Moscow. The only other city in Russia that anyone knows anything about. Well, I guess I can say I've seen Russia, now...
- Since we had had our Grammar final on Thursday, we watched a movie for most of class on Friday. The film we chose was a Russian one (of course) made in the 70s: Иван Васильевич меняет профессию (Sometimes translated and sold in the states as Ivan Vacilevich: Back to the Future). It is a Russian classic about a kooky engineer who invents a time machine in his apartment and accidently causes the floor manager of his apartment to trade places with the Russian Czar of the 16th century, Ivan the Terrible. It was a good experience in bad cinematography - the chase scenes were filmed in fast-forward and the acting was stiff. Worse yet, it took the stale science-fiction cop-out: at the end of the film, the engineer wakes up and it is all a dream. I understood about 60% of the dialogue, since they spoke quickly and mixed modern Russian with the language of Ivan the Terrible's time. But, it was good not to have to think too much.
- After classes we all gathered in the cafeteria for a small celebration in honor of finishing the program. There were small Russian pastries and cakes, as well as cold iced tea. It's very hard to believe, after 8 weeks, that we're really done. After the celebration and catching up on my blog, I set off home to take care of my last few things before Moscow. I was already packed, and there was really only one more thing I wanted to do in St. Petersburg, something I had been thinking about all summer... changing into jeans despite the heat, I traipsed down to the park and found the women who bring the ponies every day to give rides to the children. I was turned down at the first two ponies, being informed that they were for small children only (although I did my best to look small and unimposing). Not to be deterred, I walked over to where the woman who always rides her horse over here (and whom I saw texting and riding my first day in St. Petersburg, which instantly made me like her) and repeated my inquiry. Looking a little askance, she nonetheless went over to the horse and unbuckled his reins from his saddle, indicating that I should mount. I did so and she proceeded to lead me in a large circle around the park. It felt so good to be back on a horse, although I didn't dare to do much to direct him myself since I didn't know how he'd react. At the end I got a picture of myself on his back (my first picture with my disposable camera), payed out my 250 rubles, and returned to the apartment, satisfied. (I would have been happier with a picture on one of the ponies, even if I didn't ride it, but was too timid to ask).
- After this successful foray, I reviewed the contents of my suitcase one last time (it only made sense for me to bring just my carry-on instead of all of my luggage) and set out to meet my traveling companions at the Georgian restaurant that we had visited earlier upon Anna B's recommendation. Since I had yet to find my sister an appropriate souvenir (she had requested a tie-dye shirt with cyrillic writing on it, which proved a singularly difficult thing to locate in St. Petersburg) I decided to spend the hour-plus before our meeting-time in remedying this situation. Since I couldn't fulfill both the tie-dye and cyrillic requirements, I decided that a white shirt would serve just as well, and we could tie-dye at home. Unfortunately, there is a strange dearth of nice white T-shirts in any size between youth Medium and adult Xtra-Large at the end of July in St. Petersburg. After scouring every souvenir stand between my apartment and the Hermitage without success (at least 20 stands), I resigned myself to the necessity of returning to the souvenir fair, as overwhelming as I knew it would be, in order to find what I was looking for. Finally, my search was rewarded, though I had to settle for an orange shirt instead of a white one in order to get one in Emily's size with appropriate lettering. It wasn't a complete waste, however; I was also able to find another perfect souvenir for a good friend, as well as a fan (a last-minute idea which turned out to be the best one I'd had while in Russia). By the time I reached the Georgian restaurant (right on time, might I add) my poor suitcase was much the worse for wear, but I was happy, albeit thoroughly tired out from wandering the city for 90 minutes. As it turns out, I needn't have been so meticulous about time - the rest of my group didn't arrive for another 40 minutes after telling me to go into the restaurant and get us a table (since the restaurant was nearly empty, I just ended up looking quite silly, sitting alone at the big table for such a long time). They claim that they got lost, which made me rather more reluctant to follow them once we left the restaurant and our opinions differed on the direction of the train station. But, since we still had over two hours until our train left (I never understood why we agreed to meet and eat at 6:30 when our train left at 10:40), I decided that getting lost wouldn't really cost us much of anything, in the long run. So, we meandered towards the train station, consulting maps and signs and intuition along the way, and arrived well before 9:30.
- While we were waiting for it to be time to board our train, Tatyana called me one last time to see me off (since she hadn't been home from work yet when I left at 5). We exchanged pleasantries, reconfirmed my plans for my return on Tuesday, and said some of our last goodbyes. I noticed with pleasure the ease of our conversation - I guess the program does teach you how to speak Russian, although it certainly isn't easy… Finally, at 10:10 we heard the announcement for our train and proceeded to the platform to board. Emily, Aryeh and I had been able to book a 4-person compartment together, and found that we would be in quite comfortable accommodations. Overnight trains don't seem to be very popular in the US (at least, I had never traveled on one or heard of anyone who had, but I'm not exactly the most traveled person…), but I thought it was a quite sensible and comfortable way to travel. Emily and I took the top bunks, but soon reconsidered our decision when we discovered that the window in the compartment didn't open and the air at the top tended to be hot and stuffy. However, as soon as we began moving, we made the glorious discovery of the ventilation system: from a vent in the ceiling blessed cool air was pouring out, and it turned out that we had the better bunks. Since we were only three and it was a four-person compartment, we spent a bit of time getting to know the last occupant - a young Russian woman named Alina. She was very nice and (as most Russians have been, in my experience) quite impressed with our feeble attempts at communicating in her own language. After visiting with her for awhile, we were contacted by the remaining member of our group, Molly, who hadn't been so fortunate as to book with us. She was in third-class, which consisted of open compartments, and requested that we bring her her share of the perogies we had purchased for the journey. Emily and I promptly set off to deliver the goods, passing through a total of 30 doors in 5 wagons before we finally reached her berth. Seeing her surroundings made me very glad that we had booked a closed compartment, even through we had had to pay a bit more for the ticket. It really was a roll of the dice who you ended up bunking by, and the cooling system wasn't nearly as evident in the third-class wagons. (Emily and Aryeh booked third-class on the way back to St. Petersburg - as far as I know, they made it back safely…) After this adventure, we hunkered down for the night, although I'm not really sure how much I actually slept in the next 7 hours. But it was quite a blessing to be cold enough to curl up in my sheet instead of sweating out the night as I had for the past few weeks. Emily even used one of the provided wool blankets, but I preferred to savor the sensation of cold, as I knew it would be the last time I would feel this way until I left Russia.
- Around 7 the next morning we got up, changed back out of our pajamas, and ate our ration of perogies for breakfast (some mushroom and some cherry - I decided to pass on the salmon in the morning :P) The train pulled in right on schedule at 7:40 and we promptly detrained and sought out the entrance to the nearest Moscow metro station. Now, although the Moscow metro system is much more extensive than the one in St. Petersburg, has an ingenious ring line that encircles the city and connects the other lines like spokes in a wheel, and some of the metro stations are more like museums because of the Communist initiative to beautify public spaces, I don't like it nearly as much as the St. Petersburg metro. I felt that it was dirtier and more run-down, probably because it is older. In fact, I didn't like Moscow in general nearly as much as I did St. Petersburg, and not just because of the smog (caused by the nearby wildfires that were burning down entire villages) that clogged up the air and obscured even the buildings across the street from the hostel. St. Petersburg has a much more open and European feel (as it was designed to have), and though being situated on the Gulf of Finland means that the humidity is always higher, I really grew to love the rivers and canals that ran through the city with its 400+ beautiful bridges and its White Nights. Okay, maybe not the White Nights. I will admit that I was quite relieved when in Moscow it was dark by 10pm, like in decent places. :] But anyway, it certainly wasn't dark at 8AM as we parted ways with Emily and Molly (who would stay with an acquaintance in another part of the city) and made our way to Godzilla's hostel, which happened to be located across from the police headquarters of Moscow. In America, this would have been a much more comforting thought, but I still felt that we wouldn't have much to worry about as far as safety in our immediate neighborhood. Otherwise, Aryeh and I were very impressed with the hostel: it was very professionally run and the staff were as helpful as possible, and fluent in English although some of them were evidently native Russian speakers. We checked in (which involved paying the key deposit - somehow only Aryeh got a key, but our door ended up never being locked, so it wasn't a problem - arranging for the hostel to complete our registration with the police station, and being shown to our room so that we could put our bags by the beds we chose), and as I looked around the 10-bed mixed-gender dorm, I remarked to Aryeh, "Why do I feel like this is going to be 9 men and me?" He responded pragmatically, "Because it is. How many girls do you know who would volunteer to sleep in a mixed-gender room?" Thinking about this, I decided that he was right. I didn't know any, including myself. Originally, Emily was supposed to be in the room with us, but when the opportunity arose for her to stay with Molly, she jumped at it. It ended up being all right - we were only in the room to sleep, and we didn't even do much of that during our stay due to the heat and certain other circumstances which I will vaguely relate later.
- After finishing at the hostel, Aryeh and I set off for Red Square, armed with a map and cultural guide of Moscow generously furnished by the hostel. On the way, Aryeh placed a call to the US and we quickly discovered how abominably high the roaming costs are for Russian cell phones - it wasn't 5 minutes before his phone ran out of credit, and he was using an international phone card that should have kept the rate at 1 ruble per minute. This was to prove a constant source of hassle for us over the duration of our visit, prompting Aryeh to eventually purchase a Moscow SIM card just so that he could avoid the roaming charges. I was able to escape this by only using my phone sparingly - since I had had to replace it only three weeks before and almost never used it, I still had 250 out of the original 300 rubles of credit left. It was frustrating to finish a short call and see that your balance had just dropped by 20 or 30 rubles. Costs in general ran about 10x higher than they would have in St. Petersburg. After we grew wise to this, we tried to minimize use of the phones, which meant that our communication with Molly and Emily was less than consistent, which led to additional frustrations. As did their tendency to run late, although mentioning this is really the pot calling the kettle black - I'm notorious for my inability to be on time. When they arrived, we toured Red Square and took the obligatory pictures by St. Basil's Cathedral, then got in line to visit the mausoleum and file solemnly past what is ostensibly Lenin's mummified corpse. No one (except perhaps Prime Minister Putin) knows whether or not it is real. It looked awfully waxy to me, but that might have been the dark interior that my eyes were trying to adjust to or the strange reddish light that was cast upon the corpse. We couldn't stand and gawk for long, however; any sign of hesitation on our part and the imposing, expressionless guards blew their whistles at us, glared, and motioned for us to move on. It was quite intimidating and none of us wanted to test our luck with Russian security guards. (We all wanted to get back to America in one piece and on schedule :P)
- At this point, though it wasn't much past noontime, it was almost unbearably hot in the city center, so we took refuge in the GYM department store complex that lines one side of Red Square, where we sat at an umbrella'd table and sipped flavored lemonade. Then we returned to our respective dwellings to wait out the hottest part of the day, determining to reconvene for supper. Unfortunately for Aryeh and I, our hostel wasn't much cooler than outside, but at least we could sit down out of the sun. We ended up having peanut butter sandwiches for lunch (courtesy of Latalia who had the precious spread shipped from home since it is a thoroughly American food) and then watching Saving Private Ryan in the lounge on the TV that has something like 200 Blu-Ray movies attached to it. It is undoubtedly one of the best and most intense movies I have ever watched. That took us well into the afternoon, so by the time the movie finished it was time to meet up again. We decided to explore Arbat St., the souvenir center of the city. I insisted on walking there although Aryeh doubted that I could manage the trek in the 30 minutes until our meeting time. I got there more than 5 minutes before Aryeh, and well before the girls. They had quite a time finding us (three metro lines converged at our meeting place although the exits were quite a distance apart) and we had to use quite a few of our precious cell phone units in giving them directions to where we were. Finally we were together and we set off down Arbat St. We stopped at a Sbarro's for a reasonably priced and quite tasty supper of real, American pizza, then toured a souvenir shop so that Aryeh could buy his brother a soccer jersey (to his chagrin, he later found the same jersey for less than half the price at the outdoor market at Red Square) and finally returned to our hostel at 10. It turned out to be a good thing that we didn't come back any earlier; as it was, even with a cold shower to rinse off the sweat, I couldn't sleep until almost 1AM because of the heat. Aryeh gave up on trying to sleep early and watched Inglorius Basterds in the lounge - in retrospect I wished I had joined him. I tossed and turned and suffered until about 6:30 when the heat from the 10 sleeping bodies raised the temperature in the airless room beyond bearability. I awoke Aryeh around 7 and asked what he wanted for breakfast, then walked to the nearby produkti to buy yogurt and juice for the both of us. This became my sole breakfast during our time there, but at least it was cheap (I was spending far more than I planned to in Moscow between eating out twice daily and the cell phone roaming charges).
- After breakfast, Aryeh and I watched the news until 9:00, a time we deemed reasonable to rouse the girls. After obtaining their promise to meet us at 10 at Red Square, we set out to be there at the appropriate time. However, we should have learned from our experiences the day before - they were an entire hour late in meeting us, wasting the preciously cool morning hours. They apologized profusely, explaining that their hosts had offered them breakfast and they couldn't politely refuse. Thinking of our own meagre breakfast, Aryeh soundly reprimanded them for their inconsiderateness to us, their traveling companions. Our grievances aired, we set out to explore the Kremlin, the fortress that forms the heart of Moscow. Several buildings house active government agencies, but the cathedrals and the Armory are open for public viewing. Fortunately, tickets were fairly inexpensive with our student discount cards, but it was quite a hassle getting in to the fortress. When the guard at the entrance saw that we had timed tickets for the Armory, he told us to go there first, even though our ticket time wasn't for a good hour. When we got to the Armory entrance, Aryeh was told that he would have to check his bag, which necessitated traveling nearly all the way back to the Kremlin entrance to find the purse check. Then when we got there, the guard looked askance when we said we were trying to enter the Armory - he asked Molly if she understood Russian and when she modestly replied "A little," he informed us in broken English (direct quote, now) "Lady bag okay in Kremlin." It was probably the best quote of the trip. Anyway, we finally got into the Armory at about the right time, and it was well worth the hassle. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed there (for good reason) and I only had my disposable anyway, but it was quite awe-inspiring to see the actual coronation gowns of some of Russia's most famous Czarinas and the carriage collection of Elizabeth the Spender and some of the most elaborate icons and Bibles that I've ever seen, as well as more gold and other precious metals than I've ever seen gathered in one place. I could have spent all day there walking around with my mouth hanging wide open :]
- After the Armory it was well past lunchtime, so we walked back to Arbat St. to a "fast-food" chain called MooMoos for another delicious and relatively affordable meal. The larger-than-life cow statue out front which I mounted, despite Aryeh's naysaying, was a definite plus. Then we traipsed back to the Kremlin to check out the old cathedrals, which was definitely worth the trip back. They were impressive and towering and covered with ancient portrayals of saints inside. Most importantly, they were filled with cool air - they must be unbearable in the winter, but in the 40+ heat they felt marvelous. Aryeh only went into one, then opted to sit down outside while we explored the rest. This was my first of many indications that something wasn't quite right. My "leader radar," as we OA Leaders call it, told me to keep a close eye on him from then on…
- We finished the Kremlin by midafternoon and decided to once again seek shelter from the heat. This time we went to the Euromall and watched a movie - Salt, the new spy movie featuring Angelina Jolie. Russians have a serious love affair with Angelina, so the anticipation for the movie was high. It couldn't have been the premiere, however, because the theater didn't end up being very crowded. In Russian movie theaters, they have assigned seating that you choose when you buy your ticket, as well as ticket checkers at the door to each theater - an interesting way to make sure no one sneaks in to the movie. The movie was very good, and although the plot was rather intricate I was able to understand around 85% of the dialogue and follow the action fairly well (ironically, in case you don't know, Salt is about a Russian sleeper agent who has infiltrated the CIA, but no one really knows whose side she's on - very appropriate on many levels). I was, once again, proud of the progress I had made even since watching Twilight near the middle of my stay :] However, although I saw the movie in Russian in the middle of Moscow, upon walking out of the theater I had to remind myself that I was in Russia, not America, that's how obviously American the film was. Incidentally, it was a strange experience to hear the character of the President of the United States talk about Russian spies - in Russian. XD
- Supper after the movie was taken at Шашлик-машлик, a restaurant in the mall that specialized in shish-kebabs. I ordered a nice, simple, inexpensive chicken shish-kebab. Molly and Emily, on the other hanse, decided to be a little more adventurous and ordered shish-kebabs with - I'm not joking - sheep testicles. They described the texture as "spongy" - and I'll leave it at that. We must have presented a strange order to the waitress - in addition to Molly & Emily's experiment, Aryeh ordered rose-flavored soda. (I'm amazed at that man's ability to do the most feminine things and still retain his masculinity - mostly because he just doesn't care.) After supper we headed back to the hostel. Unfortunately it was only 8:30 - though it was cooler this night, I still couldn't sleep until 10:30 and I was up again before 6:30. The lack of sleep was beginning to tell on me a bit. Breakfast was yogurt and juice again, then I decided to watch another movie before starting out the day. I chose 2012, a movie I had been wanting to see since it came out. It wasn't worth it - it was one of the cheesiest and most predictable movies I've ever seen. Another American watching the film with us aptly commented, "I could have written a better screenplay." Unfortunately, I underestimated the length of the movie and when it came time to head out to meet Molly and Emily, there was still a good 40 minutes left of the film. Well, I hated to leave without seeing the ending (and considering how they had treated us in the past couple of days, I didn't think it was too much to ask them to wait for us for once - for all I knew, they would be late too.) With that in mind I decided to stay and watch the rest of the movie, texting Molly with an estimate of how late we would be. However, Aryeh didn't see it in the same way that I did and eventually just left. Although the movie still wasn't over (I found out later that I hadn't missed much in the last 15 minutes :P) I followed him, not keen on navigating the Moscow metro by myself. We ended up arriving just when I said we would and I did feel guilty about making them wait for such an unimportant, selfish reason, although they didn't seem too fazed by it. Once together, we set off to visit the Tretyekov art gallery. After 15 minutes of searching we finally found the entrance, only to discover that it was closed on Mondays (as are many museums and places of business in Russia). Since it was by now 11:30 and our morning was gone, they decided to visit the apartment-museum of author Bulgakov (I had never heard of him, but he wrote Master & Margarita, which the other three evidently loved). Since it didn't open until 1:00, we made a detour for lunch at a Штолле that we found just down the street. The atmosphere in this restaurant was much more refined and enjoyable than that of their locations in St. Petersburg and the waiter was very friendly. I ate one pirojok with meat and one with творог for dessert. The house-apartment was small and would have been much more interesting if I had known who the author was or been able to read any of the display plaques on the various artifacts. The highlight of the museum was the big fluffy black cat named Behemoth (presumably after a character in one of Bulgakov's books). Needless to say, the museum didn't take us long, and though I really wanted to go to the Gulag Museum, it too was closed on Mondays. (If I were to do something like this again, I would plan it much more beforehand so that we wouldn't get nasty surprises like this. It wouldn't have been hard to find out what days which sights were closed. :P) So, since by this time it was again scorching hot, Emily and Molly suggested that we go to a celebrated park and play in the fountains. It was yet another disappointment when we arrived only to find one row of fountains opposite a scorched grassy ridge, and every one of the refreshment stands were closed. As we learned later, it was paratrooper day, so there were drunk soldiers everywhere. Nonetheless, we readily jumped in the fountains (all but poor Aryeh who was wearing jeans and sneakers) in a desperate attempt to cool off. We couldn't stay long, however; since Aryeh wasn't in the water he had to sit in the blazing sunshine and it was quickly taking its toll on him. Emily and Molly suggested that we walk to their place, which they didn't think was very far, although security was tight and they weren't sure whether they would let Aryeh and I in. I didn't think much of this idea, but didn't have a better one, and I was too concerned about what the others would think of me if I protested. Aryeh was in no shape by this point to walk the distance, but we nonetheless set off. As he dropped farther and farther behind, I stayed with him, but the girls seemed hardly to notice as the distance between us continued to grow. The "easy few-minute walk" turned into an agonizing half hour of struggling through the heat with no sign of respite. Occasionally Molly or Emily would turn around and call "we're almost there!" but by the third time they did this, we stopped believing them. Finally we reached the apartment, and we fortunately didn't have any problems with security. The apartment where they were staying was spacious, and nicely furnished, but most importantly it was cool. We each drank two tall glasses of cold water, then sat in the comfortable living room and munched on watermelon while we waited for our body temperatures to return to normal. As it was already past 4, I hinted broadly that I would be more than happy to be done for the day, for us to each find supper in our own neighborhood, and reconvene early the next morning. With the way the day had gone, I couldn't imagine the drama of trying to agree on a restaurant and find our way to it separately. Although I was loathe to leave the coolness of the apartment, I was quite eager to return to the comfort zone of the hostel and put this trying day behind me, spending the evening watching movies in the lounge or catching up on my blog from the "internet cafe" (2 computers in the main lobby). Alas, it was not to be. As we struggled back to the hostel, it became more and more apparent that something was seriously wrong with Aryeh - he could barely walk by the time we neared our destination.
- Now, if it had been me who had been so sick, I would have described to you everything in all its tedious and embarrassing details. But I wouldn't want someone else writing about what happened to me in a foreign country, because it's not really their business. In fact, this whole thing is only my business in how it affected my night, so I'll stick to that. Suffice it to say, my leader radar didn't fail me. After we finally made it back to the hostel around 5:30, I bought fixings and made us a nice supper of chicken пельмены covered with сметана. It was quite delicious, if I do say so myself. I also fulfilled another of my desires that I had had for a while - to buy and eat a watermelon. I picked the smallest one they had at the fruit stand, but it was still a significant piece of fruit. I sliced up a quarter of it for Aryeh and I, but since he didn't want any I was forced to eat it by myself. I finally left what I couldn't eat for the other guests of the hostel. :P Aryeh, meanwhile, was finally worried enough about his health to call International SOS, our health plan, and they were very helpful. However, the roaming charges on his phone were so high that he was literally burning through his money, so he went to take some more out of the ATM and discovered, to his horror, that he had lost his bank card. This was adding insult to injury. We finally decided that it was necessary to buy a Moscow SIM card (without the roaming charges, incoming calls would be free and outgoing would be a mere 1 ruble/minute instead of 10), which was an ordeal in itself to find an open store and explain what we needed. The adventures of the night culminated with a midnight taxi ride to a European medical clinic, since SOS decided that Aryeh's situation needed to be taken care of sooner rather than later. We had no idea where we were going, the taxi driver only spoke Russian, I had been woken up to come along and was still quite groggy… it was certainly an adventure. But we made it through and one hour and 700 rubles later we were back at the hostel and everything was taken care of. I'm glad everything worked out in the end, but it isn't something I wish to repeat in the near future.
- The next morning we were able to sleep in a bit longer (which probably had more to do with our exhaustion than anything else). Breakfast was even more meager than usual - neither of us had much money or energy to spend this morning. I ate another quarter of the watermelon and a peanut butter sandwich. We then packed up our belongings and checked out of the hostel (they kindly allowed me to store my bag there for the rest of the day until it was time for me to head to my train), then set out for Emily & Molly's, where we would leave Aryeh's bag for the day. I was very pleased and relieved to see that Aryeh was nearly back to normal this morning. After stopping by Emily & Molly's, we headed back to the Tretyekov gallery (although, to be frank, I had had my fill of art museums and galleries in St. Petersburg). We looked at more Russian art that I didn't understand or grasp the significance of, including some very impressive mural-paintings and the famous scene of Ivan the Terrible after he has killed his only son in a fit of rage (okay, that one was pretty cool). Afterwards we went to a food stand that specializes in baked potatoes (how perfect, that my last complete meal in Russia should be potatoes) for lunch - I got mine with chicken and sour cream on top and it was very satisfying. Afterwards, Aryeh, Emily, and Molly wanted to do some final souvenir-hunting, but since I was out of money and had had my share of shopping in St. Petersburg, I decided to split from the group and do my own thing until it was time for my train to leave. The other members of my group were skeptical about this, which surprised and peeved me a bit. Did they not think I could take care of myself for three hours? I had been accustomed to roaming St. Petersburg by myself, since my roommate's desires rarely coincided with mine, and I had somehow managed to keep myself out of any serious trouble ;]. A little insulted, I took my leave of them after assuring them that I had adequate plans for the interim. I walked several blocks over to a place labeled "Sculpture park" on my map, since I couldn't visit the Gulag museum as I really wanted to and didn't relish wandering around Moscow for three hours. It was somewhat interesting, but most of the sculptures were rather abstract, and as such, not very appealing to me. There may or may not have also been a movie being filmed there - at one point I was confronted and shooed away from a group of people by a sour-looking man in uniform. Fortunately the admission price was only 10 rubles for students, because at this point I was dangerously low on money. The park was large and I easily spent two hours there, then walked to the nearest metro stop and returned to the hostel for my bags. This also required taking out some money in order to pay for the two separate metro rides, much to my dismay. Each time that I took out money, I was charged a $5.00 surcharge by Bank of America, so taking out only $15 (500 rubles) wasn't a very economical option, though it was my only one.
- After retrieving my bag, I proceeded to the train station. By the time I arrived at the correct metro station, it was much closer to the departure time of my train than I was comfortable with, and to make matters worse, I couldn't remember which building was the Ленинградский вокзал (and they certainly weren't well-marked). I ended up having to timidly request directions from a group of милиция (policemen) - the first and only interaction I had with law enforcement during my entire stay in Russia. Once I found the train station, I had to ask again to be pointed to the correct train, but at least I was able to board on time. It was a very nice 4-hour journey that seemed even shorter than that. The seats were comfortable and the wagons were air-conditioned - and it should have been comfortable for the $100 I paid for my ticket… Once I reached St. Petersburg once again, I called Tatyana to let her know that I had arrived and would soon be back at the apartment. I'm glad I did, for she informed me that she was laid up at her dacha with a mild fever and wouldn't be coming back to the apartment that night - Olga would come instead. (Although I had keys to get into the apartment, Nevsky had arranged for a taxi to take me to the airport - at 3AM for a 6AM flight :P - and they would call when it had arrived with the number and color of the car so I knew what to look for, and I needed someone fluent in Russian to be there to answer that phone call and get the pertinent information.) So, once again in my comfort zone in St. Petersburg, I took the metro home, stopping on the way for some food and last-minute purchases. I arrived home at 9:30 and Mom called soon afterwards to double-check travel arrangements with me, which was quite welcome. Then I set about to pack everything up, a more daunting task than I first suspected. Olga didn't arrive until 11, at which time she made some tea and we sipped that and snacked on watermelon (that I had successfully brought all the way from Moscow) and chatted until midnight. Then I dragged myself off to bed for a too-brief respite, albeit the best sleep I had gotten in several days. I was suddenly and rudely awoken by a loud noise - I believe she turned the television on full blast - and a pounding on my door at 3 AM. My taxi had arrived. As I was stumbling down the stairs with my bags, Olga asked me about money, informing me that the charge for the ride would be 950 rubles. My blood froze - I had barely 300 rubles on me!? My only partially-awake brain tried to process everything - I had thought that Nevsky would pay for the taxi!! As it turns out, I was right, but it made for a very nerve-wracking taxi ride. The city was beautiful at night, though, with all of the lights on and the bridges up. The White Nights are solidly over, though by the time we reached the airport I thought I could detect the faintest hint of light in the East. The taxi driver had bad techno music blaring on the radio - I assume to keep himself awake. Although I had heard far too much bad techno this summer. These thoughts and many others were swirling through my head as I looked around the Venice of the North for the final time. It has been a good summer, I concluded, but I am ready to go home.
