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Published: September 25th 2006
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Benedict School
Here she is! (Photo with permission: Luke Richie) This morning I was up at 8 to get ready for a meeting at the school. I had a really good shower and a shave while Ekatarina made blini, sort of small pancakes. These ones looked like spring rolls but weren’t as crunchy and had a ground meat inside. Suited me fine. She insisted that I also eat a yoghurt and drink copious amounts of tea while she chatted with me about students who had stayed in the past. One guy, called Will, I already don’t like: “Will never went to bars and spent his free time studying”, “Will was always back nice and early”, “Will this, Will that”. Well good for Will. I too intend to study, but the whole reason that I am here and not in Manchester is to experience the culture of the language I’m learning and to use the language in real circumstances!
I was given a key and my neighbour Firmin, a student from Sheffield who was going to come with us to find the school, came over. As we were going to be battling St. Petersburg rush hour and traversing the city, our babushkii had been instructed that between them they had to
Church on Spilled Blood
This is the church built where Tsar Alexander II was assasinated in 1881. Photo with permission: Nathan Saunders get us to the school. Can’t say I minded that too much as I had mostly only seen the city in the dark!
We left the flat and went down the one meter square lift which was cosy, stank of piss and opened a good half foot too high up. The good news is that the metro station is only five minutes from my building which come the cold weather will be a great advantage. My area, Ozerkii, is a bit of a building site at the moment, but I guess it normally is an area of little kiosks that sell beer to the morning commuters and old ladies trying to flog old vegetables. There is also a supermarket and a modern looking shopping mall! Ekaterina managed to get me a week’s ticket and we went down the really long escalator to the station below. There are 21 lights down the escalator; I guess each one is about 4m vertically apart. That makes the station 84m underground, which is a long way and takes about five minutes on one escalator! I will find out an actual figure soon. Ekaterina explained to us that you never wait more than two
Church on Spilled Blood, inside
Look up! This place gives you neck ache... Nathan took this pic. Loads more pics online. Go look, or better still, come here and have a look! minutes for a metro although they are always packed. If there is no space, then push harder! We travelled to Senaya Ploshchad and came out into the Petersburg morning. Senaya is a big square and is full of bustling people, cafes and market stalls. The roads through the middle are busy and there is a giant TV on the wall. The people flyering remind me of Manchester and they aren’t nearly as adept at getting you to take a leaflet here - they back off far too easily. They’d all be fired in Manc! I think I’m going to like walking through here every morning. Ekaterina asked some people where to find our ‘mashrutka’, a yellow transit van with seats in the back that drives a set route for a flat-rate price (14 roubles, about 28p if you must know). They are basically busses, but you can flag them down anywhere and you just shout “Astanovki paszhalusta!” when you want to get out and it will screech to a halt. Great fun, and they drive like nutters. We got to school just on time. I was, however, disappointed to see that our commute had taken over an hour.
Everyone at school was marvelling at the size of the keys they had been given (Russians obviously don’t trust a key that doesn’t look like it should open a castle gate or something) and swapping babushka stories. I can see this is going to be a common theme! We met Lyuba, a slightly mad lady, who introduced us to the ways of Petersburg (or ‘Piter’ as the locals call it (except Ekaterina who insists upon ‘Leningrad’ within the flat), or P-burg as I intend to call it) and sorted a load of paperwork with us. We have two student representatives who introduced themselves and warned us off drugs, tap water, being drunk on your own and what to say to a policeman intent on bribing you.
We managed to escape to a café for lunch. We went to the one right round the corner from the school and promptly realised that we couldn’t even read the writing on the board, let alone understand it. Thus, we were introduced to Georgian cuisine. We had ‘cheboreeka’, a kind of deep fried pasty, which was alright I suppose. Well, actually, it was very greasy and not all filling! We walked back to Sennaya Ploshchad and sat in a café and plotted our afternoon.
We decided to visit the Church on Spilled Blood, probably the most famous church in St. Petersburg. It is an incredible building which had been used as a food store during the Soviet times. The interior has been completely restored and the church reopened in 1998. At the ticket desk I got my Russian out and we blagged Russian student price which at 50 roubles (1 pound), while still not exactly cheap, was better than the 250 roubles the guy behind me coughed up. However, even that would have been worth it to see the incredible mosaic interior. This is proper tourist trail stuff and more American gets spoken here than Russian! (“Isn’t it quaint?!”). If you ever come here, find a spot where a curator can’t see you and lift up a bit of the rug and look at the floor it’s protecting underneath. Stunning.
We followed my guide book’s “recommended route” around Arts Square (although I fail to quite see what there was to recommend about it) and sought out an internet café. Which, I have to say was very stylish and expensive! We found a café for a chat before I headed home.
When I got back home dinner was ready and I had… Exactly the same as yesterday! I have begun to mention that smetana aint really my thing. I unpacked my stuff and watched an episode of ‘Lost’ in Russian with Ekaterina. Season 1 here - oh yay, I get to watch it all again (sarcasm intended).
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Charlie
non-member comment
Ha, still here!
So you're not doing too badly then. The policemen bribe you over there? Mad! You'll soon find someone to try the vodka with, and you'll just have to pretend you're not drunk like we did quite a few years ago now! I have my suspicions that this 'Will' is an imaginary. At the very least he had no life, that's for sure! x