Preparation vs Traveller's Instinct

No matter how many times I fly, I still get butterflies and that flutter of excitement as I walk through the gate to board the plane. Even just looking at the departures board puts a smile on my face - I could go anywhere.

People who know me well won't be surprised to hear that within my first seven hours in Düsseldorf, I managed to find a great little Italian restaurant (the head chef was, of course, Italian) where I could finally satisfy my craving for a big plate of spaghetti ai frutti di mare. It was delicious. To be fair, in a country known for its meat and chips, as a pescatarian, I was left with little choice... It was so good that I went back twice more during my three day trip. (Although the second time I was devastated to find out they take Saturdays off and resorted to calling my mum for consolation.) I did generally find Dusseldorf to be quite a business-orientated, commercial and industrial city, and this was reflected in the architecture, food, bars, and restaurants on offer - not hugely interesting, quite touristy and generally over-priced. A fellow pianist I met there convinced me to be brave the streets of Aldstadt - known as Germany's 'longest' bar - and join him for a beer on Saturday evening. Despite the stag parties and out-of-towners who had popped into town to gorge themselves on cheap beer and cheesy music, standing on the streets surrounded by Europeans (without a hat or scarf!) with 1,50€ beer in my hand reminded me of being on the streets of Porto last summer and brought a huge smile to my face as I remembered how much I love being in Europe.

This didn't last long.

The next day - a Sunday - and it was drizzling as I spent three hours walking around with a bag full of music trying to find an open cafe with wifi, having forgotten that in Europe everything is CLOSED on a Sunday!

[I have been spoilt with the 24-hour Spar on my doorstep and array of 24-hour bars and cafés in St. P.]

Three days of quaintly-coloured houses and excessively clean residential streets and I was ready to move on.... to Vienna. A city where a ticket to the opera (3€) cost me less than my matcha chai latte (3,20€); it really is the capital city of music and I, unexpectedly, fell completely in love. The city is beautiful, not too clean and not too dirty, not too big and not too small. I was aware of the history and culture in the city but I was expected the place to be much more dated and stuck in the past - more similar to historical rich cities I have visited in Italy. The history is without a doubt there yet the place feels very current, dynamic and vibrant. A very fine balance between history, present and future, which is normally hard to get right but felt effortless in Vienna with the mix of charming little cafes, shops, and bars.  Not in the mood to make friends at the hostel, I revelled in taking a few hours each day to just wander around even if, surprise surprise, I did get lost a few times, having to rely on GCSE German to try and find my way back. The fact that most street names don't fit onto one line on the road sign is surely a sign that they are just too long?!

Somewhat on the expensive side for my limited unemployed-self's budget, I ate most of my meals buying food from supermarkets and I was baffled that lots of food shops seemed to open at 7:40am - very specific. I guess they decided that 7:30am was just that little bit too early... and thus I was deprived of my croissant breakfast as I made my way to the airport on the third day for the next stop on my whistle-stop music conservatory tour. Feeling destitute without my croissant, I was faced with the sad truth that public transport wasn't my best friend in this city either - another one to add to my list. The strength needed to open train doors on the metro often resulted in squeezing through the tiny gap on one side I had managed to create or someone taking pity on me and opening them for me and making it look ridiculously easy. The transport issues didn't end there. Round 2 of Alex getting on the metro going in the wrong direction when I was already cutting it fine for my early morning flight to Hamburg resulted in arriving to the airport two minutes before check-in closed... Though without running or even breaking into sweat. All in good time. Actually - I'll give you a tip - it's the most efficient way to travel. You get the best choice of seats if the plane isn't full - a guaranteed full row of seats on every flight. And I went straight through security and straight through the gate. No messing around. Even had time to douse myself in Chanel on the way - a surefire way to make friends on the plane.

In Hamburg, I was depressingly reminded of the English winter I had tried to escape. Wind and Rain. Although this city felt the most down-to-earth and studenty of the places I had been to so far - not only due to the fact that it seemed perfectly acceptable to light up a joint with friends in a bar. Having made it to my 11am meeting, I realised that I had perhaps taken my habit of 'who needs to prepare - I can just follow my gut instinct' one step too far as I had absolutely no idea where my hostel was, no wifi and no map. Three hours of walking around and few pointless metro rides, while desperately hoping my gut traveller's instinct would steer me in the right direction and I managed to find a hotel who found and printed directions to my hostel (4km away - I wasn't even close).

Dancing and chatting with friends into the early hours meant I was still up to see the most beautiful sunrise and so I decided to wander down to the harbour for the fish market to try a local Fischbrötchen and to get a proper view. I sat on the harbour wall eating my fish sandwich while thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of over-enthusiastic fruit sellers trying to bestow their fruit baskets onto unwilling tourists, while other stall holders rushed around trying to save their produce from some unannounced high levels of seawater, consequential flooding and seagulls trying to scrounge anything that just out of their reach.

The spectacular sunrise aside, I admittedly didn't fall in love with the place as I had done in Vienna and the sound of Berlin Calling was too strong to ignore...so I packed my bags and paid the full 8€ for the 3-hour bus ride to Berlin - with a huge grin on my face the entire way.  Despite the excitement of visiting new places, it can also be tiring and difficult and there is nothing like returning to a place that you know and already love.

There is a growing worry that Berlin won't be the same place is it now in a few years times. The unbelievable freedom for self expression and the mix of cultures - facilitated by the relatively cheap cost of living and the sheer amount of space - that you find there is hard to encounter elsewhere. Yet, this has the potential to create a vicious cycle, which means that such a wonderful, enlivening place can also be its own worst enemy. As a place becomes for 'trendy' and popular, more people arrive, prices go up, and, ironically, the base of artistic (and often poorer) people who create the quirky culture and social 'buzz' can no longer afford to live there.

Thinking about this as I walked through the streets of Berlin on my way to meet friends, who had also moved to Berlin a couple years ago for that very reason, I began wondering about where the "energy" or "feeling" of a place comes from. To what extent do preconceptions play a part? Is it the difference between knowing about a place before you arrive and arriving completely blind on a whim? Or is it based on certain characteristics you already look for in any place you visit, regardless of any prior knowledge or understanding? How is it you can feel the energy of the place within a few days of being there? I will always try to give any new place a few days of exploration and open-mindedness and I like arriving without knowing too much in order to form my own impression, although a little bit of history and a quick glance at a map definitely helps to get my bearings. However, I am often quick to judge and I can normally tell pretty soon if it's the right place for me. All of which brings me to the conclusion that it's hugely based on the people. The people who create the way of life, who create the shops, bars, parks, museums, buildings, industry, music and art.

Not one to make life easy for myself, I was constantly on edge keeping an eye out for ticket inspectors on the metro in the hope of saving a few euros so that I could buy more cheese to take back to Russia. Without a local sim card and no way of contacting people I needed to meet, it was slightly frustrating to find that lots of places seemed to have gone against the trend of the last few years by no longer having wifi for customers to use and some places even banning laptops. Shock horror they want people to actually talk to each other...! But with my own set of keys to my friend's apartment, I felt completely at home...even knowing which exit to use getting out of the metro - a undeniable sign of a local.

And before I knew it, with my bag full of cheese and pesto, having got completely carried away in Lidl, I was back to Moscow where I strangely felt warmer than I did in Germany. (They tend to go overboard with indoor heating in Russia). A place where three people are needed to check tickets on a nearly empty train: two to block each end of the carriage while the third checks the tickets - for a train that you can only board by going through ticket barriers anyway. A place where the entrance to the metro is nowhere near the exit so that trying to get back into a station you came out of can be somewhat challenging. A place where people are running everywhere, trying to get as much done as possible, but where you realise you actually spend half your time in (and on) the metro. And finally back to St. Petersburg to find temperatures back to around 0°c, the ice on the canals and rivers starting to melt and our cat lying on my bed awaiting my return.


A xxx

Düsseldorf: the place of alien trees and book fridges

Spaghetti ai frutti di mare

Sunrise on Sunday morning in Hamburg

Flooding issues...

Vienna: the most awful green for a concert hall

Standard parking: kind of found a place, kind of in it...

How to learn Russian: take part in a cake-decorating masterclass.... 

Where is your hat??

I think I might be one of the few people in St. Petersburg thoroughly enjoying and revelling in this Russian winter. Classic first-timer. 

Having left to go home for Christmas when it was still +6˚celsius, coming back to -15˚ was a shock to say the least. However, we are over the worst of the winter and I have also grown to really love the it. I pick sun and cold over dark, tepid and rainy any day. Nothing that a good polo neck and skiing trousers can't fix. On my daily walk (yes, I am turning into a pensioner), I never cease to marvel at how beautiful the city looks with the frozen canals and rivers, and all the dirt and grime of daily life concealed by a fresh coat of snow. While the Russians are experts at getting on with life as planned and not being put off by a few inches of snow (I remember all buses being cancelled the last couple times we had snow in England and everyone using it as a great excuse to have a day off), it does at least slightly slow down the pace of life in the city meaning that my January has been a calm, more agreeable start to the year than the dreary, depressive month I normally have to plod through.

New Year's Eve in Russia is rather a hybrid of Christmas and New Year celebrations we are used to in the UK (and in other countries that celebrate Christmas on 25th December). With Christmas celebrations banned during Soviet Times, New Year was celebrated more in order to compensate. As a result, the hours until 12am tend to be family-time with a big meal and presents, followed by partying and time with friends after the countdown. (Christmas Day itself, officially on 7th January, is a rather more muted affair, if celebrated at all.) Arriving at 7pm on 31st December, I was back just in time to join friends and flatmates for a big meal with secret santa and sparklers before going to see the "salute" of fireworks at 3am (with my friends complaining it didn't feel 'new yearsey' enough because there wasn't enough snow...).

The ten-day holiday that followed (1st-10th January is a national holiday in Russia) was started by two days of watching 'Friends' in Russian (which undeniably counts as studying the language before anyone comments) and was subsequently filled with many cultural activities including a couple of concerts, for which I was lucky enough to blag free tickets. One custom I love about classical music concerts here is for any member of the audience to bring a flowers or a bouquet of flowers for their performer(s) of choice as a token of appreciation. Not leaving it to the concert organisers to present each performer with a standard, flashy bouquet of flowers (that, speaking from experience, was probably bought last-minute in the Waitrose* around the corner), this results in a sweep of various audience members of all ages rushing to the stage at the end of the performance and then the entertainment of watching the performer(s) in question trying to juggle the array of flowers being thrust into their arms while trying to remain as composed and elegant as possible.

I pleased to say that people have stopped constantly asking me why I'm even here in the first place, however, a new question has taken its place: "Where's your hat?" It seems that going outside without a hat during the winter months is one of the most daring things a person can do here during the cold winter months. My new flatmate (from Moscow, 26 years old and first time living away from home) was talking about differences in weather between St. Petersburg and Moscow, and saying how much colder it is in St. Petersburg; "in Moscow I even go out without my hat during the winter!"

Now, I think I will go buy myself a hat.

Lots of love,

Masha (my Russian alter ego) xxx

*a popular, more upmarket supermarket chain in England

He was braver than I was

Life goes on regardless

NYE alla russe

Finally mastered up the courage to try out the ice myself

A contact lens vending machine...
for your contact lens needs, day or night

What happens with a primary school teacher
didn't do that well in english lessons at school...

INSANE water theatre show I went to during my 10 day holiday

Set up for our Friends marathon

Moscow loving.

'Time flies' 
A phrase technically implying that the time passed felt shorter than it actually was and a phrase that, on the plane home for Christmas, I would appropriately use to describe my last three months in St. Petersburg. However, ironically I also feel like I have lived there for years, much longer than three months at least, and so contradictory to saying that the time has 'flown'. (If only my ability to speak Russian reflected having lived there for years…!)  

My decision to stay longer than the originally intended three months has been met with many a confused look and questions of why I even came here in the first place and why on earth I like it so much. What’s not to like about a city with lots to see and do, great people and stunning architecture? Lack of affordable fresh fruit and vegetables along with dirty air meaning I have to wash my hair every other day (much more often than the weekly wash I could get away with in the UK) and tiredness as the result of constant darkness I wouldn't say are top of the list for reasons to stay. My father asked me what I wanted for my first dinner back… a plate of fresh vegetables and salad please. Ideally freshly harvested and put straight onto the plate and maybe a tank of fresh air and some sunlight. On a recent trip to Moscow, I saw sun for the first time in weeks and felt like Christmas had come early. I was running around like a small child all day! In answering these questions, I find myself trying to explain many beautiful elements of Russian culture and characteristics of Russian people which we don’t hear about in Western Europe. The stereotype of the stern-looking Russian has been challenged by the countless generous and very patient people I have met who are always willing to help. Russia's history can be found on every corner and many positives aspects from the Soviet Era, such as culture (art, music, film, theatre) and education, are still very important to the Russian people today. There is also just the feeling of SO MUCH SPACE. Yes, this does mean getting anywhere takes a while (at least 40 mins) and so I spend at least a couple hours a day walking or on public transport. However, you can feel the vastness the place and the vision that Peter the Great had for his city. The seemingly endless buildings that line the Neva (the main river) dotted with points such as The Peter and Paul Fortress really is a sight to behold. 

I felt like a true Russian taking the ‘красная стрела’ (a famous night train) from St. Petersburg to Moscow last week, chatting to two older Russian women while sat on red velvet mattresses, interrupted only when a train steward came to take our breakfast order. I realised I hadn’t been to the capital since I was fourteen years old and honestly, at the time, hadn’t been that impressed with the place. Having been told that Moscow has changed a spectacular amount over for the last few years, I didn’t really know what to expect but I must say it is amazing how differently you view a place eight years later, armed with much more cultural and linguistic awareness as well as much more experience travelling and living in foreign cities. I felt content and at ease as I met my grandfather at the station and we went back to his place for breakfast. It is also possible that seeing sun for the first time in so long might have gone to my head. Seeing the Kremlin, Red Square and other mains sights triggered memories of seeing it as a child (and not having understood the importance of it all!) It was so nice to walk around the historical centre, stunningly decorated in New Year’s lights*, with fresh eyes and I was also finally able to appreciate just how big the city is. With an area nearly twice that of London and a population of 12million+ I am definitely glad I had family and friends to help show me around. The one time I was left to face the metro alone and, of course, I ended up on the wrong line going to the wrong direction. How tourists manage is a mystery to me.

Recent social and industrial developments in Russia aside, a trip to register for my internal passport (Russians need to have an ‘external’ passport and an ‘internal’ passport) meant that I was directed to a derelict building in the middle of a building site which was apparently the ‘official’ office for dealing with my situation. After going up some dodgy, strange-smelling stairs and waiting in a deserted corridor for 45 mins, a woman call me into her office, where a very old computer that kept playing up and piles of papers everywhere meant it took another 30 minutes to process my application. Some things may never change in Moscow...!

A week at home seeing friends and family is giving me much-needed rest and rejuvenation before I face round 2 of celebrations back in St. Petersburg (see * below). 

Lots of love, hugs and kisses (yes I'm feeling generous - it is Christmas after all!)

A xxx

*While Europe celebrates Christmas and New Year's Eve in different capacities, a ban on Christmas festivities in Russia during the Soviet Time meant that New Year's Eve became one 'super' celebration. Presents and a big meal with the family take place on New Year's Eve and after midnights people go out to join their friends to celebrate the New Year until the early hours. Light decorations in the city and 'Christmas' markets are, therefore, all aimed at New Year celebrations as opposed to Christmas celebrations, which take place on 7th January in a smaller capacity.

so much space...

the remains of a soviet style communal kitchen

a very russian spread

on the night train

average amount of traffic in moscow

the run-down building I was directed to to do my passport

Stereotypes.

Through various observations and social interactions during my two months in St. Petersburg, I have started to notice certain characteristics of a typical Russian woman. I understand that a city with a population of at least 5 million, but arguably* closer to 7, it is a sweeping generalisation to say that I can describe the characteristics of of stereotypical 'Russian' woman (maybe it would be at least slightly more correct to say stereotypical 'St. Petersburgian' woman). I would also be prepared to admit that certain notions may have sparked from experiences I had with my own relatives from a young age. However, my past experience of living abroad has often confirmed general stereotypes I already had in mind. It must also be noted that the women to which I'm referring are those from the older generation who lived at least half of the lives in Soviet Russia, a time when people were all were living very similar, and who then went through similar experiences with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 - strongly shaping a whole generation.

Russian woman just seem to fuss. A lot! It's quite a contrast with English people where silence is golden and the general rule is to keep opinions to yourself unless it is absolutely necessary to voice them and to generally not get involved in situations that don't directly involve you. Quietly asking the conductor on the bus (which is full of 90% women who, I might add, never seize to push and charge past with all their strength to be the first on board to get the best seat) the best place to get off for a certain location seems to be an open invitation for at least 5 or 6 other Russian women (all above the age of 60) sat in various parts of the bus to jump in with their opinion, which more often than not contradicts that of the conductor... These conversations then tend to last at least ten minutes - normally until the poor soul who asked manages to escape by getting off at the earliest place suggested. If you're lucky, the conversation even continues afterwards with various mutterings echoing around the bus. It does indeed provide some entertainment when stuck in rush hour traffic.
Overfeeding is also a common one. Visits to see my Godmother usually leave me full for at least three days and a quick stop for a cup of tea turns into a four-course meal, which, of course, just happened to be on standby in the fridge - even after persistently insisting that I had already eaten. I am then also met with a look of pity and concern, asking if I need to have a shower in her apartment seeing as I live in a 'communal' apartment. (I have 5 flatmates but the standard is much higher than the Soviet communal apartments she is imagining.)
A technological advancement that seems to have gone unnoticed by Russian women is that of the missed call function on a mobile phone. My understanding is based on the assumption that if you are not in a place where you can pick up your phone, you will have put your phone on silent and will call back later upon seeing that you have a missed call. I appear to be mistaken. One's mobile phone should be answered at ALL times. Concerts, cinemas - in the middle of films, church services, in the middle of a meal at a restaurant, during a piano lesson... you name it. All phone calls in such circumstances are met with the same reply: "I'm sorry I can't talk now, I'm in [insert location here], I will call you later." My question is: Why not make use of the missed-call function on the phone and simply call back when you can?!

In general, Russian society has a sense of still being a very traditional society in terms of having very strong gender roles and huge focus on the importance of marriage and having a family, before 'time runs out' as it were. Most of my flatmates are over the age of 25 (4/6) and, while they are all single, 90% of their friends whom I've met are married and quite a few have already started families. Using this logic, I would need to meet the man I'm going to marry this year in order to follow suite - a scary thought. When I meet family friends or extended members of the family and they tell me about other people my age they know, the first thing I'm told about them is that they are happily married and whether they have started a family or not. It seems that success for people in their twenties is reflected in having found a husband/wife and with a baby on the way. People seemed concerned if you aren't on your way to achieving that and questions are asked. I find this hard to comprehend coming from a society where people are more concerned if you marry too young, worried that you haven't done enough for yourself (e.g. travelling, studying, working) and have, by getting married so young, given up hope of doing so.

[An interesting linguistic side note: I was surprised and quite shocked to learn that the word 'мужество' (moo-zj-est-va) that means 'courage' contains the stem 'муж' (moozsh) meaning 'husband' and 'мужчина' (moo-zsh-ee-na) meaning 'man'!]

Weirdly, I do find myself in somewhat of a paradox. I also have met a circle of people in their mid-twenties who definitely don't follow this trend. Instead they follow the pattern of drastic and very fast change and development that has taken place and is still very much taking place in Russia. My friend tells me that ten years ago you couldn't even find a cash machine on the street in Russia, while a quick internet search tells me that the first cash machines appeared in the UK in the late sixties. To match the speed with which Russia (at least western Russia) is playing catch up with western society is a generation of energetic and very driven twenty-somethings who are creating their own very successful businesses and adding to a strong culture of enterprising and taking initiative, making for a very fast-paced way of life. While in England, specifically in Bristol, there was also undoubtedly an exciting cultural and artistic energy among young people, a lot of talk wouldn't always necessarily lead to a lot of action. Great ideas wouldn't always be seen through to the end or would take a long time to be carried out and not always to their full potential. I have found that talking about potential projects and ideas with people here will lead to an email the following morning saying that X has contacted Y about Z and can we meet to discuss the best way to get the ball rolling straight away. No hanging around. We had a great idea so let's do it. Now! I am told that in Moscow the pace of life is even faster. You can have ten meetings in a day in various parts of the city (which nearly doubles the area of London) and still have time for dinner and film in the evening!

In other news, dark mornings and grey days are very much upon us. I have finally figured out that it is impossible to get up at 9am when it is still pitch black outside and I understand why my flatmates stay up quite late but also get up late. My day now starts around 10:30am when 'the sun comes up' and my bedtime is usually now around 2:30/3am. This also helps explain why shops are open until 9/10pm pretty much every day and also don't open till 10/11am. I'm told it's the only way to make it through the winter here.

I only this week noticed that Christmas is just around the corner! Throughout the whole of November I was blissfully unaware of the holiday coming up and was lucky not to see a single Christmas decoration or be met by a barricade of trashy Christmas trinkets upon entering a shop. Not that I don't love feeling Christmassy. On the contrary, there's nothing better than hot cocoa, your favourite Christmas film and the fresh, ice cold air that comes with the season but the Christmas songs on replay from the beginning of November in every shop in England does tend to take away some of the magic... At least I've avoided the uproar about the Starbucks christmas cup this year which seemed to have been met with A LOT of disappointment and negativity - I read an article in which someone had twitted that the design was so bad it had 'ruined their Christmas'?! It's the little things that matter, isn't it?

A last note to thank all those who tried to answer my various questions in the previous blog post :-)

Lots of love,

A xxx


*The official figure is around 5.2 million and comes from data of everyone who is officially registered as living in St. Petersburg - all Russian citizens are registered to a certain address and all tourists need visas to the government technically knows exactly how many people are in the country at one time. However, a large number of people are registered in one city and live in another and many people from ex-Soviet republics such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan etc. come as guest workers and aren't always registered, which makes the specific population in a city hard to quantify. I have asked various people and based on the fact that we collectively know about two people who are officially registered here, they are convinced the number is significantly higher.

Sneak peek of my favourite spot to write my blog

Restaurant day; pop-up restaurant in our flat (21/11)

Crossing the Neva

Communal apartment living - I hear being an electrician was good business back in the day

One of the first train stations in Russia (Pavlovsk)

Hips-ta-ta.

Everybody assumes that coming to Russia to learn the language is a walk in the park for me considering I am half-russian and my mother speaks Russian at home. However, we hugely underestimate the percentage of language and cultural references that we automatically learn from school and everyday life outside the home. There are huge gaps in my vocabulary - different kinds of meat, for example, as my parents are vegetarians - and slang of the "younger" generation presents me with words I have definitely never come across before. 'Hips-ta-ta' is a prime example. What does it mean? It means 'hipster'.

However, my flatmates have been more than helpful and trying to catch me up to speed and I can now (at least, kind of) sustain a one-on-one conversation in Russian so I do have some hope of making friends. At least I might then be able to ask some of the burning questions on my mind that have sprung up from various cultural differences I have noticed.

The metro here is quite different to the tube in London. Firstly it is very, very far underground because Peter the Great decided to build his city on a swamp, and so the metro needed to be built with the slightest chance that it might not sink. After your five minute journey on the escalator down to the metro you normally arrive in a wide, very open hall with options of going to the platform on the right or left hand side, depending on which direction you need to go in. In this hall (note - not on the platforms) are benches placed all along the walls and without fail they are always many people sat chatting with friends, reading books or sat having a cup of tea. My question is WHY? The trains are unbelievably frequent - I don't think I've ever waited more than one min for a train to arrive - and I can think of nicer places to sit and read with a cup of tea. Or maybe the excitement of a train arriving and disposing of load of people who rush past in a race to be the first up the escalator creates an adrenaline rush for some that I simply cannot understand.

Also metro related; at the bottom of every escalator is a woman (normally mid 40's/50's) sat in a cramped glass box, looking like she would be anywhere else but there, surrounded by a couple screens displaying images of the escalators she is already sitting next to. WHY? What is her purpose? WHAT was in her job description? I have never seen them leave this mysterious box or even stand up from the chair they are sitting in.

Unsurprisingly, many of the films shown in cinemas here are not originally Russian films. Normally, when showing a film to a foreign audience, you have two options here: keeping the film in the original language and adding subtitles or dubbing (re-recording the actors' voices in the foreign language). Russians have managed to come up with a third option. Nor does it involve adding subtitles or really dubbing (in the sense of the word) but instead they have decided to simply add another voice (the same one for the entirety of the film) that translates what is being said over the top of the film a couple seconds after the actor on screen. I call it on-screen, pre-recorded, cinematic interpretation. Surely this isn't the solution? It just makes for rather superficial, detached viewing of some very beautiful, touching films.
A nice thing about many cinemas here, however, is allocated seating. The earlier you buy your tickets, the better seats you have (you can choose them or leave it in the capable hands of the cashier) thus eliminating the worry of arriving late and leaving with a sore neck from being stuck on the front row and having to crane your head upwards.

In the world of Russian gastronomy, entire sections of the dairy aisle are dedicated to an ingredient called 'творог' (pronounced: tvaw-rug), which people generally translate as 'cottage cheese', although I would say the cottage cheese we know (in England and in Canada) is closer to a lumpy yogurt than the slightly moist, crumbly, dairy product sold in the shops here. Coming from a culture where we are taught to limit dairy intake, I find it hard to understand the obsession with it here. My flatmates swear by it and one will often eat a big bowl full after going to the gym, claiming that it's packed full of protein.
Having witnessed two elderly Russian woman arguing over the best brand to buy, I followed suite and purchased an elegant, little package found on the bottom section of the творог section. I was confused, yet intrigued. Is it cheese? Is it chocolate? Is it cream? Is it sweet or is it savoury? I made myself a cup of tea and slowly unwrapped the silver foil. What was it? I hear you ask. I STILL DON'T KNOW. It was basically like soft cheese  - similar in texture to what I imagine Philadelphia and Wensleydale if they were mixed together - which is ever-so-slightly sweet and encased in a thin layer of slightly darkened chocolate. My flatmates rage about it - "you can only find it in Russia! it's so great"... Make of it what you will.

Carrying on with the food theme (might as well as I'm sat writing this in one of the best cafe/restaurants in this city - Café Zoom...a bug problem in our flat meant I have to be out of the house for a few hours while the man does his thing so I thought I would treat myself), I find it interesting that restaurants here feel the need to not only have the prices listed in the menu but also the portions sizes (in grams) so you really can calculate value for money. Once you roughly know what 200g of boiled potatoes look like, you can efficiently order enough that will fill you up without having any left over and therefore also means you don't endure the stressful time between ordering and receiving the food wondering if you should have got that extra side of chips.
Another great restaurant-related trend here is the 'столовая' (sta-law-va-ya), which essentially takes your typical school/university canteen, improves the quality of the food somewhat slightly and offers a quick and very cheap way of getting a hot meal at basically any time of day. With a bowl of soup or salad for the equivalent of 35p (72¢ - at today's rates for my Canadian readers) and an entire meal for £1.50, it doesn't cost much more than making it yourself at home. That's assuming that your Russian is good enough to understand what everything is...I'm still making my way out of the pointing and grunting stage.

Over the past six weeks I have probably been to more operas/concerts than my whole three years at Bristol. If you know what to say, concerts can be incredibly cheap for students - a friend of a friend went to buy tickets during the day and, having pleaded with the woman at the box office saying he was a very poor student, he managed to get 4 tickets for the grand total of 200 roubles (£2). (I don't know how much the full-priced tickets were but I would hazard a guess at around 1000 roubles).

Going to all these concerts has only confirmed that while St. Petersburg is very culturally active and forward-thinking, I find that music practice here is still very (overly) traditionally and conservatively taught. As a result, unfortunately the jazz concerts I have been to have left me far from inspired by the musicians who are too concerned about taking their eyes off the page, playing a wrong note or - God forbid - cracking a smile.

I admit, it is maybe a slight exaggeration and maybe I have been spoilt by Thursday evenings at the Gallimaufry in Bristol where the saxophonist plays every note like his life depends on it. The 'jazz' musicians here are definitely technically very able but they just didn't seem to have understand the kind of music they were playing and how it needs to be played... The sheet music is a guide but then you should make it your own and just play from the heart.  The classical music, on the other hand, they can definitely play. When I think of names such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky who all also studied at the same conservatory, whose walls I now grace with my presence, a mixture of fear and excitement manifests itself inside my body... I have a lot to live up to. I'd better get cracking.

Lots of love,

A xx

This is why I love Café Zoom 

Is it sweet? Is it savoury? Who knows.

хачапури и вино (khachapuri and grenadine) wine with flatmates and classmates

My flatmate runs cooking classes.
She needs to try out her food at home first.
I don't complain.

Buckets and buckets of vodka.

My mum called me today.

"Hello?"
"It's winter."

I mean...if you're own mother doesn't call you to tell you that winter has arrived then who will?

Yes. October has only just started and snow is predicted for tomorrow because I'm in St. Petersburg. And I've got nothing but long, cold dark nights and days ahead of me. So 'A Russian Abroad' has finally arrived to Russia - I guess it's technically just 'A Russian' for now.

I have been here for a grand total of ten days - though it feels like much longer - and I'm slowly adjusting to the way of life. I maybe naïvely thought it would be easier this time, having done it twice before (in Italy and France), but I hugely underestimated the base of linguistic knowledge I had with those countries and the much smaller size of the cities I had moved to.

With a population of over 5 million people, the city is a lot bigger and also more grand and majestic then I expected. The few descriptions I read online prior to my arrival painted it out to be a sweet, quaint, architecturally-beautiful Paris of North-Eastern Europe but it feels much more rich and substantial than that description implies. Within the first hour of arriving, I was driven around on a quick tour of the main attractions and landmarks in St. Petersburg as well as being shown my mum's primary school and the outside of the apartment where she lived as a child during the Soviet Union. It is a part of my family history that had always seemed very distant so finally being able to come and see it for myself connected a thread that I hadn't realised was loose.

The first 24 hours in 'Piter' (as the locals call it) included seeing an opera at the renowned Mariinsky Theatre - a friend of a friend having offered us tickets 15 mins before the show started - and going to a film set to see director Алексей Учитель (Alexei Uchitel) filming a scene for his new film of the incarnation of Tsar Nikolas II on a set which was the most incredible replica of the 'Dormition Cathedral' in the Kremlin in Moscow. (They weren't allowed to film in the church itself). At some point I found myself helping dress the well-known actress Nastassja Kinski (though admittedly I hadn't heard of her...maybe it's a generation thing) in her costume, having run around the warehouse twice trying to figure out which entrance she was coming into. Her costume was the most spectacular creation of Nadya Vassilieva who had also designed and produced exact replicas of military and traditional dress for the actors and extras to wear during the filming. My phone told me it was 2015 and yet I found myself in 1894. The evening also included a reception for potential distributers where guests were greeted with people in military uniforms ladling vodka from silver buckets into guests' beckoning glasses. Snacks were served before going to see the filming and on returning for dinner, the tables had been covered in 50ml shot glasses full of vodka in case we hadn't had enough before and needed help getting through dinner. Hello Russia.

In the first few days I rather surprisingly found myself often making comparisons with my experience in China last summer. I had the same feeling of an eastern, previously-communist society (I know China is technically still communist but the inequality and capitalism present there suggests otherwise) developing and expanding on a big scale to match a high population with huge western influences. Big shopping malls similar in style to those I saw in China highlighting western products with considerably higher price tags. However, over the last few days I have realised that the blatant inequality stemming from a surge of "new" money was much more noticeable in China then it is here - although I have heard that it is a different story in Moscow.

And so summer is well and truly over. I'm juggling two hours of Russian lessons a day as well as lessons at the St. Petersburg Music Conservatory - basically trying to make sense of the ramblings and passionate outbursts of my piano teacher, Ekaterina Murina, who has been teaching at the conservatory since 1964 (!!) and is very very "Russian".

For now though, unfortunately my Russian homework really won't wait any longer...more in my next post I promise - if I can sustain a conversation in Russian for more than 60 seconds you will be the first to know.

До скорого,

xxx

Panorama of Mariinsky Theatre

Opera no. 1

Welcome.

When in Russia...

The dress.

The director speaking to distributors. 

The set

Mariinksy before opera no. 2

Berlino - why we NEED to travel.

I've just learnt that France is also known as L'Hexagone. Why? If you connect its furthest points together they make the shape of a hexagon... You really do learn something new every day.

It's 3am and I'm half-way through an essay about the reasons for the fall in the birthrate in Italy which is asking me to relate to my own experiences in the country. Stuck for inspiration (surprise surprise - the Italian department is known for often providing inspiring essay topics such as whether or not a pope should be allowed to go on big brother), I decided to look over my blog posts of what is now a distant experience in order to try and trigger a sudden 600-word surge of genius.

And here we are. I've now re-read the majority of my blog posts, corrected a couple typos and decided I need to write at least a monthly post. Not ideal timing considering an unbelievable amount of deadlines and exams looming which now feel like the be all and end all but which, undoubtedly, in a couple years times will feel as distant as the butterflies I felt when embarking on my Erasmus adventure.

For lack of recent adventures to talk about (unless you count an exciting weekend away in Leicester) I must resort to talking about thinking about past adventures - but fear not...fingers crossed I will find myself in Berlin and Cologne in a few weeks time so the next blog post will actually be about a Russian abroad.

I did come to my senses and get to back work after this brief transgression so I'm now finishing writing this post while on the 7 hour bus ride from Berlin to Cologne.

I recently read an article on The Guardian online entitled 'Why we travel'. Following a relatively recent trend in travel articles highlighting the importance of experiencing other cultures and societies, it highlighted a couple aspects of traveling which I had never thought of before. Although we already know the growing importance of multi-cultural understanding, what this means practicality is less often noted. It creates an invaluable open-mindedness; an open-mindedness to ambiguities and multiple meanings actions and objects can have. This in turn all comes down to a change in the way we think.

Jonah Lehrer (the writer) interestingly points out our 'basic human desire' to travel as a migratory species. It seems that the importance does not lie in our final destination or the type of holiday we opt for but the mere fact of putting distance between ourselves and where we live. He elaborates on this idea by explaining a change in the way we think about things to seem further away. Further away from the problem and we can think further outside the box and our imagination is less constricted by the confines by associations which surround us in a familiar environment. Especially useful when solving particular problems, this also allows to exercise our brains in a different way meaning we return with a refreshed cognition and less restricted imagination. He comments that, ironically, though people go on holiday to 'escape' troubles and stresses at home, they should actually be using the distance to focus on them, taking advantage of the change in our thinking process that we experience.

Relating to this more personally (and from an artistic point of view), I do undoubtedly become mentally stuck when I've stayed in one place for an over-extended period of time. This does not mean I'm one to go swanning off on city breaks and beach holidays at every opportunity - even an overnight trip to Birmingham would do the trick - but it does mean a constant need for varying stimuli in my surrounding environment. Even after a few days in Berlin I have found a whole new array of sources of inspiration musically and feel a renewed sense of energy, motivation and determination.

I would say that coming to Berlin was a particularly challenging experience given that I haven't been to a country where I don't actually speak the language (apart from vague remnants from GCSE) in a while and I've only been to Germany once as a child so it's a culture and society relatively foreign to me. I weirdly felt slightly nervous trying to find the train which would take me from the airport into the city, although I do appreciate that nearly everyone speaks English to some degree so is was by no means the same feeling as arriving in China on my own last year! The main aspect for me is figuring out the new way that people relate to each other - every society is different and I would never want to comes across as rude or ignorant.

Though I was only there for three whole days with lots of university work and a couple administrative things to do in Berlin, I was still hugely touched by the sense of need for creativity and openness - a quality that Berlin is known for and attracts thousands of twenty-somethings to the city every year. While Bristol is arguably the most culturally stimulating and progressive british city I still find it, at times, slightly conservative in terms of a certain style of being culturally progressive being the one deemed to be the most interesting one. The 'berliners' seem much more open-minded and it really is a case of anything goes. Yet, this doesn't necessarily mean actual talent is sacrificed. The concentration of musical talent is extraordinary and the willingness to collaborate with fellow musicians in order to develop as a musician individually is strongly rooted in the culture. Sundays at Mauerpark was a wonderful experience with countless buskers sharing a variety of music. Friends were explaining how musicians will get there at 7 in order to secure the best busking spot for the day and sums in the region of 400 - 500 € can be earned in just one day!

I found it interesting that a capital city of such a prosperous country is actually one of the cheaper places to live in Germany and also isn't a city that would immediately come to mind when thinking about the most beautiful cities in Europe. The most characteristic element of Berlin's skyline is a tower similar to the radio tower in Shanghai. The beauty reveals itself in a different form and much closer to the ground in the art and music which lines the streets and fill the buildings of the city. East side gallery and multiple legal and illegal graffiti spots accompanied by people bringing amps, microphones and guitars with them for an afternoon in the park depicts a less commonly found beauty. It will be interesting to see how Cologne, the 4th largest city in Berlin, compares...

Vielen Dank for reading,

xx

'French Dom' 

Obligatory Brandenburg Gate Picture

East Side Gallery

Music in the park