Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Hey everyone -
It's been too long since I've sent one of these babies home, and for that, I
apologize. I had a big thing written last week, and it's a bit too scattered,
so I've decided to wait until I send it. I'll work on it this week, and
we'll see how it turns out before I send it.
The weather here has been in the 80's (F) for about a week now. The trees
and the grass are beginning to turn green, it's always warm, and there is just
oodles of sunshine. It's hard to remember that in the middle of the winter
the sun was setting at 4 p.m., because at 11:00 we still have twilight.
It's hard to remember how empty all the streets and parks were in the winter,
because now they are simply packed nearly round-the-clock. Now that spring
is turning into summer, it's a little easier to concentrate on studies.
This is good, because the test session is coming up soon, and for the past two
months, none of us have done much learning at all.
We just finished the Maiskie Prazdniki (May holidays). May 1 is Labor
Day, and May 9 is Victory Day. Since May 1 fell on a weekend, everything
was closed the 1-4, and since May 9 is also on a weekend, many things were also
closed the 10. Most schools were open the 5th-7th, but the Nevskii Institute
for some reason decided to cancel classes all last week, although the tenth
we had classes.
I decided to use this week to see a few of the things in the city I hadn't gotten
around to seeing, so Monday I went to see the Alexander Nevskii Monastery.
One of the main things people go there to see is the graveyards. They're
like a who's who of 18th and 19th century Russia. The only cool people
from that time who aren't buried there are the tsars. In the half with
all the artists, I saw the graves of Dostoevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shishkin...the
list goes on. The other half also has some interesting people, especially
if you're interested in St. Petersburg history - politicians and so on are buried
there.
On the grounds of the monastery is also a church. I've seen lots of churches
here, but it was a bit different this time. A lot of times when you go
to churches here, you see only women, and mostly old women, but at this church
there were actually a lot of men there praying. There was also a priest
taking confession, and unlike in Catholic churches, there's no confessional
- he was just sitting there on a bench talking to the people while the line
waited a few meters away. It was also the first time I've seen beggars
inside a church - most of them just wait outside.
The grave of Alexander Nevsky is in the front of the church, so this is a pretty
important cathedral. At the more important churches here, there's a palpable
tension in the air - people go there to pray about really serious things, big
problems. At this particular cathedral, I couldn't be inside for more
than about five minutes - it was just a bit too intense.
Wednesday Annie and I made a trip to the suburbs for research purposes.
Her boyfriend is coming a week, and my mom will be here in three weeks, so we
wanted to see whether the trip out there is worth an entire day in their schedule.
We went to Peterhof (now known also as Petrodvoretz). Getting out there
was surprisingly easy, and even though less than half of the fountains were
working, most of the buildings were closed, and nothing is green yet, it was
still a fun trip. We wandered the grounds, ate a picnic lunch, and talked
about our Russian experience. We discovered that it is possible to slice
cheese with an ISIC card, and in the end concluded that the suburbs are a wonderful
place to be when the fountains are working, as they will be at the end of May.
Annie asked me how I think I've changed since I've been here. That's a
very difficult question to answer. The whole experience has made me a
bit more laid-back, I think. I no longer worry about whether I know what's
going on around me or not. (If you worry about that here you will drive
yourself crazy, especially if you're not fluent enough to keep up with subtleties
in conversation.) I really appreciate some of the more convenient aspects
of American life (doing laundry in America is so much simpler!) and I really,
really miss southwestern food. And I drink tea like it's going out of
style.
I think I also have a bit more compassion for people who are perennially confused
(like foreigners), and a bit less patience for cultural insensitivity.
This last one goes both ways - I'm tired of Americans' mindless whining about
Russia, and I'm tired of Russians' uninformed opinions of America. Americans
should not expect the rest of the world to be like America, and they also should
not expect that when it's not, other people will agree that our system is better.
And Russians here need to quit forming opinions based on what they read or and
see on TV - it's one thing to know something, it's another to understand it.
They may know a lot about America, but if they haven't been there, they can't
even begin to understand it.
As we were coming in, we ran into a group of girls from America who are teaching
English as volunteers for a semester. They work in Voronezh, and were
just in SPB for a short vacation. It was really shocking to hear their
opinion of Saint-Petersburg: clean. One girl said, "In Voronezh,
there are stray dogs everywhere, and everything's dirty, and there is absolutely
nothing to do." We were really surprised to hear SPB described as
clean, but I guess it all depends on what you're used to. We also asked
whether any of them spoke Russian. A few had studied a little bit, but
as one of them put it, "It's hard to learn a foreign language when you're
always teaching your own. Everyone wants to talk to you in English!"
(Amen! That is exactly why I have turned down every offer here teach English
- I came here to learn Russian! I need the Russian more than I need the
money tutoring would get me.)
Friday I decided to wander around Vasilevskii Ostrov (island) for a couple hours.
Specifically, I wanted to find the chapel of Saint Ksenia. It's inside
a graveyard, and the first graveyard on the 17th Line that I wandered into I
realized couldn't be the right one. It was full of Germans and Brits -
most likely Protestants, Catholics, and Anglicans. It was completely overgrown,
almost like a forest - it even smelled earthy and musty, which is pretty unusual
for the middle of SPB. In the back were some bums who'd lit a campfire,
and some teenage girls dressed like Goths, except for one who was in only her
underwear. So I wandered on, and found the one I was looking for a half-block
away.
The story behind Ksenia's chapel is really odd. It goes something like
this - at the beginning of the 18th century, Ksenia was widowed at the age of
26. Her husband had drunk a lot when he was alive, and she was afraid
he wouldn't make it to heaven. She began dressing like a man and helping
strangers who were in trouble, thinking if she did, God would listen to her
prayers. At this time in the Smolensk Cemetery a church was being built.
She snuck onto the site at night to work on it when no one was there, but eventually
the workers noticed someone was helping them anonymously and found out it was
her. Petersburgers always regarded her as a saint, and she was canonized
by the Orthodox Church.
Now, nearby the church she helped build, there's a small chapel dedicated to
her. People leave letters for her, tucked in the candle-stand outside,
because it's said that she carries the prayers straight to God. Like the
chapel at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, this place was full of people engaged
in very intense praying. While I was there, there was even a prayer service
going on inside, with the priest singing and everyone repeating back the prayers.
A lot of people, after kissing the icons inside and seeing the relics, pray
outside the church, leaning their head or their hands against the wall, before
leaving a candle and a letter to Ksenia at the back of the chapel.
It was interesting to me to see the difference in the activity at the monastery
and the chapel, which are both dedicated to local saints, versus the activity
at some of the other churches. The bigger ones that are huge architectural
monuments (like Isaakevskii Sobor or Kazanskii Sobor) are really pretty, but
they're not regarded as especially holy by believers. Likewise, there
are hundreds of smaller churches here that aren't really considered anything
special. People just go there to pray quietly. But these more important
ones are like mini-pilgrimages for devout believers.
Saturday morning Anton and I went to the stadium to go running. As we
were leaving, I saw whole buses full of military personnel pulling up.
Some who'd arrived earlier were fanning out to take posts around the perimeter
of the territory already. It looked a bit like they were practicing maneuvers.
Turns out, they were just security for the night's soccer game. When the
rival team from Moscow comes to play, there are even more, because, as Anton
put it, "we hate Moscow." He said all their fans are skinheads
and only come to start fights. Such is the rivalry between the two capitals
of Russia.
Shortly afterward, we were eating soup at a cafe, and a group of fans was sitting
next to us, celebrating the birthday of one of them. There were about
twelve of them, all drinking beer, making toasts, eating, joking...the game
is a day-long social event. Living near the stadium can be kind of dangerous.
Every time there's a game, I stay off the streets (or off the Petrograd Side,
at least) the whole day - after the game, all the fans go to local bars to get
even more drunk, and then they wander the streets yelling and chanting.
The police also think the added traffic necessitates turning off the traffic
lights (I'm not sure why they think this makes it safer), so even making it
across the street alive is more of a challenge than usual. It's bedlam.
Saturday night we went on a boat tour through the canals of the center of the
city. We'd planned on going on a tour down the Neva, but the group decided
to check out every single option before deciding on one. Halfway through
this strategy, they found a little boat with a two-and-a-half-hour tour that
covered the entire center. The boys realized that since 2 1/2 hours is
2 1/2 times as long as the typical hour-long boat tour, they'd get to drink
2 1/2 times as much beer. So they ran to a nearby store to get some more
beer in the twenty minutes we had before the boat left.
St. Petersburg is really pretty from a boat. We saw a lot of the big monuments,
and the tour guide was actually really interesting. I'm continually impressed
by the quality of guided tours in Russia. I would say they have it down
to a science, but here it's more like an art form, I think.
Sunday morning, Oleg (Anton's boss) and I headed out to Pushkin, a suburb built
by Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. It has fantastically beautiful
parks and palaces. Our main goal of the day was to go to Catherine Palace
(Ekaterinsky Dvoretz) to see the Amber Room (Yantarnaya Komnata), which was
just opened last year. We succeeded. We also walked all around the
pond in front of Ekaterinsky Dvoretz. It was a really fabulous day.
Oleg, I should mention, is somewhat atypical for a Russian man. He doesn't
smoke, doesn't drink (he said he just doesn't like it), always buckles his seat-belt,
and I once even saw him walk twenty feet out of his way to throw something into
a trash can rather than just littering. I was beginning to think he must
be a spy or something, but then I found out that like most Russian men he's
really particular about his shoes being clean. The suburban parks here
have gravel paths, not asphalt, so there's quite a bit of dust everywhere, and
I saw him clean his shoes no less than five times on Sunday!
We got back to the city around seven and decided to meet Anton and Ksusha.
Unfortunately, Ksusha had forgotten her purse at Anton's work-place, and they
were in such a hurry to go get it that they forgot to close the driver-side
door as they backed out of the courtyard. The door ripped off completely,
and Anton called Oleg to help him fix it. With a sledge-hammer and some
elbow grease, they managed to get it back on to the point they could tie it
shut (to protect the interior), but he has to wait until he fixes it to actually
drive it.
After patching up the car, we had tea and cake and watched the Victory Day fireworks
from an island away. They did a salute similar to the one on Fatherland
Protectors' Day in February - canons and fireworks from Peter and Paul Fortress.
After that we spent a while debating how to spend the rest of the evening, and
in the end we decided to buy food and wine and drop in on the neighbors with
a movie. Somehow, this occupied us until 3:30. At that point, we
all headed back to Ksusha's place. I was just exhausted, but the others
were in favor of watching another movie, despite the fact that they all had
to work the next day. The excuse was that there was still food and wine
left, and there was no sense in leaving it until the next day, even though we
had all fallen asleep during the first movie. I've noticed this tends
to happen a lot here - it's like people don't know when to quit.
Monday morning I met James and Linda (Linda used to work with my mom a while
back), who are living and working in Vyborg right now. They were in SPB
for the weekend, and I played tour guide for a bit. I have to confess
that I'm not a very good tour guide, but I had the advantage of knowing the
city better than their company-provided driver. Fortunately, unlike most
drivers in Russia, he stops at yellow lights (a lot of people run reds), doesn't
speed, and limits his U-turns to streets that aren't too busy, so the only frightening
moments we had were caused by other drivers.
After that our class had a Doestoevsky excursion, which unfortunately is not
as interesting as it would have been a couple years ago because everywhere all
over the city, people are blocking off their dvors (courtyards) with security
gates, so you can't actually go see the apartment that the characters from Crime
and Punishment supposedly lived in. But our history teacher showed us
nearly every significant piece of architecture in that part of town. Many
of the buildings are almost as old as the city itself, so someone famous has
lived in nearly every house on that side of town - Pushkin or Blok or Shalyapin...
After the excursion, I finally got around to calling my mom to wish her a happy
mother's day. I promise I didn't forget, it's just that I didn't know
it would be 4 a.m. before I got home Sunday.
This week ahead I have to start studying like mad. We have our tests session
before the Russian students do, since we all ordered plane tickets before we
were told when our tests would be. At first we students were upset at
the schedule conflict, but it turns out that all you have to do is put your
foot down and remind people that it's not actually possible to reschedule a
plane ticket this summer, assuming you found one in the first place. We
certainly aren't going to reschedule a ticket we bought three months ago just
because they changed the test schedule in April. In the end, it doesn't
really matter when we take our tests - it just matters that we take them.
I promise, I will get to work on responding to emails. Thanks so much
to everyone who's writing me!
All the best -
Heather:)
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