A Russian Abroad: conservatory

For some reason, the colder and darker it gets the less frequent the buses are. Thankfully, the weather is being kind and it hasn’t gotten too cold...yet. Hovering above zero degrees with blue skies, even if we did have an afternoon sprinkle of snow the other day, it's pretty warm for November so I can’t complain.

With it being a bank holiday yesterday and today and lectures being cancelled, I have been able to spend the evening writing this sat in the window of a nearby cafe. (I still spent the day at the piano, don't you worry.) I found myself reflecting on the name of yesterday’s national holiday - The Day of National Unity. A holiday that was celebrated up until the 1917 revolution and again from 2005. I have found myself wondering about the importance of a country having such a holiday. As far as I am aware, there is no equivalent in England - if anything St. Patrick’s day is ironically more unifying there than anything else - whereas, in Canada, I would say that Canada Day is the day that really brings the nation together - this year I felt well and truly unified as I sang the Canadian national anthem dressed in red and white in a country music bar on the west coast. However, to an extent, in a country that is often misunderstood and misrepresented, and where the majority of the population tend to feel alienated from ‘progressive’ Europe, a holiday of national unity might be just what the people need. I would say that England could definitely do with one given the current situation there. It’s not a question of being patriotic or not, and it’s not a question of unifying against anything else. It’s purely the idea of respect for each other - seeing that we are not that different from one another. Respect for cultural traits you share and a common origin and history that defines many parts of the way a nation lives.

One the funnest - please take this slightly sarcastically - things about living here and being the only English person (and one of only a few Europeans) studying at Academy is that people seem to find me curiously fascinating… not because I’m particularly interesting but more in a stranger/alien-kind of way. People always seem to have a favourite question to ask me, from “Why are you here? We want to go to Europe and you’ve decided to come here and stay, why?” when I first arrived, to asking why my "rubbish” is washed and separated, leading on to “Why do you recycle?”. From “How do you live without meat? What do you eat?” [I recently created a new Instagram account - in Russian - to deal with this one], and the classic “Why do you drink your tea with milk?” to asking if everyone in England talks like they do in Peaky Blinders and how I describe Russia to my friends when I go back.

Oddly enough, the new favourite stems from COMPLETE confusion about my having a double-barrelled first name. It seems to cause so many issues, which is especially bizarre considering I have been studying with the same people for two years now… why have they only started questioning this now? My favourite is “Why did your mum call you that?” - if anyone can come up with a brilliantly witty reply to this question (baring in mind the less subtle Russian humour) there are tickets to my first solo concert up for grabs. [No set date for this as of yet, but some time in future I can assure you.]

Russian names do have a fairly standard format that, for reasons as of yet unbeknown to me, no one seems to deviate from; you have your first name, your patronymic name and your surname. Whereas in the UK and in Canada* the number of middle names is limitless with the standard being around 1 or 2, I have yet to meet a Russian that has a middle name in addition to their patronymic name. In my case, as names are shortened with people younger than you or people you are familiar with, the confusion then comes from people not knowing whether to called me Sasha (from Alexandra) or Masha (from Maria). The variations of Sasha, Masha, Sashamasha, Mashasasha, Alexandramasha (I could go on) that I get are endless.

The beauty of this shortening of names means that are several variations on someone’s name that can be used in different situations to show various degrees of formality, informality, affection and/or annoyance. Informally, Maria can become Masha, Mashka, Mashenka, Maryusa; Ekaterina becomes Katya, Katyusha, Katka. Then you have the ones that I find quite baffling, which are not shorter than the original or, for that matter, very similar to the original such as Vladimir - Volodia, or Natalia - Natasha. However, go for formality and things become much trickier. The confusion for me really starts in having to remember two names for everyone, and then making sure I get them the right way around. When I first moved, I could never remember if my piano teacher was Vladimir Pavlovich or Pavel Vladimirovich. Was my Head of Department Sergei Evgeniovich or Evgeni Sergeevich? What was really rather amusing for my fellow classmates was a source of constant stress and worry and add to that the issue of pronunciation - try saying Tatiana Anatolievna or Aleksandr Artemovich in a Russian accent in a hurry. This way of addressing any one older than you or to whom you would need to show respect means that you can guarantee that you're dealing with a name of at least 5 syllables from the get-go. A far cry from the monosyllabic Daves, Bob's, James's, or John's of yesteryear. Although Bob Bobobvich does has a certain ring to it.

Lots of love from,

Sashamashaalexsamashka xxx

*I cannot speak for other countries but will very willingly take comments on board and make any necessary additions.

beautiful tactics by the Mosfilm Film Studio
to avoiding a parking ticket

beautiful autumn (before they cleaned the leaves up..
workers get paid by the bag to clean up leaves!
Unfortunately, it's an ongoing battle...)

beautiful embassy of Brazil
around the corner from academy

beautiful organ in one of the main
(and my favourite) concert halls in Moscow;
where I somehow managed to convince
the administrator to give me a free ticket for a
6th row seat to a sold-out concert..

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