In the Footsteps of Tsars

Today was awesome!

This morning, after a bowl of porridge and another cup of tea, Marina and I took a fifteen-minute walk to the Metro. The Metro in St. Petersburg is amazing. To enter each station, you must first take a five to seven minute escalator ride beneath city. This is necessary because of the salt marsh on top of which the city was built… in order to ensure structural stability, the engineers had to dig extremely deep until they hit bedrock. The subway itself is very loud and very crowded. Every two minutes a train arrives, and departs forty seconds later. This reliability makes it the most popular means of transportation among the residents of the city. I have never been on another metro before, so I have no way to gauge the speed we were traveling relative to other systems, but we were moving extremely fast. Much faster than I was expecting.

We met the group at Kazan Cathedral. Upon first sight of it, I was immediately taken back by how beautiful the building was. The other CIEE students and I spent a few moments exchanging stories of our first night’s with our host families before walking to Palace Square to go ice skating.

The Winter Palace is another beautiful building. At one point, it was the home of all Russian emperors, but after its siege during the 1917 revolution it was converted into a museum. In the middle of the massive courtyard overlooked by the palace stands the worlds largest free standing Granite Structure, Aleksander’s Column, which commemorates the Russian defeat of Napoleon’s attempted invasion. Many Russians are terribly offended that an ice skating rink has been erected in such a historically significant location, and as of this post, there Russian high courts have order that it be removed. Although I agree that it should not be located where it is, I must admit that it was absolutely amazing to skate amongst the decorated facades of Russia’s imperial palace.

For the record, I am a terrible ice skater and felt like a fool for most of the hour-and-a-half we were there, but I am pleased to say that I only fell down five times. Regardless, it was great fun to watch most of the other people skid around on the ice in a wobbly manner similar to my own. I use the word most because there were some incredible skaters there. They even had several professionals taking newbies by the hand and leading them around the ring. By the end of our time on the ice, a steady snow was falling. This moment was uniquely Russian and will never be forgotten.

During the afternoon the CIEE students met at a café and shared чай и пирог (tea and pie). In Russian, there is a special word for when two or more groups meet to have a discussion—собеседники (so-be-sed-ni-ki). After speaking with Roma, I do not think there is a good English equivalent.

Anyway, at the café I met three Russian students who spoke English very well. One of them in particular, Slava, shares many of my interests. We chatted about the U.S. and Russian elections, computers, our countries’ respective roles in the world, the differences between our Universities and much more. The time just flew by, and at some point during our conversation all of the other CIEE students had bid farewell to their Russian counterparts and went home. Slava and I spoke for over three and a half hours. When it came time to leave, he and I (along with two of his friends), exchanged email information.

I cannot begin to explain how excited I am by this development. The sort of conversation that I had with Slava was exactly what I came to Russia for. I was so nervous that my inability to speak the language would isolate me and make it impossible to meet the locals. But now, I have renewed confidence that the exchange of ideas that I had hoped would take place is 100% possible.