A Picture Says 1000 Words (but I wrote the 1000 words anyway just because)

I slightly forgot to blog for a bit. It's been the best part of a month and, in that time, I'd say quite a lot has happened. At least, I feel like I've been incredibly busy but as it's with almost exclusively enjoyable things I really won't complain.

I guess the main thing to mention is the visit of the family. As my parents are more or less the only two readers of this blog (hi guys) this is effectively telling them (you) about things that they (you) already know they (you) did. I'm going to stop doing that now.

Anyway, we were proper tourists for a few days. The weather was absolutely perfect every day (as it has been all this week as well - up to 23 degrees and literally haven't seen a cloud). We went to cathedrals and museums and monuments and suchlike, the highlights probably being the Hermitage, Russian Museum, Bronze Horseman, Peter and Paul Fortress, Church of Our Saviour on Blood, Kazan Cathedral, Museum of Political History, Museum of Soviet Arcade Games and the boat trip on the canals. Those weren't really the highlights, that was just pretty much all of it. We did a bit of gastronomic tourism as well (recommend Gogol for some Russian cuisine, Apteka for a decent "Indian restaurant that you enter through a public loo" experience and Terrassa or Mansarda for just a very strong evening). But apart from all that, it was just very excellent to see my parents and sister for the first time in a couple of months, and I always quite enjoy showing people around a bit (if that's what I was doing). What with the hotel being quite good (sauna and swimming pool facilities mainly used by the member of the party who wasn't actually staying there - i.e. me) and journeys both ways going well for them, I hardly think it could've gone better. Hopefully they agree. You. They.

So that was all good. It's been a week since they left and I think things were more or less back to normal, by which I mean 7 teachings, 4 lessons, 5 gyms, some football watching, some FIFA playing, some sleeping, some eating, some working and some relaxing. That's normal. We went out on Friday for Chris' birthday after some pre-sortie pizza and pres with the whole Durham lot here. A good night, dampened only by seeing first hand that some men still think that it's ok to be violent towards their girlfriends.

Что еще? Well, the uni enlisted me, Chris and Georgia to be recorded saying some things in English for the texts that all of the students will be using next year. We were fine with that and have done it twice. The good news is that they've given us huge arrays of foods and Russian pies (which are also foods, yes) both times we've been but the bad news is that we must be really annoying to work with because we end up cracking up laughing whenever anything goes remotely wrong. One of us who shall remain nameless (but isn't me or Chris and is Georgia) at one point read the sentence: "The Spanish RENFE is a system of very high speed trains with several routes across the country and some trains travelling at up to 125 metres per hour." After the original mistake, that took at least 10 takes and me leaving the room before we got through it without laughing.

Before I finish this off, just a quick and slightly more serious thought. At about this time last year, I was debating possibly going to Tomsk or Ulyanovsk rather than Petersburg. This morning I went for a quick walk and saw all this in under an hour:

I'm always one for a cheesy silhouette picture.

St Isaac was such a lurker.

This helicopter landed about 50 yards to my left among large police presence. Could be The Big Man VP.

So yeah, it's all good. Enough for now - things to do and football to watch. Until next time.

Phlogging some pictures

I feel that if my blogs have been lacking one thing above all up until now then that would be photos. As I don’t have very many things to say, I will put some of those here and this will be a phlog. With captions, maybe. We’ll see how things go.

As it has been two weeks, some things which don’t appear in these quite limited photos have probably happened. Actually pretty much everything I spend time doing is quite difficult to photograph, like uni classes or teaching. But am I really meant to gather the students round at the start of a class and just ask for a quick picture for the phlog? Things I spend my time doing: lessons and teaching and preparation for those two, football, gym, strolling about, going out, watching House of Cards. Percentage of those things appearing in these photos: 14.28. Still, here are some pictures. How do I even do this?

Ok well they're not in anything like a sensible order but let's just run with it. 

This is a canal. It's the one that goes towards uni and most of my teaching so I see a large amount of it.

The first of many of the Church of Spilled Blood but at least in this one Pushkin is kinda showing it to you.

Our quite pleasant walk from The Flat to Nevsky Prospect

This one is definitely the Church of Spilled Blood and a fair amount of the Russian Museum to the right as well.

This guy on the walk to the gym

One of the places I teach. Only about 24 hours after all those sunny pictures and it decided to snow again. Ok.

I'm literally in The Flat right now and should probably take some more pictures but this is one.

Quite like our little Yoda, randomly left for us on the floor just outside The Flat

This is the Kazan Cathedral which I walk past a good few times every day. Not bad. Not Durham / St Paul's standard but not bad.

I know, I know - you've already seen it. But it's a top building and this is what we get the moment we step out of The Flat

Token image of the inside of the gym...

...and the view from a treadmill in there. #pretendingIdocardio

Well, that's gone badly.

One of our haunts. The pool hall.

This was meant to be a great escalator snap. Unfortunately I just got this pole.

Where I teach on Mondays and Wednesdays

Soviet Arcade Game Museum - the number one museum of St Petersburg. What's a hermitage?

Yeah, but at night this time.

Went to a war museum one time.

Master and Margheritas

I’m only really writing this blog as a weekly check-in because time has flown by and nothing of enormous significance has occurred (cue my small readership closing the page and not bothering with the rest...)

Spring came to St Petersburg, which was something of a surprise. It was practically t-shirt and shorts weather. For a few days we had perfect blue skies, the sun with the tiniest bit of warmth in it, brightness and so on and it was all very pleasant. It would be safe to say that we have now come crashing back down to earth. It is -3, it is snowing, it is grey, it is windy, it is forecast to be between -1 and -8 for the rest of the week and it is not nearly as hospitable as it was a few days ago.

What have I done? Well Sunday / Monday to Wednesday appears to be the busy part of my week. I teach 4 times in those three days and I have 3 of my 4 uni classes so it’s a bit non-stop. Teaching my guys at the uni was just about passable despite the fact that we’ve now been talking about going on holiday for 4 weeks. My eight-year-old doesn’t know any words but does ok even so and my business class on Wednesday seemed to quite enjoy themselves. Uni lessons are pretty dull and uninspiring but they’re a fairly small part of the Petersburg experience so it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway, that was all a bit busy what with homework to prepare and lessons to plan while also going to the new gym in the time that was left but afterwards I had a relaxed end to the week. Thursday was about the laziest kind of day you could hope for. Evening football only starts at midnight here which meant a late night on Wednesday with the Champions League and pizza (how can one resist the allure of Mama Roma when it is so nearby and only costs £2.75 for a big and actually good pizza?). That led to a late start on Thursday, followed by quite a lot of not very much. We resisted further pizza and ate at a pelmeni place (basically dumplings, not dissimilar to dim sum) and then came back in time for the Spurs vs Benfica game. The less said about that the better.

Friday night we had our usual outing and made merry, before having a bit of a lazy Saturday. When there’s so much sport on it’s quite difficult not to just loll about watching it. With pizza. Work today, homework to do, lessons to plan. That’ll see me through until 8, at which point I’ll be subjected to watching the absolute drubbing that Arsenal are going to hand out to Spurs. Note to self: resist commiseration pizza if we lose. 

I’m still loving my time out here, still enjoying doing a bit of teaching, still very much appreciating the flat and generally I have very, very few complaints about the quality of life. Dad was right – it was always possible that one part of this trip would go better than expected (and maybe one a little worse, he said, but let’s forget about that part) and I’d have to say it’s this part. The Russia adventure looked like a strange idea of a good time. I said as much before I left.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Life, Lessons

I really don’t know where to start. I made the mistake of not writing a blog for a couple of weeks and I feel like quite a lot has probably changed / happened. In fact I just had a look at my last blog and yeah, that’s something of an understatement.

Ok so first off, I’m writing this from the new flat. I finally moved in on the 26^th February, I believe, having eventually worked up the courage to tell Evgeniya that I would be leaving. She was extremely good about it, so that was a relief. I could hardly be happier with the flat. It has everything we need and is very comfortable, plus the location is so central and convenient. This meant a small housewarming party last Friday with about 20 guests, which passed off very well, and we also had people over this Friday for dinner and drinks. Being able to have people come to visit is such a good aspect of having our own place.

On both of those nights we also sampled some of the local bars and clubs, which are all very good (for all their Russianness and quirks). Also it’s allowed me to bring out a good number of card tricks on a fairly regular basis and, as everyone knows, I always enjoy that. Hopefully the people I show them to do as well. Sorry about that grammar, "to whom", whatever.

On to other things. Ok, well apparently I’m a teacher now. I teach my uni class on Tuesdays and that seems to be going quite well, despite the boring syllabus. We just chat in quite a casual way but always in English and more or less on the right topic and then I explain stuff when it needs explaining. I’ve pretty much just defined teaching there, I realise. It’s good though – all a bit of a laugh but probably quite useful for the guys in my class as well. Aside from that, I teach a group of businessmen twice a week and an eight-year-old girl a couple of times a week aussi. There should be more jobs coming too. For visa reasons, I’m certainly not earning anything at all from these jobs and they are definitely entirely unpaid cultural exchanges but if they were paid then I’d probably say something like “it’s really nice to have a bit of income.” Hey, you can never be too careful... Anyway, it’s quite a lot of work planning lessons and stuff but I’m really enjoying it and it’s a case of so far, so good.

I joined a gym last week and I’ve been every day since. That is in small part because I enjoy it and I need to offset the insane amount of food that I’m eating in this country but it’s about 90% because not only is it the nicest gym I’ve ever been to, but it’s probably the nicest place that I’ve ever seen in the world. It’s all modern and glass and shiny and there are free towels (I don’t know why this is such a big deal to me) and there are views over Kazan Cathedral and the showers are the best I’ve ever had and it’s just generally all a pleasure.

I feel like things are finally settling down and getting into a rhythm of sorts. We have our classes and the preparation for them, I have the teaching stuff and the prep for that, I play me sports (also finally got some football going), we eat well, we play too much FIFA, we watch sport, we see friends, we go out. Usual. You come away and it’s all crazy but now it’s been a month and I can safely say that we’re doing life. The new, Petersburg life. At the moment, I just wish it wasn’t such a short time.

For now, I promised myself that I'd spend most of today and tomorrow getting a load of work done and lessons planned. Much as I don't like to admit it, blogging doesn't really count. Time to go.

Всего хорошего and счастливого всем!

Secret Restaurants, Parrots and The Crown Prince of Norway

I think I was more or less on the money when I wrote my first blog and kinda summed up the whole thing by saying that none of it is at all unpleasant but that it is certainly very strange.

I can't show you what I mean just in day to day life - you'd have to spend time here to understand that - but three examples from the last couple of days will probably show you what I mean.

So first, the haircut experience. It's always a bit of an adventure getting your hair cut in a foreign country, especially in one where the mullet is as popular as it is here in Russia. To nip that one in the bud, don't worry - my instructions were clearly intelligible enough to avoid that potential crisis - but in other ways this was an odd occasion.

Firstly, there were 6 hairdressers in quite a run-down salon, which seemed more than enough to satisfy the needs of their 0 customers. They seemed very surprised to see the potential clients that we represented. But more than that, the entire occasion was... made somewhat different from the usual English haircut by the presence of a cage of noisy and energetic parrots above my head. I wasn't really allowed to look at them (Russian hairdressers appear to care a lot more about the position of your head, as if the scissors / clippers have to stay entirely still while you are contorted into appropriate positions for the target hairs to be cut) but I was certainly aware of them perched above me, watching...

Anyway, the second little situation in which I find myself is of a surprising dependence on the Crown Prince of Norway. The story isn't anything major: I have a teaching job lined up with a Russian girl from the Norwegian Consulate (offered to me by her superior, the well named Henning Pentz 'Hanging Pants' Pendersen) and I was keen to get started, but was told I would have to wait patiently until the end of this week before my new student would have enough time for her lessons due to the visit of the Norwegian Crown Prince to Petersburg. I only mention it because it just seems so odd to me that I keep saying things like: "I wish that bloody Norwegian Prince would leave so I can start my new job", which is a not a sentence that I would ever have imagined that I would catch myself saying.

Last night also ended up being a bit more than what I'd expected. Jennie and I were invited by new friend Romain to go and have a couple of Friday evening drinks with him, his girlfriend and another of his friends. He told us the place was a little hard to find. Understatement of the century. He eventually came and found us and it soon became apparent that to gain access to our bar / restaurant, there was a.. procedure.

We went up to the top floor of a building containing a couple of bars and restaurants, where we found a smart-looking bar. We walked straight through there, through a back room and were led into the loos at the back of the bar. The four of us, three men and a woman, stood between the cubicles and the sink (whether in a women's or men's WC I do not know) before Romain went round the back of the cubicles and knocked on a secret door. In truly cartoonish style, a panel at eye level on the door was slid across and we were inspected, Romain tentatively announcing that we had a reservation. The mystery man behind the door demanded a password (no word of a lie) and Romain clearly said the right thing, handed over his exclusive member's card and presumably performed the secret handshake, and we we're allowed in. After that, I guess things were more normal. It was a very swanky bar / restaurant with very good Indian food and impressive cocktails. The evening passed off very well, after an interesting start.

So, as I say, none of it is at all unpleasant. My haircut turned out well, my job with the Norwegian consulate will be a good development and the secret restaurant experience was very enjoyable. But it is strange. I hope I've done that justice. When I catch myself looking up at some excited parrots or standing in a toilet cubicle waiting to be approved as a valid restaurant customer, or telling people that I'm annoyingly dependent on the whim of the Norwegian royal family, I still do just briefly wonder if I'm having a surreal dream.

A couple of final points just for the sake of completeness. The new flat is ours after further negotiations and, after quite some time deliberating, I managed to tell my host that I'd be moving out next week. Much as I've enjoyed it where I currently am, that'll be a fantastic part of this stay. I've started Russian classes, which are of limited interest so far but will probably improve. I taught a class of 12 lads English, which proved to be very enjoyable and quite a success. Otherwise, the usual combination of eating and drinking and watching spurs lose 1-0 to Dnipro has filled my time well.

Highly pleasant. Highly bizarre.

До скорого.

Flat Out

                It sort of wasn’t happening much and now it’s all happening or about to happen. As our classes only start this week we have been fairly free and as such have spent a lot of time in pubs watching football or coffee shops with the Winter Olympics or in restaurants generally enjoying the high quality and, it has to be said, low prices of life in St Petersburg.

               

It really is good from that point of view. You go to a restaurant which is relatively expensive for these parts (say 600 Barney Rubbles a head rather than 350-400) and it all feels quite nice and posh and they take your coat and call you sir and bring your food on silver platters (ok, not quite) and treat you generally very nicely... And then you leave at the end of a large meal with beverages and you’ve spent the princely sum of £8.63. Not bad, is it? It’s like being in Zimbabwe with a £10 note.

We’ve done a few useful things in amongst this merriment. For various fairly minor reasons and a couple of major ones, a couple of us have decided to move out into a flat of our own. We’ve spent hours researching and visiting potential places, more or less helped out by our new friend Andrei at the estate agency we’re using. Anyway, this all culminated last night in some serious action.

                After possibly two of the most stressful hours of our lives last night, intensely negotiating with our estate agent (who probably doesn’t like me because I kept calling him Andrei when that just isn’t his name, as it turns out) in Russian in his car, we agreed to push through our deal for our new flat. He untruthfully claimed that some other people were going to sign on it today and we had to hurry (a subsequent lie detector test determined that this was a lie). He became increasingly tetchy and spoke increasingly quickly as he became later and later for his Valentine’s dinner. He even sprung upon us a surprise new fee in addition what we thought we were paying, changing the nature of the deal from “seems too good to be true” to “well, it was a little bit too good to be true”, but with a bit of haggling, we’ve found ourselves a reasonable agreement and we’ll be perusing a contract on Sunday evening.

                It’s a pretty good situation, actually. The flat is nice and modern and gives us proper beds and highly comfortable surroundings, as well as finally having some internet. It’s also the most incredible location in the very centre of Petersburg but still in a quiet place (just next to the church which I think is called the Church of the Spilled Blood). Cutting ties with my host here will be awkward when she eventually gets back from Moscow but she didn’t even know she’d be having me until the day before I arrived so hopefully she’ll get over it.

                There’s not a lot else to be said about it, I don’t suppose. It’s a great development in the Petersburg Adventure and it’ll surely mean we can do more in town, especially in the evenings, because it’s so much easier to get home.

Actually come to think of it all that was the second most stressful part of last night. Nick and I decided to celebrate / recuperate after the dealings with a small meal out in town. For some reason, two guys having a quick bite to eat together on the evening of the 14^th February in Russia seems to be frowned upon in some way.

For now, it’s a case of having a very lazy Saturday to recover from the trials and tribulations of last night, before going and signing the contract tomorrow.

Oh, and we also went to the Hermitage, 3^rd biggest museum in the world, culture, art, stuff.... probably should’ve mentioned that a bit more. Impressive.

Otherwise, it’s all just getting started, for now. We’re all involved in a couple of different English teaching things starting this week, our classes start, the uni gym and swimming pool and clubs become available to us, we’ve met fellow football players who are good for regular games and this will all let us practise a bit more Russian too. I suppose that is the point of all this.

Up and running.

Better Late than Neva

My blog never really took off in France but Russia is interesting enough that I actually think it might here. Almost a week in to the St Petersburg adventure, here's a slightly overly long blog to report back.

It is certainly all as surreal as I could have hoped. I’m sitting in the living room in a flat belonging to an elderly Russian lady while she phones for clues to her codeword and a programme about some kind of Russian national sporting hero plays, presumably to whip up a bit of national pride. And it’s minus 5 degrees and everything is in Russian and it all seems different and unfamiliar. I’m definitely not suggesting that any of it is at all unpleasant but it’s noticeably foreign and strange, for now.

I guess I should recount the events of the last couple of days. Flew over on Wednesday 5th with Nick and Chris and managed to convince the Russians that we should be allowed into the country. Having been told that I would be met by “Svetlana” (who is not my host), I was slightly surprised when a long-haired and rather eccentric looking man enthusiastically greeted Chris and me, while Nick went off with an old lady who had been standing with him. He knew who we were and was significantly friendlier that his friend who drove us (predictably recklessly) in his car towards our new lodgings.

It was a slightly unexpected start but it became odder soon after. I was dropped at my house, said a brief hello to Evgeniya Vasilevnaya and left my bags (and coat – mistake) before getting back into the car to keep Chris company to his place. I was under the impression that the Long-Haired Man would then bring me home but in fact the car was driven off and we were left in the craziest flat I’ve ever seen. The belated appearance of Svetlana (for it is she) was worth waiting for – she was a Professor Trelawny-like figure (I think – the one in Garry Potter with big eyes) who claimed not to eat for months on end. Her house was full of rolls of twine and thread and cloth and strange trinkets piled high on tiny shelves absolutely everywhere. To say it was cluttered would be an understatement. Her peculiar son Ivan (24, a hulking, clumsy giant with a guttural voice and an interesting ponytail / facial hair combination) made brief appearances to angrily demand food and then disappear.
Svetlana, the Long-Haired Man, Chris and I sat around a tiny, low table being served totally random food products. Spiced tea, mayonnaise, a strange kind of cake, sour cream, biscuits, cheese and sausage on brioche and probably other things I’m forgetting all appeared as a sort of starter while some onion, carrots, red pepper and a small amount of chicken were boiled in some water for a main, complemented by more of the obligatory sour cream. This all took ages. We sat, first talking and then mainly listening as we became more tired, for about 4 hours in this overcrowded, hot flat before the Long-Haired Man declared that we should leave.

An extremely chilly 20 minute walk later, I was finally allowed to see my own place. It’s quite nice, as it happens. I’ll put up pictures at some point I guess. Evgeniya Vasilevnaya is a very friendly lady and speaks in a much more understandable way than the Long-Haired Man. She doesn’t cook for us (me and John from Durham, who arrived on Thursday) but has otherwise sorted us out well with very acceptable bedrooms. The Russian small-talk recommenced but by midnight (Petersburg time), I was out for the count.

Thursday things were still unfamiliar but less mysterious. I muddled my way to Nevsky Prospekt (the main road of Petersburg) and met Nick and Chris for goryachii shokolad and a stroll around the vicinity. We saw some things and did some things but generally just tried to get a feel for the new surroundings. I wouldn’t have said we’ve fully succeeded but we made a start.

On Friday and Saturday we set about seeing the most important sites of Petersburg. Playing ancient games with a cup of vintage cream soda in the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games was a highlight. A walk across the iced-over Neva to a submarine was worth the risk involved (NB for parents who may be reading, there was very little risk...) and the Museum of Artillery History was worth a look too. O’Hooligans Irish Pub (not a typo) allowed us to watch some English sport and we’ve eaten and drunk well in the city so far. Also it’s really cheap. So good news there.

Went to a little vecherinka on Saturday night to meet some new people and met some new people, as expected. Made it home on the treacherously icy roads with just the one tumble (extremely minor damage done to my right ring finger – send help) and then had a lazy Sunday out for lunch first and then in an Angliiskii Pab for the Spurs game. And we actually won.
As I’ve tried to show here, it’s all perfectly pleasant but just totally bizarre to begin with. I can’t say I have any complaints about anything really but if I was told this was all a strange dream then I’d believe it. We’ll see where it all goes from here!