...And so concludes a great week.
My high school friend and fellow Fulbright scholar Jon Fougner came down from Oslo last Wednesday and we had a great time over the past week. He flew back up to Norway the following Wednesday, and we managed to do
A LOT in a just a week.
Getting to and from the airport is incredibly easy here in Tallinn; there is a bus that goes from the center of town directly to and from the airport every 15 minutes, and it costs the same as any bus/trolley/tram ride in Tallinn: 5 Kroon, or about 40 cents. Talk about a good deal.
Jon flew in at about 10:00pm, so I met him at the airport, and we bussed back to my apartment. By the time we got back to my apartment and got settled in, it was about midnight, but we were excited to see each other and catch up, so we popped into one bar in the old town for a beer, and were greeted by Estonian karaoke, which included a number of American songs which had been Estonian-ized. Quite funny to us, though the Estonians made them work. After a few songs though, we decided to call it a night and see the old town the next day.
Mark, my roommate, was out of town giving a poster at a conference in Norway, of all places, so Jon and I had the apartment to ourselves. Jon crashed on the couch, and we slept in the next day. We grabbed some donuts from this amazing place down the street called Sõõrikukohvik, which literally means
Donut-Coffee Cafe. After a hearty breakfast of oily donuts, we embarked on our tour of the old town. I took Jon along the route of the guided tour I had been on, imparting the wisdom that had been passed down to me from my previous guide, and we continued to catch up. It was really nice to have Jon visit, as one of the things I have been missing most here in Estonia is the ability to communicate with a friend on the level I am used to in the United States.
Jon and I caught up on all sorts of things, from how our respective projects are going to the task of keeping in touch with friends from colleges around the world, to the political goings-on in the US (Plamegate and the indictment of "Scooter" Libby, as well as the increasing realization among the American people that we were lied to as Bush & Co. made their case for war), to our travel plans to St. Petersburg, to the ways that economic models parallel our world, to the effects technology is having on society, to other stuff that is currently evading my memory.
I wanted Jon to meet some of my friends while in Tallinn, so we decided to invite Anna and Trudee over to my place for a few drinks and dinner, though we didn't really tell them what plans we actually had in store. Jon and I up stopped by the grocery store and picked out the ingredients for a tasty dinner, and Jon brought me a sampler pack of authentic Norwegian liquor called Aquavit that we decided would be nice for tasting with my friends. When it was all said and done, Jon and I prepared bacon-wrapped lamb shanks which we smothered in pesto and braised, along with a butter lettuce salad with pears, oranges and bleu cheese in a mandarin orange balsamic vinagrette dressing. Needless to say, the girls were impressed. They dashed off to a flamenco concert that Anna had tickets to, and Jon and I met up with my German friend Raphael from TTU, who had invited us to an Estonian party in a 16th century castle. Again, it goes without saying that we had fun--
we were VIPs in a 16th century castle.The following day, we slept in again and walked around the city some more, did a little browsing in galleries and shops, and met up with Trudee and Andrew, another Fulbrighter who has only been in Tallinn for a week. They had been shopping for housewares for Andrew, and the 4 of us met up for lunch.
I suggested this restaurant beneath my office, a place called Saku Sops that I often go to, as it has cheap and decent daily specials. I've been there probably 20 times already, and have never had a bad experience....
UNTIL NOW.The daily specials are listed in Estonian, and I have begun to understand some Estonian words. The ladies who run the place know me, and know that I don't speak Estonian very well, but they humor me and let me try and figure it out before caving in and asking them what it means. So this time, the menu said "Kanamaksab." I understood 'Kana,' as this means chicken, so I say to the woman, "OK, I know the dish has chicken in it, but what does 'maksab' mean? I know it's chicken-something." And usually the second part of the word (they put words together here) refers to the sauce, or the side dish or something like that. Like chicken picatta, or curry chicken, or something of the sort. So I felt like it was a relatively safe bet. The 4 of us each ordered this, and it wasn't a big deal, only about $2.50 each, but the price wasn't what worried us.
We started eating what looked harmless enough, and each of us sort of looked around and didn't really like what we were eating. Trudee bailed on the meat first and Jon and I were right behind her. I asked an Estonian friend of mine what kanamaksab is and she told me that 'maks' ('maksab' when attached to another word, like kana) means LIVER!!!!
We were eating LIVER. I seriously thought I was going to be sick at the table. I felt so bad-- not because of what I ate-- but rather because I had recommended this place to my friends. Jon probably thought that all Estonian food was like this...
In the evening, we met up with a few friends of mine for a birthday party, but we couldn't stay too late, as we were heading to St. Petersburg via bus at 7am the next morning. But the party was a lot of fun, so we ended up staying until 3:30am, only to get about 2 hours of sleep before struggling to get up and make it to the bus by 7. But we made it, and were able to sleep on the bus en route to St. Pete's.
We made it to St. Petersburg at around 3:30pm, and I was just blown away at how different it was-- even from Tallinn. I remembered the feelings of arriving in Estonia two months ago, and our arrival in Russia made this feel like a vacation. Jon and I didn't have any Russian Rubles, we didn't speak the language, we didn't have a map, we couldn't read the signs, and to top it all off, we were carrying around our big backpacks, which made us stick out like sore thumbs.
After wandering around for a little bit, we got the courage up to ask a few people where the train station was. The problem, however, no one speaks any English, and all of the signs are in Russian. Finally we found someone who understood the word "Metro," and she pointed us in the general direction of where we were to go-- she pointed straight and then left with two hefty grunts.
Jon and I then mosied on back to where the bus had dropped us off, and went in the one establishment with a sign that we could decipher-- Western Union-- hoping both to get money and advice on where to go. But yet again, no one spoke English, despite the fact that Western Union is an American company. So again, we get pointed in another direction with another grunt. We then exited the building and went next door, which we have identified as a train station. Just as we entered, we found an ATM, so we got some cash.
Alright, step one down!With our newly acquired Rubles, we attempted to buy our tickets from a ticket window, but of course the attendant doesn't speak English. So, after about a minute of confusion, we tell her the name of the train stop we are trying to get to one final time: Nevsky Prospect. Something finally clicks, and she writes down on a piece of paper "METPO" (with P representing R in Cyrillic) and points us next door yet again. Apparently the train station and the Metro are two seperate things. So we go next door, find the appropriate place to buy our train tickets, and attempt to buy two tokens for the subway. The only problem: 1 metro token cost only 10 Rubles (28 Rubles to the dollar, so 10 rubles = roughly 35 cents), and the only money we had was in the form of 1000 Ruble notes that we had just gotten from the ATM. The woman was not pleased, but luckily she sold us our tokens despite the fact that we had essentially been trying to make a 35 cent purchase with a $50 bill. Maybe she just felt bad for us, but hey, I'll take it at this point.
We finally got on the subway, and man, it was intense. First, we headed underground on these monstrous escalators-- imagine the longest escalator you've been on in the US in a department store, and then multiply that by 4 or 5. St. Petersburg has the deepest subways in the world, and it was certainly apparent to us as we descended into the depths of St. Petersburg.
Once underground, we actually navigated the subway system remarkably well. We could tell which train line we wanted, as these were delineated by color, but (as we had come to expect at this point) the signs were all in Russian, so we had to sort of guess which direction we needed to take the train. We had to take the red line one stop, then transfer to the blue line, and take it for 3 more stops. Luckily, our first guesses were correct in both instances, so we made it through the subway system unscathed. But upon exiting the subway, we were once again greeted with a massive escalator, and what seemed like millions of people. St. Petersburg has about 4.6 million people, which is 11 times the size of Tallinn, and it seriously felt as if all 4.6 million people were in the subway at this time. This was Saturday afternoon, so I can only imagine what rush hour must be like.
Once we surfaced, we found our hostel quite easily, and awaiting us was a note from the two Fulbrighters (Laura and Jennifer, as well as Jennifer's boyfriend Jacob, who was roommates with 4 of Jon and my high school friends at Harvard) that we expected to meet in St. Pete's. They were out at museums all day, but wanted to meet up with us at 7pm for dinner. They took us to a place that they had already eaten at the night before, with another Fulbrighter based in St. Petersburg. They told us that the food was so good that it warranted a second try. We had blini-- a Russian delicacy not too different from crepes-- which were fantastic. I had roast beef in mine, Jon had duck in his, and Jennifer and Jacob split some sweet ones with honey in them, as well as the traditional Russian soup, borsch.
YUM!After dinner, we all met up with another St. Petersburg Fulbrighter-- Margaret Anderson-- who I had met in Washington, D.C. and had been in touch with via email since arriving in Tallinn. She took us to a party in St. Pete's at the home of another Fulbrighter who I remembered from D.C.-- Miriam Enriquez-- so we met a bunch of other Russian Fulbrighters including one studying puppet theater and another who was basically a professional opera singer. It was quite an eclectic group, but overall very fun.
The next morning, we joined up with Jennifer, Jacob and Laura again to see the Russian Museum, which houses quite a bit of artwork, but we focused specifically on seeing the 20th century Russian art. The only artist that I had heard of was
Vasily Kandinsky, though all of the art was incredible. I wish we could have seen more, but J, J, & L were heading out that afternoon, and we wanted to hang out with them some more before they left.
After the museum, we all grabbed some lunch at the famous 'Literary Café' that was one of
Alexander Pushkin's-- Russia's most famous poet-- regular haunts. We were treated to an elegant atmosphere with a piano and violin duet playing throughout our lunch, and it really felt like we had been taken back in time in Russia. They even have a very realistic wax effigy to Pushkin when you enter the restaurant; it was sort of creepy, I won't lie.
After saying goodbye to the Lithuanian Fulbright Crew, Jon and I walked around Nevsky Prospect (the main street in our neighborhood), and checked out some of the sights, most notably Kazansky Cathedral, which is a
HUGE Russian Orthodox Church (that absolutely dwarfs the ROC in Tallinn), as well as the Church of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood-- which could easily be mistaken for a slightly smaller version of Moscow's Kremlin. You'll just have to see the photos,
which you can find here. After touring around Nevsky Prospect for a while, we found a coffee shop in which we took refuge from the increasingly bad weather and continued our awesome conversations.
After chilling at the coffee shop for about an hour, we decided to come back and have a nap before tracking down some dinner and going out for the evening. After napping, we found a place near our hostel called the City Bar, which was actually American-themed. Because it was Sunday evening for us, we thought that we might be able to catch some American football on their satellite TV, but unfortunately, when we got there, the remote was lost, and we could only manually navigate through a number of music channels. This didn't really phase us though, as we had some
TASTY burgers that really seemed American (much better than other attempts I've had at 'American food'). We got talking with one of the bartenders-- a Canadian guy named Chris-- who was able to suggest a few bars/clubs for us to check out. He was a really nice guy and even though he worked there, he had a beer with us while we ate and he is going to give me a ring when he's down in Tallinn after the first of the year.
Chris' suggestions for places to see were good, but it took us a little while to find the best place he suggested, Club Datscha. Once we got there, we found a tiny 'club' that was smoke-filled (like everything in Russia and Eastern Europe) and was blasting Top-40 tunes from about 5 years ago, but this did nothing to dampen our fun. We ended up making friends with the bartender, Sasha, as well as a few locals who taught us some Russian phrases that we promptly forgot, but it was all in fun. Because we'd napped, we didn't make it back home until about 4am, but this was ok, as we felt that experiencing the nightlife in St. Petersburg was as important to our overall experience as was seeing museums and monuments.
Monday ended up being somewhat of a wash. We wanted to get out of town and see Petrovorets-- one of my dad's favorite places near St. P's-- but unfortunately, it was closed on Mondays, and the fountains for which it is known were already off for winter. So we thought that we could see the Hermitage instead, and then potentially get out to Petrovorets on Tuesday before heading home, but we soon found out that the Hermitage (
and everything else in SPB!) was closed Monday. Needless to say, we were dissappointed, but we didn't let it get us down, despite the fact that it had begun to rain. We instead picked an Asian restaurant called Aquarium that was in another part of the city, and decided to walk there (despite the weather) to see a different part of the city.
Aquarium was incredibly tasty; we had 4 different courses comprising all types of Chinese and Korean food as part of a 'businessman's lunch,' so we didn't break the bank, and then after finishing lunch, we walked back from Aquarium via St. Peter and Paul's Fortress, which is one of the few things in the city that is open every day (as it is largely outside). After walking through much of the fortress, we walked back to our hostel via the beach outside the fortress, and just enjoyed talking and and sharing our sentiments about Russia. Much like I have found myself doing in Tallinn, I had to keep reminding myself
I AM IN RUSSIA!! I'm sure Jon got tired of hearing me come to this realization over and over...
That evening we didn't have as late a night as Sunday. We ate dinner at a place called Spoon Café, which was much more of a restaurant than a café. In Russia, apparently, restaurants are extremely fancy and expensive, while 'café' is the heading for less expensive places that are equally as nice as anywhere I would eat in US. We were pleasantly surprised that we didn't end up eating dinner in a place like Starbucks when the head of Nord Hostel referred us to a café for dinner.
Tuesday was our last day in St. Petersburg, which was too bad. I was getting better at transliterating the alphabet so, as Jon put it, “I could be sure that we were going into a restaurant as opposed to the police station.” Since we’d sort of lost Monday, we could only go to the Hermitage/Winter Palace on Tuesday, meaning that Petrovorets will have to wait until I return to St. Petersburg in the Spring, which is my plan at this point. I suspect it will be nicer in the spring anyway.
On Tuesday, we met up with yet another Fulbrighter-- Anna Berman, a recent graduate of Brown University-- who was able to give us a guided tour of the incredible museum. I would estimate that we saw about 1,500 of 3,000,000 pieces of art in the museum, but we hit all of the ‘must-sees,’ including works by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Monet, Da Vinci and the rest of the Ninja Turtles, Rembrant, and numerable others I am forgetting at the moment. Not only did we see paintings, but we saw incredible sculptures and artifacts from from ancient civilizations, as well as those from more recent cultures. It was truly an amazing collection, and in many ways, to borrow another phrase from Jon, it is ‘an embarrassment of riches.’ From what we are told, the Hermitage/Winter Palace is home to over 3 million works of art, although at any time, they only have 150,000-300,000 pieces on display.
Only.I felt as if I could spend a week in the museum, and I probably could have. Anna is taking an art history class devoted solely to the Hermitage, so there you have it: one really could spend a week+ in the museum. Anna was the perfect tour guide for us, and we appreciated her guidance so much. After the museum, she took us to a favorite place of hers where we got local pirogis, a Russian delicacy that is like a stuffed dumpling that can either be sweet or savory. We got a few and shared them.
YUM again!After lunch, Jon and I managed to navigate our way back to the bus station via the Metro, and we managed to make it safely back across the Russian border into Estonia on a 7-hour bus ride. When we got back my apartment, we crashed hard. I never knew sitting on a bus was so exhausting!
The next day, Wednesday, was the day Jon had to leave, but it was also his 23rd birthday! So rather than celebrate simply by sitting on a plane, I took Jon out to one of the nicest restaurants in Estonia--
Pegasus--mostly to celebrate, but also to make up for the chicken liver we had eaten a few days before. We had a three course meal and a few drinks, and it was just a great conclusion to our trip, as we were able to debrief a bit and have our final philosophical and political discussions that I enjoyed so much since while Jon was in Estonia.
We had a great time, and I was sorry to see him go, but Jon is insistent that I come up to Oslo and stay with him, so I think I’ll just have to take him up on it sometime after January 1, 2006. In the meantime, it's back to work for me after an extremely fun week.
Until next time,
J
