Hold On to the Rail

Tonight in Springfield was the second time I set my feet on an ice skating rink and tried to balance my body weight with zig-zag movements. The first time was in St. Petersburg after midnight. So, in your mind you are probably already begging me not to compare these two experiences. But I will, anyway.

I would lie if I said that I didn't have any expectations from ice skating in St. Petersburg. I paid the equivalent of $20 to rent skates and buy a ticket and had put the stakes high for the night. Dance music was playing loudly and I felt pumped up and ready to go. Until I fell once, twice, three times.

After a while, my friends and I concluded that this is an alternative club culture for the younger Russian crowd. Upbeat music, fresh outfit combinations, hidden alcohol in the lockers, flirty games and lots of awkward dance movements.

I would lie if I said that I didn't have any expectations from ice skating in Springfield. The cost for both the skates and the actual skating was less than $10 but the poor state of the lobby and broken bathrooms instantly lowered my anticipation to skate. The song "I believe I can fly" by R. Kelly well epitomized the DJ's interesting music choices. Although no one flied, people had fun falling down, throwing themselves at the transparent walls and holding on to the rail. Most charming, of course, were the youngest little guys wearing their black and yellow hockey outfits and racing around swiftly like bullets.

I guess what I tried to say with this comparison is that I am glad my first time ice skating was in Russia, and that it will be really beneficial for the Springfield ice skating rink to hire a new DJ.

Top 5 Photos Taken in Russia

These are my top five pictures I took in Russia during the study abroad program in the Fall.











1. near St. Peter and Paul Fortress
2. Gatchina
3. Tallinn, Estonia
4. Pavlovosk
5. Арка Генерального штаба at Dvortsovaya Square

A Goodbye That Really Counts

I have left a lot of places. I left Bulgaria for the U.S., I left the U.S. for Russia, and now I have to leave Russia for Bulgaria and the U.S. This is my hardest goodbye.



It is the night before my flight tomorrow afternoon—I am packing my luggage, listening to my “no title” music folder on iTunes and suppressing the lump in my throat. I get distracted and start going through my “Russia” pictures. Green picnics and careless walks in welcoming parks, orange, red and yellow seas of falling leafs, frozen lakes with sleeping ducks, unafraid of the snowflakes’ play. I go back to those same sceneries colored by the birds’ songs, the smell of freshly baked peanuts and the invigorating touch of the wind. And I cannot make myself leave this place.

All my other goodbyes were more or less easier. I used to prepare myself mentally for the next adventure and start making plans for my first food choices. But when my father called me 3 hours ago and asked me about my dinner preferences on Sunday, I just shrugged my shoulders and responded, “I don’t really care. Really.”

This goodbye is different because it might be my last goodbye to Pushkin’s motherland. Even if it isn’t, I will never again relive these same moments, that my 21-year-old naïve self experiences now. Naturally, this moment of realization holds true for every single place I visit. Although I leave a piece of my soul everywhere I go, I am now leaving most of it here, in the Soviet-time apartment buildings, in the shapeless Christmas light decorations, in the Neva river and in the hot borsht soup.

Good night, sunshine!

Since the age of eighteen, I have changed several housing situations. In Bulgaria, I lived with my family in a big apartment in Varna and often visited my grandparents in the countryside. In the U.S., I have lived in a dormitory in Massachusetts, shared a house with strangers in New York and had the fortune to stay in the fine apartment of a wonderful alumna. I have never, however, experienced such a complex living situation as the one I am enjoying now in St. Petersburg.

The study abroad program arranges it for all its students to live with host families during their stays in Russia. Home stay, you would think, is as old as the world and shouldn’t have surprised me at all. Well, probably that holds true for home stays in Paris, London or Vienna, but is definitely a new and all-engrossing experience here, in Russia.



My host mother, or so-called hazyaika, is in her 50s. She loves cooking, solving crossroads while sipping her favorite black tea and watching musical TV shows. She also loves putting on make-up, reading educational books and feeding the ducks with her 3-year-old grandson, Ilyosha. In short, she combines so many different nuances of Russian culture that simply knowing her is enough to become fully acquainted with Russia.

Nina Anatolievna prepares my breakfast and dinner, does my laundry, gives me advice about life and blesses me before I set off on a trip. She shows me the gifts she bought for Ilyosha, offers me a warmer scarf or rainproof shoes and tells me stories from her youth. She is a good cook, half-insomniac, very well educated and my personal bridge to smoothly cross from one culture to another or, better yet, from the outside world to my understanding of it.

I will be leaving Russia in a month and know exactly what I will miss most about it. I will miss going to the kitchen, telling my hazyaika, “Good Night,” and her responding softly, “Спокойной ночи, солнышко!”

Alice in the Wonderland needs space

After having lived in St. Petersburg for three months, I thought it just natural to turn around in a city and see tall apartment buildings and streets crawling with seemingly busy passers by. Certainly, I thought it natural to hear the sad engine roaring of past-their-time vehicles. My new comfort zone in Russia, however, had to be disturbed by the efficient organization I found in Helsinki.

I arrived in Helsinki last Tuesday at around 1 p.m. and it was already getting dark outside. It seemed to me that this gloomy weather and lazy drizzling never left my week vacation. Already sitting in the orange Finnish metro with my friend Nikolay, I was slowly getting disillusioned by the empty spaces and rural areas I saw through the window.


“I read in the newspaper that a week ago someone threatened the metro passengers with a bow and arrows,” Nikolay warned me. I thought about the guy who pulled out a gun from his plastic bag in the Russian metro in September.
“Yeah, that sounds crazy,” I said and kept staring at the hypnotizing orange of the metro doors and seats.

On the next morning I was ready for a more eventful day. I took the same orange metro line and decided to get off at a random stop nearby the city center. I had never felt more like Alice in the Wonderland before. I had entered some mini land where the streets were mini, and the buses were mini, and the buildings were mini, and the dogs were mini. This is when I decided I wouldn’t go to a restaurant in Helsinki to avoid being served a mini portion. Suddenly, I, who have always yearned to live in the open and see the sky, was getting suffocated by all this space. Against my will, this suffocating feeling prevented me from fully enjoying Helsinki’s modern trade centers, park monuments or cobblestone pavements. I couldn’t wait to return to St. Petersburg.

Today, the Petersburg metro was again packed with seemingly hurried strangers, wet from the snow outside. Nn the street I heard again this familiar and sad engine roar from a dark blue Skoda driving by.