While in Russia, Isabel and I made a few random trips outside of Piter.
It started with my unattainable goal of viewing Dom Sutyagina. A house created/built illegally, 13 stories high, out of wood. By one man, rumoured to have killed someone. I mentioned it around some Russians, and they thought I was crazy. They didn't want me to go because it was ugly and made Russians look bad. I wanted to go. I looked into flights and trains and buses. Information is not easy to come by in Russia. I brought up this idea in class one day and a small Spanish girl said she wanted to go. I thought she must have misunderstood me. It's just a big old pile of wood. But she understood and wanted to go. Then I came across a news article. The government had torn it down. I was devastated.
But we had forged a friendship based on larks already.
On Valentine's Day (for no real reason), we went to Novgorod. Novgorod is an amazing place. It has an old kremlin, complete with church and walls and what not. It also has a huge "wooden museum". These are places where they have collected old examples of wooden Russian architecture. As we were there during the snow (probably a foot on the ground), it was quite gorgeous. There was a cross country skiing race we called into on the way.
Off the bus we headed into town to find a place to stay. We wanted coffee and finally stopped somewhere that looked promising. It cost about 50 cents... That should have been a sign. It tasted like oatmeal water. I quite enjoyed it, but Isa was less than impressed. We found a real coffee shop, like a REAL one. Organic and free trade and all that nonsense. We had better coffee there and stuck some pins in the map on the wall.
At the Kremlin, we saw a pile of junk and some construction workers piling it on in the snow. On closer inspection, it seemed to be a music school. There were old chairs and a couple busted up pianos. Also some neat canvases with basic paintings of accordions. I had to have those. We chatted with some cute workers and made our way.
Not really anywhere to eat in Novgorod. We found one place and had a satisfactory meal and a beer. The next day we had to walk in the snow to the train station, me carrying these canvases...with no gloves. We got lost, and I was in quite the temperament. We made it, I did not get frostbite. Isa did not hate me.
We lived to see Staraya Ladoga and somewhere else I can't place right now.
(side story: met this guy in a batch of new americans that came in right before i left. just now remembering that we hooked up. anyway, idiot. a group was going to Novgorod, but there is Veliky Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod.... he went by himself....to the wrong one...hours and hours past the right one.)
