Kaliningrad

If this entry ever gets posted to the blog, it will represent a huge success or maybe better described, a series of small victories and everlasting determination. It will also mean that I will be able to transfer pictures from my laptop to the newly purchased flash drive thing to some computer so that you can all see my brilliant photography skills. It will also mean that my mom will finally get a copy of the pictures from Maine which have been sitting on my camera/computer for nearly 2 months. Sorry about the delay.

We just returned from a 4 day trip to Kaliningrad which in my simplest explanation is the Russian version of Alaska, as in it is part of the country, but does not touch the rest of country sharing its borders with Latvia, Poland, and the Baltic Sea. It has this insanely interesting history, which unfortunately I only partly understand as a result of all the explanations being, you guessed it, in Russian. It used to be part of Prussia until the end of WWII when Prussia was split into three parts, 2 given to Poland, and 1 given to the Soviet Union. Then it existed for a good long time as part of the USSR (interestingly enough- foreigners were not allowed into Kaliningrad before 1991) and then when the Soviet Union dissolved, it became an oblast of the Russian Federation. I just wanted to know why it didn’t become an independent country like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania but the answer to that is apparently that because it wasn’t independent before it became a part of the Soviet Union, it shouldn’t be independent after the Soviet Union.

We flew in and out of Moscow which would have been convenient except our flights were at the worst possible times considering we had to make the 4 hr drive from Yaroslavl. We left Yaroslavl at around 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning in order to make it in time for our 7:30 a.m. flight out of Moscow. The driver was supposed to begin picking us all up at midnight but apparently he decided to do things by his own schedule and only showed up at the first person’s house around 1:15. But we made it to the airport in time, thanks to his VERY fast driving and then we caught our 2 hr. plane to Kaliningrad. We landed in very rainy weather, which continued for almost the entirety of our time there.

Tuesday:
We landed at 8:30 Kaliningrad time (one hour behind Moscow) and took cabs to the hotel. Then we sat around for a long time while they debated whether they would let us check in before the 12:00 check-in time. Then we checked in and Kristin and I decided to try to find the Museum of Amber. This involved sitting on random buses to get downtown and then wandering around forever, through very large puddles, and walking in a huge circle so that we ended up where we started, and then finally finding the museum. 90% of the world’s amber is produced/found/mined in the Kaliningrad Oblast so there were lots of both historical information and examples as well as this display of some annual amber art contest conducted in Kaliningrad. Then we got lost again trying to get back to the hotel, finally got on the correct bus, but since we weren’t really paying attention accidentally rode two stops past our hotel so then we had to walk back more through the puddles. It was sort of a rough start to the trip. Then I ate dinner (which consisted of a carrot, an apple, bread, cheese, and chocolate) and went to bed at 7. I am going to blame this on the fact that I didn’t really sleep the night before when we were speeding from Yaroslavl to Moscow. It could also be related to the fact that I am sort of a loon.

Wednesday:
Ate breakfast at the hotel, although the blini were already gone by the time we got to the buffet. Everyone else was disappointed. I was not. I do not understand the obsession with blini. Yes, they are good, but they are not THAT good. My less than love for them may relate to the fact that the last time Margarita made blini for us, she made 12. That is a lot. I guess they are not as filling as pancakes, but they are pretty close. Then she ate 2 of them and told me to eat the remaining 10 of them. I ate 5 and ran away to my room and then hurriedly left for school so she wouldn’t have time to yell at me about not eating enough. Anyways, on Wednesday we took an 8 hour bus ride/tour with a guide. The first 2 hours were just driving around Kaliningrad. We made one stop at the old cathedral on the island in the center of the city. It was built in the 13th century when three different villages were located on the land that is now the city of Kaliningrad. It is also the location of Immanuel Kant’s tomb as he was born, taught, and died in Kaliningrad or Königsberg as it was known during the Prussian time. Then the remaining 6 hours of our tour were spent at the Куршкая Коса (Kurshkaya Kosa) which was the first national park in Russia. It is located on this tiny strip of land that separates this fresh water lagoon from the Baltic Sea. We stopped at a scientific research station where they catch thousands of birds per day and tag them with a little ring about one of their legs for tracking purposes and then let them go. While we were there, one of the scientists tagged one smaller bird and also showed us an owl that they had just caught the night before. We also got to hike to the top of one of the big sand dunes and search for shards of amber on the beach, although my searching was unsuccessful.

Also while we were driving back from the park to the hotel we got pulled over by the police (дпс is what their vests say, I think. I’m not sure what it stands for. I would guess that д is движение which means “traffic.”) Anyways, for some reason the driver of our van thought he was being generous and kind when he found a radio station playing strictly American rap. Like the entire hit list of 50 Cent, Eminem, and various other atrocious rappers. Also, they don’t bleep out the bad words because I guess the Russians are not expected to object to words such as motherf**cker and n**gger being repeated over and over again. So while the song “I’m a motherf**cking P.I.M.P.” is playing at a fairly loud volume we were flagged to the side of the road. I have never actually seen a policecar pull over a vehicle. Mostly policemen just stand by the side of the road and flag over whomever they want. So this conversation between policeman and driver occurred while “motherf**cking P.I.M.P” is still playing fairly loud on the radio. I can’t explain how strange this whole encounter was. Then our driver was reprimanded for 20 minutes because of something wrong with the headlights. Also, they played “Who Let The Dogs Out.” It was awesome.

Thursday:
I took a bus back to the coast (about 1.5 hr) to a very small village called Cветлогорск (Svetlogorsk). It was a little resort village that had clearly closed up for the winter season, but it was very nice to be out of the hustle and bustle of a city. It was also very interesting, because for some unknown reason the village and all of its buildings survived from the Prussian era so it looks like a quaint German town. Combed the beach some more and in a moment of inattention was flooded by an incoming wave which soaked the bottom half of my jeans for the rest of the day. Saw what is rumored to be the largest sundial in Europe although I couldn’t figure out how to read it and I think it was inaccurate anyways. Then I spent the afternoon back in Kaliningrad at the World Ocean Museum. Buying tickets turned out to be a nightmare as there is the little slot for your money but you are expected to speak to the cashier through this glass divider thing, except I just end up mumbling like a loon and then finally resorted to pointing at the list of exhibits and the one I wanted to see. The cashier was not impressed with me. The whole museum is housed on three huge boats in the harbor (well two boats and one submarine.) One of the boats was нельзя (forbidden) as the woman explained to me so I spent the afternoon on both the submarine and this huge Soviet scientific research vessel with exhibits about the history of sea exploration and scientific research. I feel like being unable to read any of the information provided in the museum is not really as bad as you would think it to be. It just means you get to focus on the actual things on display and you never have to feel bad about going as fast or as slow as you want through specific parts of the exhibit which are more or less interesting than other parts. Also, I am obsessed with maps in other languages. Because I can still understand them.

Friday:
This was our last day in Kaliningrad so I set off to the Museum of Art and History. Somehow I convinced the woman to charge me only 20 roubles (for a student) instead of 40 (for a foreign student), because I just pulled out my Yaroslavl Student ID and tried to explain that “they” told me I only had to pay 20 roubles for entry. She too was not really impressed with my speaking ability, but my determination finally forced her to charge me the 20 roubles. Then I proceeded to wander about the exhibits of various ancient Prussian swords and arrow heads and pots and vases and other cool stuff. I was one of the only people in the exhibits so the whole time I was there all of the museum staff (mostly older women) were gossiping like crazy about something. I’m not really sure what they were talking about but whenever I would approach them, they would suddenly dim their voices (I know that is the incorrect English construction but you should all understand the concept). I wanted to go tell them that they should just continue at normal volume. Then I went and bought this flash drive at a store I had seen earlier when Kristin and I wandered forever lost about the city on Tuesday. I am sure you can buy them in Yaroslavl, I’m just not sure where the computer stores are, so my souvenir from Kaliningrad is this flash drive. It will probably be more useful than some large amber necklace. Then I tried to go back to the third ship of the ocean museum because it is about the history of space exploration. Four different Soviet astronauts were born in Kaliningrad, which makes it the only single place in the world to have that many people in space (that is a very poorly constructed English sentence). Also, this is completely unrelated, but the first woman in space was born in Yaroslavl. But the woman at the cashier place (she was the same one from the day before) just gave me an even more exasperated look, said нельзя again and I just ran away. I bet she was expecting me to come back again today. So I wandered back to the really old cathedral and paid for the museum entry there and got to see old pictures of the cathedral and this huge collection of money from different countries around the world. Included in the collection was a U.S. state quarter from Georgia. And then the death mask of Kant, which is just sort of alarming and strange. Then I took a bus back to the hotel and we left for the airport, concluding our mini vacation in Kaliningrad.

---Now I am back in Yaroslavl. Because of our plane being delayed, I didn’t get dropped off at the apartment until 4 a.m. (it was supposed to be closer to 2 a.m.), so today I haven’t really done anything. I ate a huge Margarita breakfast which was appreciated after dining for the past few days on bread, cheese, and chocolate. I think Margarita would be appalled by that diet, so I just told her that we ate well at various different restaurants in Kaliningrad. I guess what seems most striking is the fact that I feel like I’ve returned to some sort of “home.” It’s strange that this completely foreign city now feels semi-comfortable and safe to me. So while it’s nice to travel and see different parts of the country (semi-planning 4 days in Мурманск at the end of October on our second fall break), it’s also nice to have some place to come back to where it’s all routine and comfortable.

--My latest fear/worry regarding life in Russia. I think it is time I started buying things at the kiosks at the street, mainly because I am tired of finding grocery stores where I can buy a chocolate bar and a bottle of water. But the kiosks are so scary. Everything just sits there behind the glass and everything depends on my ability to formulate a correct Russian sentence to express what I need. Also, related to this is my fear of shoe shopping. I need to buy boots (and eventually some sort of warm winter coat). But these seem like very important purchases where I will not be allowed to only say да or нет. I will keep you all posted.

In the meantime, enjoy all the pictures…