Russia

Got back from Russia last week...fun trip. I went there with two of my German roommates, Daniel and Alex, another German that lives in my complex, Johannes, and a Dutch exchange student, Julius. We spent the first 3 days in Moscow. Moscow is huge, estimated to have around 12 million people...their subway system was crazy and had 12 different colored lines (Stockholm only has 3)! As you can expect with so many people, the pollution was pretty terrible. I've never seen cars covered in such thick layers of gray/brown dust...it really makes you wonder what your lungs would look like after living there your whole life. Our hostel was really nice and run by this 50-something pony-tailed guy from Carson City, Nevada...always interesting running into Americans. We of course saw the Kremlin, Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral (colorful onion dome church everyone should recognize), and Lenin's tomb. Seeing Lenin's tomb and embalmed body was pretty bizarre...he's been preserved and on public display since 1924 (against is own adamant wishes to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg). Before the fall of the USSR, the chemical process used to preserve his body was a highly guarded secret, but now we know that he's washed and moisturized on a daily basis, and receives a chemical bath every 18 months (my guide book says you yourself can recieve the same treatment, for a mear $1 million!). Anyways the body looked really small and almost waxy (sorry, no pics allowed inside), but I suppose in pretty good shape considering it's been 85 years since his death. Moscow is also known for its elaborate subway stations and we did our own little tour of the big ones...they are all quite ornate, most of them including images of happy communists farmers, Lenin, victorious battles, etc. And on our last night we went to the circus! I can only remember going to see Barnum & Bailey's once when I was little, so it was really cool for me to see. Moscow is apparently famous for its circus...the one we saw was all on ice skates with really neat costumes, trapeze stuff, seals, etc. (again sorry, no pics allowed inside).

Then we headed to St. Petersburg for the last 2 days. We took an overnight train that left Moscow at about 1 am and arrived in St. Petersburg a little before 10 am. We took 3rd (lowest) class - open cars crammed with beds - hoping for a little adventure, or atleast some drunk Russians, but sadly almost everyone went to bed immediately. We brought a little beer with us and had another in the restaraunt on the train, then headed to bed ourselves. St. Petersburg itself is a really beautiful city. It's got rivers and canals that run through it, reminding me a bit of Stockholm with so much water around. At 4.6 million residents, it's also much smaller than Moscow and had a much more European feel. St. Petersburg's founder, Peter the Great, was interested in European culture and modernizing Russia, hiring architects from western Europe help build it. A funny side note about Peter the Great: after traveling through western Europe and noticing that beards had grown out of fashion, he ordered men in Russia to shave their beards and even created a tax on beards in 1705. Anyways, we of course went to the Hermitage Museum and spent a few hours inside. It was really impressive...it used to be the winter palace of Peter the Great and is now one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world (has largest collection of paintings)...it was HUGE! We also walked around the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original fortified city of St. Petersburg. Other than that, we did a lot of walking around and enjoying the city and water views, went in a couple of cool churches, etc.

It was pretty interesting traveling through Russia as almost no one speaks English and there are very few signs with English. In Moscow, outside of our hostel, we didn't encounter anyone that spoke even one word of English, but St. Petersburg was a tiny bit more English-friendly and had a few more English signs. It was really difficult to see a totally foreign alphabet (Cyrillic) and try to remember any words or match sounds with letters. I learned the difficulties of different alphabets a bit from Greece, but there I was at least a bit familiar with the Greek alphabet from all my years of math class!

It also makes for quite a different trip traveling with all guys...they all need at leats 10 hours of sleep a night and I think noon was the earliest we managed to leave the hostel. We also had to stop and eat very often (and certainly not the healthy choices) to satisfy their hunger...but in their defense, they are big boys, 3 of them being over 6'5". Mealtimes were actually quite frustrating for me, mostly because Germans as a whole are extremely critical (they'll tell you that they are the least satisfied people in the whole world), and if the food wasn't bad then it was too expensive or wasn't enough or it took too long to get or the service was terrible. I would never travel to another country and expect to have the same kind of food I eat at home, in the same portion size, and at the same prices, with the same level of service, so all the complaining was quite a mood downer for me, but I guess it can all be chalked up to cultural differences.

Interestingly enough, less than a week after we took the train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, there was a bomb planted that resulted in 26 people dead and many more injured. While it was the day train (we took the night train), the news was quite shocking. It's thought to be a terrorist attack carried about by the "Caucasian Mujahadeen", the Islamic insurgency in North Caucasus. Another sad day for religion and humanity as a whole; maybe some day people will learn that killing innocent people can never be justified nor used as a means to power.

I was supposed to leave 2 days after getting back from Russia to go to Krakow, Poland for 5 days, but decided to stay home instead. I would have had 1.5 days of rest between Russia and Poland and then just 2 days before Kiruna and then exams right after coming home from there. So I sacrificed the $46 my round trip flight cost in order to not spend my entire last month away from Stockholm and catch up on some schoolwork.

Other than that, the weather in Stockholm has been shit. Everyone keeps saying that this was an unusually bad November, but that November is always the worst month. We only had 17.5 hours of sunlight for the entire month...quite depressing...combined with nearly constant rain or drizzle. On the few days where the sun peaked its head out, I swear the whole city was outside, faces pointed up to the sky with eyes closed and this content grin. Today we had a couple of hours of sun and I went for a nice run on my favorite trail that runs along the water through pretty trees. It also got significantly colder today, in the low 20s, and for the first time the ground was covered in frost and glistening white...it looked like some sprinkled white sparkles all over the ground!

Well I'm off to Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, on Friday. It should be very cold and I'll get to see plenty of snow. We're even going dogsledding and will hopefully get a glimpse of the northern lights!

Russia pics here

Athens Marathon

Well I completed the marathon, and it feels great to be done with it! As you probably already know, it was original course run from the town of Marathon to Athens. According to legend, a Greek soldier named Pheidippides was sent to run to the 42.195 km (26.219 miles) to Athens to proclaim the Greek victory over Persians in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC; he declared "Nenikekamen!" ("we were victorious!") upon arrival, afterwhich he oh-so-dramatically collapsed and died from exhaustion. Luckily for me, I didn't die...although I'm sure Pheidi was running quite a bit faster than me, and not on a paved road, and not wearing modern running shoes! But how crazy to run the course exactly 2500 years later?!

It was pouring down rain for the couple hours before the race, which was pretty miserable to be waiting in, not to mention it meant running the whole thing with wet, soggy feet. There was a light rain through maybe half of the race, but by the end the sun started shining. My perception of the race is significantly more pleasant a week removed from it, but at the time I recall it not being very fun. But it did feel really neat to be a part of it, and the whole time I was running I kept trying to motivate myself by saying "Kathryn, you are in GREECE, running the ORIGINAL marathon course, this is a once in a lifetime experience so you better keep your ass MOVING and try and make the most of it!" The route was actually not was pretty as you'd think, aside from some mountains...but let's be honest, mountains get really old after 26 miles. The course was also a lot hillier than I expected...I could have sworn I looked at the elevation map and saw that the highest grade was 2%...completely false...~km 12 to 31 were filled with hills and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were at a 20% incline. I pretty much went into the race with no idea of what to expect after all my shin problems and the fact that the longest I'd run was 12 miles a whopping 7 weeks prior. I really had no idea how my body would handle it, but I sort of had a finish time of 5 hours in my head as a goal. Not surprisingly I had to do some walking and my final time was 5 hours, 21 minutes, and 50 seconds...so not too far off. Surprisingly my shins didn't hurt at all. However, around the 12 km mark I started having some pain where the top of my hamstring connects with my butt muscle, and by the 25 km mark it was pretty bad to the point that I was mostly walking with spurts of a retarded one-legged running. So the middle part of my race (also coinciding with all the hills) consisted of quite a bit of walking. Towards the end of the race I started feeling quite a bit better and was able to get back into a more normal running pace, not sure what pumped me up...I suppose just the adrenaline of running into Athens and knowing it wasn't almost over. I actually did enjoy running the last 11 km, slightly downhill (I was SO excited once the hills were over) into Athens. The race finish was really neat - getting to run into the Panathinaiko Stadium, the white marble stadium built in 329 BC which held the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896 as well as the 2004 Olympics. Of course afterwards I felt like shit and my legs were completely dead. But after lots of water, gatorade, food, a hot shower, and a nap, I felt pretty okay. I was pretty sore for the next 2 days, but I had expected that. My time/pace results:

Kyle and Eleanor (both from UT) and Alex (a fellow KTH exchange student from Australia) also ran it and they did awesome! Their times were approximately 4:03, 4:31, and 4:06, respectively. It was Kyle's 2nd marathon and El and Alex's first marathons. It was really cool to experience it with friends and I ran with them for the first 8 or so km.

Other than the marathon, Athens was pretty cool. Athens itself is pretty huge, crowded, and dirty (actually reminded me a bit of Mexico), but it was a nice change of scenery from Stockholm. The area our hostel was in was pretty happenin', and I even got to see some prostitutes and people shooting up heroine in the middle of street. But of course it was really fascinating to see landmarks like the Parthenon that are so old; it completely blows my mind trying to comprehend all the time and history that have passed and it really puts your teeny-tiney life into perspective. The 2.5 days before the race we did some sight-seeing (Acropolis, etc.), but tried to limit our walking the day before in order to rest our legs. Then we spent the day after the marathon relaxing at the beach...it was the perfect last day for the trip and such a treat to be soaking up sun and warm weather (~75degF) before going back to cold and dark Stockholm. Oh yeah, and I love Greek food, although I already knew that!

Headed to Russia on Thursday...can't wait! In the meantime, I'll be trying to catch up/get ahead with school work.

Check out my Athens pictures here!