Door Languages: The horrible fates of Russian poets and princesses

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Sorry that it has been such a horribly long time since I have written here. Things have been busy (in a good way, for the most part)! Of course, class has been nuts, we have tons and tons of homework every week. The worst is when I think I've gotten everything done over the weekend and think I'll have a few days break to relax, but then we always get our tremendous grammar work packet on Mondays, so my hopes are always in vain.

One of the reasons that I haven't written for a while is that I didn't have much to say, considering that we went to the Russian Museum like three times and, as beautiful as some of the art is, it's not really beauty that can be imparted over the internet. We saw exhibits on Russian Orthodox iconography and works of unknown artists throughout Russian history. Beyond that, given that much of the art is portraits of the Romanovs, the Russian Imperial family, a good portion of our tours were history lessons and in an effort to keep this blog post interesting, I won't share that here. If you want to know all about the Russian royal family, especially the tragic lives of all its women (our guide's favorite phrase: This [female relation to some Czar] also had an unhappy fate), let me know and I'll tell you all about it. Like many of the museums in St. Petersburg, the Russian museum is housed in several former palaces, one of which, the Mikhailovksy Palace, is rumored to be haunted, since the czar Pavel I was murdered there. The Mikhailovsky Palace was also converted into a school for military officers during the Soviet Union. Although a lot of the palace was changed to make room for classrooms, gyms, libraries, and dorms, some of the murals, especially the painted ceilings, were left intact. The photos from that time have so much cognitive dissonance - stark military trappings in this luxurious palace. The Russian Museum certainly has their hands full with the restoration. Most of the palace was still closed off, but we got to peek into one of the closed off areas and it was not pretty!

Inside the Mikhailovsky Palace. All the women on these portraits married horrible men who beat them, as far as I understood, except for Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia like a boss.

The ceiling murals that stayed in place while the palace was a military school.

So besides learning about the tragic fates of the Russian dynasty, this month I also went to an excellent concert put on by the group Серебряная Свадьба, Serebryanaya Svadba, which literally translates to Silver Wedding (could also mean Silver Anniversary, I suppose). They're a cabaret group, whose songs have plots and tell stories, which they acted out with props like puppets and costumes. Besides being incredibly fun to watch act out, their music is lovely, a combination of rock, jazz, Russian folk, and even klezmer. One of my favorite songs of the show was about the death of Alexander Pushkin, the great Russian poet. There's a Russian saying, "Pushkin is our everything" and if you want to ask someone who their favorite author is, then you have to specify "besides Pushkin," otherwise you will learn nothing. But the premise of the song is that Pushkin's relatives are trying to convince him not to go to Chornaya rechka, 'Black River', the name of the place in St. Petersburg where he died in a duel. On an unrelated note, what is it with Russian and German literature and duels?! It's like you can't participate in either literary tradition without having been injured or dying in a duel or making a duel a central plot point in some novel. Anyways, the group invited almost half the audience up on stage to act as Pushkin's relatives, begging him not to go to his death, "Black river, black pistol, please, Sasha, don't go, don't go to the Black river" (Sasha is the Russian nickname for Alexander). There's a metro stop named Chronaya rechka, so now whenever I'm riding the subway, I get the song stuck in my head :)

Serebryanaya svadba with...

...costumes and accordions...

...and puppets, too!

Pushkin's 'relatives' trying to convince him not to go to his duel and his death.

As part of the program, we also had an excursion to the Peter and Paul fortress, which was built in 1703 basically as the beginnings of the modern city. Key facts:

The fortress was never used in active military defense.
The fortress was a prison where many political revolutionaries, including the authors Dostoyevsky and Gorky, and many Octobrists, were imprisoned.
The members of the Russian Imperial family are buried in a cathedral on the grounds. Peter the First, who commanded the construction of St. Petersburg and led massive reforms to Europeanize Russia, gets special attention.
It is built in a very strange shape.
It is sort of a creepy place.

The layout of the Peter and Paul fortress

The placards above the entranceway to the Peter and Paul fortress are actually wood carvings.

There is also a museum dedicated to St. Petersburg on the grounds of the fortress which visited as well. That was a blast. I loved all the old artifacts - dresses, movie posters, old school coffee makers - and we learned that the most expensive office space in St. Petersburg is the office in the cupola of the central bookstore, Dom Knigi, which was originally built to be the headquarters of Singer sewing machines. The more you know...

The Dom Knigi bookstore on Nevsky Prospect. Disclaimer: I didn't take this picture, I found it on Google (but I really like it!)

Finally, in honor of Thanksgiving, I figured that I would share my favorite Russian food with you! Priyaniki!! These are essentially gingerbread cookies, but even better. First of all, they are fluffier than gingerbread cookies, almost like bread or muffins in some cases. Second, they come in lots of different flavors - chocolate, honey, mint - so you never get bored of them. Priyanij is actually the Russian word meaning 'spicy' or 'spiced.' but not 'hot' spicy. I think of this word as describing the flavor of Christmas perfectly. It means everything full of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg. Yummy!

I didn't take this picture either, it came from some Russian cooking website. Usually priyaniki don't have quite so much frosting.

Well, this ended up being quite a long post! I hope that makes up for not writing anything for so long. If you have any questions, feel free to email me! I love hearing from everybody and knowing that people are actually reading this would give me much more motivation to write more often! Also, in case you didn't know, I will be heading home to Buffalo for three weeks around Christmas. While I'm sad that I won't be spending New Years in Russia, I'm looking forward to going home and if you'll be in Western New York around that time, please get in touch so that we can catch up! I'll leave you with some of my favorite pictures from around the city.