I'll be home when the metro opens.

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Well, this weekend was definitely our first real outing in Russia. The metro closes at midnight in St. Petersburg and it reopens at 6am. So, Jen and I decided that it would be a great idea to plunge right in and experience our first full night out in the city.

The evening started off seeming pretty normal. We had taken a tour of Павловск (Pavlovsk), the summer palace, earlier in the day and were challenged to find our way home (hooray for orientation activities..). We reconvened around 9 at the metro station near my apartment so that we could hop a few stops over and meet Anton. His friend Sasha was celebrating her 21st birthday, and we were invited to come along. So, with a cheap bottle of wine, and Anton as our guide, we trekked from the metro to an apartment about 20 minutes away. Now, you have to understand that trekking in St. Petersburg is a sport compared to trekking around a city in the US, even Burlington. The sidewalks are covered with a combination of slush, ice, and very cold puddles. It seems that even in freezing temperatures, the puddles and slush somehow survive the freeze. On top of dodging puddles and avoiding particularly slippery patches of ice, you also have to be wary of icicles that plummet off the buildings. Going anywhere is truly an adventure...

So, we finally made it to the party, took off our coats and shoes, and got comfortable. The guests were all well dressed and there was plenty of food to enjoy. It's bad form not to eat while drinking. We settled in and got used to the fact that Jen and I, along with the other women, were expected to enjoy ourselves without the burden of refilling our own drinks or filling our own plates. So we sat back and enjoyed the seventies pop and Lady Gaga rock covers, as we settled in to being 'taken care of' by the men in attendance. We sang happy birthday to Sasha and decided to head back to the metro before it closed so that we could continue our night-long adventure, so we texted our host-mom's who were overly enthusiastic about our plan. But before we could leave, we realized that we were being rick roll'd, from all sides, as the sweet melodic sound of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' poured from the speakers. The perfect beginning to this crazy trip we were about to take.

We made it back to the metro with about a half hour to spare, called Kevin and told him we'd meet him in the center, and braved the crowd of people trying to get home. The metro at 23:30 opens up a window into some of the ills of the city, like in any city. We got back to Nevsky, and of course Kevin had ditched (said we took too long). We called Zach C. and tried desperately to find the 'Laundry Bar' where he and a few others were hanging out. We asked directions from several people who seemed to all think it was in a different place, and a couple of whom refused to believe that we were American.. I guess that's good..? We finally found the bar, after Zach ran out into the street to call attention to himself so that we could spot him (so dangerous!). We got to the Laundry Bar, which turned out to be the ultimate Russian hipster bar. All around us were characters dressed in mismatching 70's style clothing, neon accents, some with afros and too many ironic mustaches. The DJ mixed some 80's and 90's beats with some MIA and other music recently popular in the US hipster scene. The menu at the bar was all in English, though most people's English was limited to the menu items. We chatted up some Russians for a while and moved on around two, smelling like a combination of several perfumes/ colognes and a wide variety of cigarette and cigar smoke. Smoking is acceptable almost everywhere.

Moving on.. After leaving the Laundry bar, we followed Allison, a year long student, to another bar. It was definitely the next stop for several other patrons of the Laundry Bar. There was art all over the walls and a dance floor/ bar downstairs. We rocked out for a while and enjoyed the fact that the bar was offering us croutons to chase our drinks. Jen and I realized that her choice to wear heals was ill advised, so we switched shoes and headed back to the center around five to be ready for the metro. Recognizing that we definitely needed to eat before going home, we scoured Nevsky Prospect for something to satisfy our appetites. Cafe food wasn't going to cut it, so we decided to stop outside the metro and wait for McDonald's to open at 7. We met some very friendly Russian teens who thought that Jen and I were unbelievably entertaining, especially when a dog wandered our way and took to Jen and I. Jen named the dog Алёша. When the dog decided to find something else to do, on of the Russians asked Jen where he had gone, and she tried to tell him that the dog was going to McDonald's to meet us for breakfast... haha. At that point we headed off to get some breakfast, but McDonald's was not offering us the crispy chicken that we so craved. We set off once again to find breakfast and noticed the Teremok (a sort of chain version of the skinny pancake, to those in Burlington) was opening at 8. We waited and eagerly stormed the counter when the doors were unlocked. We ordered a breakfast of 3 blini to share and two cokes. Jen told the young man at the counter, when he asked where we were from, that we were from the club.. hah.

Finally, around 9, we hit up the metro and returned home by the light of day. Definitely the most interesting adventure we've had so far. Hopefully there are more to come. Also, Congrats if you got to the end of this post. It was a long one. I hope it was at least entertaining.

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