Independence Day Abroad

There was one more exciting thing that happened to me on Saturday: since Sunday was the 4th, we were all discussing how we would celebrate Independence Day.  Most people seemed in favor of celebrating in a very Russian way (i.e. going to a bar and getting drunk) which I, naturally, opposed.  However, I was studying Saturday night when I received a phone call from one of the other members of my group, Anna P-, who said that she had been discussing this with her host mother when her host mom offered to have us all over to her dacha!!  Now, the opportunity to see a real Russian summer house, especially as a way to celebrate our most American holiday, seemed just too ironic to pass up, so of course I agreed. :]  Unfortunately, the outing was an all-day affair, so I wasn't able to go to church, but there are some things you only get one chance to do (and it is looking less and less like we will be invited to Tatyana's dacha, so I figured I should take the chance when I am offered it :P).  We met at 11 am at one of the most northernly metro stations in the city, from which we took an электричка (train) out into the country.  It took an entire hour just to get to the train station from the metro stop near my apartment - St. Petersburg is a big city!!  The train ticket cost 60 rubles, round trip.

Leave it to me not to be able to even get around the city without having an adventure :]  About two stops from the end of the metro line, there was an announcement that everyone had to get off the train and wait for the next one.  I just barely heard it - it was a long metro ride and I was going to the end of the line, so I was listening to my iPod.  I still don't know why we had to vacate the train, but I got on the next one and finished my journey without any problems.  

The group consisted of Anna, Molly, Kelly, Emily, me, Mykola, Andrew, and Hayk.  It was a good group and just the right size - big enough so that no one felt left out but small enough to all fit around the dining room table.  :]  It was good to be in a group of friends again: when we go places with the entire PiP group (17 people) it feels more like a school field trip, it's too impersonal.  This felt more like a holiday.  As we were waiting for the train we were approached by a Russian girl our age who pegged us as Americans and tried out her English on us (she spoke very well).  Then the train arrived, and the real adventures began.  It was so crowded!!! I honestly don't know how we fit into the train: we were all standing, pressed up against one another in the foyer of the train car.  I couldn't move in any more because there were mothers with small children directly in front of me, and I didn't want to crush them.  And kids weren't the only fragile beings in the train car: a lady near me was trying to hold onto a tabby kitten that couldn't have been more than three weeks old and kept mewing silently and trying to explore during the entire train ride, and another woman beside me held a cat carrier in which was a fully-grown and very frightened orange cat.  I didn't see any dogs, but I'm sure they must have been around; I would think it more likely for people to take their dogs to the dacha than their cats (and I'm assuming that's where they were all going, heading out of the city on a Sunday morning).  It was so crowded that not all of us could get into the same train car and we were forced to separate: Emily, Mykola and Hayk weren't with the rest of the group, but we maintained phone contact during the ride.  It was absolute chaos: no one knew where we were going or how many stops to wait.  But somehow we all managed to detrain (again, if you can deplane, you can detrain.  I am going to make up an entire new family of verbs based on this stupid idea ^.^) at the correct stop and set off for the dacha, following Anna's host mom like ducks in a row.

Anna's host mom is a hoot.  She can't be younger than 50, but she's the kind of person you would love to have as your grandmother.  She's really fun and she has a huge personality.  She knows a bit of English (a few words here and there) which she uses generously, although at this point we all have MUCH better listening comprehension :]  On the way to the dacha (about a 10-minute walk from the train station) she pointed out the various plants along the road, including Russian bird-ox which she insisted on throwing at us so that the burrs stuck to our clothes :]  And she is SO hospitable - the picture of a Russian babushka.  We had a great time at her dacha.

Finally we arrived.  The dacha definitely resembles an American summer camp in the woods or on the beach.  It is a smallish wooden house with 8 or so rooms and an attic, as well as a large garage/storage shed and what used to be a sizeable in-ground pool but is now just a small inflatable above-ground one (Anna's host mom explained that the other got a hole in it, unfortunately :P).  It was already 12:30 by the time we arrived, so we all sat down to eat the lunches we had brought with us.  Anna had told us to do so because she was unsure about the food situation.  As I have probably already ranted enough, the food in Russia is unbelievably cheap.  I was able to buy a loaf of bread, cheese, a juice box and a булочка for only 74 rubles, and I was quite proud of myself for this.  However, we were soon to be surprised; Anna's host mom started bringing out food for us!  It is no small feat to feed 8 college students a substantial lunch, but she managed it:  we started out with a giant loaf of bread and some cheese, from which we all made sandwiches; then she brought out a heaping plate of sliced cucumbers, which were quickly consumed; she then followed this with some delicious meat-and-noodle soup (the meat was very tender, either pork or lamb).  When she served us the soup (it was pretty funny: she fed the boys from large bowls, while the girls' dishes were much smaller) she also brought out six large and very silvery spoons and announced "These spoons were in the Gulag.  Who wants one?"  Of course, we all did.  I'm pretty sure they were made of aluminum, and we definitely could have bent them with very little trouble.  (The Gulag, for those of you who don't know, is an abbreviation that has now come to stand in for the entire system of Soviet forced-labor camps which existed from the 1930s-1950s; while not nearly as atrocious as the Nazi concentration camps, they worked on essentially the same basis, with poor conditions and hard labor characterizing the lives of the criminals and political prisoners sent there.  Thank you, Wikipedia.)

After our scrumptious lunch, Anna's host mom went over to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of champagne, placing it on the table and declaring, "To America!"  She then repeated the process with a second bottle of champagne, a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and a bottle of some suspiciously dark homemade wine.  Now, all of you who know me know I don't drink, but I would be lying if I said that I'm not the least bit curious about why so many people do.  As it was a holiday, and as I was in a group of my friends, and as I am in Russia where the drinking age is 18, and as drinking alcohol in general is actually not against any of my beliefs, I decided to try it.  So there; Erin Mills has now had alcohol.  Please don't be too shocked.  :D  It was so gross!!!!!!!!!!!  The champagne taste was not so bad: I've had sparkling cider before, and the champagne tasted similar to that.  But the alcohol: the sharp bite and the prickling all the way down my throat - it was so gross and weird!!  Therefore, I can now say that I have tried alcohol and I don't like it.  It may be true that another kind of alcohol - beer, wine, vodka, etc. would taste very different and I would like it: I don't know.  But I don't need to know, because now I can say that I don't drink because I'm still underage (in America), I'm scared of alcohol and particularly of how I would be drunk, and because I've tried it and I don't like it.  (Not to mention that alcohol tends to lead to drunkenness, which is expressly and repeatedly warned against in the Bible, as well as to other illicit behaviors which I have no desire to take part in or be witness to.)  And that is that.

So, back to our adventurous day.  As it turns out, there is a lake not far from Anna's host mom's dacha, so we decided to go there and swim on account of the day being so hot.  So we walked back to the train station and took it one stop further (fortunately this time, at 1:30, it was much less crowded).  The train tracks literally ran along the edge of the lake, so it was about 50 feet to the beach.  We weren't the only ones who had the idea to go to the beach this day: it was so crowded we could hardly find a place to put our stuff!  However, we finally succeeded and proceeded to enjoy the perfect day.  Although we were so extremely far north, the water in the lake wasn't much colder than in a lake in Maine (which, if you ask a normal person, is probably pretty cold, but at least I'm used to it), so it felt wonderful on such a hot day.  The lake bottom was soft sand and the gradient so gradual that you could go out 200 feet and still not be in water over your head.  There we spent an extremely pleasant afternoon alternately sunbathing and playing in the lake.  Hayk had brought his soccer ball, so we played pass for a while, but we quickly tired of that and moved on to chicken fights.  This game requires four people at a time: two people stand on the lake bottom and one person sits on the shoulders of each of the "bases," from which standpoint the person on top tries to knock their opponent into the water.  It is one of the most fun water games I have ever played, although we usually don't get much of an opportunity in pools and such (too much adult supervision :P).  The last time I played this, in fact, was one year ago at Jasmin Burfeind end-of-year foreign exchange student party, with Nikola, Alicia Lane, and the Meehans (shortly before mud-wrestling Nikola and losing badly :P).  The conditions at the lake were perfect: the bottom was soft, so it wouldn't hurt the bases' feet to hold someone on their shoulders and move around, and since the lake was so shallow we could move quite a ways off from shore so that we wouldn't bother as many people while we were being loud, obnoxious Americans.  Naturally, the boys were the bases (although one of them, Andrew, has a runner's build and thus weighs less than I do) and the girls fought it out on top.  I think I won more than I lost, although I can't properly remember.  It doesn't matter, anyway; it was all in fun.  I do remember that Hayk was the champion base: whoever was on his shoulders always won.  Probably because he's 6 feet and 180 pounds, with nice broad shoulders and good balance.  I personally want to make another excursion to the lake some weekend with the rest of the group: I think Phil the gymnast could give Hayk a run for his money ^.^ :P

We arrived at the lake around 2:30; by 5:00 we were all ready to leave.  We packed up and returned to the dacha (as did everyone on the beach, it seemed - the train was once again extremely full) where Anna's host mom surprised us with even more food: this time, homemade blini.  We passed the time before dinner playing Mafia, and discovered that I shouldn't be Mafia because I make too much noise when I play.  I don't make a very good God either, because I have a hard time keeping silent during the discussions.  I bet you can't imagine that ;]  In any case, a grand time was had by all, and the blini were delicious.  We had both apple and raspberry preserves to put on them, which were both very sweet and flavorful.  We also had tea in the traditional Russian way: there was a small teapot of previously-brewed tea, extremely strong: you took as much as that as you wanted, according to how strong you wanted your tea, then filled the cup the rest of the way with scalding water.  Much more interesting and precise than using teabags, and less messy than tea leaves.  :]

So, sunburnt and with full stomachs, we returned to the city.  The train at 7:30 was again, much less crowded than it had been in the morning or at 5; it must be all about picking the right time.  I finally reached the apartment again at 8:45, where Latalia was waiting for me with some stories of her own.  Being tired from the day before, she had opted to revisit the Hermitage Museum in lieu of the lake, and even after hearing about all of my amazing adventures, was glad that she had done so.  She had also scoped out the souvenir stalls which are located near all of the main tourist attractions and could give me the specs on potential prices.  One thing I was especially glad to hear: bickering is acceptable and almost expected.  However, if they gather that you are an American tourist, you may find a great deal more resistance, so I'll have to be careful :P

Thinking about the zoo (which had been my original plan for Sunday, and which I have yet to visit), we decided to check out my guidebook and see whether we could find the price of admission.  Interestingly enough, neither of the guidebooks that Aunt Shirley gave me make any mention of the zoo (it is reputed to have atrocious conditions for the animals - apparently both National Geographic and Frommers, the companies my guidebooks are from, are animal-rights activists :P) but we did manage to find some other extremely interesting things: in particular, a Dolphinarium, a roller-blade rental company, and a wax museum.  Now those are my kinds of attractions!!!! XD :D  At least now I know of several things I want to do: hopefully I can get my Russian friend to do them too, and then Princeton will pay for them!!  Yay for free money!!!!  :D