Go, go Schlüsselburg!

In a few minutes we will be leaving for a day-trip to Schlüsselburg. Let’s see how it will be! – Well, to really explore the city, we have just time till around four o’clock since it’s getting dark then.

(carianna)

Short Notice About My Whereabouts

The last few days have been really crazy: Just really shortly.

On Monday I met Dima and Mascha (Dima spend the last semester in Graz as an exchange student and Mascha is his girlfriend who also has been to Austria quiet a lot of times – and has even been to EIBISWALD) at the Faculty and they asked me whether we wanted to join them to go to Ryazan (Russian: Рязань) with them, where the University KVN-Finals (in Russian: КВН) would take place. I instantly agreed and so about 6 hours later at 12 o’clock at night Andrea (my roommate) and I met Dima and Mascha at some metro station where the bus to Ryazan awaited us*. We went on “board” with nothing else then a purse, a toothbrush, some chocolate and HUBBA-BUBBA AND an extra pair of socks.

The journey started and about 18.5 hours later we arrived in Ryazan. KVN-Finals started at 7 o’clock on Tuesday. It turned out that KVN is kind of a show or competition where groups compete against each other. The group that is the most funniest, that makes the best jokes, wins. In Russia it is a really popular game. Already in school there are KVN-clubs, in University still and then also for adults there are competitions. We went to the finals of the University competition because our Faculty team also competed there – actually they came in second. It was quiet interesting as there were four different contests and different kind of jokes were made – also some politicall ones.

But for Andrea and me it was especially funny because we didn’t understand all of it and after the contest, about three hours later, we already went back to Piter, again by bus, again about 17 hours of road-trip (but this time we could still get some proper food – not just chocolate and Hubba Bubba).

to get some idea about the distances and stuff, I created a google-map with the location of Ryazan

* Anna unfortunately didn’t feel to good, so she didn’t come along. ;(

(carina)

Moscow

Last week, on Tuesday, we took a night-train to go to Moscow. I was really excited about this trip. I had heard a lot of different opinions about Moscow, some people told me that they didn’t like it, because it was too big and crowded and people were rather gloomy, others told me that Moscow was really cool. I couldn’t wait to go there myself to get my own impressions.

Taking the night-train was quite alright. The old, big lady sleeping very close to us was snoring quite badly all night long, so I didn’t really sleep well. We met girls from Moscow with whom we chatted for a little bit befor the lights in the train were turned off. It felt so good to just be sitting there and having a talk, which made me realised that my Russian had indeed improved.  Our trip started off really well.

In Moscow we found the way to our hostel without any problems. It was quite interesting. We basicually stayed in a private flat that must have some kind of licence to be a “hostel”. There was one private room with a double-bed (Carina and Markus stayed there) and two rooms with bunk beds. Students of PR from some Siberian city (and I am sorry for not recalling the name) stayed in the hostel, as they participated in some PR workshop for students from all over Russia.

We were really lucky as far as the weather was concerned. It was colder than in St. Petersburg – or least it felt like that – but the sun was shining. It was nice weather to walk around.

I was a tourist in every possible way. Spending three days in Moscow is quite little time and although we did a lot of sightseeing – yeah, we went to the Red Square and Kremlin – we didn’t quite manage to cover all of the important sights and landmarks.

I went to a really nice underground art store, where former Soviet objects are re-used and either new commodities or design objects are created. I bought a really cool bag, individually designed (actually sprayed) by some young Russian artist.

It’s really hard to say what it is, but somehow being in Moscow felt different to being in Piter, and I am not sure if it was only due to the fact that I was a tourist in Moscow and thus had a different feeling or attitude or if the two cities really differ that much.

Moscow is definitely worth a trip and I have already decided that I have to go there again, because there is so much more to see and I just liked the first impressions I got from it. Moscow has definitely caught me. It’s a cool place.

Back in St. Petersburg we had a really cool weekend, throwing a party (ветеринка) with lots of people in our small, but very cosy dorm room and lots of dancing. Carina made delicious “Topfenknödel” (curd cheese dumblings) on Sunday, that were so delightful that they are worth being mentioned here.

(anna)

Feeling touristy

Mama and Papa, if you are reading this, and I do hope so, I hope you enjoyed your stay in Piter as much as I did. It was great showing you “my” city and my home for the moment.

Yes, my parents stayed in Piter for five days and I was trying my best to offer them a diverse programme. I was killing two birds with one stone: I hadn’t done much sight-seeing myself, so I finally had a good reason to get started with discovering more of the touristy aspects of St. Petersburg I had missed out on so far. Last week, I was not only passing by Hermitage, but finally went inside. The same applies to the Peter-and-Paul-Fortress.

However, I also tried to show my parents a St. Petersburg off the beaten track and less touristy, like a big real Russian market, various rides on “Marschrutkas” and a nice coffee-break in our dorm room. You don’t get these impressions from a package holiday.

I came to realise that I had already gotten used to distances. We did a lot of walking and on the second day, my parents already knew that it would ONLY be another 15 minutes of walking, when I told them, “Oh, it’s just around the corner.”

We were quite lucky as far as the weather was concerned. It was clouded and windy, it rained a bit, but it was still not too bad and we could do some walking, some more walking and even more walking.

Now I am getting back to daily life here in St. Petersburg, but I am already looking forward to feeling touristy again in about two weeks when we are going to Moscow.

(anna)

New image of Piter

Finally we have found the “real” Piter – no more product placement for Ikea, no more European stuff, just the real Russia.

Isn’t St. Petersburg lovely in the sunshine? The picture shows the Moika river from a bridge at Nevski Prospekt.

(carianna)

Feeling sunny :)

Enjoying ice-cream on a lovely autumn day

Ice-cream is sold here at almost any corner. Today we had our first ice-cream in St. Petersburg. And that was really good!

When we woke up this morning, the sun was shining and it just appeared to be the perfect day for a lovely Sunday afternoon walk, despite all the Russian homework we should actually get done. Our walks here are most of the times more like hikes, but we seem to have gotten used to it. The next metro stop just feels like a stone’s throw away, although we still walk there for about 15 minutes.

We wanted to see Podely Park (Ппиморский парк Победы). It is probably Piter’s Central Park. It took us about an hour to get there. It’s funny, but wherever we go – if it is not to the faculty, -  we always expect a journey of about an hour and so far, it has always taken us an hour.

The park was definitely worth the journey. As always, we were walking a lot. We spend an absolutely lovely afternoon! It was so nice to see so many different people enjoying the sunshine. Until today, I had never really realised how much I acutally like autumn.

(anna)

Peterhof

We haven’t really done any sight-seeing in St. Peterburg itself, but on Saturday we did our first excursion to see one of the many summer palaces: Peterhof. It is one of the best-known. Andrea from Canada and Varpu from Finland, who are exchange students at the journalistic faculty as well, and Heather, a Canadian student of Russian and Fine Arts, came with us.

Peterhof has fantastic gardens that are really huge. Although we did really quite a lot of walking, it was not possible to discover all the corners of the parks. The fountains at Peterhof are very well-known and we were lucky that they were still turned on. They were really worth the trip. It was very nice going there and we finally experienced what we had been told before: as a foreigner you have to pay different prices than Russian people for both the park entry and the palace entry. It is the same with tourist spots everywhere – you are asked to pay for everything, even for the toilet.

In the palace, you weren’t allowed to walk around by yourself, but you had to join a group. We didn’t even have enough time to ask for an English tour, but we were instantly required to come along and thus ended up in a Russian tour. We enjoyed the walk through the palace and we were happy about the words we could understand, but once more we realised that we better start taking Russian classes soon!

We went back to Petersburg by ship. We missed quite a lot of it, because we fell asleep, but a few glances of the city from the sea were enough to realise that Petersburg offered a lot of beauty and charme. We really want to get started discovering the city.

(anna)