It's Always Sunny in St. Petersburg

OK, so it's not always sunny in St. Petersburg - and even my new Russian friends, via email before I left, asked why in the world I was coming to Russia in November, which they described as pretty dreary. Coming from Vermont I figured that it couldn't be that much worse - well, I was wrong - the weather has been immeasurably overcast with lots of cold rain. That said, both Moscow, and especially St. Petersburg, are still very beautiful cities - and it could be a lot worse. One, it could be snowing here (and considering all the rain we've received a little drop in temperature would leave us knee-deep in snow) and it could be summer, which, because St. Petersburg is so marshy, is so supposed to be mosquito heaven/hell. I'm back in my room after spending seven and a half hour working my way through the Hermitage museum, which I 'll say more about in the coming posts. Amazing. With the exception of a fifteen minute coffee break, I spent the entire time period walking around looking at painting and sculptures. And I still really flew through certain areas, and didn't even make it into some of the wings - and this is only one of the buildings that makes up the Hermitage!

St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University

I spent the day at the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, a new potential partner in the Global Modules network. The day was a great success, thanks mainly to the efforts of our friend Anna Kholina. Here's a picture of her translation of the Global Modules information sheet into cyrillic, as well as a shot of her next to some of her own artwork. How I came here is classic academic networking, and proof positive of the value of presenting at conferences and making these personal visits. Some professors from Ringling College in Florida saw me present at a conference in Asheville, North Carolina - and they in turn invited me to come down to Florida to speak to the faculty about international education, and then some other professors I met down in Florida on my visit met Anna at yet another conference, and told her to get into contact with me - and now I'm here. Anyway, Anna met me at my hotel around noon and we tackled the St. Petersburg metro, which is not as beautiful as the Moscow metro system, but also a lot easier to figure out - just one stop east on the green line and five stops north on the red line - and, huzzah, we were at the university. The students are very technologically talented and thus they are a good fit for some of our Champlain College students in fields like multi-media graphics or e-gaming. I got to witness some of their work, including some stereoscopic efforts (3D to old folks like me) which were really quite impressive. The professors were quite generous with their time and the students were very friendly and responsive when I talked to them. However, one my fondest memories was sitting in the little kitchen off of Anna's office drinking tea and eating sweets both before and after my presentation. I'll be meeting the chair of the department and a couple other professors who were out of town today, and who graciously agreed to meet with me Saturday over a traditional Russian meal. Again, a very profitable day - topped off by an Italian meal, of all things, at a restaurant across the street from my hotel. The spaghetti carbonara came with an egg yolk on top of it, and the pasta was so hot that the egg was slowly cooking - never had it served that way before, but it makes sense and it was quite good. After that I went for a long walk on along the Nevsky Prospect to work off all the rich food I've been eating - I feel like I'm back in New Orleans again.

The Glamorous Life

Another in my continuing series of posts designed to prove that my life pitching the GMs is not as exciting as it sounds. Here's my room in St. Petersburg at the Nevsky Grand Hotel. I've had smaller rooms - the one in Madrid jumps to mind, although I've had a couple in Vienna that were pretty close. That said, it's half a block off the Nevsky Prospect, one of the most famous and beautiful streets in the world - and all for only $88 a night! It's hard to find a deal in Russia, but you're going to come a lot closer in St. Petersburg than in Moscow. I searched and searched and the best I could find in Moscow was a room that went for $220 a night, which by Moscow standards is a steal. This room is only a ten minute walk from the Hermitage, which, being the nerd that I am, is where I'll be spending all of tomorrow. There's a great St. Petersburg tradition of all the bridges going up at midnight all across town to allow the larger boats to go through - all the drawbridges stay up for a couple hours. I think I'm going to go check it out either Friday or Saturday, although I'll be sure to carry nothing in my pockets because pickpockets are pretty common in St. Petersburg, especially along the Nevsky Prospect. I really like St. Petersburg although the darkness is sort of overpowering - we just think it's a problem in Vermont - I don't think it got fully light this morning until around nine and the sun was down again by around three. However, they also tell me that during high summer they have days where the sun never actually sets. So, very dark and non-stop cold rain so far, but still a beautiful city. Just wish it would stop raining long enough for me to take some pictures.

"Comrades, the Global Modules!"

"And now on to St. Petersburg!" Here's a nice picture that my friend Katya sent along of me talking to a group of students at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. What a great group of students - very engaged and energetic - they are exactly what we're looking for in our international partnership.

MTV Russia

OK, so I understand why MTV Russia runs South Park, but why do they also air Scrubs, Ugly Betty and Project Runway? It's all in Russian naturally enough, although with a pretty ugly dubbing job - you can hear the English in the background so you can almost follow it but not quite. Whenever I pass through Austria I only get German language channels, but at least there is that one crazy game show where the woman takes her top off - that transcends language differences.

Reasons to Love Russia

I've only been in Russia for a couple days, but I've already started to put together a list of things to love about Russia. In no particular order: 1) in the cities the larger bookstores are open twenty-four hours a day, and are always full - the Russians love to read, 2) they put sour cream on everything - I should just move here and get it over with, 3) in both Moscow and St. Petersburg they put replicas of famous art on the street, so that everyone can get the advantage of viewing art even if they can't make it to the museums, 4) and speaking of museums, they have amazing museums - a good friend of mine who has travelled all over said that the Hermitage here in St. Petersburg is the best museum in the world - can't wait to visit it on Friday - just walking through the courtyard tonight was awe-inspiring, and I didn't even make it inside, 5) the metro stations in Moscow are beautiful - part of that old socialist celebration of the common man concept, 6) extraordinary history - can't believe that I was walking around downtown St. Petersburg tonight - walking the same streets as Lenin, one of my heroes, 7) and the people, once you get past their natural reserve, are actually very warm and very funny. I'm sure I'll have more to add - it's only been a couple days - and, sadly, I'm sure I'm be able to add reasons to not love Russia. Oh, and I can do one of those right away - the traffic, especially in Moscow, was horrible. Well, here's a reason not to go to Russia, although it certainly wouldn't fall into the hate category - Moscow is supposed to be the most expensive city in the world now.

My First Russian Meal

On Sunday night I had my first Russian meal. After Katya and I finished our maddeningly short tour of the Kremlin she thought I should have a real Russian meal, so she began a series of phone calls to friends to try and find a place next to the Kremlin. This was carried out in a cold rain - apparently global warming has hit Russia as well, because I was expecting to arrive to a winter wonderland and it was only slightly colder than Vermont. Ironically, she ended up finding a place back closer to my hotel, so we jumped back on the metro. Now, to get there you actually had to walk through a large, very modern grocery store - sort of, in an odd way, how it used to be to reach the City View Bar in Cincinnati when you had to go through a local grocery store (back in the day). Neither of us were real hungry - while waiting for her to show up I had gone in search of one of my odder traditions - McDonald's, which Ialways eat at once in every new country, even though I never go to McDonald's in the US - oh, and a Big Mac, Coke and fries cost 172 rub -or around $4.50 - same as in the US - the same as every place in the world. Anyway, we decided to have a soup and salad, which means something different in Russia than in the US. The soup was easy - borscht, which I actually loved, even though Katya told me that many Ameircans won't even try it because it is made from beets (and, truthfully, I don't really like beets - but I had several beet-based dishes that night and enjoyed every one of them). Of course, I had also had to put sour cream in it because the Russians put sour cream on everything. When the Russians say salad they never really mean anything lettuce based - it's a salad bar, but full of fish dishes or buckwheat or fried mushrooms (apparently Russians, like hobbits, love mushrooms) or this gelatenous meat dish (with horseradish on top) or pirozhky (a pastry filled with meat, cabbage, mushrooms or apples) or blinis (Russian pancakes, filled with everything from potatoes and mushrooms to chocolate). To drink I had kvass, a drink which, athough it looks like Coke, and is fermented from bread crumbs, is both non-alcoholic and very good.