28th October: A Quiet Weekend

This weekend, with the weather being so cold and most of us in much need of a rest and a catch-up on work, we didn't make any big plans. It was a nice change just to have some time to myself and get up-to-date with my emails and work.

On Saturday I had a lazy morning getting in touch with everyone back home. Lyudmila went to a family gathering welcoming her nephew back from the army, leaving me the flat to myself. For lunch she’d left me the nicest noodle and mushroom soup – it’s called лапша in Russian – and after that I met Alexia for a bit of retail therapy at Рио, the nearby shopping centre. There was already a layer of snow on the ground but on the journey the snowfall suddenly set in again, rapidly covering the roads and falling in thick fast flakes like a blizzard. Within a few minutes, however, it was over again and we were nearly there.

We stayed at Рио all afternoon, trying on everything we liked in Zara, Pull & Bear, Stradavarius, Bershka and even a few Russian shops, where we actually ended up buying the most. When it was time to go home for dinner we managed to jump on the first маршрутка which happened to be going straight to our stop. I waited with Alexia for her bus to come (there’s nothing worse than waiting for the bus on your own in the cold) before setting off home myself. It would have been a nice end to the day had some random thirty-year-old guy on the street made a casual grab for my crotch. What is wrong with these people?

A bit disturbed by this but trying to cast it off as a bizarre one-off occurrence, I quickly walked the rest of the way and returned to a cheerful landlady who was just setting my dinner on the table. I was exhausted and could have easily stayed in that night snuggled up in front of the TV, especially as the Russian version of ‘Tangled’ was on, Russian songs and all. But I’d promised Alexia that I’d go out and I've never been one to break my word, so when I got a call at 10 o’clock saying they were at Your Bar, I dragged myself out and made my way through the cold to meet them.

It so happens that on that occasion the cold actually worked in my favour, waking me up from my dazed state. By the time I got there they were grabbing a drink and a bite to eat in the local Russian fast food place, Чикен Тун, which is actually a lot nicer than it sounds from that description. Sean was there with a girl from Dagestan who’d been staying in his flat for the last two weeks; she was leaving on Monday and wanted to meet everyone before she did. Her Russian was surprisingly clear and she was lovely to talk to, despite the fact that, having being brought up in a heavily Muslim community, she had some unusual views. I was careful not to say anything that might offend, even when she said that she found it acceptable for men to have sex before marriage, but not women. Surely you don’t even have to be a feminist to see the flaw in that statement.

By this time it was getting on for 11 and we wanted to move on to a bar, but it being the Saturday of Halloween (yes, they do celebrate it here), there were no tables anywhere and we couldn't get in. Eventually we ended up in Таро where we stayed for one drink before calling it a night. It had been a quieter night than expected but it had been really interesting to chat to Sean’s housemate and probably did me good to get out the house, as I knew I’d be in all the next day.

The following day, there was yet another layer of snow on the ground, and it continued falling thick and fast until well into the afternoon and evening. I worked most of the day as well as catching up with Will on Facebook (we've given up on Skype for the moment as it just doesn't seem to work), and by 4pm I was beginning to get a bit stir crazy. It was then that I remembered that the university choir had a rehearsal at 5, and decided to force myself to go.

I’m glad I made the effort because, even though when I got there the usual choir wasn't on, there was another huge rehearsal instead, made up of all the choirs in Yaroslavl; I've never sung in such a big choir before and the sound was fantastic, especially in the long, high-ceilinged hall of the university. It turned out there was a group concert the following Saturday which, it being reading week, I probably won’t be able to attend. Nevertheless it was great to be able to go and sing Russian songs, which I found I picked up surprisingly quickly. Not only this, but a lot of them were Soviet songs about Yaroslavl and I felt like I was part of some big patriotic movement, nothing like I've experienced in the UK. On top of this, I also met a few of the girls from the university choir, all of whom were lovely and said they’ll be at the rehearsal on Thursday.

Today was slightly different from our usual Mondays as we missed two lessons, since Roy Bivon from RLUS had come to visit to get an idea of our views about the course and RLUS in general. It was pretty much the same information that we had given the organisation last time, and we received the same response. The course was fine but we were being over-charged for accommodation (17000r a month for board, breakfast and dinner when a flat here costs only 5000r a month and food is a cheap commodity). RLUS’s argument is that the university in Yaroslavl has an agreement with the landladies, but surely they could lower prices across the board. Everyone thinks the same but unfortunately nothing seems likely to change any time soon.

That afternoon we had lunch in Чикен Тун as Ben needed to meet Natalya from the international office there, to hand in his passport to get his visa. We ended up staying there the whole afternoon as Ben had arranged to take part in an interview with some Russian students who wanted to know our impressions of Yaroslavl, and after that we had to continue on the seemingly endless research for our reading week trip. By 5pm there were yet more ideas on the table and we’d come no closer to making a decision, and I needed to go back for an early dinner in time for my exercise class (aerobics tonight). I’m hoping we’ll be able to decide once and for all tomorrow and to get some tickets booked.

27th October: Week eight over, winter begins

I have never known the true meaning of the word ‘cold’ until now. After weeks of anticipation for the authentic Russian winter we've been told about, it has finally hit; the temperature has plunged to below zero and yesterday we experienced our first proper snowfall, with huge thick flakes falling on and off throughout the day. Of course, we’re all completely over-excited for a bunch of twenty-something-year-olds, and the sight of that first snow covering when I woke up yesterday morning just made my day. Naturally, when I was walking home in the early hours of the morning with frozen fingers, trying to avoid the black ice, it wasn't quite so fun.

Anyway, to sum up another week: it’s gone quickly and without any major events, apart from the one important fact that I am now officially halfway through my time here and on the home stretch. The exercise classes I’m going to on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are the perfect way of filling up my evenings, as they run from 7.30pm (or 7pm on a Friday) and last an hour, meaning I don’t get back until around 9pm most days, and by then there’s just time to shower and watch something on the TV or my laptop before bed. Sometimes the classes are brilliant, sometimes not so good, but as I’m going four times a week it doesn't seem to matter that much, and anyway, it must be better than doing nothing. Tuesday’s class was a classic example of a less challenging class; we’d been told it was going to be aerobics but it was more of a dance class, where we learnt some modern-style choreography which, while quite interesting, wasn't the best exercise as it mostly involved us watching the ever-so-slightly-crazy instructor go off on choreographic tangents, and getting ever-so-slightly confused.

There’s no class on Wednesdays, which works out well as that’s when my group of friends usually likes to go to the cinema. We’d wanted to see a Russian film about the Patriotic War of 1812 which we’d seen advertised the last time we were at the cinema, but none of the cinemas seemed to be showing it so we decided just to go and decided on a film when we got there. We were running late as usual so by the time we got there, there were only a few films to choose from and we ended up going for the new Brad Pitt film, Ограбление Казино, which translates from the Russian as ‘Casino Robbery’ but is actually called ‘Killing them Softly’ in English. It turned out the film was far too dialogue-based and the plot far too complex for us to have the slightest idea of what was going on in the dubbed-over Russian version, and not only that but even the Russians in the cinema were moaning all the way through about how boring it was, and how it was a waste of 100r. On top of that, it didn't finish until after 11pm, when the buses into town are sporadic at best, so we jumped on the first bus that came, which was to the main station – but by the time we’d got there, all the trolleybuses into the centre had stopped. We ended up walking all the way from the station in the biting cold; I even jogged some of the way just to keep my fingers from going numb.

Thursday would have been a normal day apart from a spiteful message I received by accident, which made me cry in front of my poor Babushka again. She seemed a bit taken aback by the whole thing but did her best to try and comfort me, calling me a «красавица» (‘beautiful girl’) and telling me this person obviously had problems, and that God was with them. She was very sweet, hugging me and comforting me as though she really was my grandma. Then, later on, she came into my room and chatted to me, in particular about Kiev, showing me the pictures in the Soviet book she’d left out for me.

That night I was triple-booked: boxercise, the first choir practice and a language club were all on at practically the same time. As the language club seemed to present quite a good opportunity to meet native Russians, I put that as my first priority and turned up at 5.30pm after my usual early dinner, which this time I’d had to microwave myself as Lyudmila had actually gone out (although I have realised she often goes out in the middle of the day when I’m not around either). The meeting was taking place in the university buffet and was that sort of contrived, enforced fun that schools and universities tend to fall into the trap of organising, with all of us sitting round tables in groups with tea and sweets, making conversation out of a list of questions which had been set out for us on a sheet of paper. There were four different languages: Russian, English, German and French, and I’d been put on the English table with Alexia, three Russian students and our teacher for speaking, Larissa. Alexia and I spoke Russian whilst the others spoke English, and we dutifully discussed the topic of languages. We went off on some tangents and surprisingly, the time ended up going really quickly and it seemed like we had barely started when we were told the session was over. We exchanged numbers and suggested meeting up again before the next meeting, which wasn't until 11^th November.

By that time, it was getting on for 7 o’clock and it didn't seem worth interrupting the choir practice, which had started at 6, only to leave again at quarter-past-seven. So instead, I walked with Amy and Sophie into town to sort out Amy’s Internet (a problem that everyone seems to have come up against at least one time or another). The class that night was boxercise, my favourite, and it was as good as it had been the week before. The only bad thing about going to the classes is the getting dressed and going out into the cold afterwards when you've just been boiling hot and sweating. Luckily the walk is barely five minutes long so there’s not much to complain about.

On Friday afternoon, still with no concrete information about whether everyone would get visas or not, but with the assurance that they should arrive by Monday, we stayed at the lunch restaurant all afternoon, trying to gather information online about our trip in reading week, which starts on 3^rd November. By 4.30 we were no further forward – in fact, we seemed to have gone back a step, having been distracted by the prospect of travelling to Georgia instead. Going to Georgia would be amazing, but at the moment it’s looking pretty difficult. In any case, we need to make up our minds in the next few days and get something booked.

When I returned to the flat just before 5, Lyudmila had gone out again, this time to meet her nephew who had just returned from his compulsory army service in Moscow. She had left some food out for me, but I have to say it was one of the strangest meals I've ever been presented with: simply a plateful of cauliflower. Not being the biggest fan of that tasteless vegetable anyway, I covered it in the Russian version of ketchup, but I have to say it did little to improve it. I wondered if this meal was a quirk of my babushka or of the Russian nation in general.

That night, I went to Pilates and then met with Sophie to walk to Rob, Charlie and Dave’s place, where everyone was meant to be going for drinks before heading over to the Король Королю nightclub. We didn't start till late and by the time everyone got there it was getting on for 11pm and the blizzard was setting in again, so inevitably we never actually made it out. By 3am I was falling asleep and ready to go home, and Will and Nick from Exeter insisted on walking me back, with exaggerated chivalry all the way, saving me from puddles and black ice and trying (ambitiously) to buy me something vegetarian in the kebab shop. The walk back almost seemed short with their jokes to pass the time.

The next morning I woke up surprisingly early – even Lyudmila was surprised. For breakfast she’d prepared me some cereal as usual, and instead of bread, two massive pies, which I just couldn't face at that time in the morning. She was shocked that I’d left them so, not wanting to offend her, I just said that I wasn't very hungry. She seemed satisfied with this and carried on with her chores; she was cooking something again – a soup, as it turns out, which she later showed me and said I could reheat and have for lunch with the bread, tea and juice she’d left out for me. We had another nice chat over breakfast, this time about her nephew and Russia’s system of compulsory army subscription. Apparently, army service is an absolute ordeal here and everyone dreads it. All the men have to do it for a year once they reach the age of eighteen, and even if they get a place at university they have to serve once they graduate. As with anything in Russia, however, there are people who know how to cheat the system, mainly officials who pay bribes to get their sons excused. Lyudmila seems to resignedly accept this corruption of a fact of life; I guess that’s the best way to be here, as nothing seems likely to change any time soon. I’m glad I only have to put up with it for another eight weeks!

23rd October: Petersburg Tales

It was a rush to get to the train on time on Thursday, but well worth putting in the effort as the class was brilliant. I decided to sign up; £26 a month is nothing when you consider you could go to every class, four times a week.

So, after a quick shower and last-minute check that I’d got everything, I made my way to Red Square to get a trolleybus to the station. My heart sank as I saw my trolleybus arriving on the other side of the square – there was no way I could run to the stop quick enough with my suitcase, handbag and huge bag of food. Reaching the bus stop, I looked anxiously at the sign and saw that after 9.30 the trolleybuses only came every twelve minutes. It was already 9.33 so there was no chance of me reaching the station by 9.50 as we’d agreed. The next trolleybus arrived at 9.45 on the dot, and at 9.53 I got a phone call from Ben, whose relaxed reaction managed to calm me down a bit, as I was getting quite stressed by now. At 10.05 I pulled up to the station and was relieved to see Alex on the pavement with all the bags, smiling reassuringly.

By the time the others had come back from the shop laden with beers and we had walked to the platform, our train was ready to leave, with only ten minutes until departure. Typically, our carriage was the last on the train and it felt like the walk down would never end, and the train would go without us. We made it nonetheless, and had enough time to find our beds, have our tickets checked and be given our sheets before the old train made a languorous metallic gurgle and slowly heaved itself into motion.

The train had the same layout as the train we’d taken to Moscow, with units of bunk beds in square blocks of four and a single row of bunk beds along the opposite wall. We’d been unlucky as our six beds were spread out in a single row, making it difficult to talk along the carriage, but we managed to perch on the end of two other beds for a while before everyone started going to bed. This didn't bother us too much, however, as we were all tired from the night before and the sudden absence of Beth, who’d been called home on a family emergency, had made us quieter than we might otherwise have been. I was grateful for the peace, as being the only girl amongst four lads, I didn't think I’d be getting much of it that weekend.

I managed to get a surprisingly good night’s sleep (once I’d put my iPod in to drown out the sound of thirty loud Russians snoring). At 8.15 the next morning I slowly came into consciousness with the recognition that the loud alarm I had been hearing in my sleep was in fact real and, worse, coming from my phone, which was buried somewhere in the depths of my suitcase. After conceding that it was never actually going to stop on its own I dug it out and went back to sleep for a couple of hours, by which time we were nearly arriving in St Petersburg.

At 11.30 we emerged onto the rainy St Petersburg platform with that amazing feeling: we’d made it! We took the metro to Vladimirskii and began to look for our hostel, with the help of my written directions and the guys’ map-reading skills. The hostel was almost impossible to find, being in a typically obscure location in a backstreet courtyard which didn't actually correspond to the written address. Eventually, after several phone conversations with various people from Sheffield who had already arrived and a lot of useless wandering around, we found it, barely signposted, on the second floor of a run-down and unimposing apartment building. After a long wait to be checked in we were finally ready to make our way into the city.

We’d already split up from Ben at the metro station as he was going to be staying at his friend’s hostel, who was living in Petersburg for the year. Alex and I knew the route we needed and somehow managed to get split up from Ed and Sean in the process, so made our way over to a restaurant where Alex’s friends from Sheffield were, next to the Hermitage. When Sean called me and said he and some others were going to look around the Hermitage, I made my excuses and left the restaurant, wanting to get the most out of my three days in the city, which I already knew would be nowhere near long enough.

Entrance to the Hermitage Museum (or Winter Palace, as it was formerly the winter residence of the Tsars) was free for students and twice the price for foreigners, in the typical Russian xenophobic way. I've heard that it would take a year to go around the entire gallery if you stopped to look at each exhibit for twenty seconds, and having been there for three hours I can confirm that this is probably true; the scale of the place is enormous.

By 4.30 some of us were ready to leave, so we split up into three groups, Sean and I going to see a few more sights before the day was over. We started by walking along the River Neva, where we not only got an amazing view of the city but also walked past the Russian Museum (the former Marble Palace, which was built in the 1760's and made of thirty-two different shades of marble). We also got a view of the Peter and Paul Fortress from across the river and strolled through the monumental park Марсово поле, where there is an eternal flame commemorating the victims of the Revolution in 1917-18. From there we got a glimpse of Храм Спаса на Крови (The Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood) and decided to go over and get a closer look. It was now approaching 6 o’clock so we were surprised when we were still allowed to go in – and on a free student ticket too. With its traditional red brick and colourful domes modelled on those of St Basil’s in Moscow, it is probably the most famous church in St Petersburg and was built between 1883 and 1907 on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated, hence its popular name (its official name is Собор Воскресения Христова (The Resurrection of Christ Church)). The entire church is breathtaking, decorated floor to ceiling with extravagantly coloured mosaics and completed by an enormous shrine on the exact site where the bomb was thrown at the Emperor’s carriage, making the event seem almost tangible and giving the church an eerie significance.

We met Ben outside the church, who recommended a visit to the nearby Казанский кафедральный собор (Kazan Cathedral), just a short walk up Nevsky Prospekt. The enormous Kazan Cathedral could easily be mistaken for a political building at first sight, consisting of one central dome (69 metres in length, 62 metres in height) fronted by tall stone pillars which form a semi-circle around the front courtyard. The inside, however, fully justifies its imposing exterior and shows its true purpose as a memorial to the Russian victory in the Patriotic War against Napoleon and as a fully-functioning place of worship. We were lucky enough to be visiting during the evening service, and the beautiful echoes of evensong filled the vast, sparsely furnished cathedral, creating a profound feeling of peace and tranquillity. We stayed for over half an hour, transfixed by the priest’s chant and the harmonic voices transcending from the choir stalls on the balcony.

Eventually we managed to tear ourselves away and met up with Ben and his friend Kev for dinner in the traditional Russian restaurant, Ёлки Палки, which we managed to find for Sean’s sake after an overly-prolonged search. It turned out that Ёлки Палки didn't live up to his high expectations, offering the same food as any other Russian place for double the price. It was only redeemed by its quirky Russian costumes and bizarre interior, which I can only describe as an attempt to recreate a Russian wooden dacha, with a fake tree as the central buffet island, whose branches spanned the ceiling. Another novelty was of course the spontaneous Russian dancing which two of the waitresses performed during our meal, which took us a little by surprise to say the least.

That evening we decided to go out with the group from Sheffield who Alex, Sean and Ed had come to see. After a very confusing episode in the off-license where I had to make two separate purchases in order to buy vodka and beer (as sales of vodka stop earlier in the evening), we went back to the hostel for pre-drinks, and at around midnight went with some locals to the bar street just off Nevsky. It was cold and rainy by this point, so we dived into the first bar that would let us in for free (girls first, of course). It was small and dingy, with graffiti all over the walls and some of the worst toilets I think I've ever seen. Whilst waiting for a toilet cubicle which didn't have a huge hole in the door, I was approached by a dodgy-looking guy from Armenia who claimed he’d spotted me from across the room, seen me go into the toilets (which were communal, by the way) and had to come and talk to me as I was such a красавица (beauty). Did I want to dance? No thanks, I think I’m all right.

Just when I thought I’d got away, he reappeared behind me at the bar as I was ordering in my vodka and lemonade, and asked me to dance again. I managed to escape back to the group and thought I was safe talking to Sean and Susanna (who was from Exeter but had happened to come up from Petrozavodsk with the Sheffield lot). Suddenly, someone was massaging my shoulders – and with all my friends sitting in front of me, there was only one person that could be. Sean tried to tell him I had a boyfriend and only when Alex got in on the act and pretended to get protective did the Armenian finally admit defeat (but not before asking Susanna if she had met his brother).

After an hour or so, Nikita, one of the Russians we were with, suggested moving on to a club, so we duly trudged after him. The club we ended up in was better than the last place and had a cool vibe to it; it was really narrow but four storeys high, with drum and bass music pumping out on every floor. We stayed and danced for a while but at 3am decided to call it a night as we had some heavy sight-seeing planned for the next day.

It was Sean’s alarm that woke me (and everyone else except for Sean) up the next day at 9.30. By just after 10.30, Sean, Susanna and I were out the hostel, having received a free breakfast and enjoyed impressively pleasant showers for the £8 a night we were paying. We met Ben and Kev at Площадь Ленина metro station and from there walked along the river and over the bridge to Петропавловская крепость (Peter and Paul Fortress). On the way, we came across a Stalin-era naval ship, the naval college and an impressive mosque.

The fortress itself, which comprises a large courtyard surrounded by six bastions, is on the tiny Заячий остров (Hare Island) and has to be reached via a wide stone footbridge over the River Neva. It was built by Peter the Great in 1703 at the height of the Northern War, in order to protect the city from Swedish counterattack. It never fulfilled this purpose, and from around 1720 served as a base for the city garrison and as a prison for high-ranking political prisoners, including many members of the Decembrist movement, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Bakunin, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Leon Trotsky and Josip Broz Tito. We were able to visit an exhibit in the main prison block, the Trubetskoy bastion, where these prisoners were held and which contains cells preserved in their original state. We also went into the Peter and Paul Cathedral which, like the Адмиралтейство (Admiralty) in the centre of Petersburg, is currently under exterior restoration, but is still worth a visit as the burial place of all the Russian tsars from Peter I to Alexander III, with the exception of Peter II and Ivan VI. The cathedral was the first church in the city to be built of stone (between 1712 and ‘33) and a golden angel holding a cross tops the 404-foot golden spire making it the highest building in Petersburg.

When we had left the cathedral I stopped to take a photo of it from the outside, crouching on the ground in an attempt to include the entire spire in the frame. Suddenly I was being verbally assaulted by an ugly old Russian lady for stopping on the pavement, despite the fact the whole area was an over six-metre wide pedestrian zone, hardly a narrow space. I was hoping she understood the sarcasm in my “извините” when Sean stepped into my defence. She wasn't going to be convinced by anyone and only when Sean said “We don’t want to talk to you” using the offensive ты form in тобой, did she admit defeat and shrink away, accusing him of hating old people.

Negative experiences with old hags aside, it had been an interesting visit, and we decided to pop in to the traditional market recommended by Kev’s UCL friends, which turned out to be a disappointment. After that, we headed to the Dostoevsky flat and museum, where we bought an audio guide to share but unfortunately didn’t have time to finish the tour before closing time at 6. We did get to see where he had lived and worked, however, and found out a lot about his life and early career.

For dinner that night we went along the river and found a branch of a chain of restaurants selling Eurasian food and pizza, where I tried a delicious Uzbek soup with salmon and winter vegetables. After that we went our separate ways, Susanna and I deciding to walk to The Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood to see it lit up at night. Walking along the almost deserted river at dusk was idyllic and gave me that rush of life you sometimes get when realising you’re experiencing something beautiful. It struck me again how incredible it was that I was in Saint Petersburg, in Russia, that this was really my life. The cathedral itself was stunning and I had to stop a while, not worrying about getting the perfect photograph for a change, but actually just enjoying the moment.

The next day, with big plans ahead, Susanna and I got up even earlier to meet Ben at Исаакиевский Собор (St Isaac’s Cathedral), only to find that the guidebook had failed to mention that the cathedral didn't open until 11am in the winter months. Not to be deterred, we walked over to the Медный всадник (The Bronze Horseman) statue despite the biting cold and rain. A famous symbol of Petersburg, this statue of Peter the Great was commissioned by Catherine the Great and received its name due to the success and influence of the Pushkin poem of the same name, in which the statue plays a central role. The statue’s pedestal is the Thunder Stone, which in its original state weighed around 1500 tonnes and is claimed to be the largest stone ever moved by man.

Once we had taken a suitable amount of photos and had enough of the awful weather, we made our way to the cathedral, which is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great. It was commissioned by Tsar Alexander I, built between 1818 and 1858 and is the fourth church to stand on this site. Under communism, the cathedral was stripped of all its religious items and in 1931 it was turned into the Antireligious Museum. Interestingly, the grey dome as it is now is this colour due to the fact it was painted over during WWII to avoid attracting attention from enemy aircraft.

The relatively bare exterior belies the extravagance of the inside of the cathedral. You would think it would be easy to become indifferent to the beauty of the Russian churches after seeing so many, but even as an agnostic I have to admit that I’m yet to grow tired of them. They’re all based around the same ideas, of course, but each has different decoration and a different atmosphere. Once again, we’d stumbled on some sort of choir performance, which I stopped to listen to a while before browsing the exhibits that were on display. Apart from the left side, which is now used for worship, the rest of the building still serves as a museum, including scaled models of this church and others in Petersburg, photographs and explanations of how the cathedral was built, and descriptions of its history.

We had bought a ticket to the colonnade not knowing if it would be worthwhile, but even with the mist obscuring the view of the far distance, the cityscape was striking. From that height you could really get a sense of the vast scale of the city, which, built laterally rather than vertically, with few high-rise building, seems to extend infinitely into the distance.

After we’d descended the many stone steps, Ben led the way along the River Moika to the Дворец Юсуповых на Мойке (The Moika Palace or Yusupov Palace), which was once the primary residence in Saint Petersburg, and also the site of Grigori Rasputin’s murder in 1916. It was because of this, and because I remember enjoying the tour when I came in Year 10, that I decided to go again. However, we got there only to discover that there was a only a limited-place Rasputin tour conducted all in Russian, which took place in two hours, or a general tour which cost 380r (£7.60) even for students – which, considering almost all the other sites had provided free student tickets, seemed outrageous. As Ben would be studying in Petersburg the next semester, he decided to go elsewhere while Susanna and I took the general tour. The tour turned out to be relatively interesting but by no means worth the money, especially since our audio guides broke four times and I ended up dipping in and out of the German version and the live Russian tour that was happening at the same time. There was no mention of Rasputin either, so, disappointed at having wasted my money, when it came to hand in the audio guides I complained about them. This turned into a huge rigmarole as various members of staff came to deal with the problem, and I ended up arguing with two angry Russian women and didn’t get any money back anyway. On the plus side, although my concluding point had been that I was going to make an official complaint – very English – my Russian skills had managed to hold their own.

After the whole audio guide debacle and the tour taking much longer than intended, we had only a couple of hours left before I needed to get to the train station, so we made our way over to the souvenir market outside The Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood. I finally managed to buy a couple of presents to take back with me before we made our way to the bookstore, where I bumped into Alex. He went with me back to the hostel and we made our way to the station together (so much less stressful that way). There was just time to grab a quick snack before boarding the train.

This time we were in a block of four, with Alex just on the other side of the dividing wall (which worked out well as he’d only had two hours sleep and needed a bit of peace and quiet). The others decided to go and check out the refreshments carriage and disappeared until 2am, having met a mysterious and strange-sounding guy called Knyaz who kept buying them cognac. I was exhausted by this time and was glad of the time to myself, unable to take any more lad talk, fun as it is in small doses.

When my alarm went off at 5am, it felt like I hadn't slept at all, which was strange considering how exhausted I’d been. I could not remember having drifted into sleep at all, but felt oddly awake as though the previous day had never ended. Waking up the guys was an interesting experience, with Ed taking at least five minutes to realise who I was and Ben continually shouting nonsense such as ‘Dick King Smith’ and cracking up for reasons that are beyond my comprehension. They were not going to be feeling good later. Somehow I managed to get them up and dressed and we made it off the train when it pulled in at 5.30. We took the trolleybus back to our flats, and although I tried to be as quiet as I could, Lyudmila came to greet me and to ask me about my trip and my plans for the day. She’s no longer shocked when I say I’m still going to classes after an exhausting night, and didn't even bat an eyelid when I said I’d be going to my exercise class that day; I think she’s got used to the fact I’m a bit of an obsessive.

I shuffled into my room to find it immaculate, with two books on Kiev left on the table for me and fresh sheets and clean towels laid out on the bed – bliss. After a two-hour nap I felt almost ready to face the day and managed to make it through class before dropping off my boots to the repair shop and coming back to the flat to unpack and catch up on work and emails. The exercise class that night was strength-based, which was just what I needed to make me feel better.

Today has been equally quiet. We went out for lunch and then I came back to try and tackle my University of Murcia application form again (which still isn't accepting my photo despite the fact I've performed the miracle of shrinking it to 10kb). I've spent the rest of the afternoon working and updating this blog, as well as having another enlightening conversation with my babushka. We started off with the pleasantries, as we always do when she comes in and I go out to greet her. We’d talked about Petersburg the afternoon before and today she was asking about my potential trip to the Ukraine, which led us to the issue of visas. My friends are still waiting for news on their multi-entry visas as the man in charge of sorting them out at the head office has been arrested. The worst thing is, I’m not even surprised. This is Russia.

Then we got onto the topic of immigration and, like all old people, she is not keen. They come to Yaroslavl from all over: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Vietnam… Lyudmila thinks it might be because Yaroslavl is so close to Moscow. Russia has a huge problem with illegal immigrants (we learnt about it in class) because they come over here without qualifications and work for wages so small the Russians can’t compete. We did however agree that they’re ok as long as they work hard and contribute to society. Some of them are just awful though, she said, like the Armenian women, who she claims are always fat and ugly. Apparently – she just dropped this in – the ‘hotel’ in the neighbouring building is not in fact a hotel, but a brothel run by one such fat Armenian women. They used to sneak young girls into the building and there were sounds of screaming all the time until the police finally intervened. I said that this was awful and frightening but Lyudmila just shrugged and said they've quietened down now and work hard to keep up the pretence of being a hotel, even though everyone knows what really goes on there. After going to Petersburg I’d got a taste of normality and forgotten what this place is really like. Oh, Russia.

18th October: Well looked-after

Last night, we experienced efficient restaurant service in Russia for the first time. We’d done a pre-order to make things easier, but we never expected everything to go that smoothly. When we arrived, the salads Nell had ordered for the table were already laid out, and within twenty minutes everyone’s food had arrived – at the same time and everything. We were impressed.

The food was good, especially for the price (my fettuccine cost only 130r (£2.60)) and the drinks were reasonable too (70r (£1.40) for a small glass of white wine). We’d got so settled there it was looking like we’d never leave, especially when Alexei’s dad turned up at 10 o’clock and started ordering drinks for everyone, which we were more than happy to accept. He ordered in Russian like a pro, and within minutes a bottle and a small carafe of vodka had arrived along with shot glasses and tumblers. When the cranberry juice arrived in a carton, he sent it straight back, outraged, requesting a decanter. Two and a half shots and a pizza later, the restaurant was closing, so Alexei’s dad said his goodbyes and the rest of us moved on to another bar. By 1am I decided that since I was travelling to Petersburg the next day, it was probably time to call it a night.

Today was another ordinary day: lessons followed by lunch. When I returned to the flat, I packed my things for the trip and settled down to get some work done, as I wouldn't be getting back until 5.30am on Monday morning so would have no other chance to do it. After a few minutes there was a tentative knock at my door and my babushka entered, smiling. She said she had a couple of old books on Leningrad – Saint Petersburg, she quickly corrected herself (she was always doing that, she said) – and thought they might help me plan my trip. She searched the shelves, naming guide book after guide book until she found two on Leningrad (written in the 1970s, when it was still called this) and one on Kiev for my reading week trip.

She stood next to me and flicked through the books, explaining worthwhile places to visit, before moving on to talk about the theatres there and how she used to travel there on business trips and get the spare tickets for the ballet and the opera for free. She seemed to show a real nostalgia for those days and I could tell she was enjoying talking about it. She called it Leningrad again by mistake and we started to talk about how there had been a huge debate over whether it was right to rename it back to the German-sounding ‘Petersburg’, when its other former name, Petrograd, would have been more appropriate. Many who lost loved ones in the blockade in Leningrad even oppose this, calling it sacrilege to the revolutionary past of the city. As we had talked about it in class that same day, I was interested to know why the citizens of Petersburg were also against the popular shortening of the name to Peter. Lyudmila couldn't be sure but thought, in accordance with what the grammar teacher had said, that they found it offensive.

This moved us on to the topic of the trend that has begun in Russia of returning cities their Soviet names in order to avoid burying the Soviet past, for example in Volgograd, which was formerly called Tsaritsin and then Stalingrad. I was surprised, as I had always assumed this was a debate about glorifying Stalin, but according to Lyudmila it’s not a governmental ploy but the citizens’ own desire to remember those lost in the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II. It’s a really interesting topic, not least because it’s as far-reaching as the street names all over the country, which were also renamed to honour Soviet figures and dates, even in Yaroslavl, such as the streets кирова (after the early Bolshevik leader Kirov), октябрьская (after the October Revolution) and первомайская (after the Soviet International Workers’ Day).

While I've been writing this Lyudmila has come in again, laden with a huge bag of food to for me take to Petersburg – bread rolls, pies, biscuits, nectarines and apples. She came and started flicking through the book again and told me about a good excursion that I might be able to get on, and before we knew it we were chatting again and she needed to sit down because she couldn't stand for that long. Last time we had talked for over half an hour. When I came to sit down to dinner I was presented with an absolute feast: two pieces of fish, stuffed peppers, bread, salad and marinated cabbage and carrot – enough for two! I think we’re getting on pretty well after all.

17th October: Everything seems to be going well

This week is flying by, and by tomorrow it will feel like the weekend; tomorrow, we are going to St Petersburg. To say I’m excited is an understatement. The last time I was in St Petersburg, in 2007, I fell in love with it – and I can’t wait to see it again.

But first, I should write about the last few days. I've kept busy – out of necessity rather than principle. On Monday I took a trip to Глобус (Globus, the big supermarket) to buy some fruit for the week, but also to look for a cheap tracksuit to wear to and from my exercise classes. I didn't find one but I think I’ll survive for now; I just need to make sure I find one before the cold really sets in.

That evening I went to zumba again, hoping to buy a subscription this time for the month, as it works out much cheaper this way (1100r (£22) per month, as opposed to 250r (£5) per class). It so happened that I didn't have enough cash on me at the time and the fitness centre didn't take credit cards, so I had to pay for a single class after all. This turned out to be a happy coincidence as I met Sophie on my walk home, who told me about another fitness centre right by where we lived, which charged 1300r (£26) per month for as many classes as you liked, and the classes were different every day and each week – much better than being restricted to zumba twice a week for a month. We agreed to meet up the next day so I could try out one of the classes.

An hour or so later Sophie and I met up again to walk together to the house-warming party taking place at Dave, Rob and Charlie’s flat, which they had moved into that day. Unhappy living with their babushkas, they’d got help from the university to find this place, a modern, three-bedroom flat with minimal furniture but in a good location, costing them only 13,000r (£260) each until the end of term. This really puts into perspective how over-priced the usual system of living with a babushka is, since utilities are cheap here and, as long as you know where to go, you can get food really cheaply over here too.

The house party went on until around midnight, when people started to leave to go home or move on to Cocktail Bar. Charlie, Alexia and I stayed behind chatting for a while before Ben reappeared having forgotten his hozyaika’s bag, and we decided to get a taxi to Cocktail Bar to join the others. It wasn't a particularly late night, with everyone having already drunk quite a lot before we got there, and by 3am everyone was ready to leave.

The next day the university was practically deserted and there were only three people in our group before Ben showed up at 11, and even then we were missing half of our usual set. I decided it would be best to go straight home after class and have a quick nap before the exercise class that evening. By 4.30pm my quick power-nap had turned into a full-on sleep and it was lucky that noises from the kitchen woke me up. The sleep had done me good though and by the time it came to the class, I was full of energy.

This fitness centre was a lot less modern than the one I’d been going to but the hall was huge and full of people, which seemed a good sign. The place was run by one instructor, who has trained in Moscow and is clearly an expert on all things fitness and dance. That day, the class was boxercise, and it was the toughest boxercise class I’d ever done – an intense mix of cardio and strength. After the class, Amy, Sophie and I went to talk to the instructor, Yelena, who invited us to come with her to her dacha in the countryside one of the days. This seemed unbelievably generous and somewhat out of the blue, but the others later explained to me that she had mentioned it to them before – and anyway, they do say that when you know a Russian they’ll really look after you. All in all, the class had been a huge success, so I arranged to go again on Thursday, this time to the Latina class. It seemed like this was going to be a great way to get into an exercise routine and to fill my evenings.

There was no class on Wednesday, which worked out well as we were all going out for a meal for Nell’s birthday. This afternoon I took my shoes in for repair at a local place recommended by our speaking teacher, Larissa, who seems to have all the best contacts. She’s unbelievably helpful and if you ask her anything she’ll do her best to sort it out personally. She rang up the repair shop herself and told them she had a talented English student who would be coming in with some repairs within the hour. After going into the repair shop and deciding I needed my shoes for the weekend, so would bring them in again the next week, I went into town to get some cash out and to browse the bookshop for a book on the Golden Ring (which I was unable to find). Returning home, I caught up on work and emails, including an exciting email thread with my mum, discussing our choices of resorts for our Jamaica holiday the coming January. Now it’s the end of another day and the start of another evening, and everything seems to be going well.

15th October: Russian provincial life

Never one to pass up an opportunity to visit somewhere new, on Sunday I travelled to Углич (Uglich) with Beth, Joe, Katie, Andy, Flora, Ben, Ed, Sean and Alexia.

As Uglich was said to be a two-hour bus ride away, it was an early start, and by 9.15 Joe, Andy, Beth, Katie and I were at the station ready for the 9.40 bus. When we got to the ticket kiosk, it turned out that the bus times on the Internet had been wrong yet again, and that the bus didn't actually leave until 10am. At least we hadn't missed it this time. Feeling early and well-prepared, we sat in the small waiting room until the bus arrived, only slightly concerned that the time on our tickets was actually 14.10 instead of 10.05, as we had been so clear with the ticket-seller we assumed the ticket machine was simply not calibrated. When we tried to get on the bus, however, the surly bus driver insisted that as the time on the ticket was incorrect, we had to go back to the kiosk or he would not let us on the bus. It was a stressful few minutes but we made it just in time.

Once we were safely on the bus ourselves we decided it would be a good idea to let the others know what was going on, as they hadn't even arrived at the station yet. Convinced they wouldn't make it in time, we explained how the bus was about to leave, but that there was another one at 11 o’clock. A few minutes later they were running onto the bus; the churlish bus driver had obviously decided to change the rules, as these people seem to love doing.

The journey was shorter than the three hours we’d been expecting, and by 12.15 we were in Uglich and ready to begin the day. On our way into town we visited the Богаявленский монастыр (Epiphany Monastery) a large but unimposing walled-in courtyard containing two slightly dilapidated churches that have clearly been left to ruin since Soviet times. The exterior walls are crumbling in places and on one side the brick is no longer whitewashed but completely exposed. The frescoes on the inside have been whitewashed  over to save money on upkeep, and in one of the churches just one faded painting remains, an icon wearing a slightly melancholy expression, as if he knows that he is soon to meet the same undignified end after all these hundreds of years. Aside from the walls, the rest of the church has also been stripped, leaving just an empty, eerie shell. (Despite this, visitors still have to pay to take photographs inside). The other church has maintained more of its furniture and some of its icons, including a painting of the last family of tsars, in which they are all sainted (which comes across as slightly sacrilegious, to say the least).

The cold was biting that morning, so after seeing the monastery we made our way into town to find a café where we could warm up and grab a bite to eat. After a quick lunch, where a moody waitress managed to upset half the group and caused us to split into two, those of us still remaining went straight onto the Kremlin, which was slightly set back from the town centre, overlooking the banks of the Volga.

It was an unusual Kremlin, without the high surrounding walls and large open courtyard which generally serve to make the Kremlin a self-contained unit. This Kremlin consists of the Спасо- Церковь Царевича Димитрия «на поле» (Church of the Tsarevitch Dmitri, 1798-1814), Палаты дворца угличских удельных князей (Palace Chambers of the Uglich Princes, 1480), and the Преображенский собор (Transfiguration Church, 1700-1706) and колокопьня (bell tower), which were both destroyed and rebuilt in the 18^th century. It was well worth the 50r entry fee to the bell tower to enjoy the picturesque views of the town and the river, but the churches all required tickets and a glimpse inside was enough to get the impression that they followed the typical Russian style of decoration.

With the help of Joe’s trusty guidebook, we then made our way along the bank of the Volga to the Воскресенский монастыр (Resurrection Monastery), getting a glimpse on the way of the Казанская церковь (Kazan Church) and the Церковь рождества Ионна Предтечи (Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist), which was built in 1689-90 by a local merchant to commemorate the spot where his son had drowned. The Resurrection Monastery consists of a huge cathedral, refectory, belfry and summer church, which all stand in a row and date back to 1674-77. We were lucky enough to get a look inside the cathedral this time, as the nuns were friendly and made us feel more than welcome.

We had now seen the main sights of the area and decided to make our way to the Экспозиция «Мифы и суеверия русского народа» (a privately-run exhibition of myths and superstitions of the Russian people). The museum itself was a wooden building tucked away down a side road, with only a rustic wooden sign to indicate its existence. We tentatively rang the bell and, after a few minutes a tall, bearded man opened the gate and welcomed us inside. He was middle-aged and thick-set with a clear, strong voice – in short, we agreed, everything we expected a typical Russian man to be. He asked me if everyone would be ok if he led the tour in Russian, took our money (60r/£1.20 each) and began to explain the strange exhibits on show in the first room.

The exhibition, which was spread into only three small rooms and comprised a collection of objects representing a variety of Russian folk stories, was a brilliant insight into the Russian provincial people and a great test of our language skills. Strangely, amongst all the difficult vocabulary the guide used, the only word he stopped to explain was полночь (midday), in all probability the easiest word he had used throughout the tour. Maybe it had been the only word he had felt able to explain, but at any rate it was well-meant and he seemed glad of our interest. At the end of the tour we were allowed to look closer at all the objects (some of which were eerie life-size models of strange hags and creatures), before we thanked him and he walked us to the gate.

With just a couple of hours to spare before the bus home, we made our way to the vodka museum, stopping at the local souvenir market on the way. There we bumped into the others, who told us, to our disappointment, that the vodka museum had closed at 3pm and we had all missed it. Nevertheless, we were happy to look around the market and by the time we had finished, we had less than an hour so decided to return to the café from earlier and have a warming drink before making our way back to the bus station.

We reached the bus station only to discover that there were no more free spaces on the 5.20 bus, so we would have to wait for the next one, which was luckily only an hour later. We filled the time by walking up to the nearby Алексеевский монастыр (Alexeievsky monastery), whose three-tented church is considered a beautiful example of Russian medieval architecture. The church’s present state, however, only creates an impression of depressed remains, with its crumbling walls and dilapidated roof. It has clearly been left to ruin for some time.

By this time the sun was beginning to set, casting stunning beams on the many church domes emerging from between the trees and houses of the suburbs of Uglich. It is a beautiful little town, but somehow sad in its isolation from the real world, with its little wooden houses and side streets that trail off into the countryside. I was glad I had seen another town on the Golden Ring, and starting to get a real feel of Russian provincial life.

13th October: Social Life in Yaro

Another week over, another weekend is here. The film on Wednesday was well worth the trip; it was on later than we’d expected but we didn't mind waiting around – it just gave us an excuse to play on the air hockey tables and wander round the shops. When we eventually got to see the film, it had a good enough plot and it was a great buzz being able to understand everything that was going on.

By the time we were out of the cinema it was nearly 11 o’clock and there was no sign of our trolleybus home. After waiting for over twenty minutes in the cold, sheltering from the rain under the metal bus shelter, we were lucky enough to spot a bus that was going to Улица Свободы – close enough, and at any rate better than waiting there, miles outside of town without the vaguest idea where we were. It was admittedly a bit worrying when the bus seemed to be taking us even more into the middle of nowhere, but the conductor assured us we would be going into the centre of town, and logically it would have been difficult to abduct all five of us.

Safely in our home territory, we made our way to Cocktail Bar, where a big group were out celebrating one of the girls’ birthdays. Someone must have started up a conversation with some Russians earlier on in the night because now we were in two big mixed groups. I was lucky enough to get chatting to a couple of the Russians, and ended up having intellectual conversations about literature and the existence of the soul. It was 3.30am again before we started to break off, but I felt I’d had a really good experience by talking to the Russians for so long. Having been told by Lyudmila only a few days before that my Russian had improved, that night confirmed it for me and gave me the confidence boost I needed.

The next day I was one of the few people who made it to class, and left straight afterwards with the intention of having a quick nap to prepare me for my exercise class that evening. However, I soon got into emailing and spent the whole afternoon getting up-to-date with friends and family. Lyudmila gave me dinner at 5.15 as requested, and I decided to try and start up a conversation with her again whilst she was still in the room. I often find it difficult to start a proper conversation with her because I can’t find anything to ask; since she’s retired and has so little family, she’s rarely got any news and doesn't do anything during the day that I can ask her about. However, that day I had a spark of inspiration and decided to ask her if she was going to vote in the local elections that Sunday.

Her answer took me by surprise; she said she wasn't going to vote because it didn't concern her. Her view was that her vote wouldn't make a difference, and at any rate the young people should decide since she was old and wouldn't live much longer anyway. I was taken aback by this and didn't really know how to respond. I decided the best solution was to agree to as much an extent as I legitimately could, which meant saying that politics was essentially a waste of time because politicians rarely made a big difference to anything (which I suppose is slightly true of local politics at least).

This got us on to the topic of national politics and the corruption in Russia, which in turn moved us on to talking about life in Soviet Russia, as this topic usually does. Lyudmila told me that when she was a child, she had lived in another apartment block not far from here, in a three-family flat. The flat had a communal kitchen, toilet and bathroom, and one room for each family. I told her how inconceivable this was for me, and she conceded that it had been cramped and the living conditions had been difficult. However, she also said that the families became very close in this way, and remembered how at Christmastime the fathers of each family would bring presents for all the family. They became like one big family, and she still knows some of the children she made friends with now – all who are still alive.

After dinner I had a couple of hours before I had to force myself into the cold, wet night and making my way to Zumba. The class proved to be good fun and good exercise. The music was a mixture of Latin and jives, and by the time the class had finished I was in a much better mood. I asked about the half-month membership and decided to sign up the following Monday. As I was leaving without my jacket on, I was met by a collective cry of the Russian equivalent of, “Put some clothes on! You’ll catch your death!” So it’s not just the older people who constantly worry about you being cold after all.

The next day was just another ordinary Friday, apart from the fact we tried out a new place for lunch. We ended up staying for hours just chatting and laughing, before going our separate ways until the evening. That evening we met at 8.30 to take the trolleybus to an Irish pub, Первый Паб, on the outskirts of town, where our teachers were meeting us to watch live Irish music. The lyrics were barely recognisable as English but the songs were traditional and the band lively and enthusiastic. They even asked for members of the audience to play the bongos on two occasions, a challenge Ed and Josh happily took up. Ed even happened to know all the words to one of them, a traditional Dutch drinking song.

It was past midnight by the time we were ready to leave, and taxis were thin on the ground. Only a few people managed to get through to book, so several taxis were ordered and we just had to hope we would all fit in. Luckily, someone came and fetched me when the first arrived, and even though sitting on one of the guy’s laps didn't make for the most comfortable journey I've ever had, we made it to Король Королю, a club we hadn't tried yet, in one piece.

Our first impressions of the place were mixed; the club was in a big business complex and had to be entered by going down a set of dingy stone steps. The lobby was dimly lit and from what we could see of the rest of the inside, it wasn't much different. One of the bouncers told the guys they would have to pay 300r to get in (girls were free, as usual) so Beth and I went to check out if it were worth it.

Seeing two men walk in for free, we took matters into our own hands and started escorting the guys from our group one by one into the main room, as being accompanied by a woman seemed to make entry easier. After a few of them were through the rest decided to brave it on their own and got through without any problems. Obviously the bouncers on this door hadn't got the memo about ripping the English people off.

A few shots and a lot of dancing made it a good night and by 4.30 we were ready to leave. It was still pouring with rain and we had no idea where we were so decided the only option was to jump in a taxi. I negotiated a price and Josh, Beth and I made our way home.

10th October: Routine

We are halfway through week six and the cold weather is gradually starting to set in. The rain has been almost relentless since I flew back and there is a distinct chill in the air, ready for the first snow which is predicted to fall towards the end of this month. Nevertheless, there’s still a while to go before the real winter snow comes – the snow that falls in November and remains until the spring.

The weather hasn’t allowed much opportunity for running lately, but I have been able to continue with my gym classes, sampling as many as possible before choosing my subscription. After my class on Monday I braved the rain and walked to Cocktail Bar, where a group of us were meeting for drinks. After the Your Bar fiasco it seemed like a good idea to find a new local – and Cocktail Bar represented a good compromise, with cheap drinks (half price cocktails on a Monday) and a dance floor upstairs. It was a good night and it was only the thought of my early start the next day that dragged me away at 3am.

Of course, getting through Tuesday was still a struggle and I didn’t feel much like doing anything exciting that evening so just caught up on work and watched some weird Disney programmes and Kyle XY in Russian. I’d intended to go straight home and sleep after class, but as Ben offered to show me a supermarket where I could buy my fruit cheaper than at the market, I decided to tag along for lunch, especially as they’d decided on the Georgian place off Kirova. This time, instead of eating upstairs in the log cabin area, we were shown downstairs to the proper restaurant, where the tables were big enough to accommodate us. It was hard not to feel out of place at first, when our coats were taken and we were shown to our neatly-decorated table, the only customers in the room. But, never being short of conversation, we quickly livened the place up (with the help of the westernised music channel the restaurant had on loudly in the background).

Today’s lunch was definitely slightly less traditional as we decided to eat in the pizzeria around the corner from the university, as the guys wanted to be done in time to get their hair cut Russian-style, an unfortunate craze that seems to have hit the group. Within a couple of weeks I’m sure all twenty-odd of them will be sporting the severe Russian shaved head that seems to be the fashion here (although we can only be thankful that they didn’t choose that other disastrous Russian trend – the mullet). The shiny leather jackets were bad enough.

This pizzeria is becoming a regular haunt – cheap, fast and local – but today we inadvertently experienced another interesting culinary phenomenon when Ben, requesting chicken on his pizza, was misheard and instead confronted with a cinnamon pizza – a surprising addition, but by general consensus not actually as disgusting as it might sound. At least it provided a bit of entertainment. But while the mix-up between курица and корица is understandable, it does make you wonder why the waitress thought a customer would be more likely to replace pork with cinnamon than chicken on a pizza. The strange Russian mentality strikes again.

The plan for tonight is to go and see Taken 2 at the cinema with Akob and Yana, although they seem to have difficulties with organisation so at the moment I’m simply going by Ben’s guess that we’ll meet at around 6.30 outside Lenin. I haven’t seen the first one of the Taken films but I’ve heard this won’t be a problem, and that it’s good; at any rate, it’ll be a good opportunity to practice my Russian, and the cinema tickets are only 100r (£2) on a Wednesday anyway. Cinema is another thing that’s surprisingly cheap over here, as I would consider cinema trips more of a luxury than good food and clothing – but then again, who am I to question Russian logic.