T-Shirts? In RUSSIA? (4/28/2002)

Hi Everyone,

The ironies never cease to amaze me. Several days after I had rejoiced over spring's arrival with my "Springtime for Putin and Petersburg" email, the heavens decided to dump about six inches of fresh powder on the city. Luckily, though, it cleared up within the following couple days, and we were more than glad to get back to our springtime doings.

As blue skies and vegetation become more pervasive, St. Petersburg has blossomed from damp, bleak and dormant to warm, colorful and lively. Slowly the gardens which are closed for the long winters are opening up. The city seems to have more Greek statues than Athens. It is as light at 9 p.m. as at 10 a.m., and we gain daylight by several minutes each day. We have even persuaded teachers to hold several classes outside. Life, as they say, is beautiful. In a related story, we leave in less than two weeks.Our group has one excursion left, a three-day trip to the Pskov region this Tuesday-Thursday. The itinerary doesn't look particularly diverse, though: church, monestary, church, monestary, wander around economically desperate city, church, monestary, PUSHKIN'S ESTATE (poet Aleksander Pushkin is as revered in Russia, as Shakespeare in Stradford-upon-Avon or Mozart in Salzburg, and no I am not exaggerating), church, monestary, and talking about Ted Lilly's -- oops, Derek Lowe's no-hitter.

Our last two Petersburg excursions took us to Peterhoff (ever seen fountains? No you haven't) and Tsarskoye Selo, two of the several royal palaces that circle the city. Despite the fact that their respective massive gardens and fountains were still hibernating, the palaces themselves are breathtaking. If anything, however, they prove how far removed the tsars were from reality -- people through the ELEVEN time-zones under their autonomy were starving while they huddled up in rooms made of malachite, amber, marble, or whatever. Not to sympathize with the bloodthirsty Bolsheviks, but even the Romanov aire makes one realize why there was a Revolution. (The results of which, as we saw, were rulers who hid themselves from reality while people in TWELVE time-zones under their control starved.)

On that note, three comrades (heh heh) and I last week journeyed overnight to Moscow for one last look around the sprawling stolitsa (capital). Since he was closed for inventory (?!?!?!) last time, we got our glimpse inside communism's holy sepulchre, Lenin's Red Square mausoleum. As if the aura of simply STANDING in Red Square isn't indescribable enough, the notion of walking through a dimly-lit tomb while staring in silence at a pickled dictator is beyond eerieness. No cameras or backpacks are allowed in (do they have anywhere to keep them? Of course not. Why? This is RUSSIA!). You may not stop. You may not talk. You may not chuckle. Yes, I am serious. After exiting the tomb, where you spend about 90 seconds, you file behind it to see the headstone/busts of Big Shot Commies (Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov, Kalinin, Chernenko, Steinbrenner, and some others I can't remember). Though these graves would be intimidating on their own, they are rather anti-climactic after a run-in with pickled Lenin. And take it as you will, fresh flowers lay on Josef Stalin's tomb.

The next two weeks promise to be hectic -- seeing those last few sites, eating at those last few cafes, finishing papers and studying for finals. Then comes May 9 (Victory Day comes a day late here -- the Russians had to have their own WWII treaty), and we fly out on the 11th. I'll try to send off a final wrapup before then.

Hope all is well in your corner of the world. Keep me updated.

Matt