After a night of drinking and having a very deep and philosphical talk with my friends and while watching Lord of the Rings in Russian with them, I awoke extremely tired after rising up from my extremely comfortable bed. That bed was essentially the best thing about going to Pskov. It's so much better than sleeping on a hard pullout couch all the time.
After getting ready and going downstairs to eat breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and made our way to the extremely small town of Izborsk. It's another medieval Russian town with a Kremlin, and a cathedral. That's all these things have. Walls and cathedrals. Talk about a boring life. It sounds just like the southern US! The talking of building a wall and going to church. Sheesh.
It was a nice small town, in which we got to go down this long creepy staircase which apparently led to a location to where water was obtained from in the case of a siege. We then went onto the wall, and of course, took pictures of the country side. From there, I went up the tower to see even better. Let me just say, the wind was beyond strong and cold, and the view was amazing, but the steps to get to the top were just steep. Am I glad leg day wasn't a thing today. The way down was way worse. Having big feet is just horrible.
We then exited the Kremlin through a secret exit and made our way down the country side to a consecrated spring next to the lake. I didn't bring my water bottle along, and in my sickness, I'm not about to drink from any ground water. At the lake, there were mallards and swans, of which I think are highly evil creatures. From there, we returned up to the top of the hill, and made our way to another church, and talked about it (I wasn't paying attention, the wind was deafening and my hoodie,beanie, and scarf covered my ears). There was a graveyard, and we went through it in order to return to our bus. From there we went to eat.
From Izborsk, we went to Lunch, and from Lunch, we made our way to the town of Pyechory, which is right on the Estonian border. In Pyechory, there is a monastery that looks absolutely amazing. Many monasteries in Russia were made away from the main cities in an effort to remove the influence of the princes of those cities from going over the monastery. Also, taking pictures of the architecture is fine, but not of the monks, and not inside the churches either. I actually listened this time because I didn't want to be scolded by a monk or an old lady. I bought a few souvenirs, an Icon of Saint Nicholas the Wondermaker for my little brother, postcards, and a deck of cards for myself. We left Pyechory and made our way back to Saint Petersburg, which was filled in about an hour long out of traffic that made me sick to my stomach and on the verge of puking.
October 22nd, 2016
So, after the unfortunate events of the prior day, I wrote my blog entry and headed to sleep... At about midnight. Thanks to my superior time management, I gave myself roughly less than 5 hours to sleep, since my alarm was set to 5:30 AM. As most college students tend to do, I overslept by an hour. That gave me roughly an hour and a half in which I had to eat breakfast, get ready, and meet the group at the metro station, roughly about half an hour to the south. In the time I showered, ate, and packed, it was 7 AM, and I rushed to the metro station.
Lo and behold, I arrived at 7:30 AM, AND I was still the first person. Goes to show that me being late is my being right on time to any event. We had to wait by the statue of Lenin, which of course, filled me up with a sense of Proletariat Pride, and instilled in me a notion to stop the bourgeoisie (why is that word so difficult to spell?!). The group was completed, and we headed out to Pskov, which was a long and difficult ride, complete with a traffic jam that laster about half an hour. (Cue car sickness, and thank my friend Alex for giving me the Candy Bar that helped me get through it).
Well, we arrived in Pskov after a grueling 5 hours, and headed to eat our lunch. It was the usual lunch we get on trips. A salad with way too many cucumbers (gross), tomatoes, peppers, and olives. I didn't eat it. The soup was just chicken noodle soup, so that was nice, followed by chicken and potatoes (do they not believe in spicing up the potatoes?). For dessert, it was some weird, gelatinous yogurt that was pretty good. Of course, afterwards, we went to our hotel, which is called Рижская, And it just reminded me of Soviet Era apartments and the buildings around it didn't help but add to that feeling. Also, there's no lock on the windows. So, if someone feels like doing some spelunking or bungie jumping, or even parachuting, there's always that option!
And on that note, we headed down the street on a walking tour of the city. There was really only one thing to see, and that's the Kremlin. Other than that Pskov is quite a boring place. Pskov, after Ivan the Terrible conquered it was his western most city, as well as his second biggest city. It was seen as his access point into Europe, and by the Europeans as his attempted expansion into Europe. It is close to the border with Estonia and Latvia, so it allowed a great means of defense. The Kremlin was quite cool to see, and to be honest, my time in Russia has me questioning my atheism and a wish to dwelve into Russian Orthodox. I have no reason why, it just feels like I have a need to.
We went into the church inside the Kremlin, and it was just beautiful. It is a good example of a church during the olden days of Russia, back when it was known just as Rus'. Pskov wasn't a powerful city, because it just spent its time submitting to Veliky Novgorod and Moscow. In contrast of Veliky Novgorod, Pskov was known as Slaby Pskov (Great Novgorod and Weak Pskov). Of course, I finally submitted into entering my full winter gear, bringing out my Slytherin scarf, and my mom even made fun of me by asking where I was, since all she saw was clothing. I don't mind the cold. It's the wind that kills me.
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