We left for Russia on Saturday, March 06, on one of the windiest mornings in Klaipeda. A bus picked us up at the dorm, and we, the 28 study abroads, plus 4 SA interns and 2 SA staff leaders, traveled 6 hours to Riga, Latvia, where we boarded a 16:15 sleeper train bound for Moscow. We have an entire car to ourselves (the rest of the passengers on the train should consider themselves lucky...) and are quickly settling into our 2nd-class rooms. There’s a little bathroom at each end of the car, then a long skinny skinny hallway down one side of the car, then rooms on the other side. The sleeper compartments are tiny little shoeboxes that are just exactly right.
We crossed the border late enough that we should have all been asleep, but early enough that we were excitedly still awake. The Latvian part of the check was pretty short; some soldiers and guards came in and poked around in our rooms, checked and stamped our passports, asked us questions, and went on their way. We traveled through about a half hour of no-man’s land before coming to the Russian checkpoint. This took much longer, and at the order of our group leaders, we were all much quieter. One soldier came in first and looked around our room, making the bottom bunk kids get up so he could check the storage compartment under the bed. Who knew there even was a storage compartment?? Then an old mean-looking lady came and checked and rechecked and stamped our passports and Russian visas, then a young soldier, younger than us, for sure, came by and crawled up on my bed and opened up the ceiling (didn't know that was there) and shined a flashlight all around checking for who knows what. It was bedtime soon enough and my roommates and I fell asleep watching the snowy Russian countryside roll by. They brought tea and little breakfast boxes in the morning - a hard roll, weird cheese, jam, weirder sausage, you know, your typical 'Latvija Ekspress' train breakfast.
We arrived in Moscow around 10:ish and took the Metro to our hostel. We had time to shower and change, and then we left for the city center. ***Side note: We had been divided up into transport groups (TG), and my group named ourselves the 'green frogs' in Russian, because in Russian, frogs don't say ribbit, they say 'kwah' so we called ourselves TG-Kwah. These were the groups that we were with most of the time, and how we took roll and all that fun stuff. I couldn’t have asked for a better group – Edva(rs) was our group leader, a funny little Lithuanian guy, our boys are very tall so are easy to follow through a crowd, and the girls are wonderful. End side note*** My TG went first to the Pushkin museum, which is just your general art statue painting really old artifact kind of place. It was a small collection, but really good stuff. I was officially feeling like crap by this point, though, so I bought myself a cup of tea. This was my first Russian language experience on my own. It pretty much exhausted my vocabulary, but it was fun. “Adien geriachee chai, pahzhalysta.” “Spacebah.” One hot tea, please. Thank you. So I sat and people-watched for a long time while the rest of TG-Kwah was in the museum culturing themselves. After over an hour of sitting and resting, I was feeling better by the time we were ready to leave.
TG-Kwah walked down the street and bought stuffed baked potatoes and peach juice from a street vendor, which remains my favorite meal in Russia. We ate our food in the sunshine in front of a big beautiful Russian Orthodox church – Church of Christ our Savior. The church was built by whoever was Tsar when Napoleon got kicked out of Russia for good as a thank you to God. Then the church was destroyed during the communist era; Stalin wanted to put a statue of Lenin there, but ran out of money, so he built a swimming pool. It wasn’t until after the communist regime was out of power that the people rallied together and raised money to rebuild the church, which was finished in 1997. The church was beautiful outside and in, with detailed paintings of scenes from biblical history: David’s anointing, the presentation of Baby Jesus to Simeon and Anna, John baptizing Jesus, Pentecost, and so on. Pictures of saints and martyrs line the pillars and archways – the pillars of our faith, this great cloud of witnesses – candles and incense burned in front of icons of favorite saints, babushkas bow and cross themselves. Yet somehow, with all the sensory experience of the worship here, this building remains so empty.
We next went to Tosca, and I am sad to say that I started running a fever within 20 minutes of arriving at the opera house, and Tosca became beautiful background music to my 3-hour nap. When the fat lady sang, or, in our case, stopped singing, we walked to Red Square, which was open. This is a rarity, it seems, especially as it was the day before a holiday and with the upcoming presidential elections. ***Side note: Putin’s opponents in this ‘democratic’ election have all either been imprisoned, taken a vacation to Byelorussia, or just gone missing all very recently. The Russian people know, but still love Putin, since they’ve never known ‘honest’ politics. End side note*** Even in my fevered state, seeing Red Square at night was amazing. Walking on the huge cobblestone square laid before me centuries ago, surrounded by beautifully illuminated tributes to the Mother land – the State History Museum, a big, masculinely glorious red building; the GUM mall, once the epitome of communism, lots of people shopping and waiting in line for not enough things they can’t afford, now represents Moscow present, expensive clothes, more things the people don’t need/can’t afford; St. Basil’s cathedral, trying to be the Happiest Place on Earth - Napoleon thought this church so beautiful he wanted to take it back to Paris. Yes, one St. Basil’s to go, please. The northeast wall of the Kremlin guards over Lenin’s Mausoleum, and blocks out much of the city noise. Red Square is beautiful.
We dragged our exhausted bodies back to the hostel where I promptly fell asleep, and remained that way all the next day, Vilma (our SA leader) stopping by occasionally to shove juice and food and drugs down my throat. TG-Kwah got back around 11:30 that night and came to visit me, a welcome interruption from my boredom and sickness-induced sadness, and brought stories and souvenirs of their day (walking around Moscow, visiting the Kremlin, and going to the circus) back for me, along with flowers, chocolate, and poetry for Women’s Day.
Day 3 in Moscow: I am, of course, still sick. We had to check out of the hostel early on Tuesday, so I couldn’t stay in bed even though that’s where I definitely should have been. We went to Red Square again, which was closed, but we were able to see Lenin’s body. What an amazing man. So loved, and yet so hated. They wipe his body down every couple of days and re-dip him in their ‘secret solution’ basically paraffin wax and formaldehyde. I wonder what underwear Lenin wears. They just changed his suit a couple of weeks ago – a new look for a very dead man. He’s been dead since 1924. Seriously. I also got to see the changing of the guards, which was pretty cool. Like in London, only more dangerous, and less ceremonious. Basically I just pouted around for the day, walking wherever the group walked and sitting down whenever possible. I had a glass of juice made out of 12 kiwis, sat in an internet café for 2 hours, sat in a restaurant for 2 hours in the evening, that sort of thing. I was miserable. We had to go back to the hostel to pick up our stuff out of the luggage room, so Chad (the NorthAmerican SA leader) took me back early, and I got to sleep on a couch in the lobby, then he hired a taxi for me so I didn’t have to walk to the train station, which was so nice.
I slept well on the sleeper train to St.Petersburg – same setup as train to Moscow, only better breakfast (including spreadable cheese and some mysterious meat paste). We arrived in Petersburg around 7:30am, and walked to the hostel. We check into our rooms – all the TG-Kwah girls got to stay in one big room with lots of windows and sun and beautiful hardwood floors – it was great! I slept all morning while everyone else showered and got ready for the day, then when everyone was out on the 5+ hour walking tour of Petersburg, I slept, unpacked, took a shower, almost got locked in the shower room – funny story – did some laundry, just had a slow, wonderful morning. I was feeling a little better, and these were all little things I could do and feel productive. I had a lazy, wonderful day, then Vilma took me to meet the group for the Feel Yourself Russian show by way of the Metro and some walking. The show was really well done, very funny, lots of dancing, and our TG-Kwah dinner after the show and my mushroom soup was even more healing to my spirit and body. Then my friend Leah gave me a slideshow on her laptop – I love digital technology. Her view of the world through a lens made me happy.
Our second day, Thursday, I guess, in Petersburg we went to St. Isaac’s. We paid the 50R to go up the 257 stairs to the top of the church for a view of the city – it was SO beautiful! People pointed out all the buildings and monuments to me that they had been shown on the tour yesterday. Then on to the Hermitage! I went to the Peter the Great house exhibit, which was a few doors down the street, then walked through the Russian Culture rooms to see how life was like for the Tsars. I loved seeing all the furniture, especially the nursery furnishings of the children of Nicholas II and Alexandra. We stopped for Kebabas for dinner, then went to Sleeping Beauty. Oh, A Chorus Line has it right – Everything is beautiful at the ballet. The story, the set, the lights, the props, the costumes, the makeup, the dancing, the music, oh, the music…all the people coming to see and be seen. Everything is beautiful at the ballet.
Day 3 in St. Petersburg was one of the days that I felt the best for the most of the day. I went out for the day with another SA and we went to the Church of the Spilled Blood, and went souvenir shopping at the market behind the church. Then we met another girl at the columns across the Neva and went to the hermitage. We saw paintings and more paintings – Monet, Rembrandt, Pisarro, Corot, Kandinsky, Picasso, Matisse – all the greats. I made Leah walk down the grand stairs with me in skirts and curtsy. I think I was born in the wrong century. Out in Palace Square, the sun was shining, and if I block out the noise of traffic, and instead listen for the sound of the horses hooves and carriage wheels rolling over cobblestones, I put myself back in 1880. Who cares that they charged money for a ride in the carriage; I can pretend the sound is authentic. We walked back to the hostel by way of the market again. We stopped and talked to the picture man for a long time. He’s a crazy old man, but it was so neat to hear about his wife and kids and his view of the world through a lens and without.
That night we had a cultural discussion with Chad and no natives. It’s amazing what a difference that really does make in how much we’ll open up about stuff. It was good to hear people process Russia and Orthodoxy and Poverty. As every day in Lithuania, I have such a hard time watching people dig through trashcans and scavenge for food and kopeks and not be able to offer them anything other than maybe an orange and a smile. I know that God is faithful and I know that His grace is sufficient, but where is the sufficient grace in that old man’s life? How does he feel God’s love and provision and abundance? Is God being sufficient and strong in that old man’s weakness through giving us – giving me – opportunities to sacrifice my abundance and give? Solzhenitsyn says ‘all that the downtrodden can do is go on hoping. After every disappointment they must find fresh reason for hope.’ And if they don’t find fresh reason?? God’s mercies are new every morning, I know that. But how do you find those – how do you give those mercies to someone digging through the garbage?? I don’t get it.
Day 4 of St.Petersburg. I started running a fever again during the cultural meeting. Seriously – I’m sick of being sick! I decided to take a day of Spring Break on our last day in Petersburg, so I spent the morning chilling in an internet café. Looking at GAP/OldNavy online was dangerous for my spring-ly materialistic mind. I want to wear flip flops! We met a bunch of people in the afternoon to go to Summer Palace/Aurora/Lenin. The Summer Palace is 100% adorably small, and the gardens surrounding the palace are 100% meant to be visited in the summer. All 250+ statues are bronze, so they put them in little wooden huts during off-season to keep them out of the elements. We enjoyed ‘outhouse gardens’ instead, and laughed a lot as we snacked on the benches in the sunshine. Still, though, there was something strangely beautiful about the patterns of the wooden boxes in the gardens. The Aurora (Lenin’s revolutionary group short canons from this ship to start the first city-wide strike, which gave Lenin popularity with the people and eventually got him ‘voted in’ after the Bolsheviks got rid of Nicholas II. The ship remains a symbol of Russian freedom and they sunk it during WW2 to protect it from the Germans, then pulled it back up later) turned out to be too far away, so we looked at it from the bridge and walked to the Lenin square. All the group split up once we got to the big statue, so one of the TG-Kwah guys and I grabbed a bench and basked in the sunshine and talked for a long time. Then it was back to the hostel to hang out until it was time to leave for the Metro to the train station. And, I’m running a fever again. Evening, day 4. Good bye, St. Petersburg.
To leave you with a little reflection on the cities: Moscow is a much more politically-minded city, and always has been. This is evidenced even in the beauty of Red Square and all the blood that has been spilled there. St. Petersburg was built as a respite from the bustle and noise and politics of Moscow, and remains such, although it seems just as busy. The architecture is much more airy and less functional, and more romantically aesthetical, where Moscow is much more masculine and purposeful in its beauty, and I loved the pulse of Red Square almost as much as the whimsy of Palace Square and all the Gardens. Time Travel? Yes, Please!
We took the train back to Riga, then the bus back to Klaipeda, Karklu 5, my blessed home. Savo Namu. It’s good to be home.
See you in 6 weeks...*Anna
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