Student Experience

During the holiday vacation, my host family invited me to spend some time at the dacha. The dacha was a really fun Russian experience. My host parents and I spent lots of time together around the fire trying to stay warm. We passed the time singing karaoke and eating shashlik that my host father prepared over the fire. And then, when we felt like braving the cold, we went put on our long underwear and voyaged to a nearby mountain to go sledding. My host mom and I had fun sliding down the hill together on our little tube. The sledding hills in Russia are really great, and are made so the sledder can pick up some serious speed on the way down. Sledding is also a popular activity during Maslanitsa. During this holiday, it is tradition to eat many pancakes, with many different toppings. It is also tradition to make a big doll, which represents winter, and burn it. Our group was able to participate in celebrating this holiday in a village, that had a great sledding hill.

We celebrated Maslanitsa, just a week ago, and it was supposed to be the sending off of winter, and the welcoming of spring. I think winter was confused, because it came back today and the temperature plummeted to -24C. Strangely, a few days ago, all the snow in the street was melting and it seemed as though spring was here. Every day is an adventure here in St. Petersburg, the changing weather being just one little part. Every day is a surprise.

This is my second semester here in St. Petersburg, and I feel like I have really gotten to know the city. I also feel like I’ve gotten to know the people who work on Nevsky handing out advertisements and wearing signs. Everyday I pass these people on my way to class, and it is very interesting to me that they stand out in the cold all day handing out slips of paper. People don’t always accept the handouts, but I like to take them, because then the people smile. Sometimes I get home and my pockets are full of Petersburg metro maps because they are printed on the backs of most of the advertisements. Some of the jobs here in Russia are very interesting.

Before coming to Russia, I had never witnessed the removal of snow from the rooftops. Everyday, men are working on the roofs, shoveling the snow and ice off the tops of the buildings onto the sidewalks where other workers scoop up the snow and toss it into trucks. The trucks carry the snow out of the center and dump it. I am not sure where all the snow goes, but I always see many trucks driving away, full of snow.

I was lucky enough to spend some time in Moscow over the break, and saw a very different part of Russia. Moscow and Saint Petersburg are two very different cities. Petersburg is a rather European city and it is large, but doesn’t seem that way when I’m there. Moscow on the other hand, is huge. The metro in Piter has 5 lines, compared to the metro in Moscow looks like an octopus, with many lines. Each city has it’s own interesting history. Russia is full of history, and it is impossible to live here without learning something new about this country nearly every day. Russia is a great place.

Katelyn Burns

Luther College, St. Petersburg, 2010

Well, here we are...oriented out of our minds, we've taken that 5,000 mile leap of faith across the Atlantic and ended up in Moscow. It's Russia, all right – the street signs are in Cyrillic, the people all wear fur hats, and the cafeteria serves plates of hot dogs and rice for breakfast. There are, however, no lines for food or empty supermarket shelves, no giant posters of Party leaders, and no fear on anyone's part that anyone's country will be accidentally turned into an irradiated pile of rubble. Did we miss the most interesting parts of this city's history? Perhaps, but after a few weeks living here I find it difficult to imagine Moscow ever becoming dull. Each new experience makes me more certain that Moscow is simply and fundamentally different from other cities. Armies of snow shovelers occupy the streets in the morning, working tirelessly but also with a determination to use the least efficient means possible in their work (in front of my dormitory, they use their shovels like bulldozers, pushing each load, regardless of location, into one specific pile while leaving nearly as much snow scattered across the pavement as there was when they began). Laws and regulations are enforced almost at random – the Metro security has given me a thorough lecture for going out through the in door, while they just sit and watch as teenagers jump the turnstiles with impunity. Our 20th century Russian history professor has told us that at the turn of that century, though Russia had more land and more workers than most of the rest of the world, their production was severely limited by the inefficiency of their tools and methods. Muscovites must not see this as a problem.

Manpower is something Moscow still seems to have in spades. There are people hired to shovel snow, clean the escalators (by holding a rag to the side of the escalator as they go up and down), police the metro in fours, and even shine the corrugated aluminum used to wall off temporary construction projects. Of course, they get payed only 20,000 rubles a month (roughly US$660), a rock-bottom salary. Or so I thought, until my professor explained to me that doctors working in public health centers get around 25,000 RUB (US$830) and professors only 8,000 RUB in a month (US$260). Retirees in Moscow – the third most expensive city in the world after Tokyo and London – end up with 4,000-8,000 RUB (US$130-260).

To someone like me, accustomed to seeing things in terms of a strict supply/demand causality, it seems very strange that this country does not simply collapse in on itself like a yurt missing its tunduk. But then again, perhaps this tunduk (the small circular disk upon which rest a yurt's roof branches) is no more than sheer stubborn hope, optimism, and determination to continue life, regardless. This is visible in every aspect of life in Moscow – from the opening of the “EthnoMir” with only a tenth of the exhibits finished (and construction methods that seem to date at least as far back as the architecture being exhibited) to the awe-inspiring (and clean!) metro stations, from the grandiose designs of the city planning board to the women who wear high heels in snow up to their calves. It is a rare and beautiful thing, this obstinacy, and if I discover nothing else while in Russia, having seen it will have been worth the trip.

Daniel Carpenter-Gold

Columbia University, Moscow, 2010

Upon landing in St. Petersburg, making my way submissively through customs, and exiting the airport onto the iced sidewalks with mounds of snow larger than cars, I learned something of great importance: it is very cold in Russia. This probably should not have come as such a shock especially since I had been checking the temperature online for the last three months, but nonetheless, I was taken aback by how bone-chillingly cold it was. I made a comment along the lines of “I should have taken Spanish” and received laughter from one of the more experienced students. Apparently this was a very warm day, and after having the hairs in my nose freeze together this week, I would have to agree with him. But reading about the “Russian winter” in books and checking the temperatures online did little to prepare me for actually experiencing the arctic wind. This is a lesson I was quick to learn. Much of what I knew of Russia was simply facts and information with absolutely no personal experience behind it that would help me understand what it was truly like to live in the country. This would quickly change.
We began our journey into the center of the city via soviet bus, and the euphoria of seeing such strange scenes was enough to quell the fatigue of traveling long enough to make it to our rooms in the dormitory. I then passed out, but the fatigue seemed to linger for nearly two weeks. It was one of the more difficult things I've dealt with since arriving in Russia. The other, oddly enough, isn't the foreign culture, language, or people; it's the big city which is uncomfortable. I grew up in Texas where everything is spread out; cities are sprawling and there's plenty of room to have a “personal space” in which to live. This is not so in Petersburg, and even worse in Moscow. Also, it should be noted that in Texas temperatures rarely dip below freezing and an inch of snow is more than enough to shut down the entire state. Personal space was something I took for granted in the United States, and I now wish I hadn't.

It's frustrating beyond comparison to hear so many words spoken in Russian, to be able to write them down if they were spoken slower, but still not be able to understand the meaning of what's being said. I keep a piece of paper and pen handy in order to jot down the new words I hear, but by the time I've looked up one word in the dictionary, there's ten more already on my list. It's both frustrating and humbling. My host family seems well aware of my frustration and lack of understanding and speaks slowly to me so that I understand. It's childish, but helpful, and I'll thank them for it once I have the knowledge to better express myself. And that's another point of hair-pulling. I want to express myself in Russian, but I still lack the quick recall of many words which I know but still unable to speak off the top of my head.

As each day passes though, I become a little more accustomed with the language, with the city, and with the people. Soon my frustrations will transform into a more relaxed attitude where the foreign words are no longer unfamiliar, but second-nature. It's a process I'm eager to complete so that I can better experience the treasures which this country has to offer.

Samuel Price

Texas A&M University, St. Petersburg, 2010