and says, “Yo, I’m real happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Pluto has one of the biggest orbits of all time!” Starting out slow, and speeding up towards the end matching Kanye’s pace through the whole thing. It was magic. Pure genius. Comedy at its finest.
Oh, more on topic, that first night in St. Petersburg we were at the hostel and went downstairs to take showers. We’re showering and Lenny says, “Caleb you’re a music major you should sing something.” So I bust out the American National Anthem. When I’m finished, feeling pretty good about the performance, I tell them they should sing something. Out of the blue, Adeel begins to sing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” In case you don’t know, this is another internet meme, called Rick Rolling. It’s basically the ultimate slap in the face on the internet, but a funny slap on the face. So Adeel rickrolled me. In the shower. Without a computer. The probability of that is so low its almost identically zero. Nevertheless, Adeel pulled it off. I don’t know how he does these things. The surprise alone caused all of us to laugh.
Our train arrived around 10am and I woke thirty minutes earlier to wash my face, get dressed, and eat some food. This was a good idea because when we stepped off the train we met our tour guide and off we went. No time to drop our stuff at the hostel. Into the bus and off to explore the city—reminiscent of somebody in my family during the Disney World Trip. To Dorothy’s credit, the tour guide did show us a bunch of stuff (so much that I took over 600 photos in 3 days, and am going to have at least 4 posts of St. Pete’s) and we had tons of fun, likewise at Disney World.
We drove around the Winter Palace and parked behind it to walk through the square and grab a quick bite to eat for the kids who didn’t bring food. I snapped some shots of the Alexander Column and Winter Palace, and the building opposite the Winter Palace:
The first building I looked at when we entered the square. Probably because it continues left and we walked in basically alongside it. We went through the arch to have breakfast.The close up shot of the archway. And turning around…The Winter Palace, with the Alexander Column just in front standing 47.5m tall, and made of a solid piece of granite. It is set so neatly that it is not attached to the base. So if you were Hercules, you could push it over, or blow it over. This has yet to happen though.
We then went across the bridge to take some photos of the river and landmarks there.
One of two original lighthouses in St. Petersburg.This dude, Poseidon or lookalike, sits at the base on one side of the lighthouse, presumably to guard it.
In these next few photos we’re going to play a game. It’s called spot “That Guy.” Some of you might be familiar with this game. It comes from those photos that people take while drunk, at a party, on vacation, touring, or all of the above. When they finally look at the photos they notice a random dude they’ve never seen before in the background of the photo smiling or making a face at the camera. Needless to say, we caught one of them in these photos. He’s in all three. See if you can spot him; it’s real obvious in the third one.
Let me just say that the uninformed would be looking at the building in the background with the Russian Naval flag above it. May I bring your attention to the foreground and slightly to the left of center where one of the most delicious pea coats clothes Mike Weiss? And mark the collared black sweater underneath. Simple elegance. But seriously, check out that pea coat. You don’t see that everyday. I’m going to move somewhere colder so I can buy one. Without over doing it, Mike’s half smile brings the photo together.It felt weird having this picture with other people in it and not me so I included one of me. And it makes the game more fun. This is the hardest picture to spot “that guy” in. And hey, I like my polarfleece; don’t get the impression that I don’t from above comments.Oh KAKA there he is! Adeel didn’t even notice. That dude was super sly in the previous photos, sneaking up like that. Nah just kidding he’s one of us. He’s Bill, and he’s pretty chill. Plays soccer too, and cooks good foo’.
We then drove further down the river and I took a photo in front of a fairy statue:
Thankfully this one is stuck into the ground so I didn’t have much of a chance of pushing it over unlike Alexander.The Aurora Cruiser from the famous Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. It returned to St. Petersburg and during the October Revolution of 1917 it fired a blank shot to give the signal to storm the Winter Palace. Apparently, the flooding St. Petersburg gets every year is problematic for the ship as it’s bolted down to the bottom of the river.Turning around to look back at the lighthouses. They don’t call St. Petersburg the Venice of Russia for nothing. Ah, the air is so pure. It feels really refreshing. The wind too, nice deep breaths in the brisk morning air.This was the first building in St. Petersburg. Actually, the building inside this one, Peter’s log cabin was the first building built in St. Petersburg. But then soldiers immediately began working on this one around it, so we were told.
We drove to a park and walked around for a little and were able to see the Church of Christ Our Savior on Spilled Blood from far (there’s a story I’ll try to remember it).
The Tomb of the Unknown SoldierSt. Isaac’s. The most collossal building I have seen yet in Russia. In my opinion it dwarfs Christ Our Savior in Moscow. But it’s not listed as a larger church because they turned it into a museum. We went there the last day, and I have photos so I’ll tell about it then. Yes we went up to the upper level via that stairway.Look at how small those people are. This thing is massive. The inside is absolutely breathtaking. By the way, instead of using “completely” the Russians use “absolutely” when speaking English. For example: The church was absolutely demolished before the third rebuilding. Our tour guide did it a lot (I managed to bite my tongue and didn’t say anything, it was kind of amusing anyway).
Now a little preview of Yusupov Palace, or Moika Palace, or Yusupov’s Moika Palace. This was the place of conspiracy against Rasputin by Grand Duke Pavlovich of the Romanov family, among others, where Rasputin was shot multiple times in the basement…and eventually died of drowning. Yea it’s a crazy story. I have some photos of it though so I’ll lead you through it. Basically though, Rasputin was almost immortal.
What kind of bathroom has a little shelf like this for dudes like my friends and me? In the boys bathroom too, that was dumb of them. So of course, we all took our turn up there. This bathroom was super nice though; check out the urinals:All that blue tile. We could have left after this and felt it had been a successful trip.
More of Yusupov Palace coming tomorrow, with no more photos of bathrooms. But a lot of clocks…
This week 9/14 – 9/18 was shortened to 9/17 because Thursday night we boarded a train to St. Petersburg. Not much happened this week except for Austin’s Birthday in which we went to FAQ Cafe, pronounced like F*ck, and the Russians ordered a few dozen bottles of champagne, chacha, and vodka. Adeel and I got a burrito and Mors juice (a super good berry a little bigger than a blueberry and purple, tasting like a blueberry mixed with raspberry. It’s basically my favorite juice now). Then we slipped out and got McFlurry’s at the McDonalds nearby. My first McFlurry ever. And the first time I’ve eaten anything from McDonalds since middle school. It was good though. But no more.
Anyway, back to Monday. It has been 2 weeks since I got here and I still haven’t found the Puma store. But that changed today. I jumped on the metro to Sportivnaya Station where there was a Puma store and checked it out. They didn’t have anything I wanted and the styles were a little different but it was nice to know where the store was. More fun was the cool alley I walked through to get to the store and the school next to it:
These kids know what’s important. They don’t care about getting their slick clothes dirty, only about the ball on the field.Some cool graffiti behind me when I took a photo of the students.Another piece of graffiti down the alley.Photo of the Alley
That alley was the highlight of my day. Anyway, moving on through the week we began to notice that a Rolls Royce kept appearing in the same spot parked on the street a halfblock away from our school:
The secretary at IUM, Elena Pishchik, is this little not so young lady who is full of energy and runs around saying “tak tak tak” (well well well) always in multiples of three. She doesn’t speak much English so during a conversation when we run into a communication block she just smiles and says хорошо (good) and then walks away. Anyway, we fantasize about us walking to/from school one day and witnessing Elena hopping into the Rolls and lighting ’em up as she peels out, with some aviators of course.
Thursday night came fast and I had to rush home from my 8pm piano lesson which began late and ended at 930 for an 1130 departure. Dinner was waiting so I scarfed down some food, showered, shaved, and over-packed for St. Petersburg. We walked out in the rain to the metro close to us, transferred once and arrived at the train station a little early for our 1am departure. The train reminded me of the Polar Express, even though it had nothing in common except being a train. There were four bunks to an open ‘room.’ Two top, two bottom. I grabbed a top with Chris; Adeel and Jordan took the bottom:
Austin came over to chill with us for a bit. That’s my suitcase on the top bunk and Chris on the left. Yes, the beds were about a foot too short for Austin and me. But I figured out how to maximize the angles of my body joints to get the most comfortable sleep.
Then I wrote for a little and read about Roland, Eddie, and Susannah. Then I caught some shut-eye. And was woken up a few times during the night to a Russian lady yelling something through an intercom at a station we passed through, or screeching of the train as we slowed through some stations. But keeping the window open for the wind was definitely worth it. It was soothing to fall asleep to the sound of the train. Petersburg tomorrow!
Saturday we left the dorm and got into a tour bus to drive around Moscow. Actually, it turned out we were just driving to parking spots and then walking around Moscow, to much disappointment for some of us, who stayed up late and thought we could rest on the bus.
The first thing we saw was something from America:
I want to see this but since Time Burton partnered with a Russian Director, the only showings are in Russian.
Then we saw some remnants of Soviet past, the KGB buildings, which now house the FSB (the new Secret Service).
One of the KGB buildingsThe one next to it. There’s one more but I didn’t catch the photo.
We then proceeded to Red Square and parked on the side of the road. Upon exiting the bus our driver got arrested. The tour guide swore about how the bribing problem is disgusting here in Moscow and then she went over to talk to them. This is her coming back:
We were told to leave him and he would discuss a payment amount while we toured the red square.
We crossed to St. Basil’s. Apparently, this nickname is after a dude who preached in only chains in Red Square and then eventually died because of coldness and stuff. The church is actually called “Intercession Cathedral” because the multiple domes are actually multiple worship rooms. The largest can hold 5-7 people. So services are small. I don’t think they do them anymore.
St. Basil’s from behind with the Kremlin on the left. The sun blocked the picture from the frontside.Note the (St Basil’s) in parentheses.
Since it was the end of Moscow’s Birthday week, men were tearing down the bleachers from the outdoor stadium:
Reminds me of that famous photo of the men sitting on the metal beam of the Chrysler Building under construction. Not quite as cool though.The Other Side of the Red Square. I’ll go back to get photos of the actual square when the cleanup is done.Apparently Communism is alive and kickin’ in Moscow. Unfortunately for the movement, there doesn’t seem to be a future generation for it as one can tell by the photo. Our tour guide told us they get angry when people confront them or take photos so I snuck this one before they got too close. (Oh, by the way, the face on the board belongs to Lenin. That’s what ЛЕНИН says in Cyrillic.)
And right in front of the communists lies the center of Moscow:
People come here to throw coins over their left shoulder because it’s good luck. The poor wait until valuable coins are thrown and pick them up. The four corners represent the four major different areas of Russia or something like that. One points to St. Petersburg, one to Siberia, one to the southern mountains and I don’t remember the others. I don’t even remember if the third one was actually correct.Even Moscow’s Malls are decorated exquisitely.
We then drove down the street to go inside the Cathedral of Christ Оur Savior. But they don’t allow photos so I don’t have any. Here is a photo of a statue across from it though:
I think this statue is life-size. Alexander II (aka Alexander the Liberator <like W.>, Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, King of Poland) was a giant—metaphorically of course.
We then drove to Sparrow Hills where Moscow State University stands and a great view of the city can be held. Close to the Hills is the ski jump from the Russian Olympics way back when:
Our tour guide says that Russian athletes prefer to live in other countries and train elsewhere so this jump rarely gets used. But it’s still there. Maybe when it snows we’ll sneak out here with some cardboard boxes… (and helmets)Moscow State University, the tallest academic building in the world. Probably because of that decoration at the top. Without it, Chris claims his school’s building would be the tallest. He goes to Pittsburg. Just look up “tallest academic buildings” on google. I keep telling him that the big star isn’t 200 ft. tall.To prove his point, Chris tries to eat the star so his school can be the tallest.Panorama of the city from MSU. In the center is Moscow’s futbol stadium. Soon, I hope, I will go to a game.
At this point our driver and guide dropped us off downtown near the Ministry of Internal Affairs, one of the 7 towers Stalin created in the Soviet style to represent the USSR, MSU being one of them. It made a lasting impression because the building is still in use.
Here ’tis. There are two parts of the building on either side that wouldn’t fit in the picture. And if I scooted back anymore a billboard would have blocked a large part. And I was too lazy to put a panorama together like the one above in Photoshop.There are two of these on either side of the photo above. Imagine them connected and then you won’t be far from the truth. Note it says 1951 on it; I don’t know why though. Maybe construction date.
The bus tour was over and so we decided to go eat at TGI Fridays because I had been craving a sandwich and hadn’t had one since getting here. (Before Moscow I basically had eaten the same sandwich for lunch everyday since middle school. Don’t fix what ain’t broke I guess) Unless you count some open face peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on tiny pieces of bread.
Here is the mall we went into, along with a view of some tall buildings in Moscow.
This ends most everything interesting that happened this weekend. Except that three of us who play soccer found some Russians in the dorm with whom to play. (We met players from the MSU team at the previous weekend BBQ so maybe we’ll get to play with them sometime) I showed them a mini field they had never seen before, basically an indoor field but outdoor; plus the field was made out of dirt/sand. It was right behind our dorm building too. We were surprised they hadn’t seen it before. Playing soccer for an hour and a half was a great way to end the weekend.
We woke early Monday morning (8am) to get to the IUM which is 2 metro stops away, and then about a 10 minute walk. My first class was Basic Algebra at 930. I’m auditing this class to review what I learned last semester; plus, the professor, Igor Vladimirovich Artamkin, is pretty cool and the problems are fun. I got my first taste at 3 hour classes. At least they are only once a week. That’s the ‘Russian’ style apparently. Then lunch at 1300 in the cafeteria and then back to the dorm to hang out. We’ve been to this class twice now, and the professor has worn the same brown/tan polo. It’s a legit shirt but I dunno, he only sees us once a week. He could rotate his wardrobe a bit. (At least I know the professors are somewhat like some in the usa). Then we went back to school for the crash course in Russian language. Even though I’m taking the actual class, I thought it would speed up my learning a bit, and it has a little. This course is only 1.5 hours.
Tuesday came a little later (class at 1115) with Russian Language 1, but I chose to wake up and go for a short run with Mike before class. We ran back to the monument park with the spire and then back. Still no bike. Our teacher looks like someone our age and barely speaks english. Between her mistakes and ours, we have a pretty good time and it is forcing us to communicate more in Russian. We found out at next Russian class (Thursday) that we have two teachers, and the other one is just as fun but speaks better english. After lunch some of us, those in Complex Analysis, met the Cowboy. At least that’s what we call him. His name is Sergei Mikhajlovich L’vovski and he has a shaved/bald head with a goatee. His hanging gut together with the jeans and flannel shirt he wore tempted us to visualize the cowboy hat atop his head as he turned back and forth from the board explaining how the complex plane worked. The only thing that made him cooler was that he says “Very Nice,” exactly the same way Sasha Cohen says it in the movie Borat. We have started a counter on this quote, and he is at an average of 7 a day. Crash Course again after this class and so I arrived wiped back at the dorm having spent most of my waking hours at school.
Wednesday is my longest day. Topology in the morning and Advanced Algebra in the afternoon. Our Topology teacher Victor Vassilievich Prasolov is boring and pauses for 30 seconds at a time in between sentences. I appreciated this at first because I was taking notes, but then I realized he was just reciting his ‘book’ that we bought, which consisted of his lecture notes. He is unlike Alex Paulin, my algebra teacher last semester, who also gave us the lecture notes before class and then went over them during class, but was engaging, funny, and basically convinced me to love algebra. I’m thinking this isn’t going to be the case with Topology. We had a more traditional Russian style in this class, as the lecture was 1.5 hours and then a TA (GSI) came in halfway to do “problem session” with us for the next 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, this meant we each work individually and then show him our answers. Since then, we have managed to work together somewhat and help each other which in my opinion helps us learn more. I got in an argument with Vladimir (TA) the first day as he said I shouldn’t use the new definition of continuity to solve this problem as it was harder to solve using it than the traditional epsilon delta definition. I tried to explain that by solving it with the new definition, I would learn how the definition worked…it didn’t get across to him. But he’s gotten more sociable and agreeable in the subsequent classes.
After lunch 3 of us joined Pavel Ivanovich Katsylo for Algebra. After telling us his grading scheme, he gives us a cd with his algebra book on it, as well as some math programs, and about twenty other math books he thinks would be useful for us. I guess pirating in Russia is pretty lenient. The grading scheme is as follows: He gives us the final exam the first day of class. There are 71 problems. They are the homework for the semester as well. Then, at the start of the final, we declare how many we can solve, if we say above 64 then the maximum we can get is an A, if we declare 57-63 the maximum we get is a B. Of the problems we declare he chooses 3 of them for us to present on the blackboard. If we get all right, he gives us our grade (from what we declared). For every problem that is wrong, he lowers our grade one letter. Here’s the catch, we are allowed to use ALL our notes and work from the semester during the final. So we solve as many of these problems during the semester as we can, type them up and print them out to bring them to the final. What this means it that the problems are hard. Here is an example of a problem from Group Theory:
Suppose |G| = 4m + 2. Prove that G is non-simple. ie there exists a non trivial normal subgroup N in G.
We proved this in class. Apparently if you put 4m + 2 = 2(2m +1) and then just prove it for (2m+1) because the proof of 2(2m + 1) is included within the (2m + 1) proof, it takes 200 pages before the claim is proven. Glad we don’t have to do that.
Since this first class, I’ve liked this class more and more and it is now probably my favorite class here. We just learned the Sylow Theorems this week (3rd week) and proved the first 2 statements.
Anyway, since I had spent 6 hours in class already, I ditched the crash course and never went back. Instead I went walking around the city with Ester, Michael Donatz, and Lenny. We were trying to find a sheet music store to get music for my piano lesson tomorrow as well as michael’s lesson tomorrow. We found the shop, but it was closed. So Ester showed us some of the sights:
This is Patriarch Pond. Near the music store which is located near Chaikovsky Conservatory. These are all near the Garden Ring, which is one of my favorite parts of the city.
Then we went out to a cafe, and even though we had a local Russian with us, the order got screwed up and Lenny got some fish filet crepe thing and he’s allergic. They made us pay for it anyway but whatever, we never went back.
Thursday Morning I went for a run again and then went to Russian Language class. Afterward I headed out to the music store to buy some sheet music. They didn’t have a lot of choice in editions but even so, a Barenreiter copy of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes cost me only $25. So I picked up the etudes as well. Got the Skriabin Sonatas, Prokofiev Sonatas, and Chaikovsky Seasons too. I navigated my way back to the piano teacher’s house (we had a consultation guided by Ester previously in the week) and made it in time for my lesson. She doesn’t speak much english so it made it difficult to communicate at first. But I’ve noticed that two things go in our favor. One, Italian is the language of music (western classical) and so we were fine there, and because the common words we knew were few, it made it really easy to understand her comments, like: “Brutal hands here, relax!” (Her piano was the first I’d touched in two weeks. Also, I do need to work on relaxing when I play to avoid harsh tone, so we’re working on that)
We decided to work on these pieces:
Schubert Impromptu Op.142 No.3 I had started this with my piano teacher at Berkeley. I don’t really like Horowitz’s interpretation but it’s the best I could find. If you can listen to Murray Perahia’s performance. It wasn’t on youtube though.
Rachmaninov Prelude Op.32 No.5: HorowitzAshkenazy These are the first recordings I’ve heard (I don’t usually listen until I’m farther on in the piece) but I like Ashkenazy’s interpretation better. When my teacher, Tatyana, played it for me, I was awed at how beautiful Rachmaninov could be. I had no idea; I had not heard many of his pieces at all. She said we could start this prelude next: Prelude Op23 No4 (I chose Richter’s as Ashkenazy’s was a little more muddled) or we could do an etude. I’m torn.
And then of course I’m continuing to play the Chopin Berceuse and Nocturne Op.62 No.1 (Pollini is just a little too fast) whenever I get to try out a new piano. Like when I dropped into the C. Bechstein piano store. Ester wanted to hear me play something so I played the Berceuse. The piano in there was amazing. It felt like touching my fingertips into glassy water; I could see how I affected every little detail, but comfortably. It wasn’t like it was too harsh or revealing. It was warm and smooth (just wish I had practiced more beforehand) (and that the lower bass had just a little more tone). The black keys had sort of a texture to them also. Instead of slipping off them when my hands were moist, (not that I was sweating profusely or anything) they absorbed it and gave extra grip.
Friday I only had Russian Language class again. But that evening, Chris’s friend Evgeny invited some of us to his friend’s birthday bbq over near Moscow State University at Sparrow Hills. So we took the subway there and got out at Vorobiyovy Gory Station:
Vorobiyovy Gory Station, over the River.
It was a very pretty station with a nice view. The BBQ was fun. It ended with Austin becoming so drunk, that when the Russians led us through a short cut (an old cobblestone pathway 3 ft wide with a 50 degree slanted hill downward next to it) so we could make the metro before it closed at 1am, he slipped off the cobblestones and went head over heels down the hill. Chris and I thereby proceeded to keel over and laugh uncontrollably as every time Austin became right-side up he would flail and then slip, and since he was drunk, his reaction times were super slow. It got even funnier when the Russian with us jumped after him like Austin had fallen into a shark tank. Then the Russian started falling and they slid all the way down to the road, where we wanted to go in the first place. Nobody was hurt, it was soft dirt and grass along the hill. But we did get a good laugh.
Here are a couple more shots of my dorm so you can get a better look of what it looks like. Maybe interior shots will come later:
The back of the dorm. My window is down on the right second floor up. But I haven’t counted to see which exactly.The entrance to our dorm lies to the left with the overhang. Austin leading the way.
I do believe this is the most I’ve written in one post. So I will stop now. Tomorrow I hope to put the Moscow Bus tour photos up and then by the end of this weekend I hope to put the St. Petersburg trip up. I took almost 600 photos while I was there. So I will post the trip in 3 parts. Last thing, how cool is this: I’m currently remotely connected (remote desktop) to my sister’s computer who is running windows xp so I can clean it, while I’m running Mac OSX and I’m google-video chatting with my mom, dog, and cat on the computer next to my sister’s. I feel like this is cheating the whole “study-abroad” thing because I’m virtually at home. My mom could walk the laptop around the house and it’d be like I was there. Sort of. Anyway, time to sleep.
My first week ended with an invitation to Ester’s Dacha, a country house <pronounced dah-cha where ‘ch’ sound is like in chair>. These are cottages within train distance of Moscow that the Moscovites own and use when they want to get away from the city/smoke/pollution/asphalt/cement etc. Apparently, the more expensive ones are closer to Moscow, which somehow doesn’t make sense to me as I would think the farther away from the city, the cleaner the air and overall atmosphere, at least that’s what it felt like to me as we traveled there (yes I know if the dacha is closer it takes less time to get there and since it’s closer to Moscow the real estate value might be higher, but still…)
So anyway, this weekend I really got to see how beautiful Russia really is. Between rolling hills, small rivers, forests, and the clean country air, it was dachtastic! (a new word composed from the words ‘dacha’ and fantastic, with the definition as ‘as fantastic as being at a dacha’) This word might be used throughout this post so it’s important to know its meaning. Another phrase spontaneously created is ‘dached out’ used to express when ‘one has had too much of a dacha. However, a more general meaning has been proposed to include when one has had too much of something, usually a situation, location, or hang-out spot.’ An example is: After spending the entire month in the country side we were all dached out and ready to return to the bustling city life we had previously left behind.
We met Ester at the northeastern side of the city after the afternoon classes at Komsomolskaya station to change from the metro to the train. We took a commuter train to her dacha which is in between Moscow and Tver. It was a comfortable ride that took about 90 minutes. It was basically a series of booth seats on either side of where a table might be but wasn’t lined up on both sides of an aisle-way. I took advantage of the open windows to snap some photos:
A station in between the dacha station and Moscow.A powerplant? on the way looked cool.Tracks. I liked these shots so I took a lot of different ones that all kinda look the same. But you can read the station name here: “XOBPNHO” where it’s a reverse N. Pronounced sort of like Hovrino or Havrino depending if the accent is on the first o or the i. I’m learning Cyrillic!Some huge river along our path. I can’t seem to figure out which river it is though. Probably the one between Tver and Moscow but google maps won’t show me the name.Beautiful landscape. As we said on our train ride, “Some fields to frolic in.”Some Dachas!Cool abandoned traincars. There were some abandoned military vehicles as well along the journey. Makes ya wonder, don’t know about what, but one could wonder.Dachaville! definition: a close gathering of dachas resembling something like a village or town.A final tracks photo in the direction we were heading.
And we arrived at the Dacha…
Ester’s station to her Dacha. She wouldn’t let us walk across the tracks like the locals. Instead we had to use the tourist walkway that went overhead.I’m envious that this kid gets to ride a bike and I have yet to acquire one. He is Ester’s neighbor and came over for a little until he fell out of a tree (6 ft) and bellyflopped onto the brick path that just hit his stomach area, while the head area and legs hit earth. He made a thwack/thud sound and his mom came and took him home. (He’s okay though)
Ester’s Dacha in the background (one of two buildings) with some random dude in front of it to the left. Nah that guy’s my current roommate Austin from Santa Barbara.
Ester’s living room. From left to right: Michael, John, Natalie, Marc, Austin. Guy in front I think is Daniel.The upstairs loft equipped with a ladder to get there.Old stove from a previous generation, in the other building where some of us proceeded to play some card games for some of the night, not realizing that some of the decks had only 36 cards. Russians play a game called Durock that uses only 36 cards.John, Michael, and Lenny (left to right) cooking sausages Dacha-style. I’m holding the sausage from the stick in the bottom left corner. Needless to say, once we put em in the bread with some ketchup and cheese they were dachtastic.We took a walk the next morning around the neighborhood and saw a real-life scarecrow. It didn’t come alive though like in Wizard of Oz.I beat Ester to the station so I could jump in between the tracks to take this photo. Incredibly, moments after I took this photo, getting ready to take the next, two trains, one from either direction, sped past me surrounding me in the middle of the tracks. I was spun so quickly I began getting vertical acceleration and helicoptered up and over the trains onto the station platform. Not really though, but that would have been cool. It wasn’t dangerous at all. No trains were coming for a while.Arriving at the Moscow Train Station, our trip ended. I made sure to quote James Franco in Pineapple Express before leaving the dacha saying, “Let’s roll, I’m done with these woods.” We just missed the rain in Moscow. It stopped once we arrived but there were residue puddles.
On our way home taking the ring line, I was able to snap some photos of the incredible station artwork.
Amazing decoration within the metro stations. This was from the Komsomolskaya ring line (brown line) station.Waiting for the train to come to take it around to our light blue line transfer. The artwork is super detailed. And indeed, little to no vandalism.This is a mosaic in the middle of the station, one of many (different scenes in each). It looks like Lenin or Stalin accompanied by the hammer and sickle. Probably Lenin; the Russians don’t like Stalin too much.
This weekend was definitely dachtastic. But I definitely was not all dached-out when we left. I did have stuff that needed getting done when I came back to the dorm, mainly more partying with the locals in our dorm. But sleep now, morning comes and I want to run before Russian Language class.
On September 1, a girl from our dorm, Natasha, took us for a walk to the monument/park that reminds me of the Washington Mall. It’s pretty close to our dorm, it takes about 15 minutes to run there and about 7 minutes to run around the circular monument (this run has become part of my weekly exercises, there’s a .25 mile stretch of dirt that’s good for intervals too).
the spire memorializes the Napoleonic Wars, with St. George, the Patron Saint of Moscow, protecting at the top, and then the 1944 memorial is for WWII.spire close up. St. George at top holding golden ringThis semi-circle stands behind the spire.Moscow’s Bday is Sept. 5-6 or something so there are many festivities this entire week. The cobblestone area here is covered with a giant tent now.Moscow State University is the tall building off to the distance in the far right. Going there for a BBQ tonight (Sept 11, 2009)The front of our dorm. From the left: Mike (NY University, Cellist), Chris (Pittsburg U, a pretty cool cat) David (Miami, gets free airplane flights) Adeel (U of Maryland, Ping Pong Master), Lenny (Miami, The eldest and guitarist)Everyday I go to school I see this poster. Yea be jealous, I’m gonna see this again in November here. The best one I think so far.The Math in Moscow Students of this semester. All fun people.I said they were fun. Top row left to right and on down we have Natalie. Lenny & Mike Weiss. Will, David, John. Austin, Bill, Caleb, Mike Donatz.Because it’s my title. Some store on Little Arbat near our school.
So Ester took us for a short tour on September 3rd around the city, walking distance from our university. We saw her favorite building, her least favorite building, the kremlin from atop an awesome bridge, and a statue of Christopher Columbus with Peter the Great’s head (I’ll explain). The city is laid out using a ring system. The center ring surrounds the Kremlin, (no pictures of Kremlin in this post, they came out bad, and I have better from later) then the Garden Ring (the buildings along this ring are my favorite, I’ll talk about this in the post for ‘next’ week, which is actually last week…I’m way behind) then the 3rd transport ring (38 miles long), and they are building the 4th transport ring around the wayyy outside. Apparently it costs the government $200 million to build a mile or something.
Ester’s favorite building in Moscow. The detail on it is phenomenal; although, it is hard to see as there are trees around it. We didn’t know what it was called though, or I forgot.Close Up of that building: painting.Bridge that leads away from Cathedral of Christ the Savior, one of the most amazing buildings I have seen. The Kremlin is to the left, Cathedral behind, and Columbus/Peter the Great to the right. Cool Sky eh?Apparently, this monument was originally made in the 1990’s as Christopher Columbus with hopes of selling it to the USA. However, after our recent discovery of Columbus’s benevolence toward the American Indians we didn’t want to erect a monument for him. So the scultor decapitated Columbus and stuck Peter the Great’s head on top. This is why his head here is a wee bit small. Unfortunately, the high winds and salty air in St. Petersburg would disentegrate or push over this statue had it been placed there. So the Russians decided to put it in Moscow, with the phrase “it’s not ugly, it just looks out of place.” Note: Peter is facing away from the Kremlin towards Europe, the area he wanted to explore. (sorry lighting is bad, it’s getting close to sunset; I’ll add a better picture soon from this past weekend’s bus tour).This is one badass building. Originally this site was to be a monument of Lenin, in size of the Colossus of Rhodes. So Stalin demolished the original Cathedral erected in Napoleon’s time. Unfortunately, Communism didn’t work too well and Stalin ran out of funds (he spent too much on killing people maybe), and so the monument was never constructed. Instead, it became the largest outdoor swimming pool. The new cathedral construction began with the fall of the Soviet Reign and was finished in the 90’s, I think 1996 (although when I went in this past weekend, the lower levels were being painted). Anyway, the mass of the dirt from the hill this cathedral stands on is exactly the mass of the cathedral. So Mother Earth wouldn’t be angry with extra weight or something (there’s probably some geological reason for this actually, but I think I stopped paying attention to the guide). But this building is absolutely massive. It’s the largest church in Russia. I’ll talk more about it when I post pictures from the bus tour, because we got to go inside.
As I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the inside, check out this painting from Wikimedia Commons:
This is from the 1883 original cathedral, but the reconstruction is about the same. It’s absolutely breathtaking. And even though this is Ester’s least favorite building because she is sad that some people’s faith is reduced to this huge material structure, I’m still awed by the amazing detail and enormity of this building.Same church, this time from underneath/next to the cool bridge. The previous photo is of the left face of the church in this photo. In other words, if you walked to the right in the other photo (start from Dian throwing Peace up towards Ester in the right of the photo), you would eventually get to this bridge (which is what where we came from; so yeah these photos are slightly out of order).The sun set while we were on the bridge. It was quite beautiful. And as this sun sets, my eyelids are setting as well so I’m gonna go get some shut eye, after I read about what happens to Roland and Eddie.
I am in Moscow now. Settled into dorm with roommate Michael. On the way here I learned that smoking is very cool. Check out Munich’s exclusive Smoking Club inside the airport:
Smoking Club
It was almost irresistable to pick up a pack of camels and get my cool on inside the club with the lady who had smoked too long and now was in a wheel chair.
Unfortunately, there were no men with guns at the Moscow airport, just a nice couple who helped me through customs. It seems that the women are more inclined to help than the men. They are also a lot nicer and respond when I say hi. The men usually ignore me.
Check out the concert we went to last night with Esther, Ana, and Ira (Ira picked me up at the airport, and the other two girls are affiliated with Math in Moscow). It was apparently a local band whose members went to the same university as Ana and Ira and were close friends. Everyone in the club all knew the band and were friends with each other. Other than the smoke it was super fun. They did some English covers: Radiohead, Tommy from the Rock Opera (The Who), and Twist & Shout. The rest sounded like Russian drinking songs. Oh, there was a solo yukalaylee where he played/sung a Beatles song. Can’t remember which. Here are the photos:
The Band: Pony, Style: Alternative RockThere is quite an abundance of Alchohol in Russia. Apparently its like $3 for the finest Vodka.
The subways are indeed very pretty. Each station has different architecture. I’ll try to post more when I visit more stations. Here are a few:
Subway station. I don’t remember which, still need to learn language.Ana on our left (dress), Esther on our right (sweater vest). Daniel, student from Stanford, right behind them. He has been here before.Russia is definitely ready for a Nuclear fallout. These steep escalators go hundreds of feet underground all over the metro. To feel how steep they are, the lights on the left are standing vertical. When we looked at the advertisements on the side, they match the angle of the tunnel so I felt vertigo. Also, the tunnel is made out of metal. Yea, these guys are legit.The white house, where the government sits and does other things. Apparently we’re not really supposed to take pictures of this. But we were on the metro late at night so not a lot of people saw.
Alright, time for some lunch before I head down to the university. Dian, who comes from Beijing took most of these pictures. I will post more of the Russian monument park we went to. It reminds me of the Washington Mall.
