Izzie

Today was a great day for one main reason. Her name is Izzie.

Dogs make everything more fun, don't they? This is Ivan and Jen's dog, and every once in a while she apparently puts in a day at the office. After a rough start (I made a move that was a little too sudden for her and she spent about ten minutes barking at me) we become fast friends and spent a fair amount of time playing together.

After work I went home for a bit and then went to watch the opening match of the world cup, at what is apparently an ex-pat hang out. This picture is really dark and pointless, but I'm all about adding visual interest to the blog.

Riding the Rails

So, I'm going to try to write a little bit about everyday kinds of things. Today I thought I would talk a little bit about how I get to work - the metro. If you're already bored, stop reading now.

St. Petersburg has one of the deepest subway systems in the world, and as far as average station depth, I think it's actually the deepest. The deepest station is over 100 meters deep, which is pretty far down, especially if you compare it to most New York stations, which are barely underground. It means riding the escalators in and out of the stations is one of the longer parts of the trip each day.

I walk from my house to the Nevskiy Prospekt metro station (where the blue and green lines cross), ride one stop to Sennaya Ploshad (where blue, purple, and yellow cross), and then ride the yellow line to Ligovskiy Prospekt. I know that doesn't seem far enough to warrant taking the subway, but the stations are a lot farther apart than they look on the map. The church is farther out on the yellow line, at the stop Novocherkasskaya.


To ride the subway here, if you don't have a card, you buy tokens, which cost 22 rubles, about 70 cents.


Differences between riding the subway in St. Petersburg and New York

St. Petersburg - clean, well-designed, quiet, people stand to the side when you try to get off the train, you never have to wait more than two minutes for a train

New York - disgustingly filthy, sometimes the ceilings are falling in, noisy (but sometimes that's actually really fun - when it's musicians and not just the horrible noises the trains make on the tracks), people try to be in the way as much as possible, sometimes you have to wait what feels like a lifetime for a train

New York would win in plenty of other contests. One of the other interesting differences is that in New York there are always people begging in the subway. Sometimes they play music, sometimes they make a speech, sometimes they silently walk around with a hand out, but beggars are common on New York city subways. I have not seen a single person begging on St. Petersburg subways. I thought I was about to see one a week or so ago when a woman got on and began making a speech. But no. She was selling covers for your passport. Of course. That's what most people do on subways. Since then I have seen two more people doing the same thing and they have pretty great success. One day from one stop to a next (maybe two minutes) a lady sold passport covers to three people sitting right around me. She wasn't even able to get to the other half of the car before I got off. So far no one else has done any soliciting on the subway, just the ladies selling passport covers.

Here are pictures I took this morning on my way to work.

Entering the Nevskiy Prospekt station.

This is how I know I've never waited more than two minutes for a train. On each platform there is a digital clock showing the time and how long it has been since the last train left. Because the trains are so frequent, people are rarely running to try to get on a train before the doors close. They know there will be another one in a minute or so. Good thing too, because some of the train doors close pretty mercilessly. I'm pretty sure it would hurt to get caught in those doors.

My train pulling into the station (the trains are blue, though you can't really tell in this picture).

The Ligovskiy Prospekt station, where I get off every day.

I'm feeling very excited because I made a list of all the things I know I want to do before I leave, especially things outside the city that are going to take some planning. After work today I went to a company that does river trips and booked a ticket to go to Valaam. I was looking into other ways of getting there, but it seemed pretty complicated, and this way I will even have food provided for me. If you're interested in what Valaam is, http://valaam.ru/en/, there's more information. The short story is that it's a monastery on an island in the northern part of Lake Ladoga, which is the largest lake in Europe (a little smaller than Lake Ontario). It looks like a really beautiful place, and once I'm there I'll be free to hike around the island, which has chapels and hermitages all over through the woods. This is one of the things I've known I wanted to do since before I came, so I'm excited to make it happen.

As I walked home from doing that I came across this church. It was closed, unfortunately, but I thought it was pretty. It's kind of the twin of the one across the street from my building, except yellow instead of red.

I hope you all enjoyed your St. Petersburg subway lecture. Now you can picture what I'm doing every morning, while you're all still in bed, or perhaps just getting ready for bed.

Breathing

Since I've had a few people write to ask if I'm okay and one not so subtle hint that I should update my blog, I decided that I would write a quick entry before bed tonight. I think what's actually happened is that I've settled into a routine, so there's isn't always something each day that seems blog-worthy. Perhaps that's not the case. I actually was planning to write about my Sunday afternoon...

Sunday was a beautiful day. I had a really great day at church for several reasons. First, I ran into some sister missionaries on the subway and they were able to show me the secret tram that runs from the subway station to the church. It was probably only secret to me, as it is part of the St. Petersburg public transit system, but now instead of taking a thirty minute walk from the subway station I can take a five minute tram ride. The result was that I made it to church on time on Sunday when I otherwise would have been late again. I left myself an hour to get there and still would have been late without that tram. That building is not centrally located. Second, because I was there on time I got to take the sacrament. It had been a few weeks what with my lateness and district conference the first Sunday I was here. Third, I talked to a few more people, mainly to McCartney, a white Namibian who is here attending medical school. He's been living here for five years and has one more to go before he moves back to Namibia. Interesting guy. Fourth, it's always good to attend church and feel like a part of a community. I was also able to understand all of sacrament meeting really well and most of Sunday School. By the time I got to Priesthood meeting I was tired of working so hard to focus on the language.

After church I went home, made dinner, and then went over to the park to read my book. I just finished reading March (that's what I was reading on Sunday), and it was an interesting read. The park was so pleasant. I spent about half the time reading and half the time looking up at the sky and around at my surroundings. I feel like I post pictures of the same things a lot, but that's just because a lot of the pictures I take are in my neighborhood, so my apologies if my pictures are less than interesting.

This was the view from the first bench where I was reading.

And this was the view above my head.

Sometimes I love looking at the sky through the trees. Such cool patterns.

After reading there for a while I got up and took a little walk over to the Marsovo Pole (Field of Mars), which is just across the road from the Mikhailovskiy Sad (where I was initially), and read on a bench there for a while. While I was sitting there a crow landed on the bench right next to me. I always noticed that crows in Lithuania were different from the ones in the US, and it doesn't surprise me that they have the same ones here, but it is interesting to see differences in things that I would normally take for granted (like, crows are black).

Here they're black and gray. Do we have black and gray crows in the US? I always think of them as black birds.

Here was the view from this bench.


Otherwise my days have not been very eventful. I've been going to work and generally coming home afterwards to eat, read my book, and go to sleep. Boring I know, but I'm feeling more settled in and less pressure to get out and do something every single day. I'm going to make myself lists of things I know I want to accomplish and make sure that I get it all in, but otherwise, I think it's nice to get about the business of regular life.

Churches

I decided you all deserved a break from reading. I didn't want you to feel obligated to check in on me everyday, especially when I don't have anything special to say. As I looked at my pictures from the last couple days I realized that I have basically spent them going into some of St. Petersburg's big churches.

On Thursday I walked down the street from my apartment to a church I could see every time I went to get something at the grocery store. Turns out it is called the Cathedral of the Transfiguration.

There was a service going on, so I didn't take any pictures inside. I don't quite understand Orthodox services. They seem in some sense very informal. There is always a lot of activity going on in an Orthodox church, even while services are going on. People don't sit during Orthodox services (there aren't any benches), and the people participating are scattered around, while the rest of the church is full of people praying independently, cleaning, or walking around. The services also are entirely sung, much of it by the priest, but there is also a small choir. I really like the music at Orthodox services. It was nice to spend ten or fifteen minutes at the end of the day quietly listening to the music and enjoying the peace of the Cathedral. The other thing that is pretty awesome is that the fence around this Cathedral is made of guns captured during the Russo-Turkish wars.

I finally made it back to the Isaakievskiy Cathedral on Friday. You remember - the one where the lady sold me a ticket even though the building was already closed.

The building is a museum now, though really all that's on display is the building itself. It is pretty spectacular - a lot of gold. My favorite feature was the dome, an 8,780 square foot painting by Karl Bryullov, one of the greatest Russian painters.

In a building where everything felt pretty heavy and dark (marble, gold, dark colors, etc.) I thought the dome was very light. I can't imagine being able to execute my vision for a painting on a huge curved ceiling (not that I would be able to execute my vision for a painting on any other kind of surface). I helped my sister paint a ceiling in her house once that had some curves in it and it was one of the most annoying things ever, and we were just painting it a solid color (remember when we painted the ceiling on the front porch, Ali?).

Here are some bonus photos I'm not going to talk much about.

This is Peter the Great's Summer Palace. It was one of the first residences built in St. Petersburg and is in the Summer Garden, which is right by my apartment. Unfortunately the entire park is closed for restoration.

And this is the building that Tchaikovsky was living in when he died. His apartment is on the top floor.

As I was walking to the subway this morning I looked behind me and this is what I saw.

Pretty awesome.

Last night I went out for the first time since I've been here. I met up with the Dutch guy, Michael, from work, his girlfriend, and a couple of Irish people he knew. We went and got dinner at a Georgian restaurant (Georgian food is a big thing over here) and then went to a lounge kind of place where they were playing a lot of American funk music. It was good to be out socializing with people, though I don't love staying out late. It was nice, though, that as I walked home at 2 am it was pretty light out.

An interesting thing about staying out late in St. Petersburg is that every night for about four months of the year (during the summer), they raise all the bridges across the River Neva so that ships can come upriver from the Gulf of Finland. They start raising the bridges around 1:30 and they stay up until about 5:30, so you have to plan all your activities carefully and make sure you're on the right island before the bridges go up because otherwise you're stuck for the rest of the night. And you really are stuck because the subway stops running a little after midnight and doesn't run again until morning. Unfortunately Michael and his girlfriend missed their bridge last night. However, the one they needed closes for about twenty minutes at 2:45, so they were able to get home a little after 3:00. I find it kind of amazing that a city this big (5 million people) gets cut in half every night. Some night I'll walk down to the river and take a picture of the bridges up and the boats coming upstream.

As a result of staying up so late, I slept in this morning and had to cancel my plans to go to Tsarskoye Selo today (one of the big palaces outside the city). Instead I went to the Peter and Paul fortress on an island on the other side of the river. The dominant feature of the fortress is the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which is where all the tsars were buried from Peter the Great on.

This is Peter the Great's tomb.

They even brought Nikolai II (the last tsar) and his family here about ten years ago. They are all buried in a separate side chapel.

The fortress was founded in 1703, and is considered to mark the founding of the city itself. I spent several hours at the fortress, visiting museums, touring a prison, and admiring the views across the Neva of the other half of St. Petersburg.

Do you recognize some of the landmarks in this picture?

And now I need to try to go to sleep, though I'm not that tired. I hate when I stay up late and throw off my sleep pattern! Do I sound like an old person? I hope you're all having a great weekend.

I Wish...

I'm amazed by technology. Last night I called my Mom to wish her a happy birthday. The things I had that made it possible: my yota device, which provides me with internet access wherever I go, a laptop with a built-in microphone, and skype. Basically I could have been sitting anywhere in the world and called my Mom without a telephone. And international calling to landlines or cell phones on skype is only $6.99 a month for unlimited minutes. Isn't that kind of unbelievable? What makes it all more unbelievable to me is that I can clearly remember when none of these things were possible, and I'm not even that old. Technology blows my mind. I don't understand how any of it works, but I'm certainly grateful for it.

If you're interested, my sister put together a slideshow for my Mom's birthday, and has now posted it on her blog, here: http://alisonhelquist.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-2nd-happy-birthday-mom.html

My Mom is awesome, just so you know.

In other news, I'm reporting back on the cat. As a refresher, here is the cat I'm talking about.

I discovered that there is actually a second cat, opposite this guy, on the other side of the street.

The history is less interesting than I had hoped. The first cat was put on the building in January 2000 and is named Yelisey, because the ledge he sits on is attached to the Yeliseyevsky Department store. The other cat is his girlfriend, Vasilisa, and appeared in April 2000. People throw change at the cats because if you get it to stay on the ledge your wishes are supposed to come true. This has no historical basis or anything, though. I was secretly hoping that there would be some literary connection, like maybe he was supposed to be the cat from The Master and Margarita, though that novel takes place in Moscow, not St. Petersburg. Apparently little bronze sculptures of animals are in vogue in St. Petersburg these days, and that's all. As for the wish granting, I think people just like to throw small change at stuff.

As further evidence of both of these things (statues in vogue and people like throwing change), there is a 5-inch tall statute of a bird perched on a tiny ledge inside one of the canals where nobody would possibly notice it without already knowing it is there.

Again, if you can get your change to stay on the ledge your wishes are granted. The sculptor said of his little statue that "Chizhik Pyzhik helps students to get through unhappy love-affairs and get around on public transport without having tickets." What? Does this make any sense? I'm assuming this is a really poor translation of what he actually said.

This statue has been stolen several times, so now the local museum has several ready-made copies for quick replacement in case it happens again. We wouldn't want to be without our chizhik pyzhik statue. How else would we get our wishes granted?

"Try not. Do or do not; there is no try."

I figured out my internet situation. I am now the proud owner and user of a "yota device." You can learn all about these handy things at http://www.yota.ru/en/. Basically, I now have a 4G connection anywhere I go in St. Petersburg. It will be very handy on the nice, long summer days as it will allow me to sit in the park and update my blog.

The handy little device just plugs into a USB port and I'm good to go. Unfortunately, these devices only work in six Russian cities (Vyborg, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ufa, Sochi, and Krasnodar) and Managua, Nicaragua, so it won't do me any good back in New York. Random, right? Why Russia and Nicaragua?

Since nothing else of special note happened today, I'm going to use this opportunity to show you pictures of my apartment. I just want to say that I actually did the dishes and cleaned my room right after I took these photos. I'm not sure why I didn't do those things right before I took them. As you'll see, there is all sorts of random decor in the apartment. That all belongs to the people who actually own the place.

This is the main hallway of the apartment. All of the rooms open off of this area, with my bedroom through the open door at the far end.

This is the other hallway (it turns off the main one) going to the kitchen, and with the toilet and shower rooms on the right.

Here is my kitchen. It has been nice to have, though the food I'm able to scrape together from the limited and strange selection at the grocery stores is not really as good as restaurant food. I meant to bring one of my mission cookbooks with me (recipes specifically geared towards cooking with what's available in Lithuania), since the available products in Lithuania were essentially the same as here, but I forgot, and now I can't remember what we ate all the time. I'll figure it out.

This is the living room, which I actually have not used at all yet. Generally once I get home I retreat to my bedroom and do everything in there. But this room is here for me to use, so maybe I'll use it someday, especially if someone comes to visit me while I'm here.

And here is my long, skinny bedroom. My bed is in the corner at the far end of the room on the left.

There is one more big room, which is the owners' bedroom. They live in Moscow, but keep this apartment for times when they come to St. Petersburg for work. They shouldn't be here much while I am here, but may be up for a weekend or two at the beginning of July.

Sorry this is kind of boring. Maybe I'm running out of stuff to say...

Fact

Here are some interesting facts about St. Petersburg. In 1917, St. Petersburg had a population of 2.5 million. By 1920 at the end of the Revolution and civil war, there were only 600,000 people in St. Petersburg. By 1941 there were 3.4 million people in St. Petersburg, but by January 1944, at the end of the 872 day Nazi siege on St. Petersburg, during which over 1 million civilians died and many others escaped the city, there were again only about 600,000 people left in the city. Today the city has about 4.6 million people and is the fifth largest city in Europe, after Moscow, Istanbul, Paris, and London. During the 20th century St. Petersburg's name has been changed from St. Petersburg to Petrograd to Leningrad and back to St. Petersburg.

I hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend. It was a beautiful morning and I enjoyed taking a morning run through all the parks around my apartment. These morning runs are part of my training to try to run the length of Manhattan by the end of the year (Inwood to Battery Park). Though maybe I’ll bump that back to next year. I’ll have to either make really quick progress so that I can do the run in the fall, or I will end up doing that really long run when it’s really cold outside.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day. After work I went back to the Isaakievskiy Cathedral, both to go up on the outside of the dome and to go inside. I carefully questioned the lady at the ticket booth about closing times and whether I would have time to do both, and after she reassured me that I would, I bought tickets to do both (about $10 each). I went up on the dome first, since that closed first. It was a nice view. I think it’s always fun to see cities from above.

This is looking towards the Winter Palace (the big greenish building). The gold spires are from the Admiralty and the Peter and Paul Cathedral on the other side of the river. You really have to click on the picture to make it big to see what I'm talking about.

This one is looking across Isaakievskiy Square towards the Mariinskiy Palace at the other end of the square. The Palace now houses city government offices.

When I got down from the dome, about twenty minutes after buying my tickets, the cathedral was already closed! I went and talked to the lady that had sold them to me, explaining what had happened, but they have a no refunds policy and she was not very helpful. It tried hard not to let a wasted $12 taint my evening, but it was hard.

I walked a little more and stopped by the famous statue of Peter the Great on his horse. I’ve been meaning to walk to it all week, and today I finally made it.

It was nice to eat dinner at home tonight, instead of at a restaurant, and I have so much more free time before bed than I usually do because I didn’t have to spend time in a restaurant.

For those who are curious, my new niece now has a name—Suzannah Rae. I like it.