Into the Motherland with Roberto: September 2016

September 25th, 2016

Oh, the pain! How does one live without internet for most of the day? The internet was cut off because my host mom forget to pay for it before leaving for her dacha, and when I returned home, I found out I was unable to use it! So I did what any sane person would do, and attempt to finish War and Peace. After getting halfway through Part 2 of Book 3, I decided it was time for me to take a break and walk around the city.

I went down to the Summer Garden Area and decided to check out the Field of Mars. The weather was actually quite nice, much to my surprise! I was able to take off my leather jacket until the wind started picking up.

So, going into the Fields of Mars, much to my surprise, is that there's not really much there to see. There's a memorial to those who perished in World War I, but that's pretty much it. There was also some sort of protest going on by a group of vegetarians wanting to end animal slaughter. That was fine an all, but thank you for making me have to leave the Fields of Mars! (As a foreigner, I shouldn't be near any demonstrations. They'll blame me, plus, I was wearing a leather coat so, I didn't want to be attacked by the crazier ones.)

Right after that, I headed down to Спас на Крове, walked straight down to Nevsky, and just walked around the general area between my street and Nevsky. I was quite bored, but also didn't want to spend much money doing anything. I stopped in front of the Admiralty, and took a quick breather before heading back to Nevsky, and from there, going home, because I was quite famished and thirsty.

Upon eating at my usual burrito place, I buried my head in War and Peace until my host mom returned, made dinner, and announced that the internet should be returning sometime soon. This was a much easier day than the other's I have written about, but I also didn't do anything interesting.

September 24th, 2016

So today, instead of taking it as a reading day, I decided to get my homework out of the way for my language courses, and since it took all but 30 minutes, I went to finally check out the house/museum of the poet Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova).

But, as my usual habits are, I don't like to leave the house before noon, because I know some of my friends back home are awake, and I'm not entirely awake to even want to go out. I assume my desire to go eat aides in my ability to leave the apartment. And why do I not go out more like the rest of my peers? I'm in the perfect position to go anywhere in the city! I have a tri-color metro line just up the street to go around the city, a railway station to go into the suburbs and spend the day there, and even malls in a walking distance (Won't go back to a mall for a while. I'm all spent out.).

The journey of this super lazy American continues after he departs from his lovely apartment in the center of the city, and walks, yes, walks to the museum, because it is faster than taking a metro or a bus, and it's just right down the river. Going from there, I decided to enter a cafe and eat a Shawerma, which apparently had a do it yourself kit with no instructions.

Upon arriving to the museum, you see street art in the entrance, and then have to go through a small garden in the complex, because the palace that was there was converted into apartments. It was quite nice, and getting in free, because I'm a lovely student, I climbed three flights of stairs (I'm still sore from working out the day before), and made it to the apartment.

At first glance you don't think this is the location, but when there are stantions telling you you can't go further upstairs, you know you're in the right place, so I of course open the door, walk in, and get greeted by several babushkas, whom point me in the correct direction. After going into a small hallway that leads to the bathroom (we weren't allowed in, the babushka's yelled at some Swedes for that), I turned left and went into the kitchen, form there, there's another long corridor that contains doors that lead to the other side of the musem, but those are locked, and at the end of the hallway is a room with several personal items of Ахматова.

Upon turning left once again, and feeling like you're in NASCAR, you walk into a several different rooms, such as the guest room, dining room, and bed room. It was quite interesting, because there was a cat sleeping on the display, and my first thought was that it was taxidermied. IT was not. It started to move and shake around, and a nice babushka explained to me that they let cats into museums because it would eat any rats and protect the area from other pests and rodents. They just kicked them out during closing times.

I went through the museum once more, because I assumed my friend Dasha was helping out at this museum, but to much avail, she wasn't showing up. So I decided to go downstairs into the garden. Right next to the exit was Joseph Brodsky's American study, which seemed pretty interesting to go into. It's just a small room.

There was a small arts festival going on right in the garden upon exiting the apartment complex. I looked around, took pictures of the palace itself and the surrounding scenery, and finally ran into my friend Dasha who was volunteering with the festival, not the museum.

I decided to play around at the festival, and exchanged questions with a flag-code art project, and then walked around with a large tablet in my hands as part of a virtual reality art project someone did. From there, Dasha and I went to lunch at a Столовая (Cafeteria), because the other places either seemed sketchy, or had only meat.

We ate, discussed about ourselves and our avid sense for writing, and went back to the garden, since Dasha had to cover a shift. I left shortly thereafter, because I had prior plans made that I didn't want to break, and I also wanted to see the Анна Ахматова statue.

After walking down the street, and down the embankment, I made it to the statues of the Politically Repressed which stands across the river from the Kresty, and across the street is a small park with a statue of Анна Ахматова standing and looking at the Kresty.

After departing from the Embankment, I made it down to the closest metro station (I forget it's name, It's very long.) And from there, we went to a vegetarian restaurant, which I assumed didn't exist in Saint-Petersburg. We had a nice discussion on Game of Thrones theories and other things, before departing home. And woe is me, it started to rain! We just walked and talked, because luckily, we were both well dress to deal with the rain, minus not having head gear, but who cares about that?