Sankt Peterburg

Two weekends ago my classmates and I had the pleasure of taking a train to the former capitol of Russia, Sankt Peterburg.  I found the train to be more comfortable than expected; we each had our own seat that also converted into a respectable bed, as the voyage was an overnight one (around 8 hrs).  It was an excellent experience as we were able to mingle with some true Russians and enjoy the novelty of an extended train ride, which most of us had never encountered before.  The only discomfort I felt with regards to the whole experience was the lack of privacy, as their were no partitions between my fellow passengers and I.  Overall, I enjoyed it.

The real fun came when we actually arrived in Peter (as the Russians call it).  The city can best be described as a gigantic museum where people live.  The architecture is unlike anywhere else in the world with grand, pastel-colored buildings, massive cultural monuments, and magnificent imperial palaces.  Peter the Great, when he commissioned the city's construction, roughly modled it's layout after Venice by having winding canals carved through the entire city and erecting 342 arching bridges to connect the estranged city blocks.

(Visual Aid)

The weather in Peter was cold (shocker, right?) with random dousings of snowflakes the size of my eyeball.  While I still recognize the freezing temperatures, they are nowhere near as bad as the 12 degree weather that accosted us when we first got here.  Anyhow, here are some pics of the city in the spring (I didn't take these).

(The Hermitage, one of the premier art gallas in the world)

(Cathedral of the Resurrection)

(Canal)

 While the architecture was fantastic, the actual museums were breathtaking, full of history, extravagance, and royal vanity.  The walls of both the Hermitage and the Russian Museum were adorned with golden leaf, painted with frescos, and molded with angelic sculptures.  I cannot imagine how much effort and time were consumed in the erection and decoration of these massive structures.  I took pictures of these locations, but if you want to see them, you will have to go to my facebook page as I am too lackadaisical to repost them here.

We meet a Brazilian named Ash in the hostel we stayed at who had been living in Peter for 4 months.  He showed us around on our off evening, taking us to a cool British pub down the way from our prospekt.  For the most part though, we were either touring museums, cathedrals, or museum/cathedrals to the point where I believe if I saw another sculpture of of a naked dude or iconoclast of some dead Russian saint, that I would go postal and further tighten Russia-US relations.  I must admit the Rembrandt exhibit at the Hermitage was one of the most inspiring that I have ever seen.  The skill and realism that Rembrandt portrayed his painstaking masterpieces blurs the line between photography and oil on canvas.  I think of the torturous hours Rembrandt must have spent in his studio meticulously tracing this and that line then looking over the whole work and deciding that the tiny edge he had just spent hours defining wasn't within his vision.  I can see him sigh twiddle his paint-speckled moustache and begin retracing again and again, until he had matched what was imbedded in his artistic consciousness.

This mental image reminded me of a dialogue I had just read in Plato's Symposium.  In this dialogue, Socrates and Diotima are discussing the true essence of beauty and love.  They are debating the conclusion that love is of the immortal and Diotima provides proof in the form of a parent's love of their offspring.  She puts that people partake of immortality by conceiving offspring that will outlive them and so further themselves past their own lifespan.  She believes that in this way the mortal body may partake of immortality to which Socrates asks: "'Is this really true, O thou wise Diotima?' And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished sophist: 'Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;-think only of the ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their
ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal.'"

Rembrandt's wealthy sponsors deserted him in the twilight of his life, leaving him to paint in poverty and obscurity.  It was during this time he composed many of his most famous masterpieces, painting elderly men and women in the Jewish ghettos.  I believe he would understand more than most men this intrinsic longing for life beyond death, otherwise he would have gone out and gotten a job where he could make ends meet, not locked himself in a basement forgoing food to slather paint on a blank sheet of canvas.  He outlived all of his children and his wives but continued painting, grasping at this immortality, which he achieved.  However, was this a noble or selfish pursuit?  Could he truly believe his art would improve the world in even some minute way or was he simply a lonely man, calling out into the void of eternity for someone to hear his voice?

I guess I am more aligned with the latter theory, but then again I don't believe anything worth happening would be accomplished without rational self-interest.  That is the basis of capitalism after all; I guess I am just breaking it down to a more existential level.  Anyway, he paint real good so I'm glad he was a lonely, self-promulgating money-waster.

Peace out,

DH

Never Trust a Babushka

Something happened to me the other day that has affected my faith in humanity.  An evil monstrous being sent from the depths of Hell, sprang forth from the loins of Satan himself, to steal 500 roubles from me.  It looked like this.

(Just look at her beady little eyes...)

That's right, I was swindled by a babushka.  My woes started off with a trip to the Museum of Natural History on Red Square.  Robert (my roommate) and I were running late because of a decision to stop and get something to eat before we left, allotting us no time to return to our dorm to get my metro pass.  I only had 4 trips left on it anyway so I figured I'd just buy another at the station and use the one in my dorm at a later date.  And then I met Hell Incarnate.

Now, before you judge me on my rather harsh depiction of this elderly woman, I feel you should view what I would call a babushka brawl.  Warning: this may be disturbing to younger viewers.

Now do you believe me?  Something about the cold Russian winters hardens some of these women into an impenetrable cages of pent up rage and spite.  Now that you know where I am coming from, I shall continue.

She was sitting in the ticket booth glaring through 3 inches of plexiglass at me like an anaconda in a cage, sizing me up.

"Zdrasvui," she hissed.

"Zdrastvuite.  Daite 10 poshalusta." (Meaning give me 10)  I didn't know the word for "trips".

She spat out something incomprehensible, I assume she was insulting my mother's character.
I repeated my last phrase and handed her 500 roubles (about 16 dollars).

She looked at me and then handed me a metro pass and 22 roubles in change.  Here is where I should have been suspicious, but I had trust that this little babushka had my best interests at heart.  I saw 28,00 on the receipt and though that she had given me a month pass or something.

"Das vedanya," she spouted while ushering the next person to the counter.

Robert and I made our way to the turnstile and I tapped my metro card on the sensor.  The trips left display read 0 as I passed through.  This didn't make sense, but we were already late and had a group of 10 students waiting for us to meet them at the Ohotni Ryad station, so I let it go, assuming that I had just bought a 28 day pass and that's how those passes read on the scanner.  In my minds eye I can now see the babushka's evil smirk as I disappeared down the escalator...

("MWUHAHAHAHAHA!)

It was only after my trip through the surprisingly boring Museum of Natural History (mostly a collection of neanderthal arts & crafts) when I tried to enter the metro again did I actually discover the truth...

I had been bamboozled by a babushka.  There were no trips left on my card and I had to borrow my friend Suzanna's.

My classmates and I returned to the station where I purchased the ticket only to find the lady who sold it to me was long gone.  I assume she dematerialized into a cloud of bats and flew out of the skylight.  We tried telling the other women working the till what had happened, but our crude Russian speech only served to aggravate them until one of the cashiers started yelling insults at us in rapid succession and we decided we had better give up. I left the station with my friends mocking me, down 15 bucks with one trip to a caveman craft fair to show for it.

If you are out there, babushka, reading this with your little shawl wrapped around your head, eating mushroom soup to warm your ice-cold heart, just know that I'm still here and I'll be looking for you every time I step on a metro and if I find you there will be retribution.

Advice to everyone else, never trust a babushka until they've given you a reason.

Peace,

DH

Church and State

I ended my last post speaking about my first impressions of the magnitude of Red Square, not only in spacial terms, but in the historic sense as well.  However, this was only part of our excursion into the heart of the Russian empire.  We also went behind the Kremlin walls and took a tour of the Armory; a collection of the accrued treasures of the Motherland from the 4th to early 20th centuries.  I was unfortunately not allowed to take pictures inside the building, but some of the opulent exhibits can be viewed HERE.

One of the most staggering statistics I can remember off hand is of a copy of the Russian Orthodox gospel that was encased in almost 3 kilograms (6.6 lbs) of solid gold and then adorned with diamonds.  I have never seen anything like this.

After that we went on a cathedral tour.  The first cathedral we visited was the Church of the Deposition of the Robe of the Holy Virgin of the Moscow Kremlin.  Yes, that's the actual name.

I'd have cut to the chase and named it "Church of the 'Of The's"

It was a small church with many murals depicting the Holy Virgin of the Eastern Orthodox church.  All of the iconostasis (depictions of holy icons) were from the 17th century, giving the place a stylistic unity.

The next stop on the tour was the Dormition Cathedral; the Cathedral where Russian Patriarchs were laid to rest, pictured below.

After that was the Archangel Cathedral (below).

This place had a specific interest to me because of the fact that Ivan the Terrible (pictured below) and his sons were laid to rest here.  Ivan was one of the most notoriously vicious tzars to ever rule Russia, but also a very intelligent leader.  In one of his most notorious bouts of mental instability he snapped and actually killed his son and chosen heir Ivan Ivanovitch who was later buried next to his father in this cathedral.

("I brought you into this world, I can take you out.")

I found my focus waning as I became overcome by the blatant hypocrisy of this entire establishment.  These gorgeous churches, religious murals and priceless artifacts were being forged at a time when 4/5ths of the Russian peasantry were being traded as property under a system of serfdom where they had no rights other than what their landowners gave them (which was usually only rights to work until you died).  They were taken away from their families and traded to other farms at their landowner's whim.  These gorgeous works of artisanship seemed hollow when viewed on the backs of these wretched slaves who fed their creators.  Jesus Christ stared down at me from almost every wall with sorrowful eyes as I looked at holy icon after holy icon, but all I could see was the sweat and blood wasted on these fruitless gestures that ironically opposed the very ideals they were intended to uphold.  Vanity, thy name is history.

It was pretty neat though I guess.  I got another story on the way about being robbed by a grandma in the metro.  Peace!

DH

Week 1: The Smiling and Nodding

I don't know how many of my readers know much about the Russian language, so I will provide a sample of the Cyrillic alphabet just to give you a taste.

As you may have noticed, it is a mash of Greek characters mixed with some Latin ones that are phonetically different from their English counterparts with a few completely random characters (that I would guess came from Byzantium) thrown in for good measure.

If the alphabet gives you any indication, speaking and listening to Russian also is very difficult.  My last two teachers in the states were Americans by birth so they both spoke much more slowly and with a funnier accent than the native Russians I am now encountering.  This brings me to the overarching theme of my first week here: smiling, nodding and saying "Da" (yes).

I know enough Russian to ask questions and buy things, but my main problem lies in the fact that after I say something like "I want to buy bread." they respond with a string of quick sentences asking, I would imagine, what kind of bread I would like to buy?  Do I want it in a paper or plastic bag?  Did I find everything I was looking for?

Out of this string of sentences I will recognize a few words towards the beginning of the statement, but in the time it takes me to process those words I have missed the entire last 2/3rds of what the person said.  And there are the times when the sentences just fly over my head completely.  I feel like a caveman, just pointing at stuff and grunting to obtain the basic necessities of life.  It's frustrating, but in a motivating "I wanna learn more" sort of way.

I touched down in Sheremetyevo on the 5th of Feb at 11 am Moscow time, jet lagged and ready to sit down and rest.  However this would not be the case as we spent an hour and a half pushing our way through the Moscow lunchtime gridlock and then had to walk around the Lomonosov building with all of our bags for another 2 hours getting the proper forms filed for our dorms.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper.  My first view of MSU was astounding though.  It is one of the buildings in the Seven Sisters project commissioned by Joseph Stalin in an effort to keep up with the western city skylines.  Eight skyscrapers were originally planned for construction, but due to funding issues one was scraped.

(Front of the Lomonosov Building)

Moscow had just seen record snowfall and there was (and still is) about 3-4 feet of snow on the ground.  I ended up staying up until a normal bedtime to combat the jetlag and went to sleep.

The next day we explored the area surrounding MSU and enjoyed looking at the gorgeous architecture of the school.  It is a cross between the Gothic and Russian Baroque styles raised to new heights by American steel girder technology.

                                               (Side View of the Lomonosov Building)
The next day our lovely onsite coordinator Marina Rozina took us to the place everyone thinks of when they think of Russia, Red Square.

(Me Gigin 'em in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral)

Red Square was originally named Beautiful Square back in ancient Russia and the wide brick clearing was used as a marketplace for traders and hunters.  In old Slavic tongue, the words beautiful and red were the same (krasnaya).  Much later as the language was transforming into what we now consider Russian, people felt their should be a distinction between the two words so beautiful became krasivaya, but the name Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshad) stuck.

(Another cathedral in Red Square)

As I stood in the center of this massive brick square I was overwhelmed by the weight of history pushing in on me from all sides.  Here I was standing in the same place that all the greatest men of Russian history had consolidated their places in eternity.  Stalin had given speeches here.  Lenin was laid to rest right there.  Ivan the Terrible had this palace built.  Peter the Great had stood right here.  It was a very introspective moment as I contemplated if anyone after my death would geek out over something as small as being in a place where I had been.  It made me reevaluate my complacency in life; my own self-depreciating laziness.  These men didn't sleep in until 2 o clock in the afternoon.  They were up at dawn, rallying their troops for battle or debating with economists or meeting with foreign statesmen.  These were men with purpose, not men with the tendency to fall asleep at 3 am, watching cartoons with their hand still inside a half-eaten bag of Dorritos.

I made a resolution there to live my life with a greater sense of direction and vigor.  I feel that it would be hard for anyone to see such a monumental testament to human initiative and not reconsider their own attitude towards living.  I'll leave you with that food for thought.  I am about to leave for a lecture on Russian Politics, so until next time poka!

DH

Pre-departure

Well, this just so happens to be the first time I have participated in the wave of bloggery that seems to be sweeping through popular culture at the moment, so all you readers may need to have a bit of patience with me (at least for my first few posts).  I am not certain if all of you are aware of the place in life that I currently occupy but I'll do my best to bring you up to speed.

I  have been at Texas A&M University pursuing a degree in International Commerce for the past two and a half years.  This major requires me to obtain a minor in some foreign language.  I had always thought that Russian was a cool sounding language and having not been very fond of my Spanish classes in high school, I decided to study it.

There have been many times, as I read through countless lines of Cyrillic text, that I have cursed this decision to study such a complex and entirely novel language, but I kept going.  Now, I am stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire or being that it's Russia, maybe out of the fridge and into the freezer is a more appropriate idiom.  Phrase it however you like, I will be spending the next four months (February 5th- May 26th) studying at Moscow State University.

Pictured above: The Lomonosov Building @ MSU (lagrest university building in the WORLD)

I have spent the past semester and break filling out paperwork, getting passport photos, arranging airfare and filling out visa applications, but in three short weeks I'll be in the capitol city of the Russian Federation.  I decided that the best way to document this once in a lifetime experience would be through this blog where I can give everyone back home a taste of the East as well as archive it for myself when I get all old and nostalgic.

So, I encourage you all to follow along with what I am sure is to be quite the adventure.  I will be sure to include every success, failure, anecdote or tale of mischief that occurs and if you know me at all, there is sure to be plenty.  So until then, das vedanya!

DH