Well, we successfully survived the first day in Moscow. It is HOT and humid here, and our floor does not have air conditioning. Day time highs are in the low 30s Celsius, which puts it in the 80s. While our windows open, they face a three sided courtyard and we don’t pick up the breeze that would help cool it off. On top of that, the windows face famous Gorky Park, which means we get music from late morning until closing time (sometime after midnight last night). My sink laundry will keep busy washing out sweaty shirts. I will be happy [View Full Entry]

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Currently I am about halfway between St. Petersburg and Moscow on a train. I happen to know that these tickets weren’t particularly cheap, but this is the way to travel. There are nine of us from UNI taking the so-called “day train” to Moscow. It is largely a direct trip with only two stops along the way. We pulled out of St. Petersburg at precisely 4:00 PM and I have no doubt that we will arrive in Moscow at precisely 9:30 PM as our ticket states. We are traveling 2nd class (business class) which is pretty dang nice the way it [View Full Entry]

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I have just completed to very long exhausting days as a tourist once again. This time, my tour guides were Dmitri and Igor, who are a faculty member and student respectively in the Information Technology department (computer science) at Herzen University (as opposed to my earlier trips which were either arranged tours as a group with my colleagues from UNI, or were me off exploring on my own). On Saturday, they walked my legs off. I wish I had had a pedometer with me to estimate how far we walked, but my guess from looking at a map (and from [View Full Entry]

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So perhaps you are tiring of my essays on how culture here is different from ours. However, I find that this is really what makes this trip so interesting. In many ways, if you were to drop me down here without hearing the language or seeing words on the walls - that is, if it were only the scenery - I am not sure that I would know that I was in Russia instead of something like Austria. Much of the old town of St. Petersburg was built at the same time as the grand palaces and towns of Western [View Full Entry]

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Today was a day devoted to being a tourist and I have to say I have enjoyed myself. This morning after breakfast I walked down to the “Church of the Resurrection of Christ” which is also known as the “Savior on the Spilled Blood” (I mentioned this in Saturday’s post). It was built between 1883 and 1907 on the spot where Alexander II, the Emperor of Russia , was mortally wounded in 1881. In fact, in one spot inside of the church is a sectioned off “altar” (wrong term) purported to be the spot where he was wounded (assassins threw [View Full Entry]

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More observations on Russian culture… 1) Alcohol Consumption - I made an offhanded comment on this in an earlier blog post. I indicated that the consumption was incredible, and by people of all ages. I have been paying more and more attention to this issue as we walk around and I think I see it differently. There IS a lot of alcohol consumption. Walking down the street you will see people of all ages (including teenagers) strolling with an open container of beer. Get off the main streets and you will see curbs and gutters littered with empties. Having said that, [View Full Entry]

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Today consisted of the topic level sessions at our conference. I met with all of the computer scientist, while others met with colleagues from their discipline. It was an incredibly fascinating way of learning more about the Russian way of doing things, although my experiences were slightly different from those of several of my colleagues, so it is hard to tell what is true culture and what was circumstance. Our meetings were to start at 11:00. (By the way, the work day here starts closer to 10:00 with coffee at 11:30 or 12:00, lunch at 1:00 or 2:00, and work often [View Full Entry]

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Today was a “work” day, so there is less interesting news to share. Instead I thought I would focus on some random things that interest me about my trip so far. These things might seem like I am mocking the Russian system, but I am not. I just thought I would comment on the differences between the US and the Russian way of doing things. 1) Steam - If you check on a map, you might be, like I was, surprised to see how far north St. Petersburg actually is. It sits at ~60 degrees North as opposed to Cedar Falls [View Full Entry]

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It will be after Mother’s day when most of you read this blog, but know that I was thinking of all of our mothers out there today. This is clearly an American holiday not followed in Russia. This morning started as a beautiful day. After breakfast we departed for a 40 minute bus drive out of downtown St. Petersburg to the Russian village (“suburb”) of Gotchina. Here there is a palace built by Catherine the Great for her lover. He, unfortunately, died fairly early on and the grounds were taken over by one of her sons, Paul (forgive me if I [View Full Entry]

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Saturday was our first full day in St. Petersburg and a chance to do some sight seeing both formally and informally as well as simply rest. Breakfast was at 9:00 followed by a bus tour of historical St. Petersburg. The day began overcast and rather cool, but the trip was nice to get a feel for how things are laid out so that we were more comfortable later on when we venture out on our own. We started in St. Isaac’s square which is home to St. Isaac’s cathedral, a park, and surrounded by several buildings with incredibly interesting stories too [View Full Entry]

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