Day 7 and 8: Russia
This is going to be a long post, but I promise it will be a good one. (The end is the best story)
There are some experiences that are just plain special and the past two days have been exactly that. On Friday afternoon I left St. Petersburg with a group of 10 people and went to visit a Dacha, a Russian summer home.
Dacha are owned by entire families. The woman who we visited, Katya, had spent her childhood going to the Dacha with her parents and grandparents. She continued to use it into adulthood until, 7 years ago, they decided to build a new one. She designed the new house herself and loves it so much that she lives there year round with her husband and dog Mona. There is a wood stove to heat the house in the winter. They still have a flat in the city that they use occasionally and the old Dacha is still on the property, her in-laws live there now.
At her home we drank Russian tea, which is black and made with tea leaves. She makes it very strong and pours a little in each cup and then tops it off with hot water. With a little sugar it was absolutely delicious. We all had multiple cups.
She also made us fabulous food. We had Pirozhki, which are individual buns stuffed with either mushrooms and potatoes or cabbage. In the forest right near the Dachas there are tons of mushrooms and berries. They love to go pick them, especially the mushrooms, so it is used a lot in their cuisine. Her husband will can and freeze the mushrooms to make soup in winter.
There were also Sushki, which are a traditional Russian tea bread. They are small, crunchy, bagel shaped crackers. Kind of like the ones in chex mix. We also ate small, open faced pies, that didn't have a name. They were stuffed with cheese and garlic and were my favorite thing to eat.
One of our desserts was Varenye, which were boiled apples, similar to apple sauce. We also sampled Russia chocolates and had green grapes. Everything was so simple and delicious.
We had a wonderful time sitting with her, eating, and listening to her tell us about her life. Her entire family were famous Russia actors, she even wrote a book about their lives that did well enough to publish a second edition, it sold five thousand copies in the first 6 months. Her house was covered in pictures of her mom and dad and cousin in their various rolls, both on stage and in films.
Her father also fought in World War II or, as the Russians call it, the Patriot War. She told us one story about how her fathers regimen was captured by the Nazi and forced to march toward a nearby town. During the march, if you fell down you were shot, so people pushed on for as long as they could. Suddenly he was pulled out of line while the guard wasn't working and had a civilian hat and coat put on him. A brother and sister took him to their home where they lived with their mother. They housed him there, fed him, and gave him books to read for the three months that the town was taken over by the Nazis. When they were finally freed the Nazis took the remaining people from the regimen out into the square and shot them all. If it had not been for that brother and sister who decided to go out and save just one person, he would not have survived.
Her stories were fascinating, we could have listened to her talk forever.
When we finally got to Vyborg around 7 we checked into our hotel, which had free wifi! I was able to call my dad and talk to him, which was crazy! How weird is it that I was sitting in Russia and he was at work and I was able to talk to him like normal.
We had dinner at the hotel, which wasn't particularly needed, but was delicious. We had a mayonnaise based salad with peas and chicken, then a main dish of salmon and potatoes, followed by vanilla ice cream. The Russians love their starches, I have not eaten so many potatoes so many meals in a row.
After dinner we split up from the adults and walked around the town, which wasn't all that exciting, except that we found a grocery store and I bought a movie just because the case was written in Cyrillic. There was a beautiful bay lake that we walked around, it was 10 o'clock at night and the sun was just setting. We eventually ended up back at the hotel. We sat outside and split a bottle of wine. It was not all that expensive, 600 rubles, and it tasted delicious. It was fruity and not too dry. We liked it so much we got another. We sat there and talked, drank wine and watched the sun set. After the second one was finished three of us decided that we needed to do a vodka shot since we were in Russia. We got three shots and one pineapple juice for 480 rubles. This shot was so much better then the one I got at lunch on the first day. It was smooth going down and didn't taste or smell like rubbing alcohol. I now feel satisfied with my Russian vodka experience.
It was starting to get cold out so we moved up to one of our rooms, where we realized that the window opened up to the roof. We ended up sitting on the roof of our hotel, with another bottle of wine, and looking out over the city and up at the stars. It was beautiful. At one point someone started setting off fireworks from the parking lot right below us. It was a very peaceful night.
The next day we went on a walking tour of Vyborg. The guide that was sent to us for the tour did not speak English so our original guide, Alisa, had to translate for us. Because of this is was really difficult to make connections between the information she was telling us because we were getting it in bits and pieces. She would say some later on and it would confuse me because it didn't seem to fit with what I had thought I had been told earlier. It was confusing.
Vyborg was basically just an average small town that happened to have a small castle in the middle of it. Vyborg was one of the first cities in Russia and the town changed hands between Russia, Sweden, and Finland many, many times. At one point Catherine the Great came and told the people of the town that she wanted it rebuilt. Because of her there are many buildings with second stories and different churches. It looked very worn down and lived in. There were a lot of playgrounds and tired looking apartment buildings. There was one church that was very beautiful, it was white and blue with a lovely gold onion dome on the top. I decided to sketch it while we were standing there and now that is one of my favorite things in my journal.
Right after we saw the church we stumbled upon a small market. And by stumbled upon I mean that us kids were bored, saw it, and walked over there. They were selling baskets of all sizes and sweaters, hats and scarfs all woven out of sheep wool. They were very soft and some were excessively furry with long strands hanging off of them everywhere. Other tables were selling nesting dolls and other small items like magnets and pins. Yay pins! They looked military and some looked like they were from the Olympics. I had no idea what any of them were from but I bought three for 100 rubles.
One of the people I was with bought a tiny broom, without a handle, that when put upside-down by the door will keep the peace. But only when it is upside-down.
We went to a large garden called Monrepo, which means My Vacation or Rest. The garden is 189 acres and is protected land, nothing can be built there. The people who developed the park did it with the intention of keeping all of the rocks where they were and just carving out paths around them. While in the garden we sat on a huge rock. That rock was the farthest north that we were while in Vyborg and since Vyborg is north of St. Petersburg we have the honor of traveling the farthest north than anyone else on the voyage. Kind of cool.
I am very thankful that I decided to go on this program. I had really wanted to go to Moscow and was disappointed when it was full but this ended up being a really rewarding experience. I really feel like I have experiences what life in Russia is like instead of just touristy Russia. I like visiting cathedrals and huge museums, but the opportunity to sit down and talk to someone who has lived there their whole life was a special experience.
We got back to the ship around 5:30 and when Chris, who was on the Vyborg trip, and I were sitting in the dining hall at about 6:30 when we decided that we really wanted to go to the Russian Ballet, which we knew was going to be Swan Lake. Almost at the same moment two other guys came by and said that they too wanted to see the Ballet. We had no idea where it was or how much it would be or if we could even get tickets but we decided to go for it. We found Nicole (also from the overnight) who agreed to go too, and we went our separate ways to change, meeting right before the gangway at 7. The ballet started at 8, we had one hour.
It took a while to hail a cab, there were not many on the street right outside the ship, which I found very surprising since I would think they would make good business picking up tourists off the ships. We tried one but he didn't speak any English and so had no idea where we needed to go. Just then I saw another cab and it ended up that it was the same cab driver that Brian had had the night before. He was willing to take 5 people at once and was going to charge us 200 rub a person. We crammed into the cab and made it to the theatre at 6:35.
We found the box office and were feeling very impressed with ourselves when the women put up a sign on the window and turned the people in front of us away. The sign was in Cyrillic but its meaning was clear: no more tickets. With some pushing the woman told us there was a place to buy tickets right outside the theatre on Nevsky Blvd, the main road.
The kiosk was easy to find and we got to the front of the line at 6:50. The tickets ended up being 2090 rubles a piece, which is about 60 US dollars. That was way more expensive then we were expecting but we went for it anyway. By 6:58 the five of us all had our tickets in hand. We literally ran back to the theatre, and made it to our seats in the middle of the overture. We quickly realized why our tickets had been so pricey, we had balcony box seats. First balcony, third from the left. Incredible.
The ballet was perfect, absolutely magical, parts of it gave me goosebumps. It was even more incredible that we had decided to go an hour before it started and had not only made it but had some of the best seats in the house.
Russia surprised me, my hopes had not been high but it turned out to be a fantastic two days filled with learning and experiencing and seeing the freaking Russian ballet in Russia.
I'd say this first port was a success.
