To Peter and Back Again

That is, in fact, a monkey in a sweater.

We arrived in St. Petersburg (henceforth, Peter, as it is referred to in Russian) on Thursday after a rather enjoyable train ride where all the Russians stared at the loud Americans for seven hours straight. We, of course, felt very flattered that others thought us so fascinating as to pay so much attention to us. We were supposed to stay at a hostel that night, which, if we had been in Western Europe, would have meant we spent the night with a bunch of backpackers, young tourists, and generally interesting people. Unfortunately, Peter didn't get the memo or something, because we walked in and it was fully of forty-five-year-old ex-cons in wife-beaters. We had joked before arriving that we would end up in some hole-in-the-wall place, one where there's a creepy guy in the corner who just stares at you and doesn't ever say a word. We coined the phrase "Kyrgyzstanian in the corner" based on its alliterative quality rather than as any statement about Kyrgyzstanians, who are some of the nicest people ever. Anyway, we didn't exactly have the "Kyrg in the corner" in mind when we got there, but it soon became much more relevant. Most of our new ex-con friends were pretty inebriated and didn't give us much of a problem, but there was one excessively friendly one who insisted on telling us that the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room had stabbed someone the week before, and the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room insisted on yelling at us. So, we decided that there wasn't reason to find out whether the rumor about the "knife fight" (as the friendly one put it) was true and ventured out to find somewhere else to stay.



A friend of a friend had met us in the metro to help us find the hostel, but once we found a more suitable hotel, she was ready to go. One of the other kids, her, and I wandered around trying to find her Uncle's house, and it was while roaming the streets of Peter than we wrote our first Russian haikus:

Улица на Н... Или на М... нет, не то. Мы заблюдились. Ишим не найдём. Улица - мечта, мираж. Бродим в темноте.

The street starts with N... Or M... no, that can't be it. We are surely lost.  We search but won't find. The street's a dream, a mirage. We roam in darkness.

Anyway, it's all just a bit of silliness, as Peter Llewelyn Davies would say. I read Peter Pan this weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a lot more violent and a lot more critical than I remembered in being, but I got a lot of good out of it, and it put me into one of those moods where you're really sad and nostalgic but in a good way, in a way that makes you want to be a better person. One of my favorite lines from the book:

It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been, for they had long lost count of the days; but always if they wanted to do anything special they said this was Saturday night, and then they did it.

If we all applied this philosophy, taking into account moderation, of course, it would undoubtedly provide for wonderfully exciting lives. Anyway, Peter is a cool city. We started off our first day by delivering a book for our work, but the lady ended up being a full-on member of the Petersburg intelligentsia, which is basically where the term intelligentsia came from anyway. She invited us into her home, though, and we dined on red caviar and pumpkin bisque with shrimp among other things. Now, many of you might be inclined to think that I jest, but alas, I've uploaded a picture to demonstrate that it is, in fact, a reality. The lady showed us all her modern art, which is, of course, a necessity for any real member of the intelligentsia, and with typical intelligentsia flair, she explained that one of her paintings, "The Bouquet," could be seen alternatively as the Tree of Life, an atomic bomb explosion, or an erotica. It was all very funny, and we were rather amused. She, on the other hand, was rather amused when we asked for mint tea rather than black or green; she said, somewhat flustered, "Well of course I have mint tea... in my medicine cabinet..." and then was curious to know what country we were from and why in the world we would prefer 'medicine' to what was undoubtedly very fancy, delicious tea (to accompany the spring water that she has shipped in from an artesian well several kilometers from Peter).

Among other sites that we visited while in Peter were the Hermitage (which is basically Russia's version of the Louvre), Spas na Krovi (a temple built by a slightly crazed tsar), and a museum containing a huge collection of preserved fetuses. The Hermitage was really stunning, and while it was neat to see lots of paintings by people like Monet, Rembrandt, and Da Vinci, my favorite sections were the Asian and Egyptian collections. We got to see everything from samurai outfits to sarcophagi to metal sculptures of Shiva the Destroyer, and it was all really interesting. I wish we had had a little bit more time to spend there in the Hermitage, but it was a really neat experience as a whole, and I had a lot of fun.

I've included a picture of the inside of  Spas na Krovi (also referred to as the Temple of Spilt Blood), which is just breathtaking on the inside and outside alike. I liked it there, but it was honestly too touristy to feel that it was or had once been a place of worship. We went to a Kazan cathedral, and the difference there was night and day. We came at just the right time, because they were holding one of many services in preparation for the approaching Easter holidays, so we got to hear the choirs and see the opening of the iconostasis and all that was entailed in that. I love the feeling there. I think we sometimes forget about all the things that unite us in terms of faith, among all the different religions. The reality is, though, we're all pretty much alike, and there are things we can learn from everyone, ways in which we can grow to be better people as a whole.

I am running out of steam now, but in any case, we made it home safe and sound after our two days of fun in Peter, despite a few complications on the way back to Moscow. We ended up with the wrong dates printed on our tickets, and that meant a couple of awkward and discouraging conversations with the train station administrator followed by a funny haggling scene with a bus driver who ended up driving us and a smattering of other interesting characters back to Moscow through some rather unfavorable weather. Things are going really well here, though, and I really love life. Good things ahead, that's all I can say for now.