Hi everyone!
I have now been in Russia nearly three weeks (holy hell), and it is awesome, and I will write more generally about what life is like here next time, but for now, here, have this helplessly detailed account of my second day in Russia! Yay! :D
(Stories include: going the longest period of my life so far without bathing, the most awkward phone call of my life, nearly becoming an enemy of the state, and severe social anxiety)
I guess the good thing about being incapable of sleeping on planes is that it makes it that much easier to escape from the cruel clutches of jet lag.
After being awake for 33.5 hours, I was out cold on that uncomfy little bed.
Olga was to pick me at 8am—“Actually, 8:15, so you can sleep more”—so I’d set my alarm for 8 and gone to bed immediately. Even by then, it was so late that I’d barely be able to catch eight hours of sleep—definitely not what my body needed by that point, but hey, still enough to make it through the next day without keeling over. Hopefully. But then I woke up on my own, the sun blaring through the thin curtains across the window, and somehow I recognized that that was not where the sun was supposed to be at any point before 8 o’clock in the morning. This was like 10am-type stuff right here.
Fearing the worst—that in my sleepy stupor I’d set my alarm for 8pm rather than 8am—I checked the time on my phone.
5:17am.
Holy hell. I hadn’t realized we were almost as far north as freaking Anchorage, Alaska.
I double-checked my alarm time just in case. I had set it correctly. Phew.
Eventually I managed to fall back asleep (it wasn’t the time zone change but the light that made it difficult), waking up on time at 8am to gather my things and be ready by the time Olga came. It didn’t take that long to get ready, since, you know, it wasn’t like I could change clothes or anything. Ugh. I just hoped my suitcase would be delivered by that night. Until then, I was already pushing 41 hours without a shower as someone who literally hadn’t gone a day without a shower in nearly a decade, and this did not float my boat. (That being said, there was definitely a part of me happy to have an excuse not to have to take a cold shower—the thought still horrified me, even if I knew I’d have to at some point.)
Something I’d forgotten to mention about the previous day: I’d discovered that there exist vastly different outlets in Russia than those in the US (which, in retrospect, duh), meaning none of my plugs or chargers worked. (Another horrifying realization.) Thankfully, the charger that came with my Russian phone had a separable USB cord that I could just replace with my iPhone one, but this meant I could only charge one at a time. Since my Russian phone had been good on charge the night before, I’d decided to charge my iPhone, but now, as I waited around for a text from Olga, I realized that the Russian phone had decided to run out of batteries in the middle of the night. Oops.
I had just managed to get it charged to the point where it would turn on (I’d received no texts) when there was a knock at my door. Sure enough, it was Olga. I stuffed the charger in my coat pocket and we hit the road.
We headed straight thing to the host university, GUAP (Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation), because I still needed to get officially registered as a visitor within 24 hours of arrival, and since they’d agreed to host me, they had to be the ones to submit the paperwork. Plus, I was to meet the dean of the college and thank him for his support (“English is fine. And make sure you say how nice and helpful Viktor was, since he’s his son” she added). I was surprised to learn that apparently GUAP was not actually where Olga worked, but instead a place where she simply had good connections and whose smaller size meant it was easier to convince them to sponsor me than her actual university. (Indeed, the “University of Aerospace Instrumentation” doesn’t actually even have a linguistics department; who knew?)
The dean’s driver took us to the university as Olga asked how my previous evening had been, and we chatted a fair amount in Russian. I was still clearly groggy, having just woken up, so my Russian was pretty terrible, but I still learned some neat things about the city. (For instance, almost all of the buildings around where I lived were ordered built under Stalin.) Plus, some of the views on the ride were incredible as we began to enter the actual heart of the city, and I was excited to see more.
When we finally got there, we headed up to the registration office, and holy hell, let me just say, I don’t know how on earth anyone finds anything in Russia. We had to go through a variety of unmarked doors, down an exorbitant number of long corridors, and up three separate staircases before finally being at the office, all of which Olga somehow maneuvered expertly. This is a thing that I have since noticed with lots of other buildings here. I don’t know if it’s because they’ve all undergone a variety of different uses since being built—walls built and knocked down all over the place, just trying to make do with what they had—or if their architects are just trolls, but whatever the case, it was all I could do to not just start laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of this building.
But finally we were there, and I showed them my visa, and ten minutes later we were out the door and maneuvering through everything again backwards.
We stopped by the dean’s office, but he was out of his office that morning, so Olga said we’d probably just come back at some point later in the day. By this point, I was starving—I had forgotten that morning to pack a granola bar in one of my pockets, and now I was cursing myself for my forgetfulness. Thankfully though, Olga asked if I was hungry and suggested we go to a nearby cafe called Shoko-Mokko (“Choco-Mocha”). I nodded my head vigorously to the affirmative, so we walked across the street and were just entering when she suddenly got a phone call from the dean.
She answered the phone and muttered awkward things in hushed Russian, shooting occasional glances my way. Uh-oh. I had a bad feeling about this. And sure enough, confirming my worst fears, she ended up handing me the phone. “It’s him,” she whispered. Dear lord.
What ensued was certainly the most awkward phone conversation of my entire life. It went a little something like this:
I dejectedly handed the phone back to Olga, mumbling something about “phone anxiety”. Which is true; I am always just the worst whenever someone suddenly hands me the phone. But at least I hadn’t been the source of all of the awkwardness this time; he had clearly not known what to say either. I was just glad Olga had told me what to say beforehand.
Anyway, the cafe turned out to be pretty nice—good vibes, as with any cafe worth its salt (caffeine?), and I plugged in my phone so it could charge some more. Olga tried to get me to get a coffee, but even with my newfound realization that it wasn’t too terrible (and perhaps even, dare I say, mildly enjoyable), I withstood her pressures—this was not a habit I wanted to form. As for food, I was unsure about what to get, but Olga recommended me some oatmeal stuff called kashi, and since I wanted to get something at least vaguely Russian, I decided I may as well go along with it. And oh my god. Okay, look, I’ve never been like a huge oatmeal fan—like, I enjoy it a fair amount, but I would never dream of listing it as one of my favorite foods. But holy hell this stuff was amazing. Hands-down one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, and it didn’t even have any fruit in it. What even was this. Plus, they gave me a giant, heaping bowl, by far the most oatmeal I’ve ever had at a single sitting, and the only reason I was able to finish the whole thing was because it was so damn good.
But as we were eating, new complications were developing on the horizon. Olga got several phone calls during the duration of our breakfast, and she told me as we were leaving what the new problem was: apparently, the travel agency through which MISTI got our visas cleared had taken it upon themselves to apply for business rather than student visas (at least in my case), which was great in that that meant I got a multi-entry visa, but not great in that it meant the university could no longer officially register me.
In other words, we had to find a place willing to register me within an hour, or I’d be an enemy of the state.
(Okay, so maybe the reality was slightly less dramatic than that, but still. Not good stuff.)
Cue us walking around for about an hour, wandering seemingly aimlessly around the city while Olga intermittently explained the situation or surroundings to me or was on the phone with various people. I didn’t mind; I loved getting to see more of St. Petersburg. It was still overcast and damp, but nonetheless beautiful as we drifted through the streets, passing a variety of canals, crossing numerous bridges, and even finding ourselves in front of the Mariinsky Theatre, which I got way too excited about. (I also fanboyed out when she pointed out we were on the bridge featured in Gogol’s “The Overcoat”.) With a couple of exceptions, I could tell we were mostly in non-touristy sections, those without much in the way of flashy signs or whatnot, or even any signs at all. Just buildings and buildings down the street, lining the canal, sometimes all looking similar and sometimes not.
Eventually Olga finally pointed out a hotel in the direction we were walking and told me that they had agreed to register me. I sized up the place. It was a somewhat disheveled-looking street, and the hotel—the “Hotel Premier”—didn’t look any different. We walked in through the rusted doors to a darkened stairwell that looked like it could have been called a staircase had it been better taken care of. It smelled strongly of cigarette smoke.
Through a door to the left and we were in the hotel’s tiny main office. It was just before the deadline. Olga greeted the two women and I handed them my passport. After about ten minutes (and an undisclosed amount of rubles that Olga had shoved into their hands), we were off again. (It wasn’t a bribe, she insisted; just a “thank-you for their troubles”. I believed her. After all, you can’t spell ‘troubles’ without ‘rubles’.) Apparently, if ever interrogated by the police or any other officials, I was to give the hotel as my place of residence in the country—the hotel had graciously agreed to say I was staying there, even though it was technically illegal. We were lucky for them to have had such a good working relationship with the university.
Speaking of which, however, Olga then told me another repercussion of my having gotten a business visa: I could no longer stay at my dorm.
Yessssss.
She said she’d also been trying to call various people to see if she could find me a host family, which sounded so totally beyond awesome to me. Not only would I have a kitchen and hot water, I’d also be able to practice my Russian! Plus, perhaps a much better location than my current middle-of-the-edge-of-nowhere stomping grounds. This was a wonderful development. (So long as I didn’t have to actually stay at that hotel.)
Apparently I was to move out preferably within three days, but Sunday at the latest. I quickly calculated in my head. It was Tuesday. If it did take til Sunday, that would be four days from now, which would make… six total days without showering. Dammit. I probably would just have to suck it up and take a cold shower before then. Oh well; could it really be that bad? After all, just because it wasn’t hot didn’t mean it had to be ice-cold. (Note from the future: L-O-L-O-L.)
Anyway, after this absolute godsend, it was time for us to head to the university that Olga actually worked for and meet some of her students there. They would then be taking me across the city and giving me a tour of sorts of all the cool things downtown. I was a bit nervous about the prospect of being forced upon a group of friends that I didn’t know—I hoped they’d at least willingly volunteered for this—but I figured it would probably be fine and fun, just like with Dasha the day prior. And so we began wending our way over (but only after stopping at the horrendously complicated building at GUAP again).
By this point though, Olga had become increasingly concerned by the fact that my suitcase still hadn’t shown up, and she insisted that she find me some change of clothes so that I could actually bathe. I was reluctant to spend money on some cheap clothes I probably wouldn’t ever wear again, especially if my suitcase might end up just being delivered later that night or something, but suddenly we found ourselves in a crazy underground mini-mall, surrounded by tons of tiny shops lining a maze of dimly-lit corridors. Bakeries, convenience stores, electronics shops, phone accessories, lingerie—it was like a farmers’ market, but underground. And, like, without the farmers and stuff. Or the produce. An underground street market? But like, not ‘underground’ in an illegal way? Whatever. You get the point.
Anyway, Olga scouted out a little clothing shop (the shop was little, not the clothing), by which I mean it was basically like a concessions stand with clothing laid out on display—a concert merch booth, perhaps. It looked like I could buy a shirt and an underwear for just under the equivalent of $10. Hmm. I guessed I may as well get them, at the very least because I knew it would make Olga feel a lot better. Speaking of which, where did she go?
After paying I turned to see her down the corridor, talking to what I first thought was just a wall but which upon closer inspection turned out to have a little slide-open pane in much the same manner as a fast food drive-thrus window. Apparently it was an electronics shop. She beckoned to me, holding something in her hand. “This, does it work?”
I looked at the object and saw that it was a three-prong US-to-Russia plug converter—just what I needed. (She had brought with her two converters when she came to my apartment that morning, but they only took two-prong plugs, and my computer had three prongs.) However, upon closer inspection, I saw that the Russian side still only had two prongs—meaning it wasn’t grounded, which could potentially be dangerous with higher-voltage electronics. I told her I’d need one with three prongs on each side, so that wouldn’t do. As much as I needed an adapter, I could just find one later with her students, who we were now on our way to meet.
Thankfully, it seemed the architects of Olga’s university were much less crazy (or perhaps simply less inspired?) than those of GUAP. We walked in, went up some stairs, turned a corner, and walked down the hallway. That was it. See? Only four steps. (Er, figurative steps, rather.) It was refreshing!
Olga peered into the window of a classroom. “Oh, they are still testing!” she exclaimed quietly. Oh, great, so she was forcing them to babysit me right after an exam. “Let us go to my office and wait!” The way she said it, I was expecting a long walk to another corner of the building, perhaps through some random darkened corridors ready to destroy my perception that the place was sanely designed after all, but instead she just walked to the door across from the classroom and opened it. It was rather anticlimactic.
We sat down at/near her tiny desk (apparently Russian professors don’t spend much time in their offices, though I’m not sure whether the third-of-a-cubicle-sized spaces allotted to each of them are the cause or the effect), me charging my phone more in case I ended up getting severely lost and desperately needing it. (Boy Scouts may have failed me on the whole survival skills thing, but not on being prepared, yo.) It was about half an hour of me intermittently staring out at the beautiful Neva, right in front of the window, and attempting to amuse myself on Twitter. But then, finally, there apparated voices in the hall outside of our door, and I knew my time had come.
The first sign of a problem was when I saw how many there were—nearly ten. Oh dear. She had said it would be some dude named Ivan and some of his friends, but she had not mentioned how many. But then they saw me, and immediately some of them giggled and muttered things I couldn't understand. The laughs didn't sound particularly mean, but it's just generally not a very good feeling when your general existence makes people laugh.
“Eta Sebastian,” Olga said, introducing me, “i on…” I didn't catch the rest because it was too fast. Some giggles continued. I pretended not to notice and instead opted to continue to (attempt to) display some amount of confidence, which in my case probably meant something along the lines of standing up too straight and looking into the distance with my eyes glazed over. I tend to overcompensate.
She talked for another minute or so, stretching on to the point where I suddenly became acutely aware that this was definitely much longer than the normal introductory, “This is so-and-so, they’re yadda yadda yadda, have fun and show them a good time.” I began to suspect that perhaps not all the giggles were directed at me. I still wasn’t sure what she was saying, mainly because I was too busy at the time freaking out about the impending socialization I’d have to do with people who already clearly hated me, but I managed to pull myself back out of my head just in time to understand the word “iskusstva”, and for her to turn to me and say, “Iskusstva—that means ‘art’.”
Eager not to look like a dumb American and/or total n00b, I nodded and stoically said, “Da, ya znayu”—Yes, I know—but then realized directly afterward that I had said it a bit rudely, much the same way you’d respond to your mother when she gets drunk and reminds you that you were an accident but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love you. People snickered. I immediately felt bad, but Olga thankfully didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened. It also had the strange side effect of making me feel like I’d just received some strange sort of validation from the students, which both boosted my confidence but also made me feel gross for it.
Anyway, shortly thereafter she’d finally finished speaking, and almost immediately a chatter broke out across the group of students, smiling and laughing. I watched as about half of them formed a group and began walking away, waving bye to me, Olga and the others as they made their way down the hall. This left only five people remaining, looking at me and Olga or talking amongst themselves. I let out a deep sigh of relief. Five was still a lot, but it was sure as hell a lot better than ten.
One of them stuck out their hand to me and said, “Zdrastvuytye.” I shook their hand and said hello back, and then the same with the rest of them, each telling me their names: Katya, Zhenya, Sonya, Dasha (a different one), and Ivan. I think at one point I tried saying my name (I seriously always forget to do this when meeting people; it’s a problem), but whoever it was just laughed good-naturedly and said, “Da, my znayem”—Yes, we know. Fair enough, I supposed.
And with that, Olga said goodbye and told us to have fun, and we were off.
Things were immediately super awkward. Someone tried to ask me a question in English, to which I responded by saying I wanted to talk only in Russian, so then I fumbled my way through a terrible blabbery response, after which they all just kinda looked disappointed and embarrassed and began talking to each other about something else that I couldn’t understand. I ended up just kinda wandering behind them as we walked out of the building, calculating ways I could leave and/or make an excuse to be somewhere else. As we walked by the river, Zhenya and Katya turned to me and started trying to make conversation, with the occasional help from Ivan, but I was stumbling over my words and not understanding anything they were saying. I already wasn’t too good at Russian, but being put in a situation like this didn’t exactly help. My mind just felt like a big brick wall. We halfheartedly exchanged some basic information, but it was clearly not enjoyable for any of us, especially when I was also basically acting like a big brick wall, too (albeit a reasonably sentient one), unable to really smile or move in non-robotic ways or have any normal amount of human tone inflection.
We crossed the bridge to the other side, reaching the Winter Palace Garden and beholding the Hermitage. Ivan tried to explain something to me about its history that I didn’t currently have the mental faculties to even try to understand, so I just nodded and went “ah” at what I felt were the appropriate times. Afterward he just kind of looked to the side and nodded awkwardly though, so I doubt I was actually fooling anyone. I felt my toes curl up inside my shoe.
In a better situation I’d have been in complete awe that the Winter Palace/Hermitage was standing right in front of me, or vice versa or whatever, but when I get like this everything just takes on a surrealistic quality and doesn’t even feel real. I am become robot. Destroyer of any reasonable prospect of having friends.
And so on.
At some point, I think Katya was trying to explain something to me, and I didn’t get it, and so she tried again because she really wanted to get the point across, but I still didn’t get it, and then she looked super defeated and looked pleadingly at some of the others.
That’s when I decided that this whole thing was stupid. “Yesli ya nye ponimayu po-pyervom, mozhna skazat’ mnye po-angliski,” I said. If I don’t understand it the first time, you can just say it in English.
Cue us basically speaking only in English.
And then things got so much better.
Soon, we were talking, actually talking, having fun and laughing and forming normal human bonds and everything, and it was wonderful.
We walked around Palace Square, by the new and old Hermitages, through the arches of the General Staff Building as they told me stories and fun facts about the buildings. They all spoke English very nearly fluently. I would say some simple things in Russian, and they would sometimes say something in Russian first before immediately saying it again in English, but I’d decided that it wasn’t like I was going to get much out of Russian-only conversation anyway if that’s how it had been going, so it wasn’t a big loss. Soon, they all agreed they were hungry, and I was feeling like I could eat too, so we headed up through the arches to find some bliny.
We ended up eating at this place called Teremok (Теремок; one-letter difference), which is apparently the Russian equivalent of McDonald’s but much, much better. It is a fast-food place, which took me a while to realize because it doesn’t have a drive-thru (in any of the locations I’ve been to), but instead of burgers it serves bliny (blee-NUY, with a very short ‘u’ as it ‘cut’ and ‘y’ as in ‘funny’), which is basically the Russian equivalent of crêpes but (dare I say it) much, much better, and they can be filled with both sweet and savory things and whatever the case they’re wonderful. I had no idea what to expect, so I ordered a cheese-and-mushroom one as well as a chocolate one, and we sat down and we ate and my god was that cheese-and-mushroom one just amazing. (The chocolate one too, but alas, it was slightly spoiled by some pine nuts that had no right to be around such holy company.)
We managed to snag a row of tables for the six of us, so we sat and ate and got to know each other better. We talked about where we were from, and they mentioned how they’d Google-stalked me before meeting me, and we all consoled Katya on the B she’d gotten on her English exam. (I guess her English wasn’t quite at the same level as everyone else’s, but still astoundingly good.) This was around when I finally began to feel truly comfortable around them. By time we left, I was finally feeling myself again, the brick wall gone and replaced with a real human standing (well, sitting) in its place.
After eating, we ended up wandering around the city for a while, walking aimlessly down random streets and talking about whatever came up. Soon, the topic of yesterday’s protests was broached, and then things got mildly awkward for a moment after Dasha expressed regret that she wasn’t able to go since both her parents worked for the government. The others fell silent and kinda looked at her and then at me, as if wondering how I’d react to such a statement. I just replied the same way I would have otherwise, sympathizing with her regret. This led Zhenya to ask to no one in particular, “Are you—uh, are we allowed to talk about politics?”
I laughed and shrugged. “They actually told us not to talk about politics with anyone, just to be on the safe side. But I mean, I, like—I don’t mind.”
Zhenya nodded thoughtfully. “‘They’? Why did they say not to?”
“Like, the trainers for our program,” I explained. “Two women who grew up here. They said just because it could be the source of a lot of disagreement, people are already wary about Americans, et cetera.”
Katya got excited and asked, “Oh! What else did they tell you about Russia?”
So I listed off a lot of things—no whistling indoors, for instance, or smiling at anyone you don’t know. No shaking hands across the threshold of a doorway. Or, for that matter, no shaking hands between men and women—
“—Wait, what?” Katya exclaimed. “They actually told you that?”
I held back a smile—I had been interested to hear what they would say. I had actually mentioned this to the other Dasha yesterday, and she had been completely taken aback, never having heard of such a custom. However, everyone in this group was familiar with it, although they did say it was mostly only true of select older people and that it was thankfully dying out with their generation. (After all, they had all initiated the handshakes when we’d first met.) Zhenya made a comment about how it reflected a lot of the sexism in their society, and the conversation got to how conservative the country was and how behind it was in LGBT rights. “But maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this?” someone suggested awkwardly.
I was intensely curious to hear all of their thoughts on things, and it seemed to me like they were all more on the liberal side, so I said, “I mean, for what it’s worth, I think we’re probably on the same general page, or side, anyway…” People nodded, but still looked uncomfortable, and I didn’t wanna push it. So the conversation moved on.
At one point, we’d ended up in front of the Kazan Cathedral (well, technically behind, but the back happens to face the main thoroughfare of the city and is the prettiest façade anyway), talking about how pretty St. Petersburg was. They’d all been too busy recently to really stop and appreciate the city they lived in, but now had finally let themselves be reminded. And now that I was feeling more comfortable, I was at last able to appreciate the beauty of everything, and standing in front of the Kazan Cathedral was simply awe-inspiring. We all just kinda stood there looking up at the colonnade for a while, taking it in.
“Hey, Sebastian,” said Katya suddenly.
I turned and looked at her. “Yeah?”
“Are you—was, eh, was English your first language?”
I figured she was asking between that and Spanish. I smiled and nodded affirmatively. Her face lit up, and she looked up in disbelief, holding back a proud smile.
“Wow. You are the first native English speaker I have talked to.”
Her friends cheered and patted her on the back, and we stared on at the cathedral.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A bit later and we had found ourselves a café, purportedly so that I could practice my Russian with them since we could all hear each other better, but that did not end up happening. Instead, we talked linguistics—about the ins and out of English and Russian phonology, whether there were six vowel phonemes in Russian or just five (obviously six, we all agreed), and how, despite Zhenya’s nearly flawless British accent, she had only started learning English a couple years prior. (“Aww, that’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to me!” she said, after I mentioned how I’d thought she’d perhaps lived in England when she was younger.) We were in there for hours, mostly me and Zhenya and Katya and Dasha talking, Ivan every now and then and Sonya sulking on her phone (I actually found myself questioning my sanity because I honestly hadn’t even noticed her until then—she didn’t say like a word to me the entire time). Eventually, though, it was getting late, so we gathered our things and headed out toward the Metro station, still talking and laughing. We exchanged numbers, and they said to let them know if I was doing anything interesting, or to text them if I needed anything. And with that, it was goodbye.
I decided they probably hadn’t been laughing at me after all.