Visiting the Motherland

Oct 23

The plan was to wake up at 7, snooze until 7:15, then finish some last minute packing until I had to be ready and downstairs at 8. What actually happened? Heard my alarm at 7, snoozed until what I thought was 7:15, looked at my I-pod and stared at a very blurry 8:06. WHAT!?! I’m telling you I flew out of bed and started frantically packing. My hands were absolutely shaking as I tried to put my contacts in so that I could actually see what I was doing. I was dancing from desk to desk grabbing chargers and food and whatever else I could remember that I wanted, but don’t worry everyone, I couldn’t forget my passport again because Emas was holding on to all them until we got on the bus.

I got downstairs around 8:15, only to realize I wasn’t the last one! Phew, I felt a lot better and tried to quietly catch my breath after running down all those stairs. After a short while, we were on our way to Neumann to pick up the rest of the group. It was a cloudy day, and it was raining softly as we headed to the Hill of Crosses, only about 2 hours into our drive to Riga. The Hill of Crosses is exactly what it sounds like: a huge hill with thousands of crosses, of all different shapes and sizes.

We stopped in Lido again for dinner at the same restaurant from my last trip to Latvia. The food was just as good as I remembered :). Around 4:30 we headed off to catch our 17 hour train ride to Moscow, Russia. The section of the train that we had was set up with two benches on the left that comfortably seated two people per bench and had two beds lofted above them. To the right were two smaller seats with a table that folded to transform it into a bench, with another bed lofted above it. Now, my bed was tricky and didn’t have a step up to help me climb up. What I had to do was jump up, grab onto the handle on the side of the wall, and shimmy onto my bed and somehow manage to turn around so my head was towards the aisle. It was really funny to watch, and I had to do that multiple times while I was getting ready to go to sleep. I’m glad everyone enjoyed my struggle.

I was really tired but Emas suggested that we stayed awake until we got through the two border checkpoints, one for Latvia and one for Russia. We stopped at the Latvian border around 11 and got to the Russian border around 1. Don’t worry Mom, I made sure not to say Hi to my friend Jack, or say anything that sounded like bomb too loudly. After the border checks I made my little cup of soup for dinner. It was delicious and just the perfect size to hold me over til tomorrow morning for breakfast. Ah, bedtime!

Oct 24

I hold true to what I said before: I do not like sleeping on moving vehicles. I caught a few hours of precious sleep on the train, but nothing steady. At 9:30 we hopped off the train and wandered over to the underground metro to get to our hostel. I forgot that we weren’t allowed to take pictures because of some feared conspiracy, but I did manage to snag one before Emas told me I was going to get arrested. It wasn’t overly crowded as it wasn’t rush hour, and I liked it a lot better this way as it was easy enough to maneuver.

We stopped for brunch at the mall before heading off to the Red Square for our 3 hour tour (insert Gilligan’s Island theme song here…). The weather was absolutely gorgeous as I was completely comfortable in a light hoodie and my peacoat. Not quite what I was expecting of Russia. I was more prepared for two sweaters, my jacket, coat and two scarves, but hey, I’m not complaining! At the Red Square, you can see four distinct things: a hugenormous shopping mall; the Kremlin, which is the big red wall fortress which I like to call, “The Great Wall of Russia”; Lenin’s mausoleum; and St. Basil’s, the beautiful building that has the icecream scoop like bulbs at the top. I thought my feet would have remembered how to handle long tours, but apparently they forgot. Though I did know some tricks to battle the soreness of my feet, the group had a fun time standing on the sides of our feet and rocking back and forth to relieve some pressure. It was a great time.

Then we headed off to the circus. I haven’t been to the circus in about 8 years or maybe longer, and I had forgotten how much fun it was. This guy was balancing on a ladder while holding a girl on his head. And then later the same guy balanced another ladder on his head while the girl climbed to the top and did some balancing tricks. And there was a trapeze act, and a bear was driving a car, and a guy stuck his head down a lion’s throat… too many things to talk about! But for what I can possibly explain through my excitement, it was amazing! I loved it!!

Oct 25

We were able to go inside of St. Basil’s Cathedral today, and as James said, “One way in, no way out”. It was slightly harder to find the exit than it was to find the entrance, but we got out alright after a couple minutes of hard searching. Speaking of searching, we had a much harder time finding the market than we had originally planned. We arrived at a small mall-like structure, but too expensive for what we were looking for. We gave up and headed off to Starbucks to get a nice Moscow thermos :) I look forward to using that to keep me warm during the next couple of months. And on our way back to the Red Square, I got my fuzzy hat that I wanted so badly!

We returned to the Red Square later in the evening to see all the buildings lit up at night. It was beautiful. A small group went over to better observe St. Basil’s and this street sweeper was roaming around cleaning the streets. Sounds pretty boring and uneventful, but it was a hilarious addition to our night.


People were very unobservant as this huge water-shooting vehicle that was driving towards them, and a few times it actually looked like the sweeper was aiming to run people over. It was a lot of fun to watch, until it got a bit closer to where I was sitting. My group got up to stand at the top of the stairs and then we were going to walk away and meet up with everyone else. As we were walking down, the sweeper turns back around and comes straight at us! Everyone scattered and tried to avoid getting sprayed by the sweeper and then calmly came back together as if nothing had happened. It was very funny… just smile and nod if you don’t get it. I’ll explain later.

Happy 22^nd Birthday Gabby! I’m glad you’re not too old to still remember it ;) (Old jokes are always funny. And by old, I mean older than me).

Oct 26

Sadly, it was time to check out of Godzilla’s hostel and head out to our last few hours in Moscow. We went to Lenin’s tomb to see the great former Soviet leader. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was pretty intimidating walking along the Kremlin with all the guards standing around, though some of them were smiling and didn’t seem like they were going to attack me for breathing. Walking past Lenin was creepy because he was just laying there, looking way too perfect for being dead for close to 90 years.

Nastya, Derek, Steph and I walked over to the State Tretyakov gallery which held hundreds of paintings and a few sculptures. I probably averaged about 3 seconds looking at each painting, which seems pretty sad thinking about how long it must have taken each artist to beautifully paint their vision. But with hundreds of paintings, it’s hard to give any one piece of artwork more time if I wanted to see the most that I could out of the museum.

Around 4:30, we were off to catch the 5 hour train ride to St. Petersburg. The train reminded me of a jet plane, long and sleek and only a pair of seats on either side. And they even played a movie! It was in Russian of course but it reminded me a lot of the Jungle Book. I watched parts of it between my moments of trying to sleep. Failed attempt at sleeping on a moving vehicle #3.

Oct 27

St. Petersburg is a whole lot colder than Moscow was. Today I wore a tank top, a shirt, a sweater, a heavier sweater, my light hoodie, my peacoat and two scarves. I was hot to begin with, but by the end of the day I was happy I was wearing all six layers. We had another 3ish hour tour today with our guide, Peter. He spoke British English, and this made me very happy :). We got to see the Church of Spilt Blood, the one that resembles St. Basils from Moscow, Kazan Cathedral which is the big curved building that looks like the Vatican in Rome, the Winter Palace which is the huge green building, and St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the gold dome one.

Tonight the group dressed up to attend the much awaited Russian Ballet, especially for Calvin’s 21^st Birthday! The first part was called Carmen Suite which was a storyline based upon this woman becoming trapped in a deadly love triangle. The second was called Le Carnaval which starred my favorite dancer, Pierrot. Pierrot (the one in gray with long sleeves) was something like a court jester who was chasing the butterfly, Papillon (the girl in the center with roses). And the third was about a battle between Death, Winter and Fertility along with help from the Sun. Overall, I liked the story line of the first one best because I could follow it the easiest; I enjoyed the second one the most thanks to Pierrot; and I loved the dancing the most in the third.

Oct 28

The morning was free to explore the Kunstkamera Museum, or what we like to call the Abnormal Museum. The most exciting, or should I say grossly fascinating, was the second level exhibit of deformed, or abnormal, fetuses. Seeing all the things that could possibly go wrong with a baby is truly terrifying. After that, the group headed off to Peter and Paul’s Fortress before heading off to the Winter Palace, the gorgeous green building that I adore. It was here that I first noticed the tank and exclaimed, “Wow, I really want to hang upside down from that!” And so I did, twice :).

And finally, we were off to explore the inside of the Winter Palace, also called the Hermitage. We had about 4 hours to explore, and I used up every minute. Lauren and I stayed together without a distinct plan of where we wanted to go, merely wandering around seeing as much as we could. We ended up seeing most of the most popular attractions: the Jordan staircase, a single flight of stairs in the middle that opened up into two sections going up along the side; the throne room; the peacock clock, a gorgeous gold clock that had a peacock in the middle, with an owl to its right, a squirrel sitting on a stump, a mushroom with a butterfly that indicated the second hand, and overall looked like a small serene scene from the forest, it was gorgeous; Michelangelo’s crouching boy sculpture; a few paintings by Van Gogh; and the Jupiter room. The entire building was simply magnificent, and reminded me a lot of Versailles.

Oct 29

For once, I’m not excited that today is Friday. This means that my week in Russia is almost over, and I’ll start the long trek home tomorrow. But anyway, the group spent the morning going to St. Isaac’s cathedral. Like all the other cathedrals, St. Isaac’s was filled with gorgeous paintings and murals covering the entire interior. I really wish the States had some churches like this, but I guess that’s what makes Europe so special. After St. Isaac’s, a small group went to take in more Russian art and history by going to the Russian Museum. Sad to say, I think I’ve had my fair share of Russian art for a while, but I enjoyed all that I got to see.

We ended our last full day in Russia with a bang by going to the performance, “Feel Yourself Russian”. The show included singing and dancing, showing off different styles of traditional Russian clothing and so much fun! Russia, you’ve done well.

Oct 30

Today was a free day to explore all the places that we might have missed over the course of the week. The entire group went to see the Church of Spilt Blood, which was built in remembrance of Tsar Alexander II, who was killed at that location. That section of road that he was killed on is actually preserved in the church. Another amazing attribute to this church is that the interior is one continuous mosaic. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Free time = Shopping. My goal for the day: buy a cheburashka. You may be wondering what a cheburashka is, and let me tell you, I honestly don’t know. It is a Russian imaginary character that according to Stephanie looks like a monkey-bear. But I really wanted one, so off Steph and I went in search for it. We found them, but the price started at 700 rubles, which is over $20! I stood in speechless silence, and Steph began her negotiation for a lower price. The price quickly dropped to 500 rubles, but we worked what little Russian phrases that we knew and throwing in that we were poor college students, and finally I heard exactly what I wanted to hear, “For you, special price”. Steph managed to get the price down to 400 rubles, around $12! Still a little bit more than I had originally wanted to pay, but hey, that was as good as I was going to get.

We then ran into Gabby and Martha who were heading to the market, and I decided to join them in hopes of practicing my bargaining skills, even though I had no more money left. Saddest part of shopping is knowing you can’t buy anything. I kept my silence and spoke in Lithuanian as much as possible, saying I was from Lietuva (the European way of saying Lithuania) and speaking the rest in the best broken English I could manage. I had one woman fully accept that I was Lithuanian, and almost got a jeweled peacock on an egg with stand for the price that I was going for. Sadly, I didn’t want to bargain too well because I honestly had nothing on me and I would have felt horrible if I had gotten down to my asking price and still walked away without it. Oh well, I was happy enough to be accepted as a Lithuanian. My Lithuanian finally came in handy :).

Around 7 the group packed up all of our belongings and walked to our final train ride. This was the best room accommodations as we had one compartment per four students, and I had a very comfy bottom bunk. Time for some travel soup and then another attempt to catch some sleep before being woken up for the Russian and Latvian border checks.

Oct 31

Ugh, it’s one of the most confusing things to be woken up on a train by a random person in a uniform flicking the light on and speaking to you in a language that you didn’t understand. But apparently I was conscious enough for the woman to accept that I was who my passport said I was, and I quickly buried my face into my pillow. An even more confusing moment is waking up to another border check thinking you’re still at the first one because you don’t remember the train moving at all. Yep, I woke up to another random person in a uniform flicking the lights on in my face and talking to me in yet another language that I didn’t understand.

The group arrived in Riga around 9:00 and we got on our bus for the 5 hour ride back to Klaipėda. And so for the fifth time, I failed to sleep on a moving vehicle. Oh well, this simply means that I’m going to sleep wonderfully tonight in my own warm bed! Oh, and today we fell back an hour for Daylights Savings, which is a fun fact: Europe changes times too. But we change back an hour the last Sunday in October, where all of you change the first Sunday in November. This means that until Sunday I am only 6 hours ahead of you instead of the usual 7 :). Enjoy the extra time you have with me!

P.S. I hope someone went trick-or-treating for me! Happy Halloween everyone :)!