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)

Being Girly Again

Forever young … Andrea and I just got tattoos on our hands and we are chewing “Hubba Bubba” chewing gum. The Skittles over here are also great. Everybody loves candy, especially women. The sweeter the better.

hubbabubba

kiwi

erdbeer

bubba

hubba

cola

mango-maracuja

“And girls just wanna have fun …” could be the title of our small night blogging session. Because simple is easier than complex.

(andrea+carina)

Туфли or better boots?

There is this cliché that women think of shoes a lot. With us this is definitely the case at the moment. We are now sharing our observations with you – can you find some answers to our questions?

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the highest heels of all?
No matter how old they are, no matter in which shape they are, no matter where they are, no matter which weather, what Russian women have in common are their shoes. Sometimes it seems as though they were competing for the “highest high heel in the country”. Sometimes we really admire how ALL of them can walk in these shoes.

Do you fancy my funky shoes?
The choice of shoes is really huge, some pairs are really super-funky. We have already found a lot of shops with funky shoes, but everyday that there is even more funk around.

How do high-heels affect architecture?
For weeks we have been wondering why the stairs in our faculty and also in other buildings are so flat – with sneakers you can easily take three at a time. As Carina was wearing high-heeled shoes today, she suddenly understood that they must be high-heel friendly stairs.

Umbrella or high-heels?
Today it is raining cats and dogs. One reason for wearing high-heels could simply be the rain and the pot-holes full of water. High-heels serve as stilts and women can walk over the water.

Any more questions?
We still have plenty and have already planned the next shoe project.

(carianna)

Showering and Getting Back to Normal

The shower I just took was the best one in my life, so I am going to write about it. Why that? I just appreciated it a lot because after all of this weird stuff happening yesterday, we have Electricity, Water (even hot one) and also Internet again or still.

That is really crazy and I didn’t expect it to be like that. I still feel that the happenings of yesterday were some exceptional circumstances. The crazy thing: Everything back to daily life but I am not yet.

See also: “Aquapark” in the dorms, Stress release after the “water attack”, The Water and Journalistic Thoughts, The Water and US Being Austrian

(carina)

“Aquapark” in the dorms

The water made its way from the 10th floor to the ground-floor

Pipes broken in dorm – water almost everywhere

We were sitting at our desks, after a long day out, checking our e-mails, when we heard water dropping down. We wondered whether any of our roommates had forgotten to turn off the water in the kitchen properly. Looking outside, we saw water dropping down from the ceiling in the kitchen.

After a few moments of surprise, our roommate Mischa and the two of us also decided to have a look outside to the hallway, where more people, commotion and water were to be found. We didn’t really think a lot, just remembering scary news stories. Within secondes, we pakced our most important things – money and passports – and just left the building, yelling at local people that they better leave as well right away. We just thought that there could be some electrical problems or the whole building might just fall apart.

On our way downstairs, we were already carrying a backpack (just laptops and important stuff like toothbrushes), our purses and an umbrella. There were only few people leaving the building and we weren’t even sure whether it was better to stay or to leave. As everything happened so out of the blue, we were just very insecure about the whole situation.

We called our coordinators and asked them what to do, whether the dorms were secure at all. We don’t think that we were overreacting or making things worse then they were, we weren’t panicing, but we really wanted to get some reassurance.

After all, it turned out that some water-pipes had broken on the tenth floor and water was flooding down all the way to the ground-floor. It was a whole lot of water. Here’s a picture from the entrance area we took when we left the building.

At the moment, we are back in our room and we just hope that we can stay there all night long without any further interuptions (It is kinda crazy that the internet is actually working, but that brings back some normality).

We will definitely blog more about this crazy evening, but at the moment, we are just having a cocktail and some food for stress-release.

(carianna)

Short notice at 7.30 in the morning

No, I haven’t just gotton up – I have just come home. The most fun you usually have when you don’t expect it. Just “Carpe diem”.

(carina)

Finally Rush Hour

Finally we experienced how Russian metro is during rush hour. Honestly, really crazy.

A whole bunch of people is standing in front of this comparably small metro building with just two or three “small” doors leading into it. Actually there are so many people that you cannot see the stairs anymore let alone space in between people. But the doors are opening and closing rapidly, as people keep rushing inside. This cluster of people is actually moving pretty fast and if you are once somewhere in the middle, you can’t move as you want to but you have to follow the will of the masses. It is really crazy but it somehow works.

People flooding into the station

You are standing there, maybe next to an old grandma with a small girl on her hand and then there might be a not too good smelling man in front of you. If you are with a friend, you are for sure gonna lose him/her. When you finally reach the building and pass the door, it is ok. You can breathe again and you can move as you want to. Also in the metros, you will find more space for yourself than you did before while queuing.

It’s crazy and a lot of fun at the same time. If you have the opportunity you should definitely go for it.

- maybe written in a confused way but it is like I felt today -

(carina)

To be or not to be sisters: That is the question!

Again some random thoughts: A few times already people have stated that we are really like sisters. It is not that we look so much the same – even though at the moment we both have dark hair, wear glasses and always wear the SAME scarf (or at least our style seems to be similiar). We just take good care of each other and soooo very often we think about the same things and simultaniously we start talking and say the same words – it really is scaring and sometimes also annoying.

That might be really boring for you. But there was another funny coincidence: These two Russian friends of ours, who have been to Austria together as exchange students, are the Russian counterpart of “Carianna”. They also made up a name and call themselves “Karisa” (a combination of KARina and lISA) and they also have pretty much the same “dream” for their future (job).

So we instantly started working on our business-plan (one problem though, as we are all pretty much alike: Differantiation of work is not that easy) … abruptly we fell silent and were all focused on something … or better someone

(carianna)

Maybe St. Petersburg isn’t that big?

We had coffee with our Russian friends Karina and Lisa Tuesday evening and they showed us a really cool coffee place in St. Petersburg, Zoom, we definitely want to go again soon. While we were having our drinks, a very handsome guy walked by and all of us were kind of speechless. We kind of wondered if he was Russian, because to us he seemed a bit Northern European, maybe Swedish or very Northern German. We spend the next five mintues getting to know Russian words for handsome guys, but that’s not the point of this blog entry.

The funny thing is: We saw him again. We saw this one guy again – in a city of almost 5 million people. At the moment, there is a German-Russian event going on in St. Petersburg. Merkel and Medwedew and also this one guy were at our faculty when we were there as well. We saw the guy, but we missed Merkel and Medwedew.

(carianna)

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.