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