Nabokov and the Sky

The touristy highlight of last week was my visit to the Nabokov house museum. It was invigorating to be in the house where my favorite writer was born and grew up (until age 17, at which point his father was kicked out of the Soviet Union and Nabokov's family left for the US).
This is the main room on the first floor of the two-story town house Nabokov's family occupied until the revolution. Only the first floor is open to the public as a museum. The cases along the walls of this room are filled with original editions of his books and editions which were printed underground in the Soviet Union. Another room on the first floor, which served as the family library displays books from the Nabokov's collection. Nabokov specifically mentions growing up with some of these books in his autobiographical novel Speak Memory. The photos of Nabokov happily butterfly-hunting are hilarious and definitely a highlight of the museum.
One of the rooms of the museum is devoted to "Vera's Butterflies". Nabokov dedicated all of his novels to his wife, Vera, and he'd sign her personal copy under the dedication always with a fanciful butterfly. Though based on real butterflies of specific genuses, Nabokov would elaborate on patterns and colors to create a personalized butterly and latinized genus-species name. He calls this one "Adorata adorata".
This is Nabokov's scrabble board. Boris, this one's for you. I tried my hardest to channel its energy and will challenge anyone who steps up when I get home.

I can't get over how strange the sky is here. Especially during the evening hours (which extend until about midnight at this point) the clouds look alive.
This photo is taken from the Lietenant Schmidt brigde, which is the bridge I often take home from the center of town. The tall cathedral is the Isaac Cathedral. At this time of day the city panorama reminds me of Budapest.

I took this photo on my way out of a jazz club. It's about 10:15pm.
This is very close to where I live.
Some Random Photos

The long awaited photo of Ira, my surrogate St. Petersburg Russian mother. She almost made me wait until she cut her hair, but I convinced to let me photograph her since you were all waiting. She is standing in front of the Isaac Cathedral, which we visited together last week. We climbed up to the terrace on the dome - one of the best views of the city. The statue of Czar Nicholas to Ira's right is famous for having all of its weight supported by the horse's hind legs.
This doesn't need comment.
These St. Petersburg citizens really love their parades. They had one on Saturday and one on Sunday for City Day, which celebrates St. Petersburg's birthday. This parade on Saturday along Nevsky Prospect featured floats from every neighborhood in the city along with huge floating advertisements of the companies and stores located in those neighborhoods.

Living Here

First off I'm sorry I haven't been posting much; internet access is expensive and far from home. I have been spending most of my time volunteering at the Hesed (Jewish elderly welfare center) and walking the city. By volunteering I mean giving presentations about myself and my project to old people at the Day Care center and helping the PR office by translating a long document from horrible English (translated from bad French) to better English. Also, I have been sick with a bad cough for a few days which has greatly lowered my productivity.
Little by little I am discovering what it's like to live in St. Petersburg. I live on Vasilevsky Ostrov (Vasilevsky Island) which is much less touristy than the main island. Most of it is residential, but there are lots of stores and bars and restaurants on the main prospects and the main university buildings are situated on the Neva river embankment on this island. Where I live reminds me a lot of areas of Brooklyn like Kings Highway or Ocean Parkway. The pedestrian-only street below is right by the metro stop nearest my apartment (or the room I'm renting in an apartment). When it's at all moderately nice out the benches and streets are lined with people drinking beers and playing guitar and being happy and drunk, which is a nice sight when I'm coming home from a long day or a long night.I am learning slowly what it means to be cool in St. Petersburg. The young men below are in my files. They are dancing in an "alternative" bar/club for the youngsters called "Novus". Meanwhile, I am sitting on a couch observing and taking notes on how to be cool. The very center of the city, centered around Nevsky prospect, is split up by a few major semi-circular canals which look like this. They don't smell as bad as the ones in Venice, but they do smell like boat gasoline and the noise pollution from the bullhorn-armed tour group leaders is sure to get worse as the summer approaches. Still, the vies down the canals are really beautiful against the usually very dramatic sky. There are lots of rainbows here and the weather is reminiscent of London or Galway; one minute it's pouring and the next it's sunny. Usually it's humid.The Church on Spilt Blood is the most ornate and colorful, inside and outside, of all of the St. Petersburg churches. From the outside it looks a bit like the Kremlin, though it's much smaller. Its name comes from the fact that it was built on the location of Alexander II's death (he was assasinated in a terrorist bomb attack). As you can see, one of the city's canals passes just along side it.Located on Nevsky Prospect, this is the most beautiful supermarket I've ever seen. Unfortunately, Ira says it's threatening to close down because people aren't shopping here (since the products are the same as in other supermarkets, just more expensive).Ira's brother and parents live in Kolpino, a town south of the city but still considered part of St. Petersburg, and they take trips there for the weekends to relax and get some family time. This weekend I went with them. The highlights of the trip were meeting Genya's adorable little cousin and his fiesty grandmother (she's exactly what you'd expect of an over 70 year-old still-working high school physical education teacher).
Below: watching Genya's 8-year-old cousin, David, perform in a musical play. He's the one in the black hat all the way on the right. David played sort of a black cat-count-master of ceremonies type. I didn't understand much of the material, which I think was quite philisophically oriented and used big Russian words. Ira sat next to me and said she also had no idea what was going on. The moral of the thing was that we should all remain kids and live in fairy land, but the director/teacher/writer apparently had something of her own in mind.

Below Genya and his little cousin, "Little Brother David", who is very charming and as instantly lovable and adorable as he looks. And I hate kids. Those little yellow-wrapped candies you can see near the pillow are my favorite Russian candies called "Korovka" or "Little Cow". They have a soft caramel center, but the outside is a slightly hardened, kind of grainy caramel reminiscent of hardened honey. They are amazing and so much better than all of the other chocolate-containing candies (all named after animals and Russian fairytale characters). On the way back from Kolpina Ira and I stopped at the monument-museum of the Siege of Leningrad. The monument you see in the photo below depicts a soldier on the left and a worker on the right. Together, the civilian and the soldier defended the city during the 900 day blockade, during which over 600,000 people died of hunger alone.

Culture Shock

Russia is different. Here are a few examples:
This was the first page of the menu at the sandwich bar I went to today for lunch. It was not at all a particularly rowdy type place, but rather a quick business lunch type place in the center of the city.
These little fishies, called Kuryushka, are unique to this area (I assume the Baltic Sea) and are only available for a few weeks in the spring. The coolest thing about them is they smell like fresh cucumbers...until you cook them. Walking down the secondary streets of the city you come across these stands everywhere with fishermen selling their daily catch. This weekend, Ira and Genya invited me over for a kuryushka feast. Ira cuts their heads off, then prepares them in two different ways: fried in flour, then sprinkled in parsley, and fried in flour, then marinated in an onion, salt, pepper, and vinegar marinade. Both versions were very tasty. You eat them with your hands, and you can either take down the whole fish with the crunchy-but-edible bones or remove the spine first. I must have devoured 50 fishies.
Some of the stations in the very center of the city which were created in the 70s have built-in platform doors that line up with those of the train when it pulls up to the station. I have no idea how these are more efficient or less expensive to produce (Ira said that was the original motivation) but I can see that people might have thought they were safer (Genya mentioned that drunkards often fall onto the tracks and die). Either way, they are very strange.
These are my first Russian friends (other than Genya and Ira, of course) - two brothers who live near me on Vasilovsky island. I met the younger one, who calls himself Kuzya (on the right), a few nights ago when I was waiting for one of the bridges across the Neva river to open again in the early hours of the morning after a night out. He and his friend walked me home. At first I was a little weary of the teenagers, but they proved to be nice guys. Last night I went out for a night walk and multiple coffee stops with him and his brother, Sasha. I was surprised to learn that they have never been to Moscow. They both live with their parents in a small Soviet apartment near me and it seems their family actually has it pretty tough. I felt bad that they insisted on buying my drinks since it was obvious they didn't have the money. Chivalry here is pretty ridiculous.

Victory Day in St. Petersburg

I had no idea I had arrived to St. Petersburg on one of the most important days of the year here - Victory Day. The main streets of the city were all closed down for the parade and for the masses of pedestrains (some with flags, others with ribbons, many dressed in sexy pseudo-uniforms and non-sexy real uniforms) that took over the streets for the day. The whole city was draped in the red, white, and blue Russian colors, as well as the very red Soviet flag. It was a Soviet victory, not a Russian one, and I guess this was obvious and evident to everyone but me; I just couldn't stop staring at all of the red stars. I finally met Genya, my Russian pen pal, and his mom, Ira, (both really great) and the three of us walked among the crowds all day. Though Ira was born in Moldova, she spent most of her life in Russia, and unlike most Russian Jews you meet in the States, these are real Russian patriots. Ira says Russia gets a bad wrap, and explained to me that when Russia came into the Baltics it built up infrastructure and did lots of good. The Occupation Museums in every Baltic city I visited clearly disagree. They document atrocities commited by the two occupiers, Russia and Germany, after 22 years of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian independence (these countries became independent in 1918, after the revolution, and then were taken over by Soviet forces before WWII). According to Genya and his mom, Ira, who come almost every year the number of veterans in the parade gets dramatically smaller and smaller each time. The veterans in the parade were divided into military sections - navy, army etc. - but there were also sections devoted to "Blockade Survivors", "Children of the Blockade", "Orphans of the Blockade"etc.

It felt like the war had just ended. This truck had a guy with a bullhorn hanging out the passenger side getting the crowd all pumped up about the victory, in that same voice you here on the radio clips from 1945.
The Communist party, strong as ever (almost). Lots of old people, but more young ones than I expected too.
According to what people have told me, drinking outside in Russia is illegal (UPDATE: I looked this up and it's actually legal to drink anything that has less than 9% alcohol by volume outside). I didn't see anyone over the age of about 12 without a beer bottle/can in their hands yesterday after the parade. The city's teens were splayed out along the river, many in this beautiful square of Isaac's Cathedral. Overlooking the crowd was the famous statue of Peter the Great on a horse up on its hind legs. His wife commissioned this monument, the first to be built upon his death.
When the whole city is trying to get smashed outside, the lines at the off-license places are out the door. Lines for the port-o-potties (at least there WERE port-o-potties) were even longer. Still, many men took the easy way out and peed right off of the sidewalks on main streets.

Saaremaa

Saaremaa is an island off the Western coast of Estonia in the Baltic sea. To get there you have to take a ferry from the mainland which stops on a little island called Muhu on the way and then crosses a causeway between Muhu and the island of Saaremaa. I spent two days on the island, the first exploring the small main city called Kuressaare with a fun beach and castle (first photo). The second day we rented a car and drove all around the coastline of the island visiting a tiny crater lake, some old wooden windmills, and the peninsula to the south called Sorve. The peninsula and its southern tip, Saare, was definitely the most beautiful, and photogenic, part of the trip and the rest of the photos below were taken there. There's a cool lighthouse, some abandoned rotting boats and anchors, and WWII bunkers for climbing and exploring. Apparently this island saw some really heavy fighting during the war. This morning before we left the island we got mudbaths at a spa. Quite the experience. Basically you just climb into a tub with warm mud (which comes straight out of a plain old regular looking faucet). The mud was more liquidy than I expected, but more of a smooth consistency, and it retained heat for the whole bath. After 15 minutes this lady comes in and showers you down, then you get out and rinse and dry yourself off. It was really nice, but I still couldnt get over the idea that I was lying in dirt. My OCD.











Oh, and I'm getting a nice tan from all the beaches I've been visiting. Nathan is quite the beach bum and has turned me into a bit of one. I've been taking almost daily naps on beaches for the past week. Speaking of Nathan, we just parted ways. He's off to Helsinki, me to St. Petersburg. About time :).

Tartu - Estonia's Laid-back Student Town

Tartu is a really sweet little student-dominated city in Southern Estonia. The main pedestrain street (below) is cleverly lined with stylish benches for sitting and splaying-out while still leaving enough space for the kids to kick around hacky-sacks. There are tons of bars, most of them with outside seating. The bar/club pictured left is one of the most amazing I have ever seen. Located is a real gunpowder cellar it's got two levels of wooden tables and benches and a dancefloor in the middle (unfortunately it was 90s night and the almost exclusive American music was getting to be unbearable). Almost everyone in there was a student and it was packed on a Wednesday night. The Tartu University students who weren't in there were apparently outside on the grassy hill overlooking the city where they were drinking massive amounts of beer, playing instruments and hacky sack - the usual. This is what college should be like.

Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn is beautiful, and a lot like Riga and Vilnius, but this city feels a lot more Northern and less Eastern. Herring is marinated in vinegar instead of oil (this makes me very happy since I eat herring everyday). There aren't any bums or alcoholics on the streets. Its Old City is better preserved than the other Baltics' - the Gothic town hall, the almost complete medieval city wall, and the Oleviste Church (once the tallest tower in the world when it was built in the early 13th century) are the most impressive. The Modern buildings in the downtown are quite ugly and look a little like IKEA, contributing to the more northern feel. Though I hear lots of Russian here, it's not nearly as common in the city center as it was in Latvia and Lithuania. Latvia seems to have a particularly bad problem with Russian-Latvian tensions, but here the two groups stick to themselves too.

Trying to Avoid Stag Parties in the Baltics

The English lads are everywhere. I've seen this phenomenon before in Western Europe, but it's never been quite this bad. Big groups of loud English rugby-looking lads being extremely drunk and taking over the city. The group outside the Stella Pub and inside it (both below) are drinking up in Riga. Our first night in Riga Nathan and I went out to a club and after I left early to go to bed, Nathan got beat up and kicked on the ground by a group of Russians who thought he was British. Not so surprising in light of how disrespectful, obnoxious, and ridiculous most of the English speaking men in this city are. Apparently they come over for the weekends to take advantage of low alcohol prices and lax sex industry policies (and cheap Ryan Air fares from London and Ireland). Riga and Tallinn provide them with what they need - you can't walk two feet without stumbling at an English/Irish pub. It's like they never left home but they pay half the price for a pint, and here they feel no responsibility for their ridiculous behavior. They also really like to dress like girls for some reason, which can be quite amusing. The couple up top traded clothes (in Vilnius).

Sigulda

Sigulda is a little city in northern Latvia full of castles and caves and a scarry funicular. The photo of the Guaja river is taken off of the funicular, from which passengers may bungee jump on weekend evenings. Turaida castle was built in 1214 and the large tower has survived since.

Beautiful Dunes in Nida