My Favorite Lunch and Other Things

I think I've mentioned a few different times on my blog that I really like Georgian food. Unfortunately, Georgian food isn't something we get a lot of back in the USA, but there is plenty of it here. One of the best (reasonably priced) Georgian places in St. Petersburg, Хачапурная (Khachapurnaya) happens to have a location a short two-minute walk from the office where I work. At least once a week, and sometimes much more, you can find me there eating lunch.

This is my favorite lunch.

Let's get a close-up of the key part.

That, friends, is khachapuri po-adjarskiy, and is perhaps one of the most delicious, and deadly, things that I have ever eaten. It is a bread-boat kind of thing, filled with cheese, an egg on top, cooked in the oven, with a little butter melting on top for good measure. Yum. I could easily eat one of these everyday. But I don't, because I value the work that my heart does for me. Most khachapuri is a kind of flat bread filled with cheese, that is baked and served hot and melty. Also delicious. The other dish in the first picture is a kind of spicy beef stew, with tomatoes and onions. Don't you want to come eat lunch with me? I realize this doesn't seem like super summery food, but the weather in St. Petersburg also hasn't been super summery. And when something is super delicious, sometimes it doesn't matter what the weather is. If it's hot out, I replace the stew with something more appropriate.

This is another church that I happened upon after work the other day while on my way to Institute class.

I've been really enjoying going to Institute classes, now that I know they exist. It's been fun to meet some of the Church members here that are around my age, and gives me a lot of opportunities to speak Russian and interact with people in an informal setting. I love the network that the Church provides, wherever I happen to be. Instant friends. Fantastic.

In addition to the new people I've met, I've run into some old friends to.

This is me with Julia Sokolova. She is from Ufa, Russia, but moved to St. Petersburg about six months ago. She was a missionary in Lithuania at the same time as me, so it has been fun to see her again.

As an added bonus the Institute building has a pool table and ping pong.

Valaam

This is going to be a big entry, so prepare yourself. There are going to be lots of pictures, though, so it shouldn't be too difficult to get through.

Valaam is a small archipelago of islands, located here. I read about Valaam a couple months before leaving for Russia and determined that this was one place I was definitely going to visit. The archipelago has about 50 islands, and since the 14th century (some claim the 10th century) has been the home to a monastery. There is a central monastery complex, around which there is a small village where the non-monastic inhabitants of Valaam (about 300) live. Scattered around the rest of the islands are small chapels, hermitages, and sketes (a small monastic settlement). Judging by the varying sizes of the different sketes, I would guess that they hold between 3 and 20 monks, while the main complex could hold many more. There are currently about 200 monks living on the islands around Valaam.

I tried to figure out the best way to get up there, and in the end it seemed like it might not be feasible for me to do without going on an organized trip. I had a hard time discovering any information about boats that went to the islands that were not run by a private cruise company, so in the end I booked a trip with Русские Круизы (Russian Cruises). As it turned out, this is not a common thing for foreigners to do. I was the only non-Russian on the boat, and when I talked to one of the employees she said she had never had another American, and rarely any foreigners. I guess they have longer trips that most foreigners do that stop at Valaam on the way somewhere else. There are week long trips that go from St. Petersburg all the way to Moscow, stopping at various towns and sites along the way. Those trips looked pretty awesome.

We left Friday night at 9:00 pm from the St. Petersburg River Terminal on the Святая Русь.

Me, at the beginning of the trip

I had decided I couldn't afford to splurge for a nicer cabin, so I was down in the very bottom of the boat, sharing a small space with three other people. When I got there there was a lone middle-aged woman in the compartment. She was from Khabarovsk, which is a city way over on the eastern edge or Russia, right on the border with China. She was very nice, so I thought maybe our room wouldn't be so bad. Pretty soon after me our other two roommates arrived, Pavel and Roman, two 22 year-olds who had just finished college and brought a huge case of beer. They were on the trip with a bunch of their friends. It's still not clear why they decided to go to Valaam, as they hardly got off the boat at all on the islands and didn't go on any excursions. It seemed like they had a fantastic time anyway. For me and my other roommate they alternated between being hilarious and infuriating. Ultimately they became exhausting, but contributed a lot to my fame on the boat. By the time we got back to St. Petersburg everyone seemed to know that there was an American on the boat called Tomas (everyone here really struggles with my first name). I was stopped by a lot of people, especially 22 year-old guys, that wanted to hang out and speak English. "Hey, Tomas, you from America, right?" I heard that a lot. It was actually pretty fun.

One of the things that I thought was especially great, was that when we pulled out of port, both leaving St. Petersburg for Valaam and leaving Valaam for St. Petersburg, they played very cheesy, sentimental orchestral music over the intercom. There was something kind of awesome (funny) about standing on the deck, listening to the sentimental music, and watching the scenery go by. It definitely felt like they were working hard to create a mood.

On Friday night, about a half hour after leaving the port, we entered a thunderstorm. The sky was so black! It was kind of cool to watch it roll up and to see the line where the storm began.

This did put a damper on my deck-sitting, though, so I went inside to the "reading room" and spent the evening with my book. Pavel managed to get exceptionally drunk that night, and didn't sleep at all, but came into the cabin talking loudly every thirty minutes or so. "Tomas, you go walk with me?" It didn't matter how many times I told him I wanted to sleep and that I didn't drink, he kept coming back to ask. Also, at some point Pavel managed to disappear with the stash of water I had brought for the trip. I managed to feel very well rested in the morning, though, and about the time I was getting up (8:00), Pavel came in and went to bed.

Another quick side-note. I'm amazed at how comfortable Russians are scantily clad around other people. Roman had no problem stripping down to his tighty-whities and hanging around the cabin talking to a 50 year-old woman. She, on the other hand, had no problem sleeping NAKED(!!!) in a tiny cabin with three 20-something year-old males. While she took pains not to expose herself, it was still weird. She always asked us to turn around so she could take her bra and underwear off, or put them back on in the morning.

When I went out in the morning it was foggy, so I wasn't able to get a good look at the lake, but Lake Ladoga is about 200 km long and 80 km wide, so probably all I would have seen is water.

There was actually something kind of cool about the fog. About the time I was finishing my breakfast of some kind of porridge with butter in it, we were able to begin seeing the islands.

We pulled into port and began our activities. My first excursion was to the main monastery complex. To get there, those of us heading that direction boarded a pontoon boat that took us from where our ship was docked. The view around the islands was beautiful. Every once in a while a steeple would stick up above the trees or I would catch site of a stone cross erected on the shore.

The view as we were getting close to the main monastery

The main monastery complex, with the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, is the large grouping in the background. The smaller building in the foreground is actually a small skete, located on a small island.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral (Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior)

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the walls of the monastery, but the cathedral was beautiful inside. It was divided into two churches, the lower one being for regular worship, and with low ceilings and arches. The upper church is for special occasions and holidays (and warm weather), and has more traditional high ceilings, domes, and decoration. One of the highlights of this excursion was attending a short 20-minute concert in a chapel in a different part of the monastery. Five male Valaam residents sang some traditional Russian religious music, much of it either written at or about Valaam. They were really good singers, and the music, combined with the setting, made for a really amazing experience. If you want a little mood music for the rest of the time you're reading, here's one of my favorite pieces they sang. This recording obviously isn't great, but it's the best I can do.

After visiting the monastery I wandered a bit around the village and the areas around the main monastery.

Somebody's flowers

A road heading away from the monastery

A small chapel, close to the monastery walls

This is what I wish I had been able to do - take a row boat and visit some of the tiny, otherwise inaccessible islands with their chapels.


After riding the pontoon boat back to our ship it was time for lunch, at which point Pavel and Roman put in their first appearance of the day. "Tomas, you come swim in Ladoga Lake with us?" I had to carefully explain, that while I would love to go swimming, priority number 1 was exploring the islands. Also, it was maybe fifty degrees and I'm pretty sure that water was freezing. After all their big talk they didn't end up swimming anyway. I ate a lot of borsch at lunch. Yum.

After lunch I had some time before the excursion around the island, so I went for a walk by myself. This may have been my favorite part of the day. Once I got up the dirt road from the boats, where there were people selling souvenirs, etc., it got very quiet very quickly. It was raining a little bit, but it was the kind of rain that was nice to walk in. The drops on the leaves were very percussive, and added nicely to the drumming of my own feet. The woods were full of pine trees, ferns, and wildflowers. It was very peaceful and I felt very happy.

My path through the woods

The Skete of Gethsemane, which I happened upon during my walk.

A stone cross that I caught a glimpse of through an opening in the trees. I would have liked to figure out how to get down there, but I didn't really have the time and didn't want to tramp around off the paths. A fair number of tourists go to Valaam during the summer, and I know the monks try to protect the islands by asking people to stick to the paths.

When I got back from my walk one of the employees of the cruise company was very concerned about the fact that I was wet. "We don't want to have a sick American on our ship! It would be a medical emergency!" I tried to reassure her that I would not get sick and that I would put on a sweatshirt and take an umbrella next time I went out.

I spent the rest of the day on the island on an excursion with about ten other people and a guide, who took us along trails to some of the other chapels and sketes that are scattered around.

My group, walking down a road.

A really pretty view

Again (and improved by my face)

A small chapel by a pond in the middle of the island

The monastery on Valaam is a working one, and one of the things they have is a dairy farm. Visiting the farm was one of my favorite parts because there was a little milk stand where we were able to stop and get cups of milk and some homemade bread from a monk. I'm not sure exactly what kind of bread it was, but it was a little like sourdough and tasted really good. I wanted to take a picture, because I enjoyed sitting here eating my bread and drinking my milk so much, but I also didn't want the monk to feel like he was some kind of spectacle, so I didn't take one. Here are some cows, though.

And another pretty view

And another skete, up on a hill

Inside the above skete's church

At the end of the excursion I talked to the guide for a while. She was curious to know where I was from and I was curious to know how she had gotten started giving tours at Valaam. She went there for the first time as part of a group that volunteered on the island - they went and worked with the monks doing whatever needed to be done, whether construction, farm work, etc. She enjoyed being there so much that she applied to become a guide. She had to study, pass some kind of test, and now she is there for the summer. All the people working as guides leave at the end of the summer, because at the end of September boat service to the islands stops because Lake Ladoga is apparently subject to really bad storms. After that, of course, it's freezing cold. I think it would probably be a beautiful place to see in the snow, though. She told me that there are a couple small guest houses on the island, around the main monastery, so it seems like it would be possible to go there on your own schedule, if you can just figure out how to get a boat to take you there. I'm sure they exist. I think if I were to go again it would be nice to have several days and some good books. There would be enough hiking to last for a while. When I saw some maps of the islands, I saw just how little we had been able to cover. While we saw many of the larger sketes and some chapels, there are others scattered all over, together with ruins of chapels and sketes that are no longer active. It seems like it could be a really cool place to get lost for a while.

After talking to her I still had about a half-hour to wander before heading back to the boat. I enjoyed sitting up on one of the cliffs and looking out at the view, and then went back.

A monk and his dog walking out to the boat landing. This dog was huge!

The view from the boat deck as we're preparing to leave

As we left the harbor and the islands we reentered the fog, so I was never able to get a really good view of the lake. Oh well. This was the view before I went to bed, exhausted, at about 10:30.

Fortunately Pavel and Roman kept things a little more under control the second night. While I think they were up and drinking until 4 or 5, Pavel managed to not barge into the room over and over, and they were both there asleep when I got up at 7:30. I slept REALLY well that night.

Out boat pulled back up to the river terminal at St. Petersburg at about 8:00 Sunday morning. I was very happy to head home and take a shower before church.

Me at the end of the trip

The last thing I heard as I left the boat - "Hey Tomas, see you later. Good luck, man!"

Pretty awesome, all in all.

White Nights

Some people have asked about how dark it gets and my taking pictures late at night, so here's a brief explanation.

St. Petersburg is the northernmost city in the world that has a population of over 1 million people. It sits just below 60 degrees latitude, which puts it almost as far north as Anchorage. Other cities that are as far north, like Oslo, Helsinki, and Anchorage, do not approach 1 million people, while St. Petersburg has between 4.5 and 5. million. Because it is located so far north, from about mid-May to mid-July it never gets completely dark. Today, for example, the sun will set at 11:24 pm and will rise in the morning at 4:39 am. For the five hours between sunset and sunrise twilight persists, which is why I am able to take pictures late at night where it appears to still be light out. It is light out. You can see examples of these pictures here. It's pretty great, actually. I don't have any problem sleeping with a little bit of light, and the fact that it's never dark means people stay out really late. It adds a sense of security to being out on the street at night.

In St. Petersburg they celebrate this time by having a festival called the White Nights. The festival is not the traditional kind where streets are closed all the time, etc.; instead, they step up their arts programming for a couple weeks at the end of June, and some nights there are concerts and things going on in the Palace Square. The ballet I went to was a part of the "Stars of the White Nights" festival, and the event that I skipped out on with the ship with the scarlet sails is the crowning moment of the festival.

I don't have a lot to update you on from my activities during the week. I went to Institute on Wednesday for a class on Teachings of the Living Prophets, I got my hair cut, and I went to The Other Side (pictured below) to watch some world cup.

Mostly just a quiet, normal kind of week.

A Day in the Country

On Saturday I decided to be really adventurous, and I rented a car to drive out into the country. I don't know why driving here is any more adventurous than some of the other places I have driven, but somehow Russian police and Russian drivers seem especially threatening to me. Fortunately I had no problems, though I did drive on some interesting roads. I tried to take pictures of some of the highway that I was driving on, but none of them really turned out well. And don't worry, I only took photos of the road when I was stopped because of traffic. The highway I was on was the main road to Murmansk, a city with about 350,000 people way, way up North, near the Russian border with Norway. The trip from St. Petersburg to Murmansk would be about 1,500 kilometers, all on a two-lane highway, mostly without any lines at all, and full of potholes and covered by a patchwork of different types of pavement. It made for a bumpy ride and would be an unpleasantly long drive Murmansk. It took me more than two hours to drive the 125 kilometers to my destination, Staraya Ladoga.

Staraya Ladoga was founded in 753 and until about 950 was one of the most important trading posts in Eastern Europe. The trade routes through here were pretty extensive; in fact, the oldest Arabian coin found in Europe was discovered in Staraya Ladoga. The Viking Rurik arrived in Staraya Ladoga in 862. His descendents moved to Novgorod and later Kiev, establishing the beginnings of Kievan Rus - the first major Russian state, so Staraya Ladoga is sometimes called Russia's first capital. Now the town is a little village of about 3,000 people and there's not a lot going on, but there are over 100 important archealogical sites in the vicinity, along with a fortress and some 12th century churches, so I thought it might be a nice place to spend the day.

This is the heavily rebuilt 12th century fortress in Staraya Ladoga. It was first rebuilt in the 16th century to accommodate modern weaponry. Clearly, there is also more modern restoration going on, as it was heavily damaged during World War II.

St. George's Church is inside the fortress and was built in the 12th century. There was also a 17th century wooden church in the fortress.

This is an original fresco inside St. George's, painted in 1167.

From the fortress I went to the Monastery of St. Nicholas, which had structures dating from the 12th-19th centuries. In the 12th-13th centuries, Staraya Ladoga apparently had six major churches and 12 operating monasteries. Those numbers are seriously reduced now, and this monastery is one of two in the town. Still not bad for a town with 3,000 people.

It looks like this monastery has had some serious rough times, however, which is not hard to imagine considering a world war and seventy years of official government atheism. The monks seemed hard at work rebuilding and raising money for restoration of the monastery buildings.

A view from outside the walls of the monastery

The main churches inside the monastery walls


From there I went to the Convent of the Assumption. In Russian it is actually still called a monastery, but this was designated specifically as a monastery for women. These grounds were in significantly better shape and had really nice gardens all over. There were still a large number of very run-down buildings, though. Again, I presume these are the result of war and many years of government oppression.

The monastery guard dog

The 12th century Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God. Unfortunately the church was closed and I was not able to go inside.

One of the back gates to the monastery


Many of the other major historical sites of interest are burial mounds, which are scattered all over the town. I stopped at a spot where there are several together on the north side of the village. These mounds date from the 8th and 9th centuries, and it is believed that Rurik himself may have been buried in one of these mounds.

This was a really peaceful spot, and there were a couple families here picnicking. There were flowers growing all over the mounds, and the mounds stand right on top of the bluffs overlooking the river.

Here are a few more photos from around the town.

Nice place for a swim?

Typical Russian wooden houses


I got back to St. Petersburg a little earlier than I thought I would, so I used the car to go out and visit a cathedral that I had been meaning to get to for a while, but is inconveniently located. The Smolny Convent was designed and built by the Italian architect Rastrelli, and the cathedral is supposed to be one of his great masterpieces. Interestingly, the convent was begun so that Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, would be able to take her vows and live there as a nun, because she was not going to be allowed to succeed to the throne. However, Ivan VI was overthrown in a coup d'etat, and Elizabeth decided not to become a nun after all when the throne was offered to her. The royal family continued to fund the construction of the convent, until Catherine the Great got the throne. She wasn't a fan of baroque architecture, so she cut off funding and Rastrelli was not able to build his bell tower or complete the interior of the cathedral. As a result, the interior is disappointing, and it's really just the outside that is worth taking a look at. The cathedral is mainly used for concerts now.

After returning my car I went home and ate dinner. I went back out around 11:30 and walked down to the banks of the Neva. Saturday was a Russian holiday, that I'm still not quite clear on. Everyone kept telling me it was like prom, except everyone in the country has it on the same day, and school's already out for the summer. Regardless, at 11:45 or so, a big sailboat with scarlet sails was supposed to sail down the river and there would be fireworks. This sounded like something worth seeing, so I joined the crowds in their festivities. Apparently the boat has something to do with some book I had never heard of (it's not Russian), that everyone seemed to think I should know. Something about a guy returning for his lover in a ship with scarlet sails.

Unfortunately, I can't take credit for the photograph above (credit goes instead to wikipedia), because sometime a little after 1:00 am, I was still waiting for this alleged boat. I was so tired I was about to fall over (I had gotten up early) and there were mosquitoes constantly biting me. As I got more and more irritable I became less and less interested in seeing some boat from some book I had never heard of for some holiday that was supposed to be like prom. Looks like it would have been pretty awesome, though.

Here's the picture I took, around 1:15, just before I went home.

Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet

Friday I left work at about 5:30 so that I could go to the Mariinsky Theater to see the ballet Romeo and Juliet. As the Mariinsky Ballet, or Kirov Ballet, as they are generally called outside of Russia, is apparently one of the greatest and most important companies in the world, I figured this was something I needed to do while in St. Petersburg. I thought leaving at 5:30 would give me plenty of time. An hour later I was less than halfway to the theater because of a series of things. First, the bus didn't come for about twenty minutes. Then, after going two stops, the driver announced that the bus I was on was not going to be completing the route, but was stopping at Moskovskiy Voksal, which was only a couple stops away, so I had to get off and wait for another bus to come. Then the traffic was insane because streets were closed all over the place. I watched the minutes tick by, and when the clock hit 6:35 and we still had twenty or thirty minutes to go had traffic been normal, I jumped off the second bus and started to run. The bus route to the theater is not that direct, so I figured with the bus stuck in traffic and me being able to walk a more direct route to the theater I had a chance. Unfortunately I wasn't really dressed for running (shirt and tie, dress pants, and dress shoes). After running several blocks in church shoes I figured I wasn't going to be able to keep up a run the whole way, and my bruised rib was kind of throbbing, so I slowed to a really fast walk. I got to the theater, very sweaty, at 6:59. Good thing. My ticket was really expensive and I did not want to be shut out. It took a little while for me to get comfortable, given my sweaty, tired condition (also because I was sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair), but by the end of the first act I felt pretty good.

If you want to listen to some music while you read the rest of this post, here's a link to the music from the ballet that was the most familiar to me. I didn't expect to know any of the music, so I was happy to find that I did. I really like the way it starts. It will get kind of loud at first, but don't turn down the volume too much because it gets quiet very suddenly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LSxpxjMQ9c
Juliet was danced by Alina Somova and Romeo by Andrian Fadeyev. Since I know almost nothing about ballet I couldn't really be much of a judge, but they looked pretty good to me! Here's kind of an interesting review I read afterwards about Alina Somova. The audience loved it. The clapping went on for FOREVER. One of the things that I noticed in Lithuania, and which apparently also happens here, is that within about ten seconds of beginning to clap everyone starts clapping in unison, so instead of a general noise, people are clapping out a definite beat. I think it's kind of an interesting cultural thing.

The theater itself was very nice too.

After I got tired of clapping I went over to a place where I could get this picture of the hall. You can't quite see my seat in this picture. I was just to the left of the royal box, in the first balcony. It was a really good seat.


I was in a really good mood afterwards, and when I came out of the theater, at about 11:00 pm, it was such a beautiful night I decided to walk all the way home. I ended up taking a ton of pictures on the way. I'm going to share just enough of them so you can imagine what my walk home looked like. It was pretty nice.

The view up the Moika Canal to St. Isaac's Cathedral

The Mariinskiy Palace

A view of the Admiralty

A rollerblading gang in palace square. People here rollerblade all the time, it seems, but this was the first gang of rollerbladers I had come across.

A view of palace square

Art students

Church of the Savior on Blood

By the time I took this last picture I was almost home and it was almost midnight. As I was walking up to this spot I noticed a familiar looking man looking at me. We both looked at each other a couple times, and as I was taking this picture he came and stood next to me to take a picture too. I realized it was Brother Kosak. He's from Germany and was the coordinator for the church seminary and institute programs in the Baltics and some other parts of Eastern Europe while I was on my mission. I had met him several times when he was in Lithuania. He had thought I looked familiar, and he and his wife, who was with him, thought I looked like a member of the church, probably because I was wearing a white shirt and tie and had a backpack on. Not many people over here are sporting that look. It was fun to talk to him for a little while. He's now the head of seminary and institute for all of the Europe East Area, so he lives in Moscow now, and he informed me that there is an Institute building in St. Petersburg, not far from my apartment. I don't know why I haven't been able to find this out from people at church that I've talked to, but I'm excited to start participating in Institute. It will be a great way to meet some people that I can start doing things with, practicing my Russian with, and will provide me with a support network, which is always nice. It was a great way to end of the day. I went to bed feeling very happy.