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.