Well, it’s been a while since I’ve sat here in my tiny room in Novosibirsk, and I must say that after a month of travel with my awesome American friends across Europe, it’s quite difficult to readjust to my solitary Siberian lifestyle. However, now that my wonderful adventure is over and I begin to regain some resemblance of regularity in my life, I will have more time to spend on such activities as updating my blog! So I suppose now is the time to stop neglecting all those pleading emails from my mother and post about my trip. The trip began when my buddy, Jason, teaching in the neighboring Siberian city of Tomsk, met me in Novosibirsk, and the two of us hopped on a train for Ekaturinburg. Here, in the capital of the Ural Mountains, we met our fellow Fulbrightnik, Abbie. The three of us spent three wonderful days hanging out in her apartment and seeing the sights of Ekat. Some of the highlights included an awesome pizza we made using fluffy, crispy pastry dough, visiting the church where the Romanov’s were killed, walking on the frozen, “smelly-dog” river, drinking Jaguar energy/alcohol drinks and then dancing like maniacs around the giant Christmas tree in the ice sculpture city as children slid down man-made hills and disco music blared from the heavens, teaching Abbie’s Russian friends how to play “King’s Cup”, and studying German, with Jason as our teacher, from the book, “German Through Pictures”. After all this, we hopped on another west-bound train which took us across the Urals (although we never saw them and their actual existence is questionable at best) and into the European half of Russia. When we arrived in St. Petersburg we were greeted by the tropical European weather that we were to experience, and cherish, for the rest of our trip. Days of 2 degrees Celsius felt to me like summer in Oklahoma coming from Siberia. In St. Petersburg we were put up by Abbie’s friend, Lauren, who is a Fulbright grantee doing research on artist books and printmaking in the city. She has a sweet flat in the center of Petersburg, just off the main drag, where we stayed for five days. The day we arrived, we also met Olga, another of Abbie’s friends, who is a masters student at the European University in Petersburg. Olga, who was born in Russia but grew up in Cleveland (also Abbie’s home town), greeted us with delicious home-made blini (Russian pancakes). These two wonderful ladies joined our holy trinity and the fabulous five was born, set to smash our way across Europe, leaving nothing but destruction in our wake. During our time in Petersburg we went to many museums including: The Hermitage – the largest and most famous art museum in Russia. It was once the Imperial winter palace. The Russian Museum – basically an amazing art museum that houses many of the most famous works of Russian art. The Nabokov House Museum – As the name implies, it’s where Nabokov used to live… Other fun things we did in Petersburg: ate American fast-food, drank champagne and ate cake in some park late at night on Russian old new year (they changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar decades ago, but still celebrate the old new-year as well as the new one), smoking hooka in Lauren’s apartment (my favorite flavor – two apples), seeing my friend Sybil (a fellow LC Pio), as well as seeing my friend, Yana, who I met in Novosibirsk, making borscht and Jason’s special tuna melts… Yum! It was really great to be back in Petersburg for the first time since I studied there two years ago. It really is such a cool, vibrant city, not to mention full of beautiful buildings, churches, monuments, etc. Our journey out of Russia and into the land of banana milk and honey began with a sleepy-eyed, early morning flight to Amsterdam. As soon as we landed we could feel the difference between Russia and Europe. Everything there felt more familiar: people spoke English, they were friendly and helpful, and they even smiled! Amsterdam was beautiful, clean, and cute almost to the point that it felt like being on a movie set or in some artificial fantasy world. Factor in the various forms of diversion and entertainment available in the city and it truly felt like Disneyland for adults. The greatest thing about our time in Amsterdam was the great amount of bicycle riding that accompanied it! Never have I seen a city with so many damn bicycles and with such a developed system of bike lanes! Renting bikes was an obvious measure for our crew. Cruising around aimlessly on bikes through one of the most beautiful cities in the world, blasting music from Lauren’s portable ipod blaster – this was heaven for a boy who, after four years of biking everyday, hadn’t sat in the saddle since leaving the U.S. in August. Other highlights of Amsterdam were the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijkes Museum, the Sex Museum, the Cat Museum, making burritos, drinking tasty beers, and listening to Dutch. Our next stop was the German capital of Berlin, a city which I had heard so much about from many of my friends. Needless to say, it lived up to the hype. The night that we arrived in Berlin, we checked in to the hostel, threw down our bags, and rushed out to catch the band Animal Collective play a show just down the street (the hostel had been chosen because of its strategic location near the venue). The show was sweet once we were able to push our way to the front. It was really cool to see one of my favorite bands playing in Berlin, but I was a bit disappointed by the level of energy and excitement in the crowd. I guess hipsters in Germany are more or less the same as those back home! Berlin, more than any other city we visited, captivated me with its rich and conflicted history and sparked an unforseen interest in German history and language. Jason and I visited one especially extensive German history museum where we stayed for two hours, yet when we had to leave to meet the rest of the group I hadn’t even made it out of the middle ages! Berlin also differed from the other cities in that it offered so much more to do and see than we could have possibly accomplished in our five days in the city. Although I think all of the best museums we saw were in Berlin, there were still many things we didn’t get to see, or that we had to cut short due to time. The Jewish Museum was perhaps the most interestingly designed and put-together museum I’ve ever been in. There were so many different exhibits, in many different mediums, with all kinds of interactive stuff, and cool art installations. It was a shame that we only saw about half of it. We also saw an incredibly extensive exhibit of the works of German artist Paul Klee, which I really enjoyed, and another museum, the name of which I forget, whose charm is now escaping my ability to describe it… We also hit up some cool bars, book/art stores, delicious Indian food, and did our normal amount of wandering. At the end of our stay in Berlin our two wonderful companions from Petersburg left us, and the original triumvirate continued onward and eastward into the Czech Republic. I don’t have a whole lot to say about Prague, except that it’s a very beautiful and charming city that reminds me a lot of the baltic capitals I visited a few years ago, only much larger and prettier. The Prague castle is one of the more impressive structures I’ve seen in my life. That being said, beyond the aesthetic beauty of the Czech capital, I found little to be impressed with. It’s just too much of a tourist city, with a tourist atmosphere to appeal strongly to me. I think it’s definitely worth visiting, but I don’t think it takes more than two or three days to do. One of the cool things about our stay in Prague is that we sampled a lot of traditional Czech food, which includes lots of dumplings and sauerkraut, as well as roasted duck! Yum… Prague marked the end of our European vacation, but not the end of our trip. All of us Fulbrighters in Russia were required to attend a conference in Moscow at the end of the month, so the three of us set off together for Moscow in a most roundabout way. Because flights from Prague to Moscow were so outrageously expensive, we decided to take a train to Vienna, where we had just enough time to get breakfast at the famous “Central Cafe”, where I guess a lot of famous people used to dine (Trotsky), and then caught our flight to Moscow. In Moscow it was nice to see the other English teachers and researchers and hear how their lives in Russia were treating them. My time with my wonderful travel buddies was capped with an evening at a wonderful restaurant, payed for by Fulbright, full of singing, laughing, spiked punch, and all kinds of antics. After an entire month of living so closely with these amazing people, sharing all kinds of new and interesting experiences, sharing so many inside jokes, sharing a level of understanding that is only possible when speaking with other Americans, it has been tough to come back to Novosibirsk. I believe I’ll soon readjust, especially once I become busy again with work and study. So all in all, it was a sweet trip, one of the most fun and exciting months of my life, and I’m sure that I’ve left out a ton of things in my recap, but oh well… I’ll try to get some pics up soon as well…
