Moscow!

Seeing as the current weather in St. Petersburg is terrible, I thought I would write a bit about my adventures so far while I wait for the rain to stop.

If you've been following the blog you will know that I've now left Tomsk, which was honestly very emotional. I became very attached to the people there and I think leaving it was harder because I know how much more difficult it will be to go back there compared with going back to Leipzig. There were tears on both sides when I said goodbye to my host mother at the bus station, I really do miss her.

After that it was all go with the travel. I surprised myself by talking to the man next to me on the bus a couple of times but most importantly I was surprised because I wasn't afraid to do so. Similar situations where I've talked to strangers have come up many times since leaving Tomsk actually (a side effect of travelling alone I suppose) and I'm proud of myself that I don't have to talk myself into it any more. I'm just not scared and it's wonderful.

New-found confidence aside, I would say I probably wavered slightly when I got onto the Trans-Siberian Express for the first time and felt completely overwhelmed. I had no idea what to do, where I should sit (I had the top bunk and it was incredibly low and cramped and the lower bunk had a sleeping person in it) or how to go about procuring bedding. In the end I curled up in the foetal position on my bunk and waited until the train started. At which point our carriage attendant appeared and started handing out the bedding and suddenly all was wonderful. At any rate mostly wonderful because I was still sleeping in my clothes on a rather uncomfortable bunk, with no room to even sit up straight.

Once I'd got used to it though it was quite pleasant, if a little dull, and thank goodness the people sitting near me were nice and they'd always move aside to let me get to the table when I needed to eat (which was probably about the only time I came out of the bunk). Arriving into Moscow at 4am was less than fun though and meant I had to sit and wait for a while for the metro to open. Whilst sat waiting I listened to Rammstein's song 'Moskau'. A while ago I decided that if my year abroad was going to have a song, it was going to be this one as it manages to combine both my languages (never mind that the song makes Moscow sound like a prostitute, I could probably write another blog post arguing how correct that assumption is).

Anyway as everyone says the Moscow metro truly is beautiful, lots of marble and columns and chandeliers and mosaics. I reckon I became quite good at quickly navigating my way around after four days. The first thing I actually did though was walk from the hostel to Red Square as it wasn't far. I could barely contain my grin as I got closer knowing I'd see St. Basil's cathedral soon. For me, this cathedral symbolises Moscow, it's what I think of whenever I think of the city and in real life it's truly beautiful, inside and out.

Other things I did in Moscow include the standard tourist fare, like going round the Tretyakovskaya Gallery and also gawking at the body of Lenin still on display in his mausoleum. I actually got chivvied by one of the guards because I lingered slightly too long. Probably because I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing, poor Lenin doesn't even look like a human body any more, he looked like he was made of porcelain. I did also wonder why his right hand was clenched and his left open though.

Speaking of guards I did also get shouted at in the Kremlin as it was getting close to closing time and I wandered across a road towards what I believe was the armoury building. There was a shout of, "Back!" from one of the guards and I hurried off, pretending I hadn't done anything.

Most of all in Moscow I think I enjoyed the things that I just happened across and hadn't planned on seeing. For example the sculpture garden opposite Gorky Park where I found an open air cinema and huddled in a blanket to watch the Belgian film 'Hasta La Vista'. Or the two vegetarian cafes that I ended up visiting, in the last of which I found out about an online social network for Russian vegetarians. Or maybe even the wall in Alexander park (behind the Kremlin) where people hide coins for people to find and when you find one you're allowed to move it to somewhere else in the wall (another time where I talked to a stranger, just so I could ask what on earth was going on!). Or the poster I chanced across in the hostel which lead me to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, where I played 'Python' and discovered how strong I was.

All in all Moscow was a blast and to be honest it didn't feel as daunting as I'd expected. My theory is that the lack of significant numbers of skyscrapers makes the whole place feel a bit smaller and easier to handle. I wonder if it's a sign of wealth and affluence to show that you can afford to build out rather than up, but who knows. I for one loved it and based on first impressions I'm not sure if I'll like St. Petersburg as much.

I'll let you know in a few days...

The countdown has begun...

I thought I’d better write an update, given that I’m leaving in 6 days. The other English people that were here left just over a month ago, and it really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long already. Things definitely quietened down after they left because exam season started, lectures stopped and the students who didn’t have exams went home.

I carried on with lectures for a bit though which was certainly helpful and I also got down to writing my year abroad essay, which I now have in a state that is almost ready to send. Apart from academic work there hasn’t really been all that much that was terribly exciting. I’m trying to keep myself busy, meeting people, going to the cinema, seeing a Picasso exhibit at the art museum (basically abstract porn) and then celebrating my birthday.

That’s probably the biggest thing that’s happened in the past few weeks and I’m pleased to say that it was a really good day despite being so far away from friends and family. It was also a Russian friend’s birthday the day before mine so I celebrated with her at her summer house and then on my birthday we gathered students together and went to see ‘Brave’ at the cinema and then had a meal in a restaurant. It’s very hard to believe that ‘Brave’ is out in cinemas here more than a month before it’s out in England; I don’t know how Russia managed that. I do highly recommend going to see it though as it’s excellent and as soon as I’m back in England I’ll be going to see it again, because who doesn’t want to hear the full (non-dubbed) effect of Billy Connolly on the big screen?

Also many thanks to all the people who gave me things for my birthday out here, they were much appreciated, I seem to give off the ‘I love books vibe’ as I got some excellent ones as well as a Russian Winnie the Pooh bear which sings and is very cute. Unfortunately I am now having to send a lot of them back home via post rather than having them in my suitcase because space is very limited. I currently have an enormous parcel (the biggest box the post office sells) sitting on my floor, ready to be sent tomorrow. My host mother is coming with me because neither of us can seem to fully understand what’s required by all the forms and having someone there who speaks better Russian than me is undoubtedly useful.

I think I’m really going to miss Tomsk, it’s a great place and I’ve met some awesome people. I know it’s going to be difficult to come back though and that makes me a bit sad. I’m especially going to miss the family that have had me under their roof for the past five months. I don’t think I’ll ever be properly able to express how much it’s meant to be included in a family in another country like that. Without a doubt it has made living in this country (whose language I felt I barely knew five months ago) infinitely better. So for all the evenings spent drinking tea and comparing countries and talking about everything and nothing, thank you guys, even though you’re not likely to read this, thank you.

Before I get too mushy I’d better talk about something else. I don’t know if I’ll blog again before leaving Tomsk, so for future reference here are the stops I should be making on my epic journey back across Europe: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Malmö, Leipzig, Berlin, Freiburg, Amsterdam, Durham. Here’s hoping I make it all in one piece but by the end I will no doubt want to kill the heavy suitcase that I will be dragging with me. No doubt there will also be brief updates on the way as all the hostels have wi-fi and I'll have to do something to fill the evenings.

 See you in a month England, I’m coming home!

CULTURE

This blog post was going to be called ‘Card Games, Christenings and other things that don’t begin with C’, then more things happened and it was going to be called, ‘Card Games, Christenings and Culture’ but then I decided that too many things had been happening, so now it’s just ‘CULTURE’ and lots of it, because the last few weeks have been pretty eventful.

First of all some great news is that I have found something akin to the game nights that I had in Leipzig and that is a group of people who play the card game ‘Magic: The Gathering’ almost every Sunday it seems. I played in a sealed tournament before we went to Novosibirsk and won three out of five games and then played again yesterday but only won one out of three. Regardless, it’s a lot of fun and it gets me out of the flat and doing things which is excellent.

Speaking of Novosibirsk, this was another adventure that was recently had, where we kind of bunked off uni and went to see a new city. In our defence Monday and Tuesday were holidays in Russia anyway, so we only technically missed two lessons. It was good fun exploring the biggest city in Siberia though. I’d say that it was perhaps too big for me but for a short break it was nice, the atmosphere almost reminded me of Budapest but Novosibirsk is not nearly as beautiful. The predominant colour there is grey but there are still plenty of things to do. We explored the zoo (and felt sad that the cages seemed so small) and went to the theatre to see the ballet ‘Cinderella’ which was stunning. I also tried to visit the planetarium and ended up investigating the metro and bus system on the way because it was so far away and after all the travelling it turned out to be closed anyway so that was a bit disappointing. The metro system is funny though, because it’s so small, here’s a picture of the map:

 After Novosibirsk there seem to have been lots of different special days, including Radio Day which mostly happened at night because it involved a rather impressive light/laser show projected onto the front the main building of TUSUR (one of the universities in Tomsk) as well as a parade and a percussion concert (which actually went on so long that there were cries of “Go away! Bring on the lasers!” from the crowd), here are more photos:

The next big day was Victory Day which was a national holiday and there was a big parade through the centre of Tomsk. After I’d got over my initial discomfort at being faced with a lot of exuberant patriotism and realised that there was solemnity and the exuberance was more to do with the fact that WWII was over and fascism was defeated, rather than the fact that Germany was defeated, I enjoyed myself. I’ll still have a problem with posters showing rosy-faced soldiers looking triumphantly off into the middle distance because they try to portray an image of war that is far from the reality but thankfully such posters seemed to be rare. Unfortunately we didn’t actually watch the parade as it went past but instead walked after it to catch up because there were speeches and songs at the university, followed by buckwheat porridge, vodka, tea and dancing. We did catch it though and saw the soldiers marching and people laying flowers at the war memorial. Have another photo to show this:

This one shows just how many people were there. I think Victory Day is one of the most important holidays for Russians.

The next exciting thing I have to talk about is the weekend in which I hardly slept because of a spontaneous trip to the cinema with Physics students and afterwards we walked through the city to Subway and were out until about 4am as the sun was coming up. It was a great deal of fun as it reminded me so much of times in England, where I’d end up hanging out with friends, talking and playing games or watching films until the small hours. I then got up the next day to go to the puppet theatre which was enchanting. It was just a small wooden house (if you didn’t know it was there, it would be incredibly difficult to find) where presumably the owner lived and worked, making the puppets for the performances. As you walked in several of the puppets on display came to life and talked to you, I especially liked the caterpillar that asked you for a leaf. There wasn’t any kind of reception or ticket booth either, you simply paid however much you wanted and sat down. The show itself was done entirely by one man and was completely absorbing; I don’t think I stopped smiling for the whole 45 minutes of the performance. I’m definitely going to try and go again.

The same day, in the evening, I went to a ‘Spring Ball’ organised by a dance school in Tomsk that was being held in the Centre for Culture in the university. There was the option to take part but I didn’t know any of the dances and was understandably tired so I settled for watching the show dances that interspersed the group dances and admiring the pretty dresses of the dancers. It was a pleasant way to spend an evening really.

The following Monday saw my next big foray into Russian culture with a visit to a banya (Russian baths). It was like a sauna but had a pleasant smoky smell and possibly was also hotter. You don’t spend too long sitting in it as it can give you a headache and it also hurts to breathe through your nose as the air is hot. Not to mention your swimming costume heating up to the point where you can’t touch it and don’t even think about wearing any kind of jewellery in there because it will probably burn you. It’s no wonder the usual custom is to go naked. Despite it sounding unpleasant it’s really not, after a few minutes of sweating you jump into a pool to cool down and then repeat the process. You can also be hit with leafy birch branches, an experience that I thought was going to be incredibly uncomfortable but was actually very similar to the feeling you get when you sink into a hot bath that is just on the point of being too hot but is warm and cuddly as you get used to it. We then ate smoked fish (basically a whole smoked fish, with all its internal organs still there, was placed on the table and you rip bits from it) and drank tea, which completed my first Russian banya experience.

The last thing I wanted to mention was another apparently international day that doesn’t seem to get much attention in England: Museum Day. If I’m honest I wouldn’t have known anything about it either if I hadn’t seen the crowds of people outside the art museum as I came out of the cinema (Kino Mir was showing German films). The art museum was open all night (as were other museums in the city) and there were all kinds of different events going on, including portrait painting, museum tours, collaborative art projects, dance battles, a string quartet, jazz and to cap it all off a fire show. I really do love chancing across things like that and I even ran into some students who I’d met before at the International Party.

I think I will wrap up this mammoth blog post here by saying that culture seems to be a big thing in Russia. I’m always seeing posters advertising concerts and in the last couple of weeks I’ve come across three parades celebrating various things (Radio Day, Victory Day and Young People’s Groups) and museum day certainly got a lot more attention than it would have done in England. Perhaps culture is too broad a word here but I’ve probably gone on long enough, so will avoid a lengthy discussion. Whatever it is that I mean, Russia has it in spades and I’m very glad to have been experiencing a lot of it recently.

That Easter Blog

I’m not really feeling the blog today but am heading to Novosibirsk for a few days and also took part in a Magic the Gathering Tournament on Sunday so the amount I have to blog about is significant. Therefore I’ll get this Easter one out of the way as I said I would do it and then it won’t be hanging over me.

As said in the last post the Orthodox Church follows a different calendar so my Easter was a week later than Easter in England. However Easter really begins with Lent and Pancake day, the latter of which was the day after I arrived in Tomsk. I think it was a little disorientating to be honest, to be plunged straight into an aspect of Russian culture especially when I wasn’t fully aware of the calendar differences at the time. We did eat pancakes though and the following day Lent began.

The Orthodox Lent is a lot stricter than anywhere I’ve come across before. All meat and dairy products are forbidden, as well as eggs and mayonnaise and because of its strictness children don’t have to properly follow it. Fish is also allowed to be eaten on some days during Lent that are holidays but generally people eat a lot of different soups and potatoes. Church services are also apparently different, with the songs being more subdued, I haven’t been to an ‘average’ service yet but comparing Easter day to Palm Sunday, I guess there was a difference in tone. However Easter Sunday was always going to be one of the more exuberant services anyway.

Easter Week started with Palm Sunday, which I’ve already covered, but there are other special days during the week as well. Maundy Thursday for example in Russia is ‘Clean Thursday’, the most significant thing here being that after the evening service a candle bearing holy fire was brought home in a special lantern. This was then used to burn a cross on the ceiling in almost every room in the flat, I’d already noticed these crosses before (there’s one on the ceiling next to my window for example) but they are ‘re-done’ I suppose on the Thursday before Easter. I’ve also noticed them in the stairway over the stairs and the window too. This seems to be the usual place for them, that and over the icons as well, like in the kitchen.

Good Friday doesn’t seem to have as much going on, although I was told that there is a complete fast (as in not eating anything at all) until lunchtime. Similarly not much happened on the Saturday other than preparing for celebrations on Sunday, this is because we went to the night service on Saturday leaving no real time to prepare anything on the Sunday. I ended up feeling a bit confused as I went to bed at about 9pm and got up again at 11pm for the service. Apparently it was two services back to back (one for the Saturday and then one for Easter Sunday) and it went on until about 3/3:30am. The most notable features were: the procession around the church with candles while the church bell was rung and people producing large amounts of food at the end of the service for the priest to bless (like with the willow branches from the week before). Mostly people brought decorated eggs, large bready/cakey things and tvorog (sweetened curds pressed into a pyramid shape). I was also told that the egg shells would not be disposed of normally; they would probably be burnt because they had now been blessed and were holy. There were also many calls of “Христос воскресе!” (Christ is risen) with the response “Воистену воскресе!” (He is risen indeed) during the service, which is certainly a thing in common with English churches. After the service we came home and ate all the things that had been forbidden during lent and then went to bed at about 6am.

On Easter day my host family’s family turned up to celebrate at about 1pm and there was a lot of food and a lot of vodka (and of course toasts) and dancing and singing until about 6pm. Russian’s certainly know how to party.

So that was Easter really, apologies that it’s not written more enthusiastically but it truly was a great time and I enjoyed myself immensely. I should hopefully have more adventures to write about after Novosibirsk and I certainly want to mention the Magic Tournament at some point even though the majority of people reading this won’t know what it’s about.

My First Experience With the Orthodox Church

So Easter is a couple of days away here, today is in fact Good Friday, but I wanted to briefly blog about my first impressions of the Orthodox church before I tried to capture the whole festival of Easter in my next post.

I went to the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul on what was Palm Sunday here. In England it was Easter Sunday, which is the first difference between the Orthodox and Protestant churches. Orthodox churches are a week behind as they follow a different calendar. It’s also called Вербное Воскресенье (or Willow Sunday) over here because, let’s face it, palms are hard to come by in Siberia and willow is also the first plant to flower in spring. This is what I was told at any rate; there may be other significances to using willow. We also didn’t have any kind of procession into the church which made me miss the Palm Sunday services of home, where we’d wave palm branches, sing, bang drums and generally make a lot of noise along the high street and into church.

What we did have on the way into the church were several people selling willow and even more people lining the street begging. I suppose it is potentially true that religious people are more generous or willing to give money to beggars; this is at least what the homeless people of Tomsk seemed to think. The other thing that was noticeable on the way into church was the building itself, because it had three large gold and silver gilded domes. I don’t know if this is a feature I’ll see at other churches but this church was certainly striking as the domes caught the light. The third noticeable thing before actually getting inside the church was how much people were crossing themselves: before going up the steps, before crossing the threshold and then before entering the church proper.



I was struck by how many people there seemed to be, I was told that because it was a special day there were a lot more people that usual but there was also an awful lot of movement. People were buying candles and other things from the shops either side of the main entrance and people were also coming and going a lot. There generally seemed to be a lot of disorder and people were free to wander around the church during the service. This was mostly in order to get to icons to place candles in front of them. The icons were also kissed and some people touched their foreheads to them and crossed themselves. The fact that there were no pews and the whole service was conducted with people standing made the moving about easier though.

All the women also had their heads covered, be it with a head scarf or a hat, even female babies and toddlers, which I imagine must have got quite warm. I’d bought a scarf especially for church, which to be honest I was far too excited about owning, whether I liked having my head covered or not. It’s one of those things that someone will have to explain the significance of to me; otherwise I will just end up being indignant at the fact that men don’t seem to have to do anything. I could probably apply this feeling to many aspects of the Orthodox Church to be honest because there’s quite a lot that’s different to what I know from home and does seem strange to me.



For example the service being in the Old Slavic language, which even the Russians don’t necessarily understand, seems to me very strange but then I suppose it’s very much comparable to Catholic services being in Latin. I found communion stranger to be honest because very few people other than babies, toddlers and the elderly seemed to receive it. I didn’t ask the person I was with about this, but perhaps it was because there were simply too many people there. Children seemed to be receiving communion whether they wanted to or not and there was an awful lot of crying. People first had the bread and the wine together on a spoon, then a priest wiped their mouth with a red cloth and they kissed the chalice. After this they moved off to one side, drank some water and ate more bread, I actually saw one crying child tipped up to be given water before being righted to continue crying.

At the end of the service everyone surged forward, holding their willow aloft in order to have it sprayed with holy water by the priest. He used a large brush which managed to throw a fairly hefty amount of water into the congregation with each flick, so everyone got rather wet. After this there was even more pushing forwards as every person came to the front to kiss the cross that the priest was holding. As he held it he seemed to be giving some kind of sermon and occasionally spraying more water on the willow branches that people were holding.

So that was my first experience with the Orthodox Church. I realise that this blog is hardly informative and that if you’re looking for real information on the Orthodox Church you should probably check Wikipedia, as I only ever seem to list things that I see in this blog. However this time I’m wary of passing judgement I think. I am certainly no-one to say what’s right or wrong in religion and I’m not going to condemn the Orthodox Church just for being different to my church in England. As ever religion is a personal matter and there’s only one person qualified to pass judgement on it. I hope you’ve been vaguely entertained by the events listed here though. Next time’s blog will hopefully be all about Easter and even if you’re not religious, the cultural comparison should still be interesting.

Until next time then.

Museums and Stuff

(Well what else do I title this if I don't want to over use the word 'update'?)

Well it’s been almost five weeks, and honestly it’s flown by. The old cliché is once again proved to be true although I don’t really know if I’ve been having enough ‘fun’ to make time fly that quickly.

Certainly over the last few days I’ve been rather busy and have finally been doing ‘touristy’ things which is nice. We had a new German student also studying Russian in our class and I hung out with her while she was here for three weeks, she’s flying back to Germany today. I’ve learned how difficult it is to switch from one foreign language into another as well. English to Russian and English to German are fine but Russian to German? No way. My brain complains very loudly and decides to speak in a hybrid of the two. It’s quite strange actually. In fact in my day to day Russian I’ve noticed I’ve been using German word order (for example putting the verb to the end after certain conjunctions and in conditional sentences), it’s a good job that word order doesn’t necessarily matter in Russian because of all the grammar to tell you what’s going on instead. However I may end up asking at some point just so I know if there is anything I actually need to change. There is a slight reluctance though because most of the time I’m unsure of the actual verb I should be using and thus putting it to the end of the sentence allows me to kind of pause and gesture and the other person will usually fill it in for me. The downside being that sometimes they add in a different verb to the one I was looking for and the whole sentence gets changed. As ever though I am learning and speaking is getting easier.

Anyway, in terms of touristy things I spent two days visiting many museums. The university has about five of its own on campus as well but I haven’t managed to see all of them yet, just the Zoological and Mineralogical ones. The former was ever so slightly disturbing as it was four rooms filled with dead animals, either stuffed or in formaldehyde. I decided I definitely prefer them alive. The Mineralogical museum was much prettier however because it was full of gemstones and all kinds of rocks in a stunning array of colours.

We then spent a day and visited three museums in the city, the first of which I always seem to forget the name of but was in a building that was previously a church and had an exhibit on bears because bears were/are a very significant part of Siberian culture. Stuffed animals seem to be a thing in Russian museums because yet again there were two rooms of the things, mostly birds but some mammals as well (including bears). The next museum we saw used to be a prison and is now the Memorial museum dedicated to recent Russian history. I wish I had been able to understand more of the things that were written there to be honest but it was still interesting. Thirdly and lastly, after Russian pancakes for lunch, we went to the art museum which had some incredible 17th century artworks. I’m always astounded by how life-like the faces can be in portraits.

Museums here seem to be a) very small and b) very cheap but they were all fascinating and it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of afternoons. The other thing I finally did was take a walk to the river to see what was there. I in fact ended up on the river as it’s still completely frozen. Definitely the scariest thing I’ve done yet but only because the snow was knee deep and it felt like every time my foot sank I was going to go into the river. There was one very nerve-wracking moment when I pulled my foot out of the hole I’d just made and found a puddle of water and broken ice. I high-tailed it towards the bank at that point, disregarding the fact that I wasn’t the only one out there and I could clearly see footprints that stretched across the whole river. There were lots of people on the river in fact, ice fishing and even kite surfing across the ice but it was still a relief to see the stones of the bank under the snow.

I don’t think I’ll be doing that again, mostly because everything is melting at the moment. It finally got warm enough to snow again which is still a weird thing to say, but it snowed for three days almost incessantly and then over the course of an afternoon it vanished. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of snow but lakes and rivers have appeared on the roads and pavements and I’m seeing wellingtons in the shops. I don’t know if I’ll buy any, I’ll try and avoid it though because I’ve already bought two pairs of shoes since being here. However this is the price you pay when the only shoes you bring are the ones you’re wearing and they’re very warm winter boots.

There’s an update though and apologies that I don’t seem to be doing the most exciting of things but at least you know I’m still alive. Particularly since Skype contact doesn’t seem to have been happening lately. However the clocks going forward in England means that most people I know are now only six hours behind me. It also means I didn’t have to lose an hour of sleep like I normally do when the clocks change. Hooray! Hopefully I’ll catch some of the people reading this online at some point and who knows maybe I'll have done something exciting by the time of the next post. There are potentially plans for skating on Sunday...

First Blog from Tomsk

Given that the conversations I’ve so far had with people have been just as I’m going to bed, I’m probably not giving a very enthusiastic impression of life in Russia. Therefore here are a few thoughts and general observances after my first few days here, written from a time when I am slightly more awake. I say slightly because I am still adjusting to the time zone. The others said they all started waking up at three and four in the morning and now it’s happening to me too. It’s not really helping my conversation skills.

Anyway, the first word I want to use to describe Tomsk is ‘old’; the whole place just feels like it has a lot of history. I’m not trying to say that it’s old fashioned (although there are certainly some parts that warrant that description) but it’s just not...modern? Western? Something like that. It definitely feels different.

There are a lot of wooden houses here as well which is apparently typical for Siberia, some of them look rather dilapidated and others look warmer than you’d think from a wooden house in Siberia. I even saw one that had burnt down in a fire and I’m sure there’s a proverb in there somewhere.

The other thing that characterises the streets here are the stray dogs; I don’t think I’ve seen so many dogs on the street before; I counted six in the space of a minute whilst walking home yesterday. It makes me wonder why people bother having other dogs as pets (which they do, I’ve seen them being walked on leads arguing with the strays) when there are so many just roaming, looking for homes.

The third thing that I’ve noticed on the streets is a lack of pavements, particularly on the back streets where the block of flats that I’m living in is. I’m wondering if they’ll appear again once the snow melts or if that’s just a thing. I’m pretty sure the road will emerge at least four inches lower down on account of all the ice that’s built up. Pretty much every Russian I’ve spoken to has lamented how dirty the streets are now and how happy they are that it will be warmer soon.

Speaking of the temperature, the cold is actually reasonably manageable at the moment. I think the average is somewhere around minus 10 at the moment but the sun is shining and my coat is very warm so I’m coping. I think the worst thing about breathing outside in temperatures below zero is feeling the mucus in your nose instantly freeze and thaw. At least I assume that’s what it is, it feels pretty icky regardless.

Other than that I’m just trying to cope with the language. I keep telling myself that I’ve only been here three days and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy and I knew it was straight in at the deep end but seriously, the learning curve is so steep, it’s a wall and I’m banging my head against it trying to get vocabulary to stick. I don’t know what it is about Russian words that makes them just not want to stay in my head. As I said though it has only been three days and I’m still a touch jet lagged, things will improve and I’ll try and stay positive.

Until next time then.