Bucket List

I don’t even really know what to say about possibly the best five days of my life. Russia has been a dream forever and now I’ve actually been there. It still doesn’t feel real.

Our trip was planned to start off at 5:30 am on Thursday. I got up at 4:30 and I’m not going to lie, I briefly considered just sleeping and not going. Okay, I wasn’t really going to do that, but 4:30 is too early for people to wake up. I had completely packed the night before, so all I had to do was grab my bags and walk out the door and onto the bus. We had two guides, Svetlana (who works for the travel agency) and Misha (he works for University of Tartu). We headed to Narva, a border city of Estonia, by about 5:45. I slept the entire way and then we had to start the process of border checks. From what I remember, we didn’t have to get out of the bus in Narva. The border officers took our passports inside the office and stamped them, then checked them again on the bus. Once we crossed into Russia, we had to get off the bus and go through the border check individually. He looked over my passport quickly and stamped it. It took about half an hour for everyone to be checked and then we were headed to the town of Pushkin (or Tsar's’ village) for our first stop. Again, I slept mostly the entire way, which is pretty good because my Iphone is completely dead.

We waited about twenty minutes for our guide to see the museum inside the former Imperial Lyceum, the former school for noble boys. During our tour we had to wear booties, something I don’t think I’ve ever had to do in a museum before. Our tour was short, about forty minutes, but the name Alexander Pushkin was said about a million times (This may be an exaggeration). Did you know Alexander Pushkin is the greatest Russian poet? I do, because i was told this a million times (This may be an exaggeration). Pushkin went to school there from ages twelve through eighteen and wrote on of his earliest famous poems. The tour consisted of seeing the classrooms, the dorms and some of his report cards.

The school is right next to Catherine’s Palace, which took my breath away. With its white and blue accents and golden domes, the palace is very Russian. Our group was split into two groups of about thirty. We had earpieces and the guide spoke into a mic for this tour. We had this kind of thing on my Europe trip, but this time they actually worked. The guide explained what the rooms were used for, who lived in the palace, and what parts of the palace were restored after being partially destroyed during the war. It was during this part of the trip I realized how many people in our group didn’t really know how to behave in a museum. Someone actually reached out and touched the gold leafing on the wall during the tour and the guide had to tell her not to touch anything. I was horrified. I remember being very little and my dad taking my sister and I to an art museum we went to often. One of the museum workers told my dad he had to hold my hand because I was so young and might touch something. I remember my dad being mad because he knew I was old enough to behave in a museum, even though I couldn’t have been older than six. I’m honestly confused how people can get to this age without knowing not to touch something in a museum. During the tour, we saw the Amber room, the most famous room in the palace. I loved the fact the floors and some of the furniture were inlaid wood, which I think is gorgeous. The palace was a great place to start off our trip. After the tour, we had about a half hour to walk around and look at the gardens.

We then headed to St. Petersburg. On the way there, about forty minutes, our tour guide for St. Petersburg explained the history of the city and Russia in general. People were sleeping, which was fine and totally understandable, but also talking pretty loudly, which was incredible rude. Here’s a quick tip folks: just because someone doesn’t speak your language, they can still hear you talking. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this in class, where people seem to feel free to blab on for the entire class. We got to St. Petersburg and did not face as much traffic as most of us anticipated. Misha had told us the drive from the start of the street to the hostel, about three miles, had taken them over an hour before. We got pretty lucky it only took about fifteen minutes. Stepping off the bus was a sensory overload. I think I forgot how calm and uncrowded Tartu is because the sudden noise of traffic was overwhelming at first. Just walking through the crowds to get to our hostel was making me feel a little stressed. Once we divided up in groups and picked rooms, we quickly put our things in our room and headed out. Another exchange student at Tartu is from St. Petersburg, so she drove to the city and walked around the town with us. It was on that walk we saw the Church of Spilled Blood, something on my bucket list. We walked to the river and took some really nice pictures with the sunset. Then we grabbed a quick dinner, where I was already falling asleep at the table. St. Petersburg is famous for the bridges that open for passing boats, but this happens at about 1 am, and I was just too tired and cranky to stay up for another four/five hours. I headed back to the hostel with some people from our dinner group and we walked back quickly because we all just wanted to get into bed and fall asleep. I read for a few minutes until the other girls got back and then proceed to pass out the minute my head hit the table.

We were supposed to wake up at 7:45 but when the alarm woke us up at 7:45, we realized our mistake. We had forgotten when Egle set the alarm that we needed to adjust the clock to Moscow time (an hour ahead of Tartu). So it was actually 8:45, fifteen minutes before we were supposed to check out, leave our bags in the storage room, and meet in the lobby with the group to go to breakfast. I immediately went into high school mode (when I would really give myself about twenty minutes to get ready) and got ready as fast as I could. I managed to get ready in less than ten minutes.

We headed to the cafe where we had a planned menu breakfast. We had this rice milk porridge thing (which I enjoyed since I usually feel nauseous in the morning and it settled my stomach) and some pancakes. Our bus was stuck in traffic, so we browsed in a bookstore until it was able to get to us. We then took a really nice bus tour through the city. This time, the guide told people they couldn’t talk when she was talking. I saw some people rolling their eyes and snickering, but I was happy she had stood up to them. I wanted to hear what she was saying about all the incredible places we were driving by. We occasionally got out to take pictures, once at the Church of Spilled Blood (which was beautiful), and then at the river. We got out for longer when we went inside St. Isaac’s cathedral and walked in the park to see the Peter the Great monument.

After a lunch at the same cafe we went to breakfast at, we drove to the Hermitage art museum or the Winter palace. Again, we were split into two groups for the tour. We were told we didn’t have to stay with the tour guide or we could go with the guide and then explore after. I chose to stay with the guide because the hermitage is huge and I knew she would take us to the most important pieces of art. My Louvre experience involved wandering around for an hour just trying to find one piece of art, so I didn’t really want to repeat that experience. The rooms were really stunning and we saw beautiful art of all kinds. The guide explained which rooms had been restored and what they had been used for when the imperial family lived in the palace.  At one point me and another student quietly hummed, in a loud room, Once Upon a December from Anastasia because one of the rooms reminded us of the movie. Again, people were touching things. One guy actually scraped the chair in the room, for the museum worker, across the floor so he could take a picture sitting in it. Other people in our group laughed like it was a funny joke, but to me it was just embarrassing. People also felt free to sit in the chair that would be in the room for the museum worker. This wasn’t as bad as touching walls or scraping the floor, but still…

After the tour we had about two hours to explore the city before we had to meet at our hostel. We got a coffee with the Tartu student from St. Petersburg and then went to the Starbucks to get some really cute thromuses that look like nesting dolls. I wanted to get my dad a mug with St. Petersburg since he collects them, but they were out.

We had to be at the hostel by 9:00 pm but we got there early, so we went to the small market next door to get food and drinks for the night train. Me and another girl finished before the others, so we walked back first. A drunk guy was following us and there was a small dark alley we had to walk through, so I ran and the other girl did the same. We made into the hostel, but the guy followed us. We sat down because we had turned in our keys in the morning and had no where to go. He stared at us and tried to talk, but I think he was too drunk to talk in English. I told the girl we should get our bags from the storage room and we got up to get them. I think he thought we were going to our rooms, so he left. People were late of course, so we didn’t end up leaving for the train station until about 9:25. It wasn’t that big of a deal though because the train station was about two minutes from our hostel. 

We got on the train almost immediately. I took a night train from Paris to Florence before, but we had enclosed rooms with six beds. This time, there were no closed rooms it was just an open car. There were sort of rooms of four beds each, but there were no doors, and then on the side of the car there were beds on the bottom and top. We had almost an entire car to our group except for six beds. Our tour guide asked the passengers if they would be willing to switch and they did, as far as I know. I had one of the sort of rooms with three other people. While we talked, I verified with Svetlana the proper pronunciation of my favorite gymnast's, Aliya Mustafina, last name. Ryszard helped us make our beds and I went to bed pretty quickly. The bathrooms were disgusting, as they usually are, so I just slept in my clothes. I was awoken at about 5:45 am by the Russian car attendant yelling in my faceNo, not terrifying at all. She startled all of us and Ryszard told us she was saying the bathroom was going to be closed in forty minutes because we were close to Moscow. I changed my top and threw on some quick makeup. It took about another hour to get Moscow, so I got a little more sleep while I could.

We arrived in Moscow and got on the bus with our tour guide. We drove to the place where we were having breakfast, we had another bus tour. We saw Sparrow Hills, the Moscow State University, Victory park and triumphal Arch in Kutuzovsky prospekt, and Russian Government buildings. We then got off the bus to see the Kremlin to see the Cathedral Square, Ivan the Great Bell Tower, Senate building, Tsar Bell, and Tsar Cannon. No tour guides were allowed inside so we were on our own. We got to the square just as the military parade was starting in the Cathedral Square. It was really neat with all sorts of marching and horses. There are videos on youtube if you want to watch, I think it’s worth the time. We only had about an hour at the Kremlin and the parade took about twenty minutes. We couldn’t go into the cathedrals during the parade but once it ended, we saw them as quickly as possible.

We arrived at the hotel at about 1:30pm but there were some issues with checking in. I’m not sure if we were early or if they were trying to move us around so all our rooms were on one floor, but we still weren't checked in by 2:15. Lunch was already paid for at the buffet but we couldn’t go until we had a room key, so Svetlana had them give her a key and they let us get lunch. While we were in line for the buffet, a group of giggly teenagers (about 14-16) tried to cut into the line. At this point we were all hungry and tired, so this was not going to fly. They tried to butter up one girl in line and distract her so they could sneak into the line, but we all squeezed together in line so there were no gaps. Teenagers are annoying in every country.

After lunch, we received our room keys. After resting for about an hour, me and two others headed out to explore a little. We took the metro to the park near the Red Square to have dinner. There is a mall under the park, so there were quite a few fast food places. It was already getting dark and we were tired, so we went back to the hotel.

We had to be in the lobby by 10am, but there was another paid breakfast at 9am if we wanted to eat. I got up at about 8am and watched some BBC and CNN news while I got ready. After eating, our bus tour started again. We drove to the Cathedral of the Christ the Saviour (which some girls couldn’t go into because of their short skirts) and the Red Square. Seeing the St. Basil's Cathedral is something that is on my bucket list and I still can’t believe I’ve seen it. The Red Square was decorated for victory day. We had about an hour, so we took pictures and picked up some souvenirs. We got back on the bus and saw some more sites. We had about an hour of free time on Old Arbat street to grab lunch and look around. I walked to the Starbucks to get my dad another Moscow cup, as I had broken the other one I had gotten him the day before when I threw my bag down on the ground. After lunch, we went to the grocery store to get food for the night train. I had gotten some food on Arbat street but I still needed a few small things. We had a half hour but I was done within ten minutes, so I got back on the bus and waited for the others to finish. I was looking out the window when I noticed a group of drunk people about fifty feet away from the bus in the small park. At first a small fight broke out after two guys started to fight and other girl started to fight one of the guys. I wouldn’t really say it was fighting, since everyone was so drunk they could hardly stand. I thought it was over but then I saw the girl kick the guy (who had sat on a bench) and hit him in the face. She then sat down next to him and he, very calmly, proceeded to hit her face against the bench and flip her over the bench. No one else in the park even flinched but the few people on the bus were horrified.

After that experience, we headed to the train station. This time, we were in two groups of about thirty in two different cars, so this time there were strangers were with us. The train was set up as the other. There was a Russian man sitting in the bed in the next section over and he kept trying to talk to us. Ryszard was the only one of us he was talking to that could speak Russian, so he kept having to translate. The man was sort of drunk but not overtly, he was just very talkative. Ryszard told us he would tell the man to not talk to us if we felt uncomfortable but he wasn’t really being harmful, just kind of annoying. Right before he got off the train, he told Ryszard he worked for a Russians spy company, so we had a laugh at that obvious lie. Ryszard made our beds for us again, and I was asleep by midnight. Morning came too soon, but at least this time the bathroom was less horrible. After getting ready, we got off the train and where in Pskov to visit the university. The EU students on the trip were able to get free visas because we were visiting the university. After a short presentation about the university, we were split into groups and walked around the city. We had three hours, which was a lot for a place so small. We walked around the town and visited the kremlin there. There is a really nice lake near by and the weather was wonderful to walk around in. We met back at the bus at 1 and went to the grocery store again to get food for the bus ride back to Tartu.

This bus ride was very short compared to the ride to Russia. It took about an hour and a half to get the border. We went through the border check but this time there was slight problem. The woman looked at my passport for a long time and kept looking back at me. She said something to me in Russian, pointing to my passport, but I had no idea what she was saying. I pointed to my hair and asked if I should take it down (my hair in the picture is down) but she spoke as much English as I do Russian. Luckily, Ryszard was behind me in line so I called him over to translate. He said she wanted to see another ID. The first ID I had in the front of my wallet was my military ID, but I figured that might not be the best ID to show. I gave her my drivers license and I guess that pleased her. We then had to go through the border check in Estonia but that took a lot less time. It was about a two hour ride back to Tartu. Of course when we got to our dorm, the elevator was broken. I live on the sixth floor, so this was not the best news. Once I got to my room I started to post pictures and skyped with my mom. I was tired and wanted to sleep, but it was only 7pm and I didn’t want to go to bed really early and then wake up at 5am the next morning. I think I’m still exhausted!

It was a really incredible trip and I hope to be able to go back to St. Petersburg with my mom, who has always wanted to go. There were a lot of things I didn’t have the chance to see, the most important being Alexander’s palace. It was the favorite palace of the last Tsar and where the Romanov’s were living when they were arrested. It was too far to go to, so hopefully when I get a chance to go back I can see it.

And if anyone is wondering, I watched Anastasia last night :)