Passion for Pirogs

One of the highlights the Russian cuisine has to offer are definitely pirogs. Pirogs are pies made out of yeast dough or puff pastry. There’s s a wide range of different stuffing – so there is a great choice in both sweet and salty pirogs. We have been eating a lot of pirogs, especially in one of our favourite cafés, “Stolle”.

It’s great fun cooking together with friends, so I gratefully accepted the invitation to participate in the pirog experience. Julia and Maria invited us to their place. The advantage of living in an apartment is definitely the fact that they have even an oven!

Besides Julia and Maria, the two hosts of this “perfect dinner”, Sara, Marina, Varpu and I myself were passionaly and eagerly involved in the preparations. But do too many cooks spoil the broth?  Let me tell you – we didn’t!

Yummy!!!

Having a few glasses of sparkling wine during the preparations, some good conversation and laughs, we were all really curious whether our very first pirogs would be as good as we hoped. By that time, even more guests – Daniel, Hilmar and Iva – had arrived.

The smell that filled the apartment was promising and when the pirogs were finally ready, they just turned out to be absolutely delicious …

Yummy!

We then went to the city center to see a concert of Markscheider Kunst, which was great fun as well.

(anna)

Halloween, Houswarming, “Lying-In”, Sushi & Co

We haven’t postet a lot about going out lately but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we haven’t been going out. Actually it’s quiet the difference. During the last two weeks we were out quiet a lot and it was a WHOLE LOT of fun.

Friday – Halloween

Halloween: Fun in Karinas Flat

On Halloween we were at a really nice friend of ours – Karina – and then we went to the Club “Achtung Baby”. In order to get free entrance Anna “pretended” to be a ballet dancer and even gave a little show of her skills. Because pictures say more than doesn’t words, you should check out flickr for some impressions.

Saturday Night – “Lying-In”
While Anna was at a concert, I was at another great party on Saturday night (unfortunately I don’t have any pics). Our roommate Andrea and I went there and didn’t return until the next afternoon. Because of the metro’s and the bridge’s timetables, all the guest just stayed there. We had a big “Bettenlager” – “bed camp” would be the literal translation but I am afraid there isn’t such a word in English, maybe even something like “lying-in”.

Thursday Nigth – Housewarming Party & Sushi
Last Thursday we were invited to “Новоселье” (Housewarming Party) and it was really cool. We were invited to this very nice flat, in a new built apartement complex. Katja, a very dear friend, invited us. When we arrived a lot of nice Russians and a really good buffet awaited us. That night we even learned who to make “Sushi” ourselves.

Partying here is a lot of fun, especially with Russians. They really know how to party and how to enjoy one’s time.

(carina)

Paaaarty!

We were at a great birthday party here in St. Peterburg last night. Our friend Maria from Salzburg turned 24. We met Maria and Julia in our first week at the registration office. We heard them talk “Austrian” and just introduced ourselves to them. That was a good thing to do.

We were a cool bunch of people celebrating Maria’s birthday. Maria, Julia and the two of us from Austria, Marina and Mischa from St. Petersburg and Sara, Iva, Merle, Joanna, Hilmar and Daniel, who are from Germany.  We were invited for dinner. It was delicious. We just looooooveeee curry. Yummy! We had a lot of fun. We were really curious about seeing their appartment and it is very nice indeed. It is interesting to see how exchange students live here in St. Petersburg if they don’t stay in a dorm. What a luxurious bathroom they have – with a state-of-the-art toilet!

It was very interesting that we ended up talking about cultural and language differences between Austria and Germany. We had quite some discussions going on and tried to teach each other different specific “Austrian” and “German” words. Although we are in Russia, we also learned some new aspects about one of our neighbouring contries.

However, “partying” seems to be a universal language. We didn’t plan to go out that night, but sometimes, if the feeling’s right, you just have to obey. Going out in St. Petersburg, in our case, has two “catches”:

1. The bridges disconnect (and this will be the case until the end of November), so there are no connections between the mainland and the islands. You can party like Cinderella and make sure that you take the last metro and get back home around midnight.

But even if it wasn’t for the bridges, there is another reason for going out really long, respectively coming back home early in the morning.

2. The dorm is closed from 1 to 6 am. So if you decided to go out clubbing, you better party all night long.

So if I tell you know that we went to the Griboedov club, you might as well guess that we had to stay out all night long. It was not an all too hard thing to do.

Thanks again, Maria, for the invitation – we loved the food (!) and partying with you. Anytime again

(anna)

Take care, Russian toilets!

Very short but important: Toilets in Russia are differnt:

1st case: If they look horrible, they are mainly ok.

2nd case: If they look normal and nice, they are not.

I just experienced the 2nd kind yesterday night, when we were going to this club Грибоедоф (Griboedov). Before we went to the club, we had some food in a small bar close to the club and as I really had to pee, I went to the restroom there. When I entered the really small “restroom”, that was actually quiet nice (it seemed to be clean and ok), I didn’t expect anything special. Actually, I was even surprised that it was that nice looking. The minute I sat on the toilet seat, the whole toilet started to move and it seemed like it would “fall on me” any moment. I instantly left the room and for the future I know that I have to expect cultural differences anywhere.

Dancing at day and night

Call me a masochist: every fibre of my being causes me pain today, but I still really happy, because I took my first dance classes here in St. Petersburg yesterday and my sore muscles keep on reminding me of that.

Russian Standards
The studio only offered Jazz and Modern Dance classes for Beginners, so I was not sure whether that was exactly what I was looking for, but I thought I might just give it a try. It was quite an experience. I don’t know what kind of BEGINNERS the dance classes were meant for, but definitely NOT for dance beginners!!! Maybe Jazz, respectively Modern Dance Beginners with a CLASSICAL background, because it was really challenging.

Jazz class was fun and I was very happy that I understood the “dance vocabulary” at least. The stretching at the end of the class was not only very exhausting, but also surprisingly successful, because all of my muscles were totally warmed up, I managed to the splits on my “bad” side as well. I can do the splits on both sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Knots in my body and my mind
I was really excited about Modern Dance, because I love, love, love modern dance. The thing about modern dance is that very often movements are explained and also somehow related to pictures. The choreographer explained quite a lot and I only got bits and pieces of it. She was explaining all kinds of things that your left and right arms and legs should do. I was trying my best to understand. At the same time, I tried to “copy” those movements she was showing us. In the end, I felt that there were knots in both my body and my mind.

Dancing all night long
At night, we went out to Грибоедов club. It was a really cool club and we had a lot of fun. We had to stay out long (respectively come back home early in the morning), because brigdes disconnect over night and so we can’t get to the island on which our dorms are located just like that on the one hand and because we can’t enter the dorms between 1 and 6 am on the other hand. It was really nice to have a coffee and a little chat taking a coffee at Кафе Хаус at 5 in the morning and then go back home by one of the first metros in the morning. We are really curious about discovering even more of St. Petersburg night-life in the upcoming weeks.

(anna)