wah travel!

It’s official. I’m coming home on the 8^th of January. And, like I said before, I was sort of sad that I’m not coming home earlier, but would know that when all is said and done…I AM SO EXCITED.

Okay. So I’m pretty sure I’m leaving Irkutsk around the 15^th or the 16^th. I’m taking the Trans-Siberian to Moscow…I told Ivan and Joseph I’d be going with them, but the thing is, I really want to stop in some cities on the way and I think they just want to go straight through. Colleen told me I have to go to Kazan, and I’d like to go to Samara and Omsk and some other places…I think I’m going to make a list of all the places I can go and then choose. Ivan let me borrow his Lonely Planet guidebook, which is the best thing in the world. I think I’ll choose a couple cities (no more than 4 or 5) and…it’ll be excellent. The only thing that sucks is at this point I’ll still be carrying around all of my luggage.

So then I arrive in Moscow. First thing to do is to find a luggage storage place where I can put my gigantic suitcase so I don’t have to lug it around Western Russia (I’ll have my black handbag and Adidas gymbag, which should be more than enough-I don’t really need much with me). Elisabeth said they should have somewhere I can store it at the airport, which would be incredibly convenient. I don’t even know how to travel around Moscow with luggage. Alone is fine, they have a metro system, I can read. Ack.

So then at that point I’m not sure. I’m definitely going to Yaroslavl for a couple days. I need to coordinate that with Alya and Sonya, because Alya (having lived there for four months) knows Yaroslavl and what’s fun to do, etc. So at some point I’m going to St. Petersburg, probably for a week or so (because everyone says St. Petersburg is amazing and I can spend a week in the Hermitage alone). BUT, here’s an interesting fact that I didn’t realize-Helsinki is only a 6 hour train ride from St. Petersburg! I mean, I knew it was close, but I didn’t realize it was THAT close! So I think I might go to Helsinki for a day or two. Other places I’ve thought about: Novgorod, other cities in the Golden Ring, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus…AH. SO MANY POTENTIAL DESTINATIONS.

Also, did you know that coffee shops in Russia don’t open early, as one would think? So I was planning on waking up early and studying more for Baikalovedene in one of those coffee shops (actually studying more wouldn’t have helped anyway so it’s not THAT big of a deal that I wandered around Irkutsk for a half hour), but they weren’t open! Also it wasn’t even that early-like 9. I mean, I realize that coffee shops are an all the time destination, but don’t most people drink coffee in the morning? Like, who wakes up at 11 and decides that they need their coffee THEN? Anyway I was not thrilled about that and ended up at the morskii café at 10:30 in the morning, getting strange looks from the girls working there (who were not dressed up in sailor costumes, maybe before lunch is too early for that kind of ridiculousness).

Also I saw this music video for a TATU song called “Not Gonna Get Us” (Nas Ne Dogonyat in transliterated Russian). Okay, a lot of Russian music videos are completely bizarre. But this one takes the cake. These two girls hijacked this burning semi-truck and are driving around some frozen part of Russia with it. They drive through lots of barricades and this truck is on fire for a surprisingly long time without blowing up. Then they show pictures from their childhood. Then back to the burning runaway truck. Like…WHAT?! Also I’ll have you know that all TATU songs are completely ridiculous, especially the one about them being in love with a robot.

I should be a) sleeping or b) doing my homework for speech practice, but after my week of frantic Baikal studying and information gathering for my papers, I need a breather. I watched Ocean’s 11 today…for the 85^th time. I would be so much more tempted to watch these in Russian if they didn’t have completely AWFUL dubbing. Like, SO bad. And most of the time it’s one voice for everyone. I completely don’t understand how anyone can prefer dubbing to subtitles. I mean, COME ON.

Okay, that’s all for today from the Strange Russian Occurrences front. Also I’ve noticed that as I speak more and more Russian, I am considerably less able to use prepositions in English. Oh, also interesting-I sort of figured that after the Middlebury program was over I’d overload myself with English…but I actually think I’ll be overloaded myself with RUSSIAN. Like, every once in awhile I listen to English music…but I think once I’m traveling I’m going to pick up some trashy Russian detective novels, get lots of music from Sonya, and just soak it all in. Maybe I’ll watch the horrible Russian dubbed versions of the movies I have. Then again maybe not.

Also random, but I HAVE to remember that when I look at hotels and hostels and am outraged at the price of 600 rubles per night, that anywhere in the United States it would be nearly impossible to find a hotel for under $50, ESPECIALLY in a major city, which means that a very nice hostel for $24…is really not bad.

Friday, November 30^th

Oh my God it’s already the 30^th of November.

I’m sitting in Café KoKs, with working internet. This is great. I also have about 15 web pages, in English, about Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1920s and 1930s. I’ll search for a few more, and then I think that’ll be fine.

I also need to plan out my trip which is going to be SO EXCITING AND FUN. Now that I’m actually, like, leaving Russia, I’m sort of sad….also we told Elisabeth to tell Pavel Alexandrovich that we only want to come to tea time with the professors if he’s going to be there.

Today some guy was creepily looking at me on the marshrutka. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a girl, or if it was because he noticed me looking at him (because he looked EXACTLY like Kevin Spacey).

This fruity iced tea is really good, and they have actual pieces of grapefruit and apple in it. I want to pick them out and eat them, but that wouldn’t be very классно.

Also, SONYA, I'll have you know that you know way more about the history of the belii dom than I do, so you'll have to fill in those details.