Since I had to wake up extremely early for my excursion to Peterhof, I am not only quite exhausted, I am in major need of sleep. (I'm writing this 3 days later than I planned too. Oops.) With a 9:40 deadline in meeting behind the Hermitage museum at the embankment, and my constant need to be early being a deciding factor, I woke up at 7:00 AM (What a horrid thought for college students everywhere.)
The weather on the way to the embankment? Beyond windy. I was crying underneath my glasses, but because I consider myself a smart fellow, my glasses transition to sunglasses in the sunlight, so alas, no manly man in Russia is able to see my tears of anguish. The temperature is a different story. It wasn't freezing, but for a Southerner such as myself, it was cold. But what did I expect when I said I wanted to go to Northern Russia?
But, let me stop complaining for a moment. We ended up taking a Hydrofoil from the Hermitage to Peterhof, so we essentially cut about 1 hour and 20 minutes of travel time. It was nice to sit down and relax before going on the massive walk that I knew would occur at Peterhof. For those of you who don't know, Peterhof was the main residence of the Tsars during their reign. In the winter they would live at the Winter Palace (Hermitage).
So, Peterhof itself is beautiful. In my opinion, which I respect, even more so than Versailles. The fountains are an engineering miracle for their time. They do not rely on pumps, because over the hills there is a spring that flows downwards and provides all the water to the fountains. So, no need to waste electricity on pumps. The palace itself is just gorgeous. We didn't get to go inside, but just being in the park area was wonderful. There are many trick fountains around the park, but if we weren't so constricted on time, I would have recorded those as well.
In the park we went to a small house known as Monplaisir Palace, Which was Peter the Great's favorite place to entertain his guests. After his death, his wife Catherine added a kitchen and bathhouse to the wing. In the style of Peter, more trick fountains were added to the bath area of this small palace.
While we were there, we met with our tutor Lera, who is just an astounding person, and I decided to spend my time with her that day, because no one else was really talking to her, (except for Darya, but that was later on) and we decided to go to New Holland.
We went back home on the hydrofoil, because it was faster, and from there, Lera, Darya, and I went to New Holland, because apparently there was a concert for a electro group known as СБПЧ (I might have written it incorrectly in the video). I compared them to 21 Pilots. I didn't really get into them, since their music seems like it's meant more for children, or just because it wasn't to my taste. From there, Lera, Darya, and I went home. It was a long day, but it was fun for sure.
August 27th, 2016
So today was a little more chill. After doing part of my homework the night before and finally getting my gym membership, I decided to go to the gym this morning. I'm pretty sure if the Russians there played "Spot the American" my George Washinguns shirt would give it away.
To begin with, complete culture shock. In the locker room, people just walk around naked like it's completely normal (which it must be in Russia) and even go to the sauna in the nude (my gym at home people wore clothes to the sauna). And to make matters worse for my poor, innocent, American eyes, there are no curtains in the shower room. So you can essentially see everyone showering.
But it was something I got over pretty quickly and accepted that I had to do. From there, I went on out to meet a friend for some coffee. We went to Starbucks of all places, and talked in a mix of English and Russian over a broad range of topics, such as books, movies, and even plays.
From there, I answered the lonely call of my friend and classmate Henry who wanted to check out the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games. I walked all the way up Nevsky Prospekt from the Galereya, and met him there, in which he proceeded to beat me in Foosball (20-10), at Chess (I forgot about his bishop), and every other game they had. The only thing I beat him at was at shooting, in which I got a perfect score. (My Texan pride could not deal with anything less.)
From there, since I had not eaten since breakfast, we decided to go get Shawarma. It was Henry's first time eating Shawarma, so I was happy to have taken him there. Now, I might be a bit biased, but it wasn't the best Shawarma I had. The award to that goes to Fatoush back in Houston. Henry enjoyed it, so that's all that really mattered. From there we went our seperate ways and I decided to finish my homework before my trip to Peterhof the next day.
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