Vacation time

(Written on 1.4.10)

Returning to your comfort zone after a long period of time spent in a foreign, far-away, strange, and often uncomfortable and upsetting place is an incredible feeling. After four months in rural southern Russia, I am now sitting in a coffee shop around the corner from the Harvard University campus, a large, hot, caffeinated beverage next to me, an article from one of my favorite professors swiped off of JStor in front of me (don’t waste your breath calling me a dork—I already know), students and smiling faces all around. I’ll put in a favorable vote for adventures and new experiences, but to finally feel like I belong somewhere again after so long is… indescribably wonderful.

To be honest, I had that wonderful feeling of belonging as soon as we traded the open, desolate plains of the Kuban for the snow-covered birch forests on the train from Krasnodar to St. Petersburg. But I’ll start the account of my trip a few days earlier to give a more complete image of the transition from one world to another (to another) that I passed through in the last week and a half.

December 23rd was my last full day in Slavyansk until mid-January. It also happened to be the day that the InYaz (Foreign Languages) students were putting on their yearly New Year’s performance. It was, for the most part, a cute, albeit strange, show. The main plot was as followed: an evil queen has captured Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost—the Russian version of Santa Claus) and his granddaughter, Snegoruchka (Snow girl), has to travel all around the world to find him. One of my third year students, Lena, played Snegoruchka and did a very nice job putting everything together. About half way through the main show, there was an interlude where the fifth years did a few comedy skits—mostly about the Institute, and mostly pretty funny. However, the last act they put on took me completely by surprise. All of a sudden, rap music came on, and three students came out in blackface (yes… blackface—the saddest part is, this was the third time I’ve seen blackface since coming to Russia) and stereotypical “gantsa rapper” clothes (fur coats, bling) and rapped: “Yo, ya Barack Obama” (Yo, I’m Barack Obama)… my jaw just dropped. Now, I’m not the most actively patriotic person you’ll meet, but to see my president, a president I voted for and wholeheartedly support, portrayed like that… I was a little horrified. But the rest of the room went wild—that act got more cheers and applause than anything else all night! I understand that blackface does not have the same cultural connotations in Russia as in the United States, but still… there are some cultural boundaries that I don’t know if I will ever be able (or willing) to cross.

I skipped the “discotheque” that was to follow and went back to the dorm to finish packing after that… only to find out that chunks of my wall had been ripped out, dust was all over the clean clothes I had put out to pack, and there was no electricity. I go downstairs to inquire about this, and am told that nothing can (or will) be done until the morning. Meanwhile, I have to figure out how to cook dinner, pack, clean, and shower in the dark. The women who work in the dorm did not understand why I was getting a little frustrated. This was really the straw that broke the Slavyansk camel’s back for me, and I started to well up in the hallway. At that moment, Masha came out and saw me. She quickly guided me into her room, where she gave me some dinner and chatted for a few hours. I was lucky she was there. The girls in that room are really a big light in the darkness (literally and figuratively) for me.

We decided to string a long extension cord from another room to give me light to pack, and I did manage to get ready. I got up early the next morning to finish and was mid-way through my shower when someone started to pound on my door. I managed to hop out and throw on some clothes just before two electricians opened it with a key from the babushkas. Luckily, they realized that I was trying to get ready to leave, and said they would come back in the afternoon, after I had gone. Who knows why they were even there in the first place.

I left around 11:30am that morning to head to the bus station to get to Krasnodar. That was the first two-hour leg of the trip. From there, I transferred to the train station, where I waited for my 6pm departure time. Around 5pm, my train pulled in, and I go to find my bunk.

Sleeper cabins are arranged as followed: each bunk has four beds, two upper, two lower. I was bunk number 34, in the last carriage. I find it, and get to cabin number 8: bunks 29-32. I move on to cabin number 9: bunks 35-39… wait. Where was bunk 34? Of course this happened to the only foreigner on the train, of course. “That’s our Russian counting for you!” laughed the man in bunk number 39. Thanks, how helpful. We assumed a numbering error, and I ended up on a top bunk in cabin 9, where I spent the rest of Christmas Eve and all of Christmas day.

My bunkmates ended up being really nice (a young woman, a middle-aged man, and an old woman who fed us all kasha, fish, and wine), so the 39-hour long ride wasn’t too bad. After a few hours, we had passed out of the Kuban and found ourselves surrounded by those snow-covered birch forests I had so often heard and dreamed of. Here, finally, was the Russia I wanted, the Russia I had always imagined, the Russia I had for so long loved from a distance. I immediately felt at home. Why hadn’t I been here to begin with? It felt so right, worlds above everything I had seen in the past four months (save the trip to Moscow).

But Russia is still and everywhere Russia, with its own special set of frustrating quirks to deal with. I woke up around 6am on the morning of the 26th and realize that our train was standing still… and still was two hours later. No one knows why, no one asks. We’re supposed to be in St. Petersburg at 9:45am. We start moving, but at a slower pace, and keep stopping ever more frequently. At 9:40, we find out that we’re still an hour outside of St. Petersburg. My Krasnodar Krai sim card does not work this far north, so I can’t call Matt, who was meeting me at the train station. At 10:30, we find out that we’ll be pulling into a different train station than we were originally scheduled to do. Again, no way for me to contact Matt. Still, no one on the train is asking questions. We pull in to the snowy station, I grab my giant bag and begin to lug it down the platform. I make it to the end and all of a sudden see Matt step out onto the platform. The first familiar, friendly face I’ve seen since October! I don’t think I’ve felt that relieved in… well, since the Fulbright seminar in October.

Matt lugged my heavy and wobbly suitcase through the snow back to his apartment, where I took a much-need shower before we headed out to get some Georgian food, the first meal with flavor that I’ve had since arriving in Russia. It was glorious. After that, we went to visit a friend of his, took a walk along the Neva (the Neva! Dostoevsky’s Neva, Pushkin’s Neva…!), before meeting up with his girlfriend in an American-style bar to have a much-needed drink and to listen to some post-folk (yeah, who knows…) music. It was a nice evening. We got back a little late, and I was dead tired after my trip, but it took me forever to fall asleep—Tyler was arriving the next day, and I was way too jazzed to keep my eyes closed for more than 10 seconds at a time.

But again: this is Russia, and those irritating quirks just keep popping up. Tyler’s plane from Helsinki was set to arrive at 11:50am. Matt and I arrive at the airport around 11:30. 12:00 comes, passes. Our flight is in. About 10 people come through the gates… no Tyler. But there are about 10 other groups still waiting for their passengers, too, so we don’t get too nervous. 12:30 comes—still no more passengers. I start to get a little nervous, and we try to think of what could happen. Maybe they’re holding the passengers that had transferred from New York—they do that sometimes. 1pm comes. I’m getting more worried. Tyler doesn’t speak Russian, and since the number he knows for me doesn’t work there, he couldn’t call me. Still no information—again, no one will ask questions, though it’s debatable whether or not anyone would have answered, anyway.

At 1:30, one of the men who had been waiting for two hours with flowers for his passenger gets up, and he goes up to the information desk. After a few minutes of heated conversation, he comes back, frustrated and information-less. But we do have one last option, the best weapon the Russian public has to offer: the mighty power of the babushka. We had one in our group, and she decided to take things into her hands. No one, not even the laziest of help desk personnel, the fiercest of militsia, can deny the force of the babushka. She got our information. As it turns out, the flight from New York had been delayed, and the flight from Helsinki left without them. The next flight from Helsinki was due to arrive at 4:50, but they wouldn’t tell us whether or not our passengers would be on it. Oh, Russia. By this point, it was 2:30. Matt and I just decided to wait.

4:50 comes. The plane has landed. We wait. 6pm comes—other passengers from NYC finally pass through the customs control gate. Everyone else who was standing with us earlier in the day finds their people. And then finally, at last… Tyler! Tired, but no worse for wear, he finally made it! We all sigh a huge sigh of relief and go back to Matt’s place to drop Tyler’s bag off before heading off to the best-tasting dinner I’ve had in a long, long time… Pizza Hut. Nothing like the taste of nostalgia to brighten up your night!

The next day was a day of forms, questions, and red tape. Oh, Russia and your registration rules that no one really understands...

The day after that was our day of culture: the Hermitage in the afternoon and The Nutcracker in the evening.

The day after that was, I think, the day that Tyler and I went to see the Church on Spilled Blood—in my opinion, much more beautiful than even St. Basil’s. That evening, we met up with Fulbright Masha and some of her friends, saw Ded Moroz completely close off Nevsky Prospekt and light the New Year’s tree in front of the Hermitage, and walked to the Bronze Horseman (and yes, I did quote a bit from The Bronze Horseman in honor of First Year Russian through Pushkin). A light snow was falling all the while—it was gorgeous. A beautiful night.

The next day was New Year’s Eve. We did some holiday shopping in the afternoon and prepared our very American feast in the evening—roast chicken, roasted potatoes, garlic bread, and a delicious caramel apple pie. Closer to the New Year, however, the evening took a more Russian turn. We ate, listened to music, watched Medvedev’s speech and saw the clocks chime 12 in Moscow. Then, we all wrote a wish for the new year on a little slip of paper, burned it, and drank the ashes… yes, I did eat my wish. After that, we decided to take advantage of the fact that we were in St. Petersburg at midnight on New Year’s—so we took a walk to the Neva (watching out for stray bottle rockets from the roofs of buildings all the way). It was damn cold, but worth it. Matt and I really wanted to walk on the Neva, but the spot where we ended up was close to a bridge, under which the ice had partially melted, so we decided against it. Still, I’m glad we made that walk.

We slept in quite late the next morning, and Tyler and I decided to go see the Peter and Paul fortress in the afternoon. I’m not going to get into the details of the adventure we went through to get there, but let’s just say that it was a mildly frustrating and extremely cold experience—though we did finally make it. Since it was so cold, and since not everything was open because of the holiday, we only saw the jail and the cathedral. I have to say, I was really hoping to see where people like Dostoevsky and Chernyshevsky were held, but all that we were able to see were the cells of late-nineteenth century and early twentieth-century political prisoners (narodniki, revolutionaries, etc.). Still, it was really neat. It was also really cool to see the tombs of the Romanovs. I’m glad we made the trek. I’m also glad, however, that we stayed in that night—it was -30 degrees Celsius by 8pm. We did make a fabulous discovery, though—St. Petersburg has pizza delivery! Yum.

The following day was our last day in St. Petersburg, and we did… absolutely nothing. But hey, I’m not complaining—I’ll be back, and the point of this trip was to relax, not to see every sight.

The flight back from Helsinki was its own kind of special—after messing up our tickets, we had to stand in what was possibly the longest line ever known to mankind so that we could get our daily groping before boarding the plane. I have to say, I understand the terror threats, but I’m just not ready to have a random Finnish lady examine the lining of my underwear. But at last, at long last, we got our seats (together) and made it through the 9-hour flight to New York and the five-hour bus ride to Boston, lugged our luggage to Cambridge (Tyler was the champ he always is and handled my monster bag for me), and finally collapsed in Tyler’s (super lux) dorm room. The evening was spent in high style, snacking on vending machine Doritos and watching The History Channel. I hadn’t felt that good, that calm, that relaxed, since we were back in Chicago (doing much the same thing). It was, in a word, perfect.

(continued on 1.17.10)

The rest of that week was, not to overuse the word, perfect (with the one exception that Tyler had class in the mornings). I indulged in tasty treats, explored Cambridge (a very cool neighborhood that I’m very much looking forward to living in), met Tyler’s friends, went ice skating outside, went candlepin bowling (with a very cool group of Tyler’s friends), and just hung out and enjoyed where I was and who I was with for the first time in a long time.

I had to be back home by the following Sunday, so I decided to head out Friday night and spend Saturday in New York with Beth, Becca, and Christine. The best part? Tyler even came with me! It was great. We stayed with Beth and finally got a chance to catch up with her on Friday night, then met up with Becca and Christine on Saturday to see the Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening listening to music, catching up, making dinner, and eating delicious delivery cookies. Life doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

Tyler and I boarded the bus to Philadelphia for the last leg of our winter ‘09/’10 travels that night. We got into town around midnight and I’m still convinced nearly froze to death in the whole two minutes it took my dad to find us on the street (inspiring some flashbacks to a very uncomfortable bridge walk in St. Petersburg). And soon we were home.

The annual holiday party was the next day (everyone had kindly agreed to delay it so that I could be there). It was fun, and nice to see everyone at once. We played the exchange game with joke gifts again, and I think I came out on top with the giant rubber duck—big thanks to everyone who helped me get it back, heh. The only sad part of the day was that Tyler had to leave that afternoon to make it back to Cambridge, since he had classes in the morning. I really wish that I was on that bus with him.

The rest of the week at home flew by. Between meeting up with people, various appointments, and running errands, I hardly had time to rest and relax. Before I knew it, it was Friday night, and I had to pack and be ready to leave by 7:30 the next morning.

After many (…many) hours in transit, I am now sitting in the airport in Moscow waiting for my flight to Krasnodar, and all I want to do is turn around and go back.

I am going to try to keep my spirits up. In a week, I’ll be back in Moscow for the mid-year seminar. I’ll get to enjoy more of the city, I’ll get to see all of my fellow ETAs, and I’ll have a chance to discuss the problems in Slavyansk and possible solutions. Maybe we can make things better, somehow. If not, we’ll go from there. I want to see this through—I feel like I have to—I just have to figure out how I can do that in a more… pleasant environment.