Russian Highlight #1: Michael Jackson nesting dolls

Date: July 1, 2008
Location: Saint Petersburg
Lat: 59° 55.87N Long: 030° 16.45E

Well, I’m here in Russia. I don’t really know what to think so far. The people are not very friendly here. It’s pretty much nothing but scowls as you walk down the street. I can’t really tell if that’s because we’re Americans or if it’s because Russians are jerks, maybe it’s a bit of both. However, Saint Petersburg is a lovely city. It has fantastic architecture. It truly looks like it could have been a city plucked out of somewhere else in Europe. I suppose that’s what Peter the Great was going for when he founded it.

The sea was absolutely beautiful coming into the port. I wasn’t able to sleep so I decided to wake up and see the sun rise. This was absolutely stunning. I guess most sunrises over the ocean on clear days are. However, the interesting thing is that as the ship moved into the area it passed by a ship graveyard. There were numerous rusted ships outside of the channel. Another neat thing was looking behind the Explorer. There were a large number of other ships waiting to get into the channel; it almost looked like a parking lot.

However, since I hadn’t slept, I went to bed for a quick hour or two of shuteye. After I woke up, it took a long time to clear customs. I’d assume it was probably near 3 or so hours. It is certainly a contrast to the ease of Bergen. We did eventually get to wander around for a little bit. This didn’t last too long since we needed to get onto the buses to tour Saint Petersburg. This was real interesting and we got to see many interesting buildings. A few of these were various churches, these all have spectacular onion domes. We also drove by the Hermitage, the Russian Admiralty, and some other sights.

After this was over, we boarded a boat for more of the tour. This gave us another perspective on the city. I suppose one could argue that it’s more fitting, as Peter the Great founded the Russian Navy. Once we were on the boat, we mostly saw what we had seen earlier. However, it was still good; Saint Petersburg is called the Venice of the North because of the many rivers and waterways in the city.

This brings me to some observations on Russia so far. Alcohol is everywhere. At every place we stopped, one could buy beer. While this might not have mattered as much in Norway, with its extremely expensive drinks, Russia, by comparison, is dirt cheap. A beer only costs around $2.60 for a 20 oz. beer with higher alcohol content. This is awesome for us; however, it is really sad for the Russians. One can’t walk down the street without seeing someone holding a bottle of champagne or drinking from a flask, or even straight from a plastic bag. Russia clearly has a problem here, yet they won’t do anything to change it as it’s too valuable. Boris Yeltsin sought to curb Russia’s alcoholism and he was run out of office for it.

However, Russia isn’t all drunks. They do have nice customs as well. One of these is that Russians get married any day of the week. After they get married, they like to take photos. Instead of just taking them in front of the church, what they do is they go all over the city, drinking wine or beer, and get photos of the whole wedding party in front of monuments in the city. This is kind of nice as we saw several wedding parties doing just this on our tour.

Souvenirs are a lot of fun here. I’m currently wearing a bushka (the Russian hat with the ear-flaps) that has a hammer and sickle on it; I have a flask with the hammer and sickle too. However my prized possession is my nesting dolls. I found a set of Michael Jackson nesting dolls. The best part of these is that the biggest nesting doll resembles the present day Michael Jackson. But as one works their way into the middle one sees Michael Jackson get younger until one finds little Michael from his Jackson 5 days as the smallest figurine. Truly these are ridiculous souvenirs which I could not be happier with!

I’m excited to go off to Moscow tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a short flight, just an hour so it shouldn’t be too bad. However, Semester at Sea loves to pack as much as possible into the trips. Unfortunately this means I need to be ready to go at 6:15 in the Union, so I’m going to go to bed. I feel kind of lame missing out on the first night in Saint Petersburg, but I’m already beat and I’m not going to be getting a lot of rest anytime soon.