Photo Update

Everything is going well now and things are really starting to come together. Hopefully by the end of the week we will have some friends at our University as well. No interesting news as of yet, just going to Uni and studying.

So I thought I would upload some more photos of our Uni and surrounding area.

 The view from the 7th floor of of Uni

An outdoor gym, for those who really are fearless.

Update

Sorry I haven't done an update recently, have been very busy which can only be a good thing. Recently things have become much better. Max, a fellow russianist from Durham, arrived on friday and we have made friends which some Russians: Ramil and Sasha who have been very helpful giving us a nice tour of the city and making sure that everything is going smoothly.

Things are starting to look up, though the weather is still pretty harsh. Walking around is still an intersting experience with the inside of one's nostrils constantly freezing over (ie it is lower than -15).

Anyway I will do a proper post soon in the next couple of days hopefully.

Chocolate Cheese

Heston Blumenthal, eat your heart out! The Russians have come up with something that you could have never even imagined. While you have your decadent bacon and egg ice cream, we have our chocolate cheese:

(Literally translated: Smooth Chocolate Cheese)

Opening this gem of a find, I found the cheese to look and smell very similar to any other chocolate spread with a little twist at the end. I was cautiously optimistic that this new spread could change my culinary life. 

I chose to eat the spread with bread as I thought it was the best medium which one can eat both cheese and chocolate spread with.

I was surprised by how tasty it looked; its texture was very similar to honey. Unfortunately the taste itself was far from desirable.

At first the smoothness of the chocolate is evident but then a strange taste, akin to sour milk, comes across which really ruins the experience. Least I only paid 20p for this culinary adventure while customers of the Fat Duck would pay £131 plus wine.

Pimp My Ride: St Petersburg

While I was in St P, I noticed a lot of highly dubious paint work that even Tim Westwood would have been disappointed with. Here were a couple of gems:

One for the ladies' man:

And then of course Sex Panther:

Uni Art

Here is some nice soviet art which is painted around the Uni

Town

So as I have already mentioned I live in the suburbs of Ulyanovsk, so since today was a nice sunny day I decided to make a little trip to the town centre. Even though the pictures don't really show it, the centre of town is surprisingly busy and a nice hub of activity and capitalism

There are a couple of shopping malls dotted around, the quality of which however is a bit dubious. The only Western brand names I saw were Adidas and Reebok...woohoo.

The roads are nicely bumpy and soon I will do a post about the small minibuses which whizz around (you can see the back of one in the picture above). They are definitely the most surreal thing so far on my Year Abroad.

The one thing I am not looking forward to is Spring when the icicles fall of the roofs. You can see some here, though these are absolutely minuscule in comparison to the one which were in St P

The egg of Mantumbi

I decided to go for walk today and get some fresh air. Unfortunately it was snowing and the wind made the walk pretty unbearable.

Nevertheless I continued on my adventure

I walked for about 25 minutes to the bank of the Volga, one of Russia's biggest rivers. Unfortunately the view wasn't great due to the snow and wind, but the view was very impressive.

Pictures of my walk back to the flat

Ulyanovsk

Hey

Sorry about my lack of posting, I haven't been in Russia since the 15th of December and I was getting pretty lazy by the end of St Petersburg. One of my many new year's resolutions is to keep this blog updated, so we will see how that goes.

My new placement is in Ulyanovsk where I will be living for the next four months. It is in the Ural mountains and is the birth place of Lenin. It is 900km East of Moscow...so I am experiencing life in the provinces.

I am studying in Ulyanovsk Technological State Uni which is a campus based university situated 20 minutes from the town centre. I am staying in student halls which as you can see from the picture above is nicely Soviet 

The layout of the surrounding buildings is very Russian. The picture above shows the neighbouring student halls with a playground/football pitch/snow pit in the middle.

Here is another picture of my accommodation, I am living in the building with the 80ft poster on it (it says 'The territory of sport'...ha)

Luckily the Uni itself is only a 3 minute walk which is pretty useful when it is -20c outside.

It's hard to show actually how much snow there is here but the two banks in the picture above are taller than me. Apparently it has been snowing constantly for the last 5 days now. 

The walk is beautiful though and you can really appreciate the beauty, even if by now your cheeks are numb.

So here is my Uni in its full glory. It stands on the bank of the Volga, so I will try and get some pictures of that when I can be bothered to go through waist high snow. For now these pictures should suffice.

Халявщик - Lucky Beggar

I have always been very fond of eggs. As my house mates can testify, last year I would always add a couple of eggs into every meal, adding that extra bit of flare. However I had never before received the holiest of holies - a double yolked egg.

That is until Russia. I have recently just opened four double yolked eggs in a row. Big deal you think? Well the odds of getting one are around 0.01%. Therefore using some cool maths, the probability of me getting 4 in a row is 0.00000001 or 1 in 10 million.

It is so rare that the daily mail released a news article when a woman got 6 in a row.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247872/Woman-finds-double-egg-yolks-box-beating-trillion-odds.html

However since this is Russia, eggs come in boxes of 10 and I can tell you that the other eggs are monsters. I can't wait to have my daily of consumption of eggs tomorrow.

This extraordinary bit of luck paired with me finding a £100 note on the floor on a night out suggests that Russia is on my side.

Zenit

Sorry for the recent lack of posts. Unfortunately I have been without electricity for the last two weeks which was made life all the more fun and 'unique' here is St P.

Anyway recently I decided to watch a game of football which involved the club Zenit playing against Yamka at their home stadium.

I thought the occasion was going to be a jolly affair much like my fond memories of visiting St Mary's Stadium in my younger years. This however was not the case.

We had arranged to decided to meet up with some Russian friends before the game and to our surprise they were drinking vodka (2 bottles between 5) at 2pm. They were your typical Russian men in the fact that they were nice guys though you definitely didn't want to get on the wrong side of them. An example of this is when i asked why one of them was wearing a Liverpool man bag (its not considered gay/strange here, actually quite the opposite), he proudly said that he had stolen it from someone in Moscow. Thankfully I am not new to Russian culture and replied as calmly as i could 'Cool man' or 'клево' in russian.

While going to the stadium itself I was genuinely shocked about the amount of riot police they had patrolling the streets, genuinely around 300 of them in full riot gear just waiting for an excuse to beat the living daylight out of someone. It reminded me of the riot videos from the 80s and judging by their shaved heads and tracksuits I was pretty much in this era. The stadium itself was completely outdoor with no shelter for the fans (surely due to its warm Mediterranean climate right?) and not an experience I would like to take a young child to. During the match people were lighting up flares and believe it or not genuine organised mosh pits were taking place in the stands.

That being said the atmosphere was fantastic and every minute of the game we were standing up and we quickly learnt the chants which were surprisingly catchy. I was even lucky enough to witness a 20 man punch up after the game. 

No wonder all Russians have seen the film Green street and is often quoted as one of their favourite foreign films.

Russian TV

Sorry for a lack of posts recently, there has been a lack of internet availability and even electricity.

Watching TV is one of the best ways to learn a language as you are able to listen to native speakers talk in their own environment. Therefore I am trying to watch at least an hour of TV everyday. This however is not a relaxing thing and is probably the worst part of my day - its basically an hour long listening exam! However to make my time a bit easier I have found some well known American shows which has been Russified (ie made to look like if was filmed in the 80s/ridiculously good looking girls/a severe lack of capitalism).

I thought i would give you some shows and see if you can guess them:

If you didn't get that one you are really going to struggle (it was Prison Break). The next:

Slightly harder, though if you watch the show you should definitely recognise the bar (How I Met Your Mother).

And a super hard one:

Everybody loves Raymond

Улыбаться - to smile

Russians are known for being pessimistic, unfriendly, dull and alcoholics.

And at first this does seem to be true. Hardly anyone laughs in public, no-one is smiling and everyone seems to just walk past engrossed their daily activities. Even more embarrassing is when Gentos and I are laughing (ie pretty much always) people literally stare at us and shake their heads spitefully at such obvious foreigners.

However in our culture lessons at Uni, we actually learnt why Russians are never seen smiling on the street. In the same way that English people feel uncomfortable when in America with their overtly polite tones, Russians believe that a smile has a very specific and significant meaning. This meaning normally signifies friendship or being acquainted, or in the more alcoholic environments the first sign of taking an interest in someone (watch Austin Powers for more details in basic flirting principles).

So therefore if one smiles on a daily basis it is considered very strange, as it makes people feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. There is even a saying that a person who smiles for no reason is a fool. Hence no one can be seen smiling on the street and everyone at first seems very dull and glum.

But once you get to know Russians, they really are some of the nicest people I have ever met - you just have to break the (Berlin) wall first.

Cathedral Update

Smolny Cathedral was build between 1748 and 1764 originally for Peter the Great's Daughter when she decided that she wanted to become a nun. However she soon changed her mind and had a quick spell as Empress.

The building itself was designed by the Italian architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli who is famous for designing the Winter Palace, which is something I will talk about later on in the year.

Its distinctive sky blue and white makes the cathedral absolutely stunning and surreal as it almost resembles a fantasy palace from a disney film:

I found it extremely sad that I was the only tourist there. The only other people there were a newly wedded couple who were taking some wedding photographs in the Cathedral's grounds. I find it absolutely amazing that this cathedral is a 20 minute walk from the city has virtually no visitors, though admittedly it made the visit all the more tranquil for me.

Now the Cathedral and its surroundings are used for Orchestras and is the modern languages department for St Petersburg State Uni (which despite the name is one of their best Universities) - which as i am sure you will agree trumps Elvet Riverside. So as one can conduct, this building is probably the epitome of bourgeois Russia. And the Smolny Institute which is right next door is no exception. Originally built as a school for Noble Maidens, it is a fantastic building as well:

Yet the more I learn about Russia the more I get confused as this building was used by Lenin as his Bolshevik headquarters in 1917 - which is probably the last building i thought he would choose. In fact Lenin preferred Tsarist St Petersburg over Moscow and he originally planned to swap the capital back to St Peterburg, though the change was never actually instigated. The building is now used as the Major's office but right at the front of the building, its history is clear:

Written at the top of the building is one of the most famous Soviet phrases 'Proletarians of the World UNITE!'

Apples

Yesterday I cam back from Uni to find my Babushka crouching and hobbling around the stove. When i first saw the contraption I thought she was making illegal alcohol (similar to the scene in The Great Escape with the Moonshine). 

Actually she was making a kind of traditional Russian drink with the apples from her dacha. Which explains why I found 3 5kg boxes completely filled with apples, returning from lectures one day (though i didn't think anything of it at the time - one sees stranger stuff here).

This strange contraption is actually very simple. The bottom is filled with water and is heated up while the 2nd and 3rd layer is filled with 5,000,000 sliced apples and a lot of sugar. The water slowly heats up the apples which let out its juices slowly dripping into the jar.

Here is a better photo:

I was surprised by how much juice she was able to get out of it and in total in came to around 4 litres. Here is some of her finished product:

The juice itself is really tasty. It is a very similar texture to syrup and you can either drink it straight or dilute it with hot water, for those cold winter days (which will come).

Though am still very disappointed she wasn t making illegal vodka

My Favourite Building

On my daily walk to Uni, I always pass this block of flats:

This absolutely stunning building is tucked away on a little side street and is a constant reminder of St Petersburg's bourgeois history. The building reminds me of one of my favourite films 'A Bout de Souffle' and its scene in the hotel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHQ2Q-_bl8k

Strange I know but thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Bits and Bobs

Ola,

here are just a couple of photos from this week, that i thought were pretty funny:

до свидания!

Capitalism

Hey Hey,

Sorry for my lack of blogging, have been busy with some pretty time consuming stuff. I now teach a group of Russian students as i am effectively a language assistant at the University where i study. We discussed many different topics but one that kept on coming up was McDonald's.

In Russia, McDonald's is huge and an even weirder observation is that there seems to be more McDonald's on street corners than in the US, which is strangely ironic.

For the late night out, the overwhelming majority have a drive through counter but for pedestrians so you can get that McD fix anytime you want:

Shop hours are also very strange indeed. Instead of your English operating hours of 9 till 5, every shop here is open from 9 till 10, even on Sundays. And where else in the world are shops like this? CHINA

The world operates in mysterious ways

Destination Unknown

Woah am I in Paris?

oh wait i'm not:

(Vodka section in a local shop)

Street Art

Having now received my timetable, I have a free day on Wednesdays so I thought that I would go for a walk to the city's avant garde art area. Unfortunately the whole building was closed until the 11th so i will do a big post about that in the near future. However on the way, I noticed a lot of Street art:

Its interesting to see that it was all in english as well...

And my personal favourite:

I have also noticed a few more Banksy spray paintings all over St P. Basically this just confirms that St P is the cultural capital of Russia and makes me all the more annoyed i couldn't get into this avant garde art complex!