State Russian Musuem

I was again faced with the decision as to what I was going to do this Friday afternoon.  The reason it is such a decision is because it is the only day that after lunch I go out on the town and do things.  Monday through Thursday I am preparing for the classes that I will be teaching that day.  That and I don’t want to be in the middle of town and then not make it back in time to teach.  That would be really bad.

Today I wasn't interested in what the other teachers were doing and so it looked like I was going to spend the afternoon alone again.  I was going to go to the Hermitage again but then I remembered that I wanted to go to the State Russian Museum.  So I asked Jessica where it was and then I went.  I was waiting around the Pushkin Statue and there were the people dressed up in costumes so that you can take a picture with them.  I was working things out with Katie and stuck around there too long.  They targeted to and talked to me and asked to take my picture with them.  Long story short.  I got my picture taken with the lady.  She said that it would be 100 rubles.  Well I didn’t have 100 rubles.  I had 1050.  We took the picture and then when I went to pay them I said that I didn’t have 100.  They weren’t going to take my 1000 because they didn’t have change and so they ‘gave me a gift’ and only charged me 50 rubles.  Ha!  Think you can swindle me.  Didn’t work.  At least not like it was supposed to, and I still got the picture.

The Barge Haulers

I really liked the State Russian Museum.  Though the Winter Palace is more detail and intricate than the Mikhailovsky Palace I think I would say that I liked the State Russian Museum better than the Hermitage.  There were still some cool floors and the ceilings were awesome.  The other thing that I liked about the Russian Museum was that the paintings were HUGE!  There were some that took up entire walls.  20 feet tall and 50 feet wide!!  It was incredible.  I don’t know very many paintings but there was one that I did remember.  The painting was “The Barge Haulers” by Ilya Repin.  There was one more that looked familiar but I didn’t know where I saw it before.

The one I wondered where I had seen it

Use the lady in the picture as a scale as to how big this painting was

I also liked in the Russian Museum the exhibition “folk art.”  There were a ton of regional Russian art pieces.  There were toys made from bone and wood carvings.  There were also many pieces of pottery and ceramics.

Wood Combs

Pottery

The other exhibit that I really liked was “Art from the end of the 19^th and 20^th Century Art.”  There were a bunch of modern art pieces and some older pieces.  There were realistic pieces, abstract, and everything in between.

Hermitage Round 2 down Nevsky Prospekt

Hermitage floor

Last Friday was the first Friday that we haven’t had Russian language classes.  So what did we do?  We each did our own thing.  I went to the Hermitage.  I got there at like 3:30pm and then left when it closed at 6pm.  I enjoyed myself a lot.  The part that I enjoyed the most was in conjunction with something that Sydney has said.  She said that people should enjoy their music as they walk around.  I was listening to Natasha Bedingfield and Neon Trees while I was in the Hermitage and I was feeling the music.  So I danced around in the Hermitage.  There weren’t very many people in the rooms that I was when I would dance.  I started being a sneaky dancer just doing a move or two and then stopping.  But then I listened to the music more and looked less at the people around me. (There weren’t very many anyways.)  I have now been in the Hermitage for about 5 hours.  I still have more to see!

After I left the Hermitage I decided that I would just walk down Nevsky Prospekt because it is the biggest street in St Petersburg and it has a lot to offer.  Can I say that it didn’t disappoint.  I have three stories:

I walking down the street and then I thought that the lady on the street ahead of me was a hooker.  Why?  She was sending a lot of signs.  She was wearing a skirt with black tights.   The also had her coat unzipped.  Something that tipped me off that she was a hooker was that she was standing in the road itself trying to flag down cars.  Then whenever a taxi or a bus would drive by she would drop her hand and motion for them to move along.    Then the thing that made say, “That is a hooker.” Was that I did see a car stop.  He rolled down his window.  There was a short dialogue/conversation.  Then the car drove away and the lady was still there.  The car got 10 feet away and the lady flipped the car off.  Must have been a bad offer.

Second story.  I was just walking by and there are a lot of stores and there is some good window shopping.  For this particle window it was advertising Techno Gym: The Wellness Company.  They had a girl exercising  in the window.  She was walking on a treadmill listening to her ipod and was super excited.  I walked by and she smiled and waved at me.  Then as I was walking by there was another person coming from the other direction and she pulled out a camera to take a picture.  The exercising girl posed for the camera and so I decided that I wanted a picture also.  I was thinking “work it girl!”.

Third Story.  It starts to get dark kind of early.  It was getting dark during the last story.  By now it is dark.  There is no more sun.  It was definitely night.  As I was walking I saw a couple cars stopped with their hazards lights on.  I was walking on the left side of the street so the closest cars were coming at me.  When I got closer to the cars I noticed that there was a group of like 4 Africans in a circle.  Now I don’t know what sort of business they were doing but I don’t know that it was legal.  The reason I saw that is because I totally saw a gun in one of the hands.  That was enough for me to not pay any attention to myself and keep walking forward just like the flow of the crowd.  That is the first non-cop that I have seen that has had a gun. 

Theater

Canal

Week 'Vacation' Adventure: Riga

We made it to Riga, Latvia!  Hurray!  After some minor hiccups with the Russian Border control we got everything worked out and nobody got kicked off the train without much hope of continuing on with our adventure.  I call it an adventure because since when is it relaxing to travel in foreign lands where they may or may not speak a language that you speak.  So far we have found people that speak English and so things have been really easy.  Of course there is the time that Marci and Courtney got yelled at in Latvian because they were playing around in a tree that was probably 200 years old and had moss and what not.  But then we just walked away and nobody was the wiser.

When I think of Riga there are a couple things that I think of.  Here they are:  I think of Old Riga which is a section of the city in the middle where there are cobblestone streets and cobblestone sidewalks that are skinny like alleyways.  There are also a number of open squares where either the Soviet history is prominent or the Independent history is seen or many other parts of Latvian history.  There are also a lot of street musicians.  Whether it is the saxophone player in the walkway under the streets or the band on the Latvian Square that makes it hard for Marta (our tourguide) to share her knowledge about Latvian history or the opera singer that is kind of close to McDonald's or the accordion player by the Freedom monument.  It is kind of difficult for cars to drive on the cobblestone streets so there are bike taxis all over the place.  There are young guys that ride these taxis around and offer people rides.  They even play music as they drive by.  Tonight I overheard Gungnam Style by PSY on one of the bike taxis.

A little bit about Latvia and about Riga that I learned from Marta on the tour that we had.  There are about 700,000 people that live in Riga which is a fair proportion of the 2 million that live in all of Lativa.  Riga is the center of learning, history and everything important pretty much.  On many of the churches here in Riga there are roosters.  These roosters are good luck for Riga.  Supposedly each morning when a rooster crows all of the bad omens and demons are dispearsed and this leaves all the good spirits in Riga.  Another animal that is seen on top of at least one building in Old Riga is a cat.  There was a fight between guilds many many years ago.  A very rich person then bought another building on Old Riga and put a cat on top of his building.  But to offend the people of the guilds he put the cat's butt to them.  Outraged, the guilds forced the other guy to rotate the cat.  Resolution?  The cat was turned.

An important monument, if not the most important monument to a Lativan, is the Freedom Monument at the top of Old Riga.  Latvia was an independent nation in the early 20th century.  The Soviet Union overtoke Latvia pre-WWII.  During WWII, Latvia was controlled by Nazi Germany.  Post WWII, Latvia was then controled again by the Soviet Union.  The Freedom Monument was erected during the first indepence and was not torn down while under Soviet or Nazi occupation.  During Soviet times the three stars respresent the three Baltic States in the arms of a Soviet woman.  But now signifies Fatherland and Freedom, at least that is what the inscription "TĒVZEMEI UN BRĪVĪBAI" which is on the front of the monument means.

Last thing to talk about is the hostel.  This hostel was awesome!  The workers at the hostel were all very helpful and they spoke English which helps things a lot.  Not to mention they are all very good looking.  The hostile was also very well placed.  It is in Old Riga which is where a lot of the really cool stuff is.  Another plus is that there is breakfast every morning from 7-10am.  That means that there is cereal with milk, bread for toast with butter and jam, tea and coffee.  That is very nice.  The one drawback has been the other poeple in the room with us.  Last night they came in at like 3am, drunk and were trying to find some stuff.  They made a lot of noise but that was the only interruption.  I have high hopes for tonight.  Speaking of sleep now is a good time for me to actually go to sleep.