Winter and Spring are Duking it Out...

Where did that phrase come from? Did dukes used to fight all the time? Why was it the first thing that came into my head when I thought of the current craziness that’s occurring here in the weather department? Interesting. Anyway…

There is an old Russian saying, so my host mom tells me, that Winter and Spring always fight for a while before Spring finally wins out. Well, there is a first-class battle going on in this city. Even right this minute, through the gorgeous sunshine that has been shining since 9 AM this morning, snow has just started to come down rather strongly and the clouds are blowing in off of the Gulf of Finland and will soon block out the sun. Every day is an adventure, it can be sunny and freezing, sunny and warm (we had 2 of those this week and threw ourselves a celebration), cloudy wet and snowy, or cloudy freezing and snowing what feel like ice pellets. Its quite ridiculous – add to all of that that regardless of the weather, the area around our metro does not emerge from its ice-rink state and you’ve got quite the commute! But it makes the mornings fun, if a little stressful for your knees and stilettos as they try to prevent you from falling, and I feel slightly less Vitamin D deficient as a result of the sunny days.

Last weekend started early, with the cover show by Jarlath’s band (featuring ‘Special Guest from Flint, Brent’) on Thursday night about 11. As with most things in Russia, we weren’t sure where the bar was and ended up in a courtyard and heading through a door marked only by printouts done on Microsoft Word. Turned out to be a pretty chill bar, and their band (‘The Dudes’) played some great covers, mostly American music but also a Russian song or two and the crowd loved it all, Jarlath is a master at picking the slightly outdated songs that are more popular here than in the US, and also some classics including ‘Beat It’ and ‘Black or White’. We hung out for a while, then Brent and I went to take one of the girls home in a cab and returned to the bar after a half hour of incredibly interesting conversation with our cab driver who seemed very smart and was talking about how the opportunities in Russia are so much more difficult to come by, etc., and how he really wanted to improve his English because it gives you so many better opportunities. Got home nice and late, before up for classes on Friday morning. The weekend passed quickly, without excursions but with enough sunny weather for plenty of walking and lots of time spent with friends.

Classes are still going well, still teaching myself out of the second year book to try and fill in the gaps. The Ohio University study abroad program in Moscow starts this week, just one day before we arrive there for the start of our vacations. We’ll see if I can meet up with them that soon after their arrival.

This weekend started Thursday night with a trip to the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theater for a concert of Mozart’s Requiem. The hall is only a few years old, is absolutely beautiful and has been a topic of some discussion in the music world because of its superb acoustics. We were in the cheap seats, directly above the choir and behind the orchestra, but the sound quality was still incredible. The piece was beautiful, an hour and a half of the genius of Mozart made real by some of the best performers in Russia. This coming week we are going to an opera in the same hall, more Mozart, this time the Magic Flute. After the opera we met up with some of the guys in the center for a few drinks and to meet Jeremy’s friend who is visiting from Southern California. Headed home on the last metro to catch some sleep before our excursion to Pushkin on Saturday. Pushkin, so named in the 20th century after Russia’s favorite son who studied at an exclusive school for six years of his short life, is the town outside of St. Petersburg where the summer residence of the tsars was located. The palace there is magnificent, as are the gardens of both French and English style when there isn’t a foot of snow covering the, despite the fact that it was heavily damaged during the Second World War. The town was occupied by the Nazis, (interesting to note that in Russian they are always referred to as ‘the fascists’ rather than ‘the Germans’ as they often are in English), and the palace was sacked of almost every valuable treasure that had not been removed by the caretakers. Many of the restored rooms include photo displays of the rooms in the late 19th/early 20th centuries contrasted with photos of the rooms after the conclusion of the occupation of the region in the 1940s. The Nazis must have known that they had hit the motherload, almost everything was removed from the rooms and some parts of the palace that hadn’t been destroyed during the siege were destroyed when the approaching Russian army forced them out. Apparently, if there is one thing Russians are truly incredible at, it is restoring imperial palaces. The Catherine Palace in Pushkin has been absolutely stunningly restored, from the ethereal paintings on the ceilings to the parquet floors and the ridiculous amounts of gold and porcelain decorations. The amber room, the only one like it in the world, has also been brilliantly restored with almost 1 ton of amber from Kaliningrad, the Russian territory separated from the mainland by the Baltic States. Interestingly, in the original amber room there wasn’t enough for the very top of the walls or the fourth wall of the room, which is largely windows, and just so has it been restored. It is incredibly impressive, as are the rest of the rooms which have been restored, from the peacock room to the golden arcade. They are preparing for the celebration of the 300th birthday of the original part of the palace this summer, I can only imagine the utter opulence.

Meanwhile us regular citizens headed back to the city after the tour of the palace – it had started to do what Jarlath affectionately calls ‘slush from the sky’ so we weren’t exactly thrilled about wandering around the barren parks – but got stuck in traffic so we were starving when we finally made it back. Sveta, Irina, and I met up with Megan and proceed to eat and talk for the next 5 hours, at which point we were all wishing for a teleportation device to deposit us directly into our beds.

Today was the last time I’ll be in church until after Easter, I’m kind of disappointed that I’ll miss Easter Mass, one of the consulate couples are trying to organize a get-together afterwards which would be fun, but I’ll be in Stockholm until the mid-afternoon. Today after Mass we went to what has become the regular post-Mass café, where they always draw designs on top of the whipped cream on our cappuccinos. Had a great conversation with one of the couples that I haven’t talked to as much, they are leaving St. Petersburg in May just like I am. He is headed to Afghanistan for a year ‘tour unaccompanied.’ We talked about the incredible benefits of living abroad and about the differences that have taken place in St. Petersburg over the years, Mike was here in 1989, and then a few times in the 1990s as well before coming back two years ago. It is really incredible to think about the incredible changes that have taken place here in just 20 years, the incredible commercialization and privatization are just one noticeable part of it. They’ve gone through so much, maybe we should give them a break on the fact that they are a little behind on their snow removal skills. Just maybe. Though the ice is thinning on the Neva, and if this warm weather keeps up maybe it will all melt while we’re gone next week.

I’ll try to post once more before heading for Moscow Thursday evening, hope all is well over there where spring has already come!