Northern Country Joys: Finland and Estonia

Hello again all! And I hope you enjoy my stories about Finland and Estonia, although I doubt you will enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed being there, because I don't know if it is possible to like something more than I liked both of them. We left on a Wednesday night from St. Petersburg, got into Finland on Thursday morning, went to Estonia early on Friday, came back on Friday evening and were in FInland through that Saturday afternoon, before we departed back for St. Petersburg. So here goes the day by day recap:

Wednesday: we went on an overnight "ferry" from St. Petersburg to Helsinki. However, it was not so much a ferry as a cruise ship, and was quite lovely. I explored a bit and watched the ship take off (depart? set sail?) but I didn't buy anything because for one, everything was expensive on the ship and I also had some snacks with me so I wouldn't have to buy the expensive things on the ship. For example, the offered and all you can eat and drink buffet for 33 euros. No way I was going to do that.

Thursday: Woke up and it was still pretty much dark, but it was 8 AM. We got the breakfast buffet provided to us on the ship and it was delicious. They offered all sorts of Russian foods and Finnish foods (I'll get to the part about Finnish food in extensive detail in a bit.) They also had these absolutely delicious pastries that reminded me of cinnamon rolls, minus the cinnamon. Words honestly can't describe how fantastic it was. I stocked up on breakfast because I wasn't sure when the next meal was going to be. Anyway, we got off the ship and met our tour guide who was to give us the tour of Helsinki. At first, it reminded me of a typical port town that heavily relies on seafaring industries. However, I saw a lot more than that on the tour, including a lot of the cool churches in Helsinki. The first we saw was called Temppeliaukio Church (I'll also talk about the Finnish language a bit later as well). Anyway, I think the common English name for this church is Church of the Rock, because it is built semi-underground and out of rocks and lots of copper. The ceiling had supposedly 22 km of coiled copper on it but I think it might have been more than that. Here is a little bit of what it looked like:

The next stop on the tour was the monument dedicated to the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. It was just outside of the city and pretty cool looking; it looked kind of like an organ:

I got the impression that Helsinki quickly turns into the countryside, and it reminded me a lot of the 1000 Islands, for those who have been there. Many pink rocks and little islands everywhere. I thought it was beautiful. This picture especially reminds me of them, taken not far from the Sibelius monument:

The last stop on our tour was to Senate Square and the Helsinki Cathedral, probably the most famous cathedral in Finland, and it was quite pretty and large:

The irony of this is that Finland has a lot of churches and while most Finns will call themselves Lutherans, they don't practice. Anyway, afterwards, we went to lunch, where we had salads and some pasta. I was still kind of full from my big breakfast though, but I ate it anyway. After that, we went to the hostel and I finally at long last got to meet up with my long-lost sister, Mari! It was so exciting because I hadn't seen her in 3 and a half years. :D I walked around Helsinki a bit with her and got a more personal tour, and we went inside Stockmann's, which I believe is the biggest department store in the Nordic countries, and Marimekko, a brand native to Finland with adorable patterns, over the years I have gotten several things from Marimekko from Mari. When we went in she bought me a pair of socks and I bought myself a change purse. After that, we went to her and her parents house (about 15 minutes outside Helsinki) where I got to meet her whole family, including her parents, boyfriend, brother and his girlfriend, and aunt for the first time. They were so incredibly hospitable and spoke great English. They had prepared something along the lines of a seven course meal of traditional Finnish foods. This included cream of mushroom soup, Karelian pies (potato or rice in little cups of rye bread) with egg butter, reindeer meat with mashed potatoes and lingonberries (which were not sweet as I was expecting, but bitter, but it went well with the reindeer meet). Mari's aunt actually made a reference to Rudolph when I was eating the meat. There was also salmon with mashed potatoes and sour cream. After that came dessert. First course for dessert was bread cheese (cheese that looks like bread) with cloudberry jam, then blueberry pies, and glögi (Swedish non-alcoholic wine) with gingerbread. All of the food was so fantastic but having eat three meals including a massive meal, I felt like I never wanted to eat again. After dinner we sat around and talked for a few more hours because they were so easy to talk to. Here is me with the family!

Maija (Mari's mom), myself, Mari and Yrjö (Mari's dad)

By the end of the day, after having had such wonderful hospitality from everyone, I decided it was my goal to learn Finnish (I have a strange obsession with trying to learn obscenely difficult languages) and live in Finland.

Friday: Woke up at about 5:30 to catch the "ferry" to Estonia. Again, it was a cruise ship. I was exhausted since I didn't get back until about midnight on Thursday night, but it was worth it. At about 9 (yes, 9) I went up to the top deck to watch the sunrise, which was beautiful. It was super windy too.

Once we got to Tallinn, the capital, everything that I had heard, such as the fact that it was very western looking and cheaper than Estonia, seemed incorrect. The first thing I saw after I left the terminal was a sign for burgers for 6 euros, which is certainly not cheap, and it also looked very post-Soviet. We walked about 20 minutes to get to the area called "Old Town," which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was adorable and reminded me of what I think of in both Willy Wonka and a Grimm's fairy tale. It was also a beautiful day. My favorite picture taken from an overlook:

The one building in the picture that stands out is called St. Olaf's Church. Me being the person I am, who is obsessed with facts finds it cool that from 1549 to 1625 it was the tallest building in the world. Our tour guide, who had apparently never been to an English speaking country but spoke wonderful English, told us that as well as some cool folklore about a few of the buildings and monuments in Old Town.

Here is another one of my favorites:

In Estonia, we were told only to speak English and not to try to converse in Russian because there is apparently a lot of anti-Russian sentiment there left over from the Soviet times. While this is probably the case in the non-touristy parts of Tallinn, I heard a lot of people speaking Russian, since it is a popular tourist destination for Russians, and no one really seemed to care. After the tour I went to a pub with a couple friends called "Hell's Head." Again, the waitress spoke great English, which is good because no one knew any Estonian, which is similar to Finnish. It turns out Estonia is significantly cheaper, I got a big meal that included fish and chips and Estonian cider for around 8 euros. I also went into the Marzipan museum and bought some Marzipan, since the Estonians claim to have invented it. Then we went back to the ferry and went back to Finland. I loved Estonia a lot, and I think a lot of people actually enjoyed it more than Finland.

Saturday: I met up with Mari again in the morning and we went by ferry, this time an actual ferry to the sea fortress called Suomenlinna, which I guess translates to Finnish castle. I really loved this place. It was on an island and had all sorts of hidden tunnels spread out over seven or so islands. It had a few old cannons that the Finns used to defend themselves against the Swedes and the Russians. I know now that no matter what the Russians say, the Russians, not the Finns were the ones who initiated the war that was fought simultaneously with WWII, thanks to the Nikkanens. There were also these cool structures that look like hobbit houses:

Before leaving the fortress, Mari treated me to some wonderful hot chocolate with a little bit of mint liqueur in it. It was absolutely amazing. I also saw the "nicest bathroom in Finland," which was a bathroom located at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Helsinki and had a view of the entire city.

The view from the nicest bathroom in Finland :)

The last thing I did with Mari before having to board the ferry to go back to Russia was go to the Anteneum art museum. They had a super cool exhibit about Lapland and Lappish (?) art as well as exhibits from other famous Finnish artists. We ate at the café afterwards where I had some delicious quiche and salad, courtesy of Mari's parents. It was sad to say goodbye to Mari, but I might get to see her again next year, if she comes to visit the US, here's hoping. Also, I plan to go back to Finland again, hopefully in the near future. All in all, it was a great trip, and I got a lot of stuff from the Nikkanen's including lots of yummy Fazer chocolate, a bottle of glöggi (the stuff I mentioned earlier) to take home, a soft map of Helsinki for when I come back from Mari's aunt Paula, a delicious seven course meal of traditional Finnish food, mint hot chocolate, a mug with a classic Finnish cartoon on it, and a surprise gift for my parents that I can't disclose here. Oh, and did I mention the incredible hospitality? Yes, it was a fantastic trip. I think more people liked Estonia than Finland, but I liked Finland more. Of course, I could just be completely biased. ;) Anyway, I just realized this is really long, but I am enthusiastic. I will write soon about the rest of what I have been up to in Russia as soon as possible. Пока!

A Few Goings On in Petersburg

Hello again all! I finally have run dry on computer problems and all is well once again which means I will be trying to catch up completely on my blog in the next couple of days. It is a tall order but I feel bad for being so neglectful. So I will devote this entry to all that I have been doing in Petersburg since I have been back from Moscow. The next entry will be dedicated to my lovely trip to Finland and Estonia. :)

First, Smolny Cathedral. So five friends plus myself chose to go to Smolny Cathedral one afternoon after class because it was a beautiful day, and trust me, those are quite tough to come by around here. The ironic thing is that Smolny Cathedral never served as a religious building, but you can go up to the top of it and get awesome views of the city. I also love that it is pale blue. :)

 The Cathedral itself

One of the views from the top

I also went back to Smolny last weekend, but not to the Cathedral, to Smolny Institute. This is basically where the government of St. Petersburg is located. There I saw where Lenin resided and worked briefly. I also saw the Constitution cut in stone on the wall, various gifts to Russia from diplomats of all countries, including the keys to the city of Daytona Beach and Riga, Latvia, as well as some pretty awesome looking chess sets. The last thing we saw was the hall where they have all there important meetings. It reminded me of something I would see at the United Nations, Russian style. We even got to go up and sit at the big long table, and pretend to be revolutionaries like Lenin.

One can dream of being an influential person in the course of world history

Next, The Political History Museum. This was our weekly excursion some weeks ago. This was the first excursion they offered to us where we had the option of taking a tour either in English or in Russian. Choosing to challenge myself a bit, I chose the Russian tour. I caught a bit of what the tour guide was saying but since I am probably more of a visual learner I probably caught a lot more just from looking at the various posters and exhibits. At the museum was the office where Lenin worked and the balcony that he would go onto to get the people pumped up. I also got to see a lot of the old Soviet propaganda posters, which I think are very cool looking, which was probably what they were going for. They also had a whole bunch of posters with the figureheads of the USSR on them.

 Lenin's Office

Cool Soviet Poster

The following weekend, we went to the Dostoeyevsky apartment museum, which was where he spent the last three years of his life living. There, he wrote his last novel, perhaps you have heard of heard of The Brothers Karamazov? What was also cool was that the previous day I had just finished reading arguably his most famous book Crime and Punishment for my lit class. While I didn't particularly like his style of writing, it was still pretty cool to see his modest (for a very famous man at the time) living quarters. I didn't take any pictures inside though because I would have had to pay and I was feeling particularly cheap that day. I did take a picture of the sign though!

I believe the next excursion we had as a group in Russia was a tour of the Yusopov Palace. Apparently, the Yusopov family was a very wealthy aristocratic family that was super tight with the Tsars. The palace itself was pretty cool. In the basement, they even had their own little performance theatre, and what's more it wasn't even all that little:

The tour was given in Russian so I understood some, but certainly not all of it. This palace is mostly famous for being the place where Rasputin (I really hope you have heard of him, otherwise, please look up his really interesting background) was murdered. The story of his murder is just as mystical as his life was. Felix Yusopov, the primary resident of the palace, took them down to the basement and tried to poison him in his food. However, this didn't work so they took him upstairs and tried to beat him to death, however, he also survived that. They then decided to end his life by shooting him in the head. However, while they were successful in shooting him, it still did not kill him. At last, they threw him in the river, where he did eventually die. The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was drowning, not poison, or wounds. Just to make sure, they took his body out of the river and burned it. I don't know,  personally think the story is fascinating, but I think Russia as a whole is fascinating.

I went to St. Isaac's Cathedral a few weeks ago. The first time I went there on a beautiful day, in hopes of going to the colonnade and getting a beautiful view of the city (like Smolny, but this is slightly higher, and more centrally located), however the one day it was nice out was the day they were closed. I went back the following week and did go to the top but it wasn't quite as nice of a day. Here is my favorite picture:

On a more insignificant note, I have also been to the movie theatres here twice to see American movies that have been dubbed into Russian. I saw Puss in Boots (Кот в сапогах) and The Adventures of Tintin. Both were good and since they were animated, you didn't really need to follow the dialogue that well to understand it, so I was able to figure out what they were saying based on context.

Anyway, I have written a lot for this post so, next time I will write about my adventures in Finland and Estonia. After that I will tell you all about the exciting things I have been doing in the last two weeks here. :)  Пока!

Do Russians REALLY like Lenin and Churches?

Hello again, all! I apologize for the tardiness of this email but I have encountered several issues that I will discuss later in this post. Also, I apologize for the length that this post is, but since my break was awesome, I feel the need to recount it to all of you. :)

So this whole past week was our break and here is the day by day break down:

Friday: We took an overnight train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. This was a super cool experience, trains in the US aren't a big deal at all but here, they are how most people travel from city to city. We got to go second class, which means that we were in a room with three other people (my former suite reunited). We got to Moscow at 8 on Saturday morning.

Saturday: When we first got there, we stopped for a quick breakfast at a cafe and then had our grand Moscow city tour! Among places we got to see were: Red Square, Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Bolshoi Theatre (Болшой театр), and a cemetery where lots of famous Russians are buried. But first, Red Square. Home to some of the most famous landmarks in Russia this square has St. Basil's Cathedral on one side (this is arguably the most recognizable monument in Russia to Americans), on another side of the square was ГУМ (GUM), a massive upscale mall, third side was the State Historical Museum, and the last side was the Kremlin and Lenin's Mausoleum.
The next stop was to Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the biggest church in Eastern Europe. It was quite large.

And here was Bolshoi Theatre, where they have all of the famous ballets. I believe it is reopening in a couple weeks after having been closed around 5 years.

The cemetery we went to was home to the graves of many famous people including famous Russian composers, writers, and political figures. The graves were all very elaborate and among those buried there are Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Gorbachev's wife, Josef Stalin's wife (who committed suicide, by the way), Boris Yeltsin, and Nikita Khruschev.

 Boris Yeltsin's elaborate grave, the Russian flag the physical geography of Russia

After that we went to the Circus, which was an awesome event. I had never been to the circus before, which apparently is quite strange. Anyway it was awesome, they had comedy mime acts, acts with various animals including walruses, poodles, bears, horses, among others, balancing acts, juggling acts, and tightrope acts. The coolest act I thought was the act with the poodles seen here:

And to end the day, a bunch of us went back to Red Square to see if it was cool at night, and it really was. All of those buildings I mentioned earlier were lit up. Here are all of the buildings. Some I took during our tour and some when we went back at night. So here are the best of the ones I took:

 Krasnaya ploschad (Red Square)

 St. Basil's Cathedral

 Kyle, me, Kelly in front of St. Basil's Cathedral at night

 One of my favorite pictures: GUM lit up like Christmas at night

The Kremlin at night, but it was under construction

 State Historical Museum (day)

 State Historical Museum (night)

Just outside of Red Square, got a bit of the Kremlin (left), Gum (center) and St. Basil's Cathedral (right)

Also, just as a side note, the hotel we got to stay in was awesome and may have had the most comfortable bed I've ever slept on.

Sunday: We went to the Kremlin, twice. The first time was to see the museum inside the Kremlin which I thought was pretty cool. We got to see a lot of things including, teapots (samovars as they are called here, although a samovar is a special type of teapot, I suggest you look it up, they are pretty cool) and other various trinkets, that many were made out of gold, silver or anything else that would display wealth as lavishly (is that even the right word? Sorry, I have many moments these days where I can't think of the word I want to say in English anymore, also in Russian...) as possible. We also got to see the coronation dresses or the Tsarinas as well as the Coronation carriages, which was awesome. 

After that, we saw Vladimir Lenin's mausoleum, which was super cool. Lenin is basically viewed as a saint even though I think many Russians also associate the Soviet era as a time of hardships. It was super cool though, we saw his actual preserved body. Security was super tight as a result and you couldn't so much as have change in your pockets. Therefore we had to check our bags. That was an adventure in itself. Normally, well always if they do it properly, they give you a tag when you check something so that when you want it bag, you just exchange the tag for the bag. Well I never got my tag and when I went bag to just ask for my bag back, she wouldn't let me without my tag. I started attempting to argue with the not very nice in my broken Russian and it didn't work, finally our Russian tour guide came with me to help out but she still wouldn't budge. At last, one of my friends came running up saying that she had gotten my tag by accident, so all was well. But by that time, I had missed going through the mausoleum. Fortunately, we had about a half an hour of free time after and I went through then instead.

After that, we went back to the Kremlin where we got our tour of the Kremlin itself, not the museum. It was all beautiful except for one building that was made of concrete that was built in the 70s, which kind of spoiled the whole picture. Other than that, we saw the buildings where Medvedev and Putin work, but weren't allowed to go by. However, we saw all of the cool churches in there. A few pictures:

For the rest of the day, a couple of friends along with myself went exploring. First, we went inside St. Basil's Cathedral. This was awesome. Apparently it used to like 9 chapels, so it was filled with corridors and had tons of small rooms. Also, there was a choir in there singing, they had amazing voices and were able to show off the amazing acoustics of the cathedral. Here are a few of my favorites from St. Basils:

After that, I went to the Museum of Fallen monuments where you could find a lot of busts and statues of the Soviet leaders, also very cool, and of course there were a lot more statues and busts of Lenin than anyone else. Here is a picture of the main thing we saw there:

Monday: I didn't do much. Kelly and I left the hotel and found our hostel, which was conveniently located very near the center of Moscow. As we were both pretty tired, we had a low day and all we did was buy our train tickets to Novgorod.

Tuesday: I am pretty sure we saw all the luxurious malls of Moscow. An were they ever luxurious. We went in one, which was an underground mall right by Red Square. Another was right next to the skyline, which we also went to visit. The last one, and my favorite, was near Kievskiy Vokzal (Kiev Train Station). This had super luxurious fountains, elevators, and best of all, had a skating rink on the top floor. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my skates with me on the trip. :(

Wednesday: We decided to go try to find the US embassy. We saw the building and didn't actually think it was anything too exciting. However, we talked to an American lady who told us that you can get a nanny job for rich Muscovites to teach their children English and you get paid very well and they make take you all over the world, which sounded appealing to me. :) It turned out though that the building we saw used to be the embassy but was now the US citizens center. We didn't actually see the embassy which was a little disappointing but oh well. We also saw a whole bunch of other embassies, however, including the Brazilian, Nigerian, Laotian, and Moroccan embassy. For my last hurrah in Moscow, I went into the State Historical Museum. They had a 5000 year old boat in there but the top floor, where they had the Soviet history, was the coolest. They had a few space helmets that they wore during the space race, a huge flag of the USSR, and a whole bunch of paintings, mostly of Lenin and Stalin. Some of them were really famous. Does this painting look at all familiar?

Wednesday night, we boarded the train and headed off to Novgorod. 

Thursday: Got in early, but certainly not bright. It was about 6:10 when we got in and didn't get light until 8. Again, we were super tired so the first thing we did was take a nap. I also had to put my Russian to the test, since Kelly is a total beginner in Russian and Novgorod, being significantly smaller than Moscow and Petersburg, has very few people who speak any English. All we did that day was walk around the Kremlin however it was cold and rainy so we went to the hostel pretty early.

Friday: We explored the various museums of Novgorod, including the Fine Arts Museum right next to the Kremlin. Normally I am not a huge fan of art, but I really liked this museum, especially the room dedicated to the sights of Novgorod, especially what it looked like during World War II. We also went to a museum inside the Kremlin where they had a lot about Ancient Novgorodian history and paintings from all over Russia about the Russian Orthodox church.

Saturday: Cold and beautiful. The puddles from the rain had iced over and there was frost on the ground which made me happy. This was fortunate that it was such a nice day as this was the day we planned to go outdoors. We hopped on the bus to go just out of town to the Urevsky Monastery and the Museum of Wooden Architecture. As I believe I mentioned when I first went to Novgorod, the Museum of Wooden Architecture shows how peasants used to live in earlier centuries. It reminds me of when we would go on field trips in New York to places like Old Genesee Village or the Farmer's Village in Cooperstown. The monastery was also really cool, but almost everything was not open to the public so we didn't end up spending much time there. This was also the day that my charger completely stopped working. I still haven't gotten a new charger yet, but I am due for my new one any day now. However, since I have been having to mooch charges off of people, I have not had time to update, and I deeply apologize.

Sunday: woke up at 5:30 to come back to Petersburg by train. I talked to, or tried to, a lady on the train. Most people see we are foreign and just try to talk to someone else but she actually talked to me which I appreciated because it always helps me improve my Russian. :)

Overall an awesome trip, despite a few mishaps. I will try to get around to updating you about my trip to Finland and Estonia as well as my goings on here in Petersburg as soon as possible. Until then, пока!