In Which I See a Bear on Rollerskates

Just one entry for this week as well, as I just don't feel up to writing about some theme I've noticed during my stay here. The good news is the low spirits I was experiencing last week have left me, they were probably just due to insufficient sleep and not eating properly. Since my return from Kaliningrad my hostess has been in the hospital, so I have been responsible for making my own meals. That isn't too much of a problem, but Russian grocery stores can be confusing, so my selection of ingredients has been rather lacking. Also, I have no recipes, so I have been having to wing it. Fortunately food in grocery stores is really cheap (I am always incensed when a block of cheese costs more than 70 rubles, or somewhat less than $3) and of a generally high quality. I think I've already mentioned this, but bread, cheese, and fruit in Russian grocery stores seem to be much better than in American ones (this is particularly true of the bread), and is generally cheaper. Anyways, after reintroducing vegetables to my diet, not to mention sleep, my spirits have improved significantly. I was worried that I was starting to exit the “honeymoon” phase of traveling abroad, after which everything gets to be irritating and life in another country loses its lustre. Fortunately, I was just not eating right, as far as I can tell. Earlier tonight I went for a walk to the post office to drop off some postcards, and since it was snowing I decided to continue to wander around my part of the city. The outer reaches of Yaroslavl' are not particularly attractive, but the snow really seemed to help alleviate that problem. It's still snowing right now, and it's very pretty. Oh, and as regards postcards, I have sent a few out, though I am still working on going down my list of people to whom to send postcards. Please do me a favour and let me know if you have received a postcard from me – it may be a few weeks before they arrive, if they arrive at all. The Russian postal service is notoriously slow and unreliable, so do not be offended if you don't get anything – it's quite likely that they either lost the postcard, or decided not to send it because they didn't like something about it. Hooray for Russian bureaucracy. Oh, and as regards my khozyaika (hostess) – she came home briefly on Saturday to take a shower and so forth (Russian hospitals are not the most pleasant places, it would seem), and she will be coming home for good next weekend. So I'll only have to cook for myself for another week, and I won't have to move to a different host family. And Middlebury gives me 250 rubles a day ($10) for food, so I am well taken care of. So you don't have to worry too much about me, Mom.

Anyways, now to the recap of my week. Monday through Friday was fairly quiet – I would say the highlights were going to play pool on Wednesday night, and buying train tickets for my trip at the end of this month. I'm going with three other American students to St. Petersburg and Moscow for 10 days, with a possible side trip to Novgorod in the middle. We bought train tickets from the main Yaroslavl' train station, and they were incredibly cheap. All told it was 850 rubles (just over $30) for an overnight trip to St. Petersburg, and a shorter trip from Moscow back to Yaroslavl'. And that was includes the service charge of around $8 which we decided to endure so as to not have to deal with the ornery workers at the normal ticket windows. We didn't buy our tickets from Petersburg to Moscow because we have to wait for somebody else, but we can get those once we are in Petersburg. But that was about it for what I did during the week. On Saturday, though, we went to go see the circus. Russian circuses are well known both for being some of the best in the world, and for having really depressing animal shows. This circus delivered as promised on both counts. Before the circus started we went and got our pictures taken with a bear sitting on a motorcycle, though the bear didn't seem to be too happy with the arrangement. I don't think bears are natural motorcycle riders. During the circus itself they brought out an Indian elephant which proceeded to do tricks, but looked very sad all the while. The dog show was significantly less depressing, with many happy-seeming dogs (some dyed strange colours) doing tricks. They even had a chihuahua that climbed a 15 foot ladder and then jumped off of it. They bear show in the second half really upset me, as they bears were are muzzled, and looked really uncomfortable and unhappy. They were all forced to walk on their hind legs, when they weren't riding bikes, or motorcycles. I think the circus would have been a much better experience if it didn't have bears or elephants in it, though many would likely not agree with me. The show was billed as being a “Bear Show with Indian Elephants,” rather than advertising what I would consider to be the much more impressive part of the show – the human acts. My mom told me that many circuses are populated with Russian circus performers, and I can see why that might be. The jugglers were really fantastically good, and according to my female companions, very attractive. For those who saw the Oberlin Circus at Teddy's graduation – imagine those jugglers, but then having done it professionally for a number of years. They were really quite amazing. The most impressive part though, was the acrobats. They had the normal dancing-type acrobats, which were fine, but then they busted out the best part. There were two biggish men who balanced 15-20 foot poles on their shoulders, with platforms on the top. Then the acrobats climbed up these poles, and did tricks on them. I was quite impressed by the people doing backflips on platforms 25 feet in the air, balanced on a man's shoulders. Little did I know, though, the best was yet to come. They got both of the men balancing their platforms, about 15 feet apart. Then one acrobat climbed up one of the poles, and stood on the platform facing away from the other platform. He then proceeded to do a backflip from one platform to the other, and these platforms were no more than 6 square feet big. Then, they got a guy on each platform, and one guy did a backflip off of his platform, and landed on the other's guy's shoulders. It was really crazy, and truly one of the more impressive things I have seen. Overall I would say the circus was a positive experience, especially considering it is a distinctly Russian sort of thing to do. Though I will avoid animal shows in this country from now on. On Saturday night after the circus some of us went over to the apartment of the Finnish student, Outi. I actually have no idea if I spelled that right. Anyways, she is here in Yaroslavl' studying at YarGU, because her home city is a sort of sister city to Yaroslavl'. We went over to her place and watched a few movies. We encountered a rather serious problem upon leaving, however – the trolleybuses had stopped running because it was fairly late at night, so four of us were forced to stay the night at her place. It wasn't too bad, though I would have much preferred to be able to sleep in my own bed, as uncomfortable as it may be.

In Which Our Hero Goes to the Zoo

Just one entry this week, as I'm not really feeling up to it, and still need to get started on my homework. Perhaps later in the week if I am in higher spirits I will check in again. Anyways, this week was the week of our group trip to Kaliningrad. We left Yaroslavl' at 2am Tuesday, to drive to Moscow to catch our 7am plane. After a largely sleepless bus ride in which we were apparently stopped by the Militsia (police) for some reason, we finally arrived at the airport in Moscow. Following our flight to Kaliningrad (again largely sleepless), we got in at around 10am. We took taxis to our hotel, and my initial impression of the city was that it was incredibly ugly. I had read that most most of the attractive parts of the city were destroyed in WWII or by those damn Soviets, but I was not prepared for the level of ugliness that I encountered during that taxi ride. All the buildings we passed were cookie-cutter soviet apartment blocks, in various states of disrepair. The initial ugliness of the city, combined with the extremely irritating taxi ride (I won't get into that) and having slept for less than two hours meant that when we got to the hotel I was in less than a wonderful mood. A four hour nap helped to alleviate this situation, so I decided to go exploring the city with some friends. I discovered once we got into the center of the city that Kaliningrad isn't really that ugly. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty ugly, but there are some very attractive buildings and neighborhoods. From this one gets a sense of just how nice the city must have been before it was decimated during and after the war. The central square (Ploshad' Pobedy, or Victory Square) is dominated by a huge gold-domed orthodox cathedral that was built in the last few years. The other main point of interest in the city is the large church on Kant Island, which has been renovated in the past few years by donations from German families who were kicked out by the Soviets. It's mostly just a concert hall now, but it does have two chapels, and one of the largest pipe organs in Europe. Unfortunately they were not holding any concerts while we were in town, or I would certainly have gone. Attached to a corner of the church is the tomb of Emanuel Kant, the philosopher, who lived and taught in Koenigsberg (the German name for the city).

On Wednesday we had a group trip to the Curonian Spit (I think that's what it's called in English), which is a narrow strip of sand dunes along the Baltic Sea, half of which is owned by Russia, with the other half being part of Lithuania. It was a really fascinating, if wet, excursion. At one point we climbed some sand dunes and then a tower and were able to simultaneously see the Baltic and the Curonian Lagoon, which is the body of water formed by the Spit. We also got to see the bird ringing place, in which they catch birds in a huge net and then tag them, record them in a book, and then release them. I had a hard time understanding the guy who was talking, but it was cool nonetheless. We had Thursday to ourselves, so some of us decided to go to the Kaliningrad Zoo. Apparently it was one of the best zoos in the world before the war, but insufficient funding and neglect seem to have taken their toll. It is a really pretty park, but the exhibits are not well maintained, and the animals seem to be hungry and sad. I'm still glad I went though, as it has been a really long time since I last went to the zoo. I got to see bears, lions, a tiger, an elephant, hippos, and a very angry elk, among other things. I also had the very strange experience of watching Sarah feed mango to a bear. Since the zoo has so little money, the keepers do not discourage feeding the animals. When we came up to one of the bear cages, people were feeding throwing acorns to the bear, who seemed to be happy as a result. Once the other people went away, and once the soldiers passed us by, Sarah proceeded to throw bits of dried mango to the bear. Bears like dried mango, it would seem. Or at least this one did. I took a pretty sweet picture of the bear preparing to catch a flying piece of mango in its mouth. Hopefully it'll still be visible if I put it up on shutterfly. After the zoo we went to the Museum of the World Ocean, which consists of some boats, and a main building. The highlight of that was getting to go into an old Soviet submarine. The old man on board was very enthusiastic, and seemed very eager to practice giving his talk in English. It was really cool. The first part of Friday consisted of going to the Amber Museum, and helping Emily buy pants. This, it turned out, was somewhat less fun than bears and submarines. Oh well. Oh, and about amber – Kaliningrad is, I think, the world's largest producer of amber. And they seem to all be really proud of this fact. Kaliningrad's hockey team is even called Dynamo-Amber (Dinamo-Yantar'). After returning to the hotel, we got in taxis and headed back to the airport, for our flight back to Moscow. Everything was a little bit delayed, and I didn't end up getting back to my apartment until 3:45am Saturday.

After getting some sleep, I went to the Icon Museum in Yaroslavl', for my culture class. They have a really beautiful collections of icons, some of which were painted in the 13^th century. On Sunday I went ice skating, and didn't even break any limbs. I would be lying if I said I didn't fall, but I didn't fall very many times, or very spectacularly, which I consider to be a good thing. I shall try to go ice skating again before too long, and perhaps might even learn to do it without looking tentative and silly. On a completely unrelated note, I need some opinions regarding facial hair. I am unsure if I'm happy with my beard. I'm having a debate with myself about whether or not I should go for just chops and a 'stache, to go with the mullet I'll hopefully have by December. So, if anyone has any words of wisdom regarding beards, moustaches, or mullets, please let me know, by whatever means you see fit. Thank you in advance.

Oh, and one last note - I just uploaded pictures from Kaliningrad, this time with real live people in them! That should placate you for a while, Teddy.

Ramblings, as promised

Now, to the topics I promised I would revisit. On Wednesday night, after playing a few games of pool, we sat down and talked to Andrei, Pavel, and their friend, whose name escapes me. For a while I talked with Andrei about the stock market and investments, which turned out to be difficult, seeing as how I don't know the Russian words for any of those sorts of things. After that, we talked about politics for a while, which was definitely the most interesting part of the evening. So far the only things I have heard from Russians about Russian politics have been from Olga Ivanovna, our Politics professor. Predictably, she seems to follow the official line about the Russian political system, which holds that it's an open, democratic system in which everyone has an equal chance and say. Andrei and Pasha, though, told us that the elections this December really don't matter, as Yedinaya Rossiya (which I think is usually translated as “United Russia”) is certain to command a huge majority in the State Duma, which is their more important house of parliament. United Russia is the “Party of Putin,” and thus gets all the benefits of Putin's new laws suppressing legitimate opposition parties. The only other parties that are expected to gain seats in the Duma are the Communist Party, LDPR, and another party, which I think is called Spravedlivaya Rossiya, though I'm not certain. The Communist Party isn't particularly strong, and is mostly supported by pensioners who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union. LDPR is the party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who is a ultra-nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic nut. Do yourself a favour and look him up on Wikipedia to see just how ridiculous / scary this man is. Spravedlivaya Rossiya, or whatever it's called, is the union of three earlier political parties. It's supposed to be a fairly moderate party, and a challenger to United Russia. But Pavel told me he thought Spravedlivaya Rossiya was just created by the powers-that-be to take votes away from KPRF (the acronym for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation). It was really interesting for me to hear these guys give a completely different view on national politics than I had been hearing in my classes. They don't seem to think that Russia is a democracy at all, and they had the same opinion about the American system as well. I won't get into what I think about that point, as this is neither the time, nor the correct forum. As I said, on Thursday I went to IMKA, where we did some “cross-cultural communication,” which I find to be a very Macalester term. This consisted mostly of introductions (which were interesting in their own right) followed by discussing stereotypes that Americans hold about Russians, and that Russians hold about Americans. As there were two Americans there, and more than 10 Russians, this ended up being a fascinating discussion. We divided up into groups of three, with Rhiannon and I in the same group, along with a crazy Russian student-type named Aleksei, who had studied in England. Each group had to come up with a list of the stereotypes they thought Americans hold, and those that Russians hold. Most interesting to me was what Russians thought Americans think about Russians. They seemed to think that Americans know a lot more about Russians then they actually do – for instance, birch trees and good food were both given as things that Americans associate with Russia. I would estimate that very few people in the US who haven't tried Russian food would assume that it's good (it generally is, for the record), and wouldn't have known that Russia has birch trees. As for the stereotypes that that they held about us (or thought Russians in general hold about Americans), they thought we smile at strangers too much, that we get married late, and that we have high living standards. They also associated cowboys, fast food, and Hollywood. Aleksei had some really interesting views about Americans, but I won't go into them now, for I have already written way too much. Oh, and perhaps the best part about the IMKA experience was that Vitya (nickname for Viktor), who is one of the heads of IMKA has as his ringtone the song “YMCA.” As in, the Village People. That made me really, really happy.

In Which I Converse With Some Real Live Russians

It has been a very enlightening week here in Yaroslavl'. I feel like this week, more than any other so far during my time here I've done what studying abroad is all about – conversing with people, with real live Russians about topics that are important to my conceptions about Russia as a country, and the people as a whole. Oh, and seeing bears. That's also what studying abroad is all about. But before I get to all of that, I'll recount what I've done this week, for those who require a day-by-day account of my activities (my Mom). After an entirely unexciting Monday, of which the highlight was successfully uploading my pictures to Shutterfly, on Tuesday we had yet another trip to the Nekrasov library with my Politics class in order to pick out an article that deals either with Viktor Zubkov, the new Russian Prime Minister, or with the upcoming parliamentary elections. Olga Ivanovna (name and patronymic are used when addressing professors and other people in older generations), or Politics professor, showed us the various political magazines and newspapers in Russia, all of which are controlled by the state, as far as I can tell. Anyways, she wanted us to choose an article, and then describe it to the class. My article was about the members of Zubkov's cabinet that are expected to continue to be a part of the government, and which aren't. It was interesting, but at times hard to decipher what the article was saying. On Wednesday we went to the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour with my Culture class, and saw the exhibit on “The Song of Igor's Campaign,” which is a Russian epic poem that all Russian students study, and which was discovered at the monastery. After walking around and looking at old Russian artifacts, we went and saw Masha the bear, who lives in a cage on the monastery grounds. I had never seen a bear before in real life that I could remember, so this was a strange experience. Masha was rather listless and depressed looking, though once someone offered her some fruit on a long pole she got up and showed some life. Masha did not dance, and thus did not quite fit the stereotype of Russian bears. Perhaps I'll go to the circus sometime in the next month to see their “bear show,” so as to fulfill my need to see large, sad looking bears dancing and riding motorcycles. Anyways, Wednesday evening I went with a friend to play some pool with the two Russian guys we met last weekend. They speak about as much English as we speak Russian (or perhaps less), so the conversation was about half in each language, I would estimate. After beating them handily in both games of our pool hall reenactment of the Cold War, we sat down and talked for a bit before going home. But I will get back to this later. First, the rest of my week. I have no classes on Thursday, so I went and hung out with some friends in a cafe before we decided to go sit by the Volga and chill out there. At 4:30 I left with Rhiannon, another American student (and one who also goes to Macalester) to go to IMKA (Russian YMCA) where they were holding another meeting for potential volunteers (it seems they don't have enough for all their programs). Anyways, we spent an hour and a half there, doing what Vitya, one of the leaders, called “cross-cultural communication.” I will also get back to this, once I finish recounting my week. Friday was not terribly exciting, consisting of nothing out of the ordinary. On Saturday we hopped on a boat headed up the river towards the Tolgsky Monastery, and had ourselves a picnic in a field next to the forest. This picnic was organized by Alina, the same person who arranged the hockey game I went to last weekend. We had ourselves a wonderful picnic, with bread, cheese, fruit, wine, cookies, and the like. It was really nice. We even played some silly games. Dasha, a friend of Alina's, decided to play a getting-to-know-you game called “The Train Choo-Choo,” which was a mix of ice-breaker and conga line. It was strange. And then someone else decided we needed to play a different game, which was very difficult for me, as it involved rhythm. After our picnic we walked through the monastery (which I've decided is one of my favourite places in or around Yaroslavl', and then took the boat back to the city. Then we went to a cafe, which was decorated to resemble a castle, or maybe a dungeon. It's a really cool, tiny place, with brick and stone walls and ceilings, and very hefty wood furniture. I foresee myself going there fairly often, especially considering they are purported to have very tasty soups. On Sunday I attempted to go to the one laundromat in the city to clean my clothes pre-Kaliningrad, but failed, as they are closed on Sundays. Then I attempted to go to the traveling seal and dolphin show, held on a boat on the Volga. In this too, I was unsuccessful, as we apparently underestimated the demand for mobile animal shows, and the tickets were all sold out. So instead of dolphins, we went to a cafe called “Vanilla Sky,” where I had the first spicy food I've had since I left home more than a month ago. It was awesome, if a bit expensive. Then, I spent the rest of the evening either doing homework or washing clothes by hand, as everyone in Russia seems to do. It's possible that the thing I miss most (apart from family and friends, of course) is easily accessible washers and dryers. Washing clothes by hand sucks.

This coming week we are going as a group to Kaliningrad, which I am very much looking forward to. For those who don't know, Kaliningrad is the little bit of Russia that is separate from the rest of it, on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania. It is actually a whole region, though the most important part is the city, which shares its name with the region. The city of Kaliningrad was a German city called Koenigsberg, which was flattened in WWII, and taken over by the Soviets. The Soviets got rid of all the Germans, and turned it into a distinctly Russian city. It is named for Mikhail Kalinin, who was one of Stalin's henchmen. He is known best for ignoring a massive famine in Ukraine in which millions of people died, and for ordering the execution of thousands of Polish officers during WWII in a forest near Smolensk, which was then blamed on the Nazis. What a guy. We leave Yarloslavl' at midnight or 1 am Monday night, for a 7am flight out of Moscow, and then get back here on the 5^th or so.