Hammer and sickle, they drink vodka with a pickle

Nadine and I hit the streets early Tuesday morning with a Danish student on our trip named Lisbet to see St. Petersburg's central synagogue, which turned out to be within easy walking distance of our hotel. It was amazing! We only had about five minutes to peek in before we had to be back with the group, but that was worth the trip. The outside was striped and done in geometric shapes; the inside was painted white with yellow and blue accents and decorations. It was big and airy and grand and they so do not make them like that at home. It was also kind of fun to explain the idea of the synagogue to Lisbet, who didn't know much about Judaism and was curious how this particular building differed from any other.

We got back to the hotel in time to catch the second of two group walking tours leaving. The first tour, it transpired, went to a communal housing complex, among other things. My tour, on the other hand, started at a Russian banya (we didn't actually go into the baths themselves, but we got the scoop from our locally-born-and-bred guide), went through a food market (in which everyone gives your free samples in hopes of making a sale!), and finished at a bar. Yes, you've read that right.

The food market was fairly interesting, even without the free food part. The visuals were almost (but not quite) on par with those in Jerusalem in some places, and the guide broke down the class and ethnic strata of the place; for instance, most of the women selling cheese are Slavic, whereas the fruit folk hail from farther east.
We also heard about all the different kinds of Russian candy for sale (but not for tasting, sadly) and were informed that Russians like pickling most anything.

And now to the bar part. Paulina, our guide, walks us up to a wooden door with a sign that says the place is open from 10-22 (10am-10pm), and she explains that it's one of the last Soviet bars in the area. Inside, we find a kind of run-down, smoky, definitely local sort of place with an entire cabinet full of all sorts of vodka. Paulina explains how you drink Russian vodka like a Russia: shot of vodka (and they're big shots), followed by a bite of pickle, and then tomato juice with some salt. She also assures us that this is not supposed to be a Bloody Mary. In any case, I'm sitting down at the old wooden tables with everyone else, preparing to give this thing a try (and yes, it's about 11:30am at this point), when a 60- or 70-something Russian guy walks up and starts jabbering at me.

Alcoholic Russian guy doesn't quite fathom that I don't speak a word of Russian beyond spasibo ("thank you"). Fortunately, Paulina and another Dane on our trip, Mia, who's studying in Moscow for the semester, intervened and surmised that he's telling me I "look Russian" (which I'm later informed has no real legit meaning and is generally used as a conversation-starter or come-on). I tried to explain through them that I might have a bit of Russian blood going for me, which prompted my new friend to conclude that I must be a Russian alcoholic and that someone had to take a picture of him with me. Mia obliged, which was apparently all the guy needed to settle back down with his friends. Case in point, it seems, of older Russian men. After that episode, we all raised our shot glasses with a nastrovya! ("cheers!") and did the thing. I'm not a big fan of shots, but real Russian vodka goes down a lot more smoothly than its international counterparts, I learned, and the tomato juice took the sting off nicely.

After lunch, we had a nice, long guided tour of the Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace. The building was a gorgeous example of Peter's schtick-- bright and intricate and lavish, inside and out. The art got a little old after a bit--not quite my style, I admit--but the rooms themselves were decorated so thoroughly and individually that it was well worth the wandering. We had a bit of free time after the tour to explore an exhibit on Islamic art and another on Impressionism; after a quick stop at both parts of the Internet café downstairs, a group of us started heading for the Hermitage Theater but were pretty waylaid by the nasty snowstorm that had begun. We did make it in good time before "Swan Lake" began, but another group had walked all the way to the hotel and back, and made it just as the curtain was going up, bent in half and covered in fresh power. Yikes.

The ballet itself was lovely, though it took until after the third act for any of us to know what was going on, after I borrowed a synopsis from someone. We all enjoyed it immensely after that, and walked out wanting to rent "The Swan Princess." The walk home was another story. We could take the metro for a chunk of it, but neither the theater nor the hotel were super-close to a station, so we got the full-throttle "Russian spring" treatment.

Thanks to the snowstorm, our day trip on Wednesday to the very, very old city of Novgorod was cancelled. Instead, we took a behind-the-scenes tour of sorts with an academic friend of Jon's. It was interesting-- he talked about the city's Soviet architecture, including the "churches of secularism" that are each of the city's metro stops. We also got a glance inside a municipal building featuring a huge red hammer and sickle on top. Unfortunately, all of this was sort of drowned out (pun intended) by the fact that the snow had started to melt, producing a muddy slush that had everyone soaked up the shins. Brr.

The afternoon brought a visit to a local homeless shelter. They didn't speak English (Jon translated) and didn't quite know what to do with us, but the main speaker was pretty interesting. Under Soviet rule, it was technically illegal to be homeless, so the government had a safety net, be it jail or regular provided housing. Without communism, though, the homeless population (some of it immigrant) grew, and they're still working on getting it recognized and addressed, both in Russia and in the world.

We then had about six hours to kill before our next group meeting time. The weather was so nasty (and it was late enough in the day that most museums were closed) that almost everyone went back to chill at the hotel. I, however, was one matriyoshka doll set short, and ended up trekking a mile or two in nasty, nasty winds to a recommended souvenir shop that didn't exist. I found another (and in it, a lovely purchase) on the way back, so it was worth it, but good lord, this climate is nuts.

There was an incredibly amusing dinner at the hotel restaurant with some of my fellow travelers including an incident of ordering ice cream specifically for the pirouline cookies it came with, after which the group headed to the Moscow train station in St. Petersburg to catch a sleeper train south. I explained my random hiccups to the Danes, had a muffin, and turned in as soon as we'd started moving. This turned out to be a good decision-- others stayed up late enough to learn the Russian word for "vomit," which turned out to be shpraf.