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...