3-25-07

3-25-06

Well, it would certainly seem that Spring Break gave me a burst of energy. This past week, I’ve crossed off two things on my “Have to do” list, and by the end of today, I will have crossed off four things on my “Want to do” list.

Friday, after classes, Hannah, Kate, and I wandered around Nevsky for a bit before organizing a group excursion to see TMNT. That’s right, a group of 20+ intelligent students studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia, went to see the new animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. We had a good time. The Russian dubbing didn’t even bother me after a while, although we were all a little confused on some of the finer points of the plot. Give me a break, it was confusing and full of holes, and I’m sure that if I were to see it in English, I’d be confused, too. After that we went to a pub called Liverpool and listened to a Beatles cover band for a while. I came back here and was out like a light.

Yesterday morning I slept in and then met up with Hannah, Kate, Becky, Hillary, and Tappert and we went to the Piskaryovskoe Cemetery. It’s the cemetery where the people who died during the Nazi blockade were buried, or more realistically, dumped. It’s quite intimidating and heavy. There’s just anonymous mound after anonymous mound, marked only with a year and whether they were civilians or military. In another section, there are individual graves of soldiers who died. There’s also a large monument with a sad-looking Mother Russia. The eeriest thing about the cemetery, however, is that music is constantly piped in through loudspeakers everywhere on the grounds. Just eerie.

Then we went back into the city and met up with Mattison and visited the graveyards at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Both were cool. One was packed and fun to just wander through and look at the unique memorials. The other contained the gravesites of Dostoevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinke, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. I took lots of pictures. Mussorgsky’s had a stone piano carved into it. Rimsky-Korsakov’s was the most unique. In a cemetery full of largely dark stones, or statues with angels, Rimsky-Korsakov’s was a large white Celtic cross.

We wandered now Nevksy before splitting up. Kate, Hannah, Hillary, and I went to Café Max to check our email, and then to Teremok for dinner. We ended up staying there for just two hours talking, drawing the ire of the cleaning girl.

Then, this morning, I dawdled around in my pajamas and read (I really need to make a list of everything I’ve read while I’ve been here) before meeting Hannah at Dostoevskaya Metro station. We got a little lost but then found the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic. Very cool, but as most of the placards weren’t translated (And my knowledge of exploration vocab is not a strong area), I feel like I could’ve gotten way more out of it. But nevertheless, it was interesting and we had a good time.

Then we took our own sweet time (At least in Mattison’s opinion) to get to the Zoological Museum to meet up with Mattison. The Zoological Museum is largely just stuffed animals in glass cases, but it was a good time. It was fun to see familiar animals (What kind of museum has a stuffed St. Bernard? Or a Spaniel?), and it was cool to see some of the museum’s highlights, such as the skeletons of a blue whale and a wooly mammoth.

After that, I came back here, had dinner, and called Bloomington and home. The weather for the week ahead looks good, so we’ll probably be staying fairly active. I just hope that I eventually get around to posting this and the other entry sitting on my desktop, it’s frustrating. But at the same time, I don’t want to waste this wonderful weather. I’ll have to find some kind of middle ground, I suppose. Maybe I’ll go to Kofe Haus some evening and put up with horrible service. We’ll see.

PS: As I’m posting this, this might be my best coffee house visit ever. I think that has to do with a couple of things. First, I was able to secure a single table in a corner. Second, this corner is right by the entry station for the waitresses, which means that when I need to pay, they can’t ignore me. Third, the staff that’s usually here (Namely Yellow Sweater Girl) appears not to be here, except for one waitress. Maybe I should become a Monday night regular!