Weekend adventures...

So, I just woke up, it’s snowing, and there is snow sticking to the ground! That’s really exciting, because we haven’t really had snow since we have been here, so I have been inspired to write another blog entry.

I wrote my last one on Friday (even though I will have pasted it on Monday), so I guess I’ll talk a little bit about my weekend. Saturday, I went with my friend to visit another friend’s neighborhood, on the Petrograd Island. Our neighborhood is fine, it’s very residential and quiet, but we kind of saw what we were missing when we went to the Petrograd Side. There were cafes and restaurants everywhere, and lots of museums and cool places to check out. In my neighborhood, we have some casinos that are really sketchy, a karaoke bar, a club that is half internet cafe and half gothic club, and a sketchy café named Alyosha’s. We went to Alyosha’s once, but the second time we were about to go in we saw a giant bar fight break out, so we turned the other way.

But, back to Petrograd island. So, upon coming out of the metro station we saw the only Mosque in St. Petersburg, which is really pretty. Then, we started walking along one of the main streets because it was supposed to have really extravagant architecture, which it did. We stumbled upon a bust of Lenin, which are plentiful in this city, and then we decided that we wanted to find a museum. We settled upon visiting Kirov’s apartment. Kirov was a very important Soviet official, whose murder was used as the basis for Stalin’s show trials in the ‘30s. Needless to say, I was very interested in this apartment.

To start off, it was GIANT! This apartment was basically an entire floor of the building, over 10 rooms. If you think about how most people were living in communal apartments, it’s really ridiculous how much space the heads of government were keeping for themselves. Getting back to the museum, though, half of it is his preserved apartment, and the other half has been turned into a museum about him. There was also another floor that was a museum about Soviet life for children.

Kirov was really into game hunting, so there was dead game everywhere. Birds and foxes on every wall, and someone had even given him a polar bear rug as a present! The craziest thing was noticing how many portraits of Lenin and Stalin there were everywhere. Every room had at least 2 pictures of each of them hanging on the wall or on desks. It’s weirder when you think that Stalin was in that apartment a lot (I saw the table he ate at!), and would come in and see his face everywhere. I guess that’s what he wanted though . . .

Sunday, we had a group excursion to the Peter and Paul Fortress, which was built by Peter I as defense against the Swedes, but they never really had to use it for that, because they beat Sweden before they finished building the fortress. Mostly, it was just used as a jail for political prisoners, including Dostoevsky and Trotsky. We walked around the fortress a little bit, but it was really cold yesterday. We went into the main cathedral, where all of Russia’s pre-revolutionary leaders were buried. It was a beautiful cathedral, although it seemed more like a mausoleum inside, with all the tombs. We finished up that excursion with lunch at the vegetarian chain “Troitskii Most” which is really delicious! I’ll probably be frequenting that restaurant once a week.

Ok, well I need to get to school now. Though the streets are snowy, it doesn’t seem like people are driving any slower. Russians are crazy. Oberlin kids, have a great first day of classes – keep me updated!