In Soviet Russia, you give the Turkey salmonella.... just kidding!

Thanksgiving today! Something I am learning about myself – when a situation really requires a leader, I lead to the point of controlfreakdom. I guess LEP wasn’t for nothing. This happened with the St Petersburg trip, and definitely happened with Thanksgiving. Jon told us that sometimes students make a Thanksgiving, and that Vika can host it, but that the rest was on us – cooking, getting supplies, getting organized. Jenny was my partner in crime – we chased after everyone making sure they were all contributing and that they’d all show, and I signed up for the most important part – the Turkey.

Jenny and I had to find a special ‘American’ grocery store to buy the turkey(s), which were small (8lb) French ones. The turkeys (we needed 2 to feed all our 15 people) were purchased, and we Russia-style improvised, letting them thaw on Vika’s balcony (yes, outside) since no Russian refrigerator is big enough for 16 pounds of turkey. The next day we found Ashan, the giant Russian Walmart / Costco and successfully procured the only 2 sweet potatoes in Russia, we’re pretty sure. They’re super rare here – when we asked the produce people, and they had no idea what we were talking about. We ended up finding them in the exotic produce section, under these weird Vietnamese fruits that looked like pink and green koosh balls, no joke. That’s how weird sweet potatoes are to Russians. Also, vanilla extract is not sold here. Instead, weird powdered vanilla is. Okay, Russia.

Jenny and I trotted on to my house to make the sweet potatoes and sing along to Celtic Women Christmas carols. I’m not sure what to really call that dish – they were mashed sweet potatoes topped with chopped walnuts, butter, brown sugar (Another b**** to find) milk and stupid vanilla powder. We added cinnamon for good measure, even tho the recipe didn’t call for it. The recipe didn’t call for us mixing the topping with our bare hands either, but in Russia, you improvise. You also have to ask your host sister to light the oven for you, because you are American and pilot lights are scary.

This morning Jenny, Billy and I got to Vika’s at 11:30, the real getiin’-the-show-goin’ crew. Billy’s dish was to be stuffing, to be made while the turkeys cooked. Silly Billy (I’m sure he’s never heard that one before) bought approximately 6 LOAVES of bread to make into stuffing – we used two. Also bought like 10 onions, not exaggerating. I was afraid to even see the turkeys – I was sure they’d be either still frozen solid or green with salmonella from having defrosted on a freaking balcony. To my shock, they were perfect. Luckily, we had Billy there to be all manly and rip out the guts with his manly hands – though he did have to put on some game-time music on his headphones to get up the courage. And he did complain / freak out loudly. But I feel like it just added a nice touch to the atmosphere. No one wants to get that acquainted with a turkey’s intestine. Also, the turkeys’ drumsticks still had a few feathers on the ends of the bones, for decoration. French. After giving the turkeys a nice, creepy, oily massage, we stuck them in the oven and moved on to stuffing. The theme of this Thanksgiving was ‘let’s make dishes that we have no idea how to cook.’ Frankly, with the stuffing, we sort of just winged it. Cubed a ton of white and black bread, covered it with beaten eggs, then added sautéed onions and celery and vegetable broth until the bread was all mushy, baked it. Sounds simple. You’d never guess that it took us 3 freaking hours to do, lol.

In the midst of the stuffing-making, Jenny and I faced a pickle. Billy had gone out to fetch his girlfriend Natasha from the metro, and Vika had gone swimming, so Jenny and I were left alone in the apartment, needing to get the turkeys out of the oven to make a foil tent for them, but we had absolutely no clue where we could find an oven mitt. (A ‘hot-hand,’ Jenny, really?) We super-awkwardly searched the apartment with little luck – we had to use her bathroom hand towels. Russia. We also managed to knock an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet in the process. We swear, we’re American, not special-needs.

Towards the end of 3 hours in the oven, I started getting panicky for the turkeys. Russia also does not believe in meat thermometers, so all we had to go on to tell if the birds were done was good instinct and cutting into the meat to see if there were any salmonella wormies crawling around in it. The turkeys, to the eye, appeared worm and blood free, so we just went with it. I was still super panicked when Jon was carving the birds, I was sure they’d either be dry as the Sahara or poison. Turns out, they were pretty legit. Win.

The aspect of dinner I was most skeptical for was definitely my responsibility for making turkey gravy. You must understand, my great-grandma makes the best turkey gravy, ever, ever. Like, I could live on this gravy the rest of my life. So my gravy standards are pretty high. And every time I attempt sausage gravy, its either burned, congealed beyond recognition, or completely flavorless. So I approached this, the staple of my personal Thanksgiving experience, with great deference to the cooking gods. Jenny and I performed a veritable chemistry lab on this gravy, making it in three rounds, and then something shocking happened. This mess of flour and fat and tears suddenly turned into… into gravy. I will never, ever be as impressed with anything I will ever create again. It was flavorful, proper consistency… gravy. Omg. I owe this success, I think, to the decision we made out of boredom a few hours before to use turkey giblets and heart and neck and stuff for something, so we boiled them with an onion for like an hour, giving us our very own made-from-scratch turkey broth. So not only was our gravy existent, it was actually made from scratch. As was, I now realize, our sweet potatoes (though not the stuffing, we used Russian vegetable broth mix and premade bread.)

Our fellow ACTRers started coming around 3pm, bringing all the proper dishes we were missing – Natalie did cranberry sauce, Chantal did freaking amazing mashed potatoes, Sarah brought more stuffing (oversight on our part, eesh), Paige made a fresh salad (the Russians freaked when they saw we were eating raw vegetables, particularly mushrooms. ‘Is it safe?’ one even asked us), Audrey made a tower of bread and plenty of butter, the boys brought plenty of champagne. Katrina and Lilia had us covered on desert – Yule log cake and carrot cake, respectively. For the last half hour we were all bustling around the tiny kitchen occupying ourselves with something. I was organizing the finished dishes on the table when I saw one cast-iron pot that I didn’t recognize, on the stove. Lifting the lid, I was hit with a violently boiling something and a cloud of smoke. I slammed the lid back on and froze, an expression of horror on my face. Basically, we had put Sarah’s stuffing on the stove to heat up and forgot about it – it seems to me it was about 3 minutes from catching on fire. Jenny and I carried it to the balcony and examined it, but it was definitely ex-stuffing at that point. Sarah at that time was out getting Ben from the metro – Jenny had to break our retarded news to her. She took it like a champ, though. She regarded it as our sacrifice to the ‘Nothing in Russia is Easy’ Gods.

We arranged the last dishes on the table as Jon and Vika finished carving turkey number two, and I was overwhelmed with satisfaction. Jenny, Audrey and I always say, the trick to having successful times in Russia is to go in with low-to-no expectations that things will work out. We followed that rule, and indeed we were met, in turn, with a lovely dinner and our whole company of friends, without a single regret (well, if you don’t count Sarah’s stuffing.) Jenny and I beamed at each other and fist-pounded about fifty times. We all assembled our plates and settled in the living room and watched ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Such a lovely movie, brought me to little happy tears at the end. The whole time I kept an eye on everyone enjoying their dinner, assuming my Grandpa’s role at home of calling out individuals: ‘Katrina, you’re not done eating, are you? We have way too much mashed potato left! Go getcha’ some more.’ We also had to throw in ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ for good measure.

An hour and a few cups of mulled wine later, we all headed home, laden down with leftovers (at least, the ones Vika didn’t want ;-) Jenny walked alongside me and noted, ‘dude, I think this means we’re grown-ups.’ That scared me a little, to be sure, but she’s kinda right. Eeep!! I’m okay with being a grown-up as long as I still get to have my non-Russian Thanksgivings at my grandma’s house, like they were meant to be!

The Cruise Blog (it's a doozy...)

Our week long journey began meeting at the Metro station at 1045 at night, luggage in tow. This actually happened to be a rather eventful Metro journey for me – I was sitting on a three person bench in my train, and sleeping in the corner seat was this homeless woman, and in between us sat this rotund old dyedushka (grandpa / old man) wearing a pea coat and a proper, Russian, furry, black hat. He leaned over to me and said something that sounded like a question, but I couldn’t understand him, so I tried my ‘sorry, I don’t speak Russian very well’ line, but he didn’t seem to care in the slightest / pay attention. About every 5-10 seconds, he would lean to my ear, pat my arm, and tell me these wise little things; <It’s such a shame, for young people to end up as old bums like her. If only she had read more books when she was younger! Do you read books?> <Yes, I do read.><What are you reading now?> <Tolstoy – War and Peace.> <Good girl,> he said, and messed up my hair like you would a little boy. I was officially completely in love with this dyedushka. I probably only understood about a third of what he told me, but it was all so very wise and awesome. He noticed I was jittery every time we came to a station – the station we were meeting at was in a part of the metro I haven’t been on before, so he kept track of the stations for me. My official adopted Russian Grandpa, he was.

The next strange event happened as I stepped off the Metro. Earlier that day, I had gone to the mall with some friends to make some last-minute purchases for the trip, and on the way home, my friend and I were aggressively flirted with by this Azerbaijani guy, who literally asked while we were standing on the platform, ‘Do you take the metro often?’ Wow, pick up line fail. So that would have been a non event, but then, four hours later on a totally different end of town, the SAME EXACT Azerbaijani appears out of nowhere when I get to the station, offers to carry my suitcase off the train for me, and badgers me, <Let’s get to know each other. Give me your internet name!> I told him, <I’m sorry, I’m going very far away, for a very long time. Oh look, here’s my friend, time to me to go, sorry!> and ran away. The odds!

Since we were taking a sleeper train to Nizhny Novgorod, we boarded at about 12:15 am. Very strange to be in a place like a train station so late! The train was basically a hallway with groups of four bunk beds lining the wall – no doors or curtains or anything. Our car was half ACTR students and half soldiers – good times. I’ve never been on a train before, (I think I was the only one) so all I kept saying was, ‘Wow, it’s just like in ‘The Darjeeling Limited!’’ They turned the lights out pretty much as soon as we started moving, and everyone in my compartment went to sleep, but I stayed up and worked on translating my new Russian Tarot card deck (my love!) At one point, John, our intimidating director, came into our little compartment and just started staring at Misha, who was long passed out. John just stood there and stared, didn’t say a word to me. Eventually I said awkwardly, ‘Privet, John…?’ at which point John awkwardly looks down at me and says, without any gestures or anything, ‘Make sure you get that out of sight before you go to bed. There’s a high percentage of theft on this train.’ And he left. Oh, John. I stood up and investigated Sleeping Misha, and saw that his Walkman was indeed lying on the edge of the bed, very loosely in his hand. Awkwardly, I unplugged Misha’s headphones and slipped the Walkman out of his hand, put it in my purse, and went to bed myself. In the morning, I did remember to give it back to Misha, but not before he told us ‘So, someone stole my CD player in the night.’ ‘’Um, that was me,” I said awkwardly, pulling it out of my purse. ‘John told me to,’ I added without making any more sense.

I'm on a train! WOW!

We started our excursion around Nizhny Novgorod bright and early. We started out walking around the top of the highest hill in Nizhny, which had a really pretty view of the river and city. Though it was bright and sunny, it was still only about 9 am - I was wearing just my military jacket, which I came to EXTREMELY regret when we came to this little recreated peasant village museum thing, which was all outside or in unheated and therefore equally freezing log cabins. It was indeed an interesting and cool looking place, but I was too busy shivering my head off to pay any attention to the Russian tour guide. 

Nizhny Novgorod - pretty.

After wandering for a few hours and having the most rushed lunch imaginable, (DON’T go to a Russian restaurant if you have to be somewhere in the next 2-3 hours, service is unimaginably slow by American standards) we made it to our cruise ship. I noticed with regret that I had lost my paper with my cabin assignment on it, so I timidly told John I needed to be reminded of my room number. “Last name,” he barked. “Martin… Kayla.” John looked at the list seriously for a minute, muttered, “This can’t be right,” and briskly walked away from me. Oh, thanks, John, that’s good to hear with absolutely no explanation. He came back in about a minute and simply said, “218” and left again. I soon discovered the thing that ‘couldn’t be right’ was that my roommate was a guy, a big friendly guy from the Vladimir group named John. Obviously not meant to be my roommate. In about five minutes, his Resident Director Kelly came and told John he was being switched, and that I had a single. Score! My room had a pretty view of the water and was mine all mine! I indulged in completely unpacking my stuff, even decorating a little bit considering it was only my room. I was delighted in the course of the cruise that it became sort of a default hangout spot for us (just like Emma’s and my locker freshman – junior years of high school by the North Doors!) 

View from my little cabin window!

My safety instructions. WIN.

After we moved into our rooms, we still had about two hours before we sailed off, so we went back into Nizhny Novgorod to hit up a produkti for some chocolate and water. We got ice creams and met some of the kids from Vladimir, with whom I accidentally promptly made enemies… These two girls, one of whom was named Katya, set their purses down on the short wall on which we were leaning, eating our ice creams. Then they ran off up this hill to have a photo shoot… but they went really far away so we couldn’t even see them anymore, and were gone a long time. We finished our ice creams and wanted to wander more, but we were stuck with these strange girls’ purses. Katya reappeared over the hill, and I called in Russian in what I thought was a friendly, teasing manner, <Girls, do you want these? We’re going now!> Katya stops, turns, marches up and grabs the purses, and marched away again without saying a word to us. For the rest of the trip, this girl refused to speak to me and only scowled when I would try to make tiny conversations with her. WTF? But anyway, after the mishap with the Vladimir girls, the St Petersburg girls came out of the produkti behind us with their own ice creams, and Jenny excitedly introduced us all. These girls did not instantly hate me, so we became at least casual friends on the cruise.

One of the rules on the cruise was that you were supposed to sit at the same table every lunch and dinner, so that the wait staff would know who ordered what. My table ended up being five Moscow girls – me, Katrina, Paige, Jenny, and Audrey, plus Misha. Bombarded though he was by excessive estrogen, we really got to know each other much better, and the six of us bonded very nicely on the cruise. The other half of the cruise-goers were elderly British and Germans. The table next to us featured Mr. and Mrs. Kiggel and Mr. and Mrs. Briggs. The tallest and Britishest British man from that table came to us the first dinner and asked us where we were from, and what we were doing in Russia – making very polite conversation in a very proper British accent. He then added, ‘May I give you some serious advice?’ We were all ears. ‘All we British are quite stuffy, you know, and on a cruise we had in the Florida Keys all the American students were quite noisy at breakfast. If you lot are quiet in the morning, everyone will be most impressed and we shall all get along famously.’ We vigorously agreed to be quiet as mice (I’m not sure what students they must have met that were energetic in the morning, but I have a hard time believing they were American ;-) and we all very much hoped that this man was Mr. Briggs and not Mr. Kiggel. He was more like a Mr. Briggs.

The first night we wanted to scope out the bar scene on the ship – there were three or four bars onboard, so we had no shortage of options. We picked a dark bar with candlelit tables. I ordered my usual gin and tonic and sat down, and no sooner had we claimed our table than an old British couple approached us. The husband asked, ‘Pardon me, but we are rather curious to get to know you young people, would you mind if we sat and talked with you a bit?’ Again, so adorable, love. They turned out to be totally fascinating people. Bruce has lived in a substantial handful of countries, been married twice (at least,) and has done crazy things like solo bike races through the desert. We happily chatted away with Bruce and his wife for about an hour, when I took out my Tarot again and began translating. Bruce was super interested in the cards, never having seen them before. I wasn’t done translating the deck yet, so I was trying to explain to him how they worked without actually doing a reading, but I eventually gave up and gave him a full reading on his chosen topic, ‘will I be happier six months from now than I am today?’ Bruce’s favorite card was the 5 of Swords, a card that talks about how only from the clarity of mind and path afforded by an absolute failure can you really see truth and understand your true destiny in life. Bruce’s reading was my first with my deck, and it was a really fantastic and themed reading, I was quite proud of my skillz ;-)

The next morning we kept our promise to Mr. Briggs – we were quiet as mice at breakfast, if we showed up at all. I came super early and ate an extremely leisurely buffet breakfast for almost two hours, just chatting with the rotating group of friends sitting at my table and drinking black tea (with no sugar – apparently I am the only one who likes my tea with no sweetener.) We were supposed to arrive in Kazan sometime in the middle of the day, but it was super foggy, so we got delayed and stayed on the boat until after dinner. It was a really laid back day, which included a lecture on Tartar culture, a Dance class with Irina Tihova, officially one of my favorite teachers, a piano concert, and general shenanigans until we arrived in Kazan after dark. Seeing Kazan at night was actually really cool. It’s got unique heritage in Russia from being a Tartar (Muslim) population, but it also is trying to amp up a reputation as sort of a Vegas of Russia, so there was both a super beautiful and lit up mosque and a crazy colorful mall, which we had a short bit of time to explore after the Kazan Kremlin and mosque. Unfortunately, as Leila and Chantal and I shopped for a belt for Chantal, we were caught in what we jokingly called a terrorist act later. We were walking through the mall when we suddenly saw this family totally running the opposite direction, carrying their kids and flying off. Just as I started commenting to Chantal how weird that looked, Chantal went into a coughing fit, as did about half the people in the immediate vicinity. I stopped breathing right when I noticed them, and we ran to an exit. It became pretty clear that some teenage hooligans had sprayed pepper spray into the ventilators, and everyone in the mall got hit with some of it. They cleared everyone out of the mall, but after only about 5 minutes, they started letting people back in. We went back to keep looking for a belt, but I got hit with another wave of it, and we ran out again. If it was a <terract,> as one of the security guards said, I can’t imagine the goal. ‘Success, we made some infidels –cough!-‘

Kazan Mosque

Beware of Terracts here!!

That night on the boat was one of the most fun. Chantal and Leila and I had some good vodka and conversation together and switched to the big dancing bar on the top deck, danced for awhile with the others and then went with everyone outside onto the top deck and looked at the starts and huddled together for warmth. A very cute moment indeed. Though, it was another one of those nights where I become drunkenly jealous of the smokers and bum cigarettes randomly, even though when sober the thought of smoking freaks me out. Almost everyone I know in Moscow does this. It ended up being a really fun night, which ended late with Jenny crashing in my room after we talked about our respective love lives into the wee hours.

Our next excursion day was to Ulyanovsk, a city only famous because Lenin and Kerensky were born and grew up there. We saw Lenin’s first home. We were actually told that during the CCCP the party didn’t want this house to be a museum, because seeing it it’s hard to hide that Lenin’s family was pretty much as bourgeois as they come. And that’s… really all I can tell you about Ulyanovsk. 

Read this. This is about Ulyanovsk.

Little Lenin's House.

Me on Little Lenin's Balcony.

The lecture that the politologia teacher from St. P gave on Kerensky was completely awesome and made me jealous that the St P kids get him as a  teacher always – he’s a nifty guy. After that we watched a really confusing movie that actually kinda just frustrated me – I could tell it was really cool, but I could barely understand any of the dialogue at all. Alas. That day I skipped the tour of the Captain’s deck in favor of a nap and ended up accidentally sleeping through dance class too… then at dinner I was all grouchy. I shouldn’t nap during the day, it makes me act like a snippy toddler when I wake up. Luckily I was cheered up by Misha’s idea of ordering white wine with our dinner – the first time I’ve been able to have wine with dinner in a restaurant! (Man, my 21^st birthday is going to be a let-down L) This night we were SUPPOSED to play never-have-I-ever, but certain TRAITORS ditched us in our agreed meeting spot and played on their own, so instead the girls basically took turns getting their Tarot read and telling their respective boy tales. Another great night for bonding!

Our next day was an excursion to Samara, bright and early. I will always remember two things about Samara – Stalin’s bunker and –delicious—chocolate. The most delicious. This day was a bit ridiculous on keeping us busy. After four days of excursions, we just wanted to rest, but instead we had to attend a mandatory and mind-numbingly boring lecture on the Russian census, which I actively chose to sleep through, unfortunately in the IB student fashion, huddled over my notebook pretending to take notes. After the dumb lecture we had another dance class, which I totally loved. My dance partner that day was Nathan, the Resident Director for St. Petersburg. The theme was swing dancing, probably the most advanced steps we learned the whole time. Nathan was so much fun to dance with (doesn’t hurt that he’s just a charming guy in general!) and we were able to accomplish the trickiest move, where I basically jumped and perched on Nathan’s hip and stalled there, and then he launches me off and I spin. The most fun ever. After dance was a concert of Russian folk music, in which Misha sang a bunch of traditional Russian songs, the adorable couple that plays all the music on the boat, him on according and her on piano accompanying him, and in which Vladimir sang a totally adorable duet called something like “Milaya Moya,” meaning “My Darling,” and in which Moscow performed our Moskovskaya Kadrill, a TOTALLY awesome and choreographed dance that we were SUPER proud of. Irina Tihova was also super proud of us. After we finished as the finale, she called us over to her and grabbed our hands and said how proud she was. I love her big time. That was another very fun evening, unfortunately our second to last. By this point, Moscow was really proud of ourselves that, though the Moscow group had the reputation of being the ‘partiers’ just inherently from living in Moscow, we totally held it together and acted very grown up and collected the whole trip. John, our srsbsns director, even told us so. Yay!

Moskovskaya Kadril!

The next morning we started with a class led by our assistant director Vika, probably my favorite Russian lady, not least because her lecture was not about the census or ancient Rus, but about Russian fairy tales, and we colored. Yes, colored pictures with crayons. So win. 

CRAYONS.

Saratov was our next excursion. I will admit, by this point most of the things we saw looked pretty similar to me – I’m pretty certain we saw a cathedral, an eternal flame, and something that Lenin might have sneezed on in some point in his life. This was our last evening on the boat. It started off slow – we watched another Russian film, called in English “Closed Spaces.” I got extremely frustrated in this one, because I could recognize that it was an extremely emo movie about messed up people, and as Emily knows, this is our favorite kind of movie. But again, I couldn’t understand any of it. So I left early. I’ll Netflix it (with subtitles!) someday. For our last dinner, we ordered champagne and each made a toast of our favorite cruise memory. Misha and I left the table last, and to my delight, Mr. Briggs called us over to them. He handed Misha a slip of paper upon which was written, “U R very brave.” (sic.) Mr. Briggs said that this was not only regarding his singing and piano playing at the concerts, but also sitting with five girls for a week’s work of meals. Then Mr. Briggs leaned in to Misha and said in a fake whisper, ‘and don’t tell, but she is very beautiful.’ And then to me, ‘Be gentle with him.’ This would be old person number 2 that has believed Misha and I to be engaged / affiliated. Right as we were departing, Misha mustered the courage and asked, ‘If you don’t mind, we at that table have been very curious to know, are you Mr. Briggs or Mr. Kiggel?’ ‘Which do you think I am?’ ‘We hoped you were Mr. Briggs, I said.’ Mr. Briggs got this sly look in his eye, and beckoned us to lean in closely. ‘Actually, you’re half right. I am Briggs, but not Mister. I didn’t want the Russians to know, but I am actually a Captain of the Royal Navy, Captain Briggs. However, since I was on a spy submarine during the Cold War, I can’t let the Russians know about it! Keep it hushed up, then!’ I basically died. (Captain) Briggs has officially been added to my list of adopted foreign grandpas.

After dinner it was Jenny’s, Audrey’s and my intent to watch Grave of the Fireflies, a soul-crushingly depressing anime film, but the avi file was broken broken broken… which may have been for the best. The mood that movie puts you in is sort of like the Nothing from The Neverending Story. We attended a pretty fun lecture on Russian rock where we sang like 21 songs (7 songs, 3 times each. That adds up to a full concert set, were we the rock groups ourselves we would sing about that long) and then got dressed up cute for our last night dancing. When we arrived, the scene was not exactly happening. The three cities, though made up of people who were even good friends with each other, were extremely cliquey on the cruise – no one exactly knows why. The little couple that does all the music on the boat was playing horrid Big and Rich style country music, and no one was feeling it, so I decided to play DJ, bringing my iPod up to the little guy. We got all three cities dancing together, and then shenanigans ensued. We bonded over songs like Paper Planes and Russia Privet. I did start accidentally a bit of a DJ war – soon there were 5 iPods on the chair and a line of students arguing over whose turn it was. In my head, it was always my turn. Because I am the best DJ. That’s just how it is. I ended up spinning it so that everyone cleared their song choices through me. I am classy that way. :-P. We kept the energy really high and really fun, and for the last half hour Petersburg RD Nathan and I were picking the best of the best (I taught sort of a fake version of the ‘Thriller’ dance) and then the moment I was most proud of: at about 2:30, Nathan came up and said, okay, we need a good, bonding, last song of the night. Calling back my Lakewood High School roots, I quickly queued up ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ which both impressed Nathan and indeed bonded the group, hands in the air with spirit fingers at the end, just like at the end of every LHS dance.

The last excursion town was Volgograd, perhaps better known as Stalingrad. Yes, where the Battle of Stalingrad took place. I’ve got to say, the War Memorial was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The hill where it is built was the bloodiest one spot in all of World War Two. Something like 1.5 million died in this year long battle. The soil in this hill had so much blood and shrapnel in it, that nothing would grow for seven years after the end of the war. With these gruesome facts in mind, it was actually a little hard to stomach the grandiose and triumphant memorial outside, in the shadow of the million-story-tall statue pictured below. However, my feeling of discomfort was reversed when I discovered the chamber where the Eternal Flame was kept. Underground at the very crest of the hill was this large, marble, echoing chamber with this great white stone hand holding an enormous torch as the flame, and around the walls, written in small script, were the names and ranks of the Soviet soldiers that died… thousands and thousands of names. A haunting choral hymn was playing, just three female voices singing the most tender and melancholy prayer I could imagine. I happened to come in to this chamber totally alone – just me and the guards on either side of the flame. I stood there a long time, just staring, and became totally overwhelmed with emotion. For Americans, this was meant something different. We only ever had one attack occur on American soil, and it was a one day surprise bombing (not to belittle anything about Pearl Harbor.) But here- the Russian people had to endure four full years of blood and starvation in their home country, every single person was affected. These thousands of soldiers written on these walls – all of them were someone’s son. Someone’s brother, someone’s husband, someone’s teenage lover… I went through the circular chamber step by step, trying to at least look at every name on those lists. I was a bit embarrassed when the rest of the group caught up to me and saw my tear-streaked face. This was not the first war memorial we’d seen in Russia, even that day. But it was different. When we stepped back into the wind and sunlight, I grabbed my friend Matt and hugged him – ‘Never go in a war, okay?’ I said with my stuffy nose. Taking perspective photos with us holding the hand of the Motherland statue was the only thing that cheered me up. We finished the memorial at the cathedral built on the hill to commemorate the dead. Even though I’m not remotely Russian Orthodox, let alone very Christian, I had Vika show me how to light a candle and say a prayer. I left the cathedral feeling much more peaceful about the memorial. Volgograd and its memorial are hands-down the things I will remember most about the cruise excursions.

Misha! Pomogi! (Help!!)

The eternal flame in Stalingrad (Volgograd)

Matt and I in front of this big, big, big statue.

Our 18 HOUR train left the station at four. This time, the entire car and half of the next one was full of ACTR students, and thanks to our bonding (to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ thank you very much,) this train ride had the St P and Moscow groups especially talking and getting to know each other. I had one more awkward moment with John. He came to my compartment and beckoned me wordlessly, so I stepped out into the hall and he ushered me to the end, to the smoking car, opened the door, pushed me inside, and left me there. Some of the St. Petersburg kids were smoking there, and I looked at them bewilderedly. ‘I think… I think John just put me in jail. I don’t know if I’m allowed to leave or not.’ They laughed at how incredibly intense John is with me. I stuck my head out the door again, and saw John walking quickly towards the car, so I snapped the door shut again. I didn’t dare move for over five minutes, after which John totally denied he had put me in the car at all. For the next ten hours, we had some fantastic topics of conversation – discussing Radiohead covers and everyone’s most shenanigans party were my personal favorites. Two of us were the last left awake much later – we had made it to 230 am, exiled again to the freezing smoking car because in Russian trains, there are no doors, and you will wake up 50 grouchy passengers if you talk. The morning flew by as everyone got ready to get off the train – at some point in the night, the silly janitor accidentally threw away a souvenir I bought for Emily :’-( (But it’s okay, I know where to get another one.) Happily, the Vladimir and St. P kids were all staying in Moscow between 18-hours and 3 days, so we got to hang out a little more with our newly-acquainted friends. Showing those folks around Moscow… well, that’s a topic for another blog. All this cruise did, though, is give me a worse travel bug. Next up – planning our weekend trip to St. Petersburg in two weeks! Success!!!

And, for my father's benefit, a picture of 'Communist Street' in Stalingrad. (Volgograd.)

This Day... This Day is the Worst Day.

Holy Moly what a freaking day.
So I’ve spent ten hours wandering Moscow today. 10. I had one half hour break I think, and whatever breaks come from scoring a seat on the Metro. The excursion this morning was just a walk around Moscow’s Second Ring, pretty much just to get a feel for the city and get some air. It was pleasant. Hot, but pleasant. I learned a couple cool things – when McDonald’s opened in Moscow, working there was so prestigious that you had to know someone in the government or mafia pretty much to score a job. The excursion ended at about 12:30 (just seeing that time written down is boggling my mind considering I’ve JUST NOW ended my ill-fated post-excursion stroll.

Basically, I have two friends with birthdays coming up, and considering the Russian mail system is really sketch, I wanted to get them presents today so I can send them into the great unknown as fast as possible. Katrina and I wanted to check out Old Arbat, the famous souvenir district, after we swung into the Church of Christ the Saviour (SO SO BEAUTIFUL AND ORNAGE OMG). We grabbed some Sbarro and went in search of the one store on Arbat that our director told us was by far the cheapest on the street. We did succeed in finding this place – indeed, the prices were low, and I’ll definitely be back. The store is great, the sales staff, well… So Katrina and I were checking out these cool wood wall hangers painted with famous Soviet era propaganda posters (friends, don’t be surprised if you end up with one of these for Christmas. As Russian students, we were super interested to know what they actually said. I had my phone-dictionary out and we were working them out when suddenly the shop lady who had been watching us came up and scolded us. In Russian, she said something close to “Ladies, you should buy these because they are pretty. Don’t translate them! You should not take these seriously, they are not true, so it’s not important what they say. Don’t translate them!” Um, I have no idea what this woman’s deal was. Yeah, Katrina and I were speaking English, but I can’t imagine we looked like such clueless Americans as the woman who was downstairs trying to buy a Samovar (which are illegal to export) with US Dollars in huge denominations. Did she think we wanted to get these little posters to finally expose that Russians still believe in GodLenin? Seriously, lady.

I left without buying anything, mostly because I feel weird buying something in the first store I come to on any given shopping trip. John turned out to be right. A lot of the other stores had prices double those at the store he recommended (most notably, a $40 talking Cheburashka doll.) Katrina and I made it to the end of Arbat, where we parted ways – she went home, and I decided to try to find the street market we saw on an excursion last week. I headed down into the red line Metro and had my experience with Drunk Russian #1 of the day. He was dirty and old and drunk, but came up and politely asked me where a certain station let out with remarkably unslurred speech. I used my Drunk Russian Avoidance standby protocol of just saying “Ya ne govoryu parussky” (I don’t speak Russian) but he wasn’t letting that fly. Probably because I said the sentence in perfect Russian. But then he just started asking me why I was in Russia if I didn’t speak it, to which I replied “Ya izuchayu” (I’m studying), and this pretty much entirely blew my I-don’t-speak-Russian cover. “’Izuchayu!’ You don’t speak Russian, what a joke. Do you like it in Russia?” “Yes, I like it a lot.” “But America is better?” “No, I don’t think so. I like big cities, and Moscow is beautiful.” He then looked taken aback that I would like Moscow as much as America, and then asked me what station I was going to. Then I sort of remembered myself and said I forgot, and that I was pleased to meet him, and then scuttled down the crowd to get on a different wagon than him. Though I must say, of all the Drunk Russians to accost me today, he was certainly the nicest. If I didn’t have this crazy pre-conceived notion about homeless Drunk Russians, I’m sure he would’ve been a delightful conversation partner.

So I took the train down to Universitet where Katrina told me the street market was, but I quickly got alarmingly lost and I returned the way I came back to the Metro as damage control. My backup plan was this giant flea market that they hold by Sportstivna station, so I took the Metro back two stops to find that. After taking a really roundabout way, I ended up at the market at 4:05, and evidently they shut down at 4 because I arrived in the square amidst a whirlwind of dislodged mannequin limbs and carts piled about 9 feet high with bags, pushed by shirtless men (Drunk Russians.) Feeling now slightly dejected, I decided a last ditch effort to check out Respublika, the big Borders equivalent near my school. Managed to get to the right station (a miracle, by today’s standards,) but then proceeded to get quite lost trying to find Tverskaya from Belorusskaya Station. This is seriously really pathetic, as any of my Moscow friends reading this will realize. Seriously, Tverskaya is Moscow’s biggest boulevard. I could see it. But I couldn’t get to it for the life of me. I started muttering English swears under my breath and stomping around a little, but I finally found the right street. I then became thoroughly convinced I was on the wrong street anyway. I was feeling pretty steamed until I FINALLY saw it on the other side of the street. I spent about a half hour there, and found some potential b-day gifts, but again decided to keep looking, since they had the right category of things I was looking for but not quite the right selection. Respublika is a chain, so I checked out  their location map and found one on the street where I live. Deciding to check out one more store today, I went back through the perehod (underground crosswalk) and had my encounter with Drunk Russians #2. These ones were a crowd of 3 or 4 street musicians that were packing up. One came at me shaking a knit hat full of coins and saying, “Beautiful girl, don’t you want a musician as a husband? We make excellent husbands. Come along with us, we are much more talented and romantic than your boyfriend.” This Drunk Russian was unfortunately pretty cute, so I was blushing against my will, but maintained a quick stride and snooty posture, not looking at him, though he still ran after me blabbering about our happy future until I got to the stairs on the other side. Fast forward to the Metro back to my street… I was sitting next to a man reading a Kindle, and on this Kindle I looked over to see the cover of a magazine called “Wood Мэстер», or “Wood Master, a magazine about carpentry. I am unfortunately secretly a 13 year old boy, so at the title “Wood Master,” I unfortunately laughed audibly, and this Not Drunk Russian looked at me super pissed off, and literally moved down the train to another seat to get away from me. Oops.

This Respublika on my street was still 9 blocks away… ouch. However, after coming that far I wasn’t about to let up, so I trotted the 9 blocks and successfully found it… only to find that location didn’t even carry the category of things I was looking for. At least the shopkeeper, who looked like a Russian Dillon Doyle clone, was super nice about it. Pissed, I came back out to the street and was quite promptly accosted by Drunk Russians #3. Oh my, were these Drunk Russians drunk. The drunkest. A crowd of 4 super wasted, like arms-around-each-other’s-shoulders-and-staggering wasted, who stumbled at me crying “Ах, Красивая девочка (pretty girl,) bluhbluhblahblehbelchblah” I directly gave them a disgusted look and literally jumped over a small trashcan to run away from them.

And so ended my adventures of today… I won’t call it the day from hell, but….

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about Drunk Russians #4… I opened my window to toss my modem onto my windowsill (the only way I get a signal,) and these Drunk Russians in the park (About 16 years old, classy) spotted me, and every few minutes I can hear them yell “Oi, Rapunzel, c’mere, why don’t you?” I seriously must have accidently showered in Drunk Russian pheromones today…..

6 AM Hookah...

Last night was a bit of an epic adventure... We started out, the 7 of us, (6 Americans and one Russian girl, Stella) at the movie theater, pretty much not caring what we saw since we were pretty much just in it for the language anyway. We ended up seeing this American/Indian film called "My Name is Khan," which was a very cheesy movie about a Muslim Indian Asperger's dude who inexplicably marries a total hottie and then teaches America a valuable lesson about tolerance. yeah. But, I understood all of the Russian in it! Good to know my vocabulary matches that of the mentally challenged.

I will have to preface this (especially for my mom! hi mom!) that if you miss the last train at 12:45am, your options are to either stay out all night or take a cab home, and cabs are not only expensive but there's no guarantee you won't be robbed or kidnapped, so really, staying out is the best option!

Post-cheesefest, we headed out to the clubs. Stella went home and another Russian girl, Marina, met us. After a brief pre-game, (as Paige put it, "I'm going to take a time out and just evaluate that I am drinking a Pilsner after midnight in an alleyway, in Moscow. This is my life right now.") we found a club called Karma Bar. I'll give this club a C+... the music was pretty much just dance mixes of American songs from the early 2000s (think "Jenny from the Block"), there were no cool lights or anything, the drinks were stupid expensive (I think I'm going to compose an index of how much a gin and tonic costs at every bar we go to as a reference. Here, 390 roubles (like $13...)) and the crowd was kinda old and a little unattractive.

At 2am, we exited Karma, mid-gamed in the same alley, and flew off to Teatro. This club definitely gets a solid B+/A-. WAY better music, a more attractive crowd (although there were admittedly tons of 16-18 year olds...) and cool atmosphere, complete with creepy giant python in a cage. I danced another hour, but by this point I was completely exhausted and my feet were killing me, so Lilia and I searched out a free booth and effectively had an hour long nap while the others watched a pole dancing competition. Jenny's shoulder was licked. That's all I'm saying there.

At 5, we nightcapped at a cafe called Etazh, which I give an A. Really awesome atmosphere with trance music and hookah, and totally reasonably priced. We had a pineapple hookah smoked through wine instead of water. Class, right? At 6 we headed out for the Metro, and I was in bed as the sun rose at 7. Hell yes.

Pictures!

With my horrible Russian internet, it's basically impossible to upload pics to this blog. However, you may see them in these public Facebook albums!

Из Москвы, с любовью: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067099&id=1077900116&l=207e149a44

Zoology and Socialist Revolution: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067831&id=1077900116&l=075ca8f724

Fair Warning: This post is somewhat graphic

Regarding the title of this post, I would actually advise those who don't want to hear something harsh to redirect their browser, so to speak.

Just to get it out of the way, everything with me and mine tonight was great - I taught tonight, wandered around the Red Square / Kremlin area with my peeps, had a g+t or two, accidentally patronized a hooker bar, and still made it home before the metro closed. So the troubling part of this post has nothing to do with me. Here goes.

So when we do orientation in DC, they basically tell us the cops in Russia are scum - avoid them at all costs, don't make eye contact, act suspicious or speak English near them, lest you be forced to pay a 'straf,' (basically a fee for being a foreigner) or be imprisoned. So needless to say, I thought nothing good could ever come from interaction with a Russian policeman.

This evening I got at least one example, though, of police doing what they were meant to - protecting people.

As I was making my last transfer tonight, I saw a blonde girl, my age, in a pink coat, completely smashed-drunkenly zig-zagging across the platform on the way to the stairs, and then literally vomiting over herself as she stumbled up the stairs. (this was the graphic part, and an image I won't soon be forgetting.) She was alone and clearly in pretty much the worst way one could be in. I stopped and watched her for a second, preparing in my head the Russian words I would need to help her get cleaned up, find out where she lived and take her home myself, when two young policemen came up behind her. I got even more nervous for her, and just barely turned the corner so I could watch without being watched back. I was sure the police would harass her, threaten her with fines or a ride to the station, or even try to take advantage of her. But instead, they both stopped and sat her down. They asked her where she lived, and told her she wouldn't be permitted to take the metro any further, but that one of the officers would take her outside and order her a cab home.

It's funny how shocked I was to hear this. I mean, in Denver, I would expect no less from a policeman who came across a black-out drunk 22-yr-old girl. I guess the lesson learned isn't necessarily that Russian police are all rainbows and sunshine, but that if one of their own (namely, a Russian as opposed to a foreigner) is in serious trouble, they will do what cops are supposed to and actually take control of the situation. So, cops.... well done? an ambiguous question, I suppose...

This tort is the best tort.

25 roubles. You don't even know.