Bannya!

It seems that I only do interesting things on the weekends now, so I’ll tell you about my weekend. Friday night, I had bought a ticket for an orchestra concert. There are two main orchestras in Petersburg, and I think I bought the ticket for the lesser of the two, so it'll be interesting to compare once I see the other one. It was a good concert, despite a bad cue from the conductor and the entire brass coming in early to the last chord of a Dvorak symphony. The tickets were extremely cheap, so I'll be sure to go many more times. The only thing that struck me as being odd was the clapping in unison that seemed to come out of nowhere when they demanded an encore by a soloist. I thought this might have been a remnant of Soviet style clapping, but my mom informed me that this is common practice across Europe at orchestra concerts.

Saturday was a really Russian day – I went to the bannya, or the Russian bathouse, for the first time! Going to the bannya is a very popular thing to do in Russia, and you can tell how often people go by how hardcore they are about it. Here's the process:

1. You go to the bannya, which is separated for men and women. We actually went to the bannya that Dostoevsky frequented, so that was a neat fact.
2. You strip down and go into the steam room, which has a wooden stove in it, so it's wet steam, unlike a sauna.
3. You sweat more than you have ever sweat before and sit there until you can't stand it anymore. This was like 6 minutes for me, and 20 minutes for the old Russian women.
4. You leave the steam room, take a warm shower, than immediately plunge into a freezing pool of water. Most people were complaining about this part, but truthfully it just reminded me of taking swim tests at camp, and the days when they made us swim when they really shouldn't have.
5. You repeat the proccess as many times as you want.

Eventually, after your body is getting used to the heat, you hit yourself with branches (with leaves), usually birch, oak, or pine. These branches have been soaking in hot water and help to exfoliate your skin. All in all, it’s a crazy process, but so relaxing and cheap, so I’m sure I’ll do it again. Definitely a cultural experience, though.

Sunday, I tried to go see a movie, but tickets get more expensive as the day goes on, and we didn’t want to pay 12 dollars to see a movie. Instead I hung around in cafes with my friend. We bought ice cream on the street for the first time, even though it was snowing outside. I didn’t think that would be a comfortable way to eat ice cream, but it was actually really good. The ice cream here is delicious – this will probably become a problem once the weather is warmer and we want to eat it all the time. We realized, though, that we walk a ton here, so eating ice cream once in a while isn’t so bad.


Sunday night, I went to Lenta for the first time, the mega-grocery store near my house. It’s basically like being in a Russian Costco or Sam’s Club. My favorite thing that I found was a large display of Heinz ketchup, including the popular Russian “spicy ketchup.” Look on my website for pictures.
We didn’t have school on Monday because of a holiday on Saturday. Saturday was “Day of protection of the homeland” which basically honors men and the military. I didn’t notice anything really happening for the holiday. It was explained to us that when a holiday falls on a Saturday, we have Monday off because people are still expected to be hung over. So, I imagine this was just a really big drinking weekend. But, having no school was very nice! I went back to the movie theater and got a cheaper ticket to see “Across the Universe”. There is one movie theater that shows American movies in English, just with Russian subtitles, which is much more enjoyable for us. The movie, if you haven’t seen it, is enjoyable, and directed by an Oberlin grad! The theater though, was so nice. I’ll definitely be going back to that one.

So, now I’m off to another week of school, albeit a short week, since I don’t have classes on Friday, either. It’s getting warm here, it was about 40 degrees yesterday, so I think my weather is much better than yours at home. Enjoy the cold!