Hi all!
We've been back in St. Petersburg for three weeks now, mostly staying inside knitting, crocheting, reading, watching movies, and cooking. As someone whose sleep pattern is closely tied with the sun, Russia's a real doozy. I wake up at 5:30am when the sun comes up in the summer back home...and now I wake up at 10:00am when the sun comes up here.
Its been very snowy, cold, and dark, meeting expectations for 6 degrees below the Artic Circle. The other night when Nathan & I were coming home from the Meriinski Theater, it was -20 C, or about -4 F. My nostrils froze. Brrr...
The fur coats are really spectacular, and also the hats. They come in many shades of brown, black, and white. Check out some google images of fur coats We saw a wolf skin hat in the metro that seemed to be about the size of upturned bushel basket, covered in thick fur. Of course it didn't cover the wearer's ears, since apparently most Russians have ears with anti-freeze in them. They wear such beautiful hats, but none of them come down far enough.
Walking around the city is a bit perilous. The sidewalk on all but the main streets is covered in 2-5" of black slush over massive icy patches. On side streets, its usually safer to walk in the streets (also slushy, but less icy) and move aside for the cars. The main roads are usually not very slushy and are mostly bumper to bumper and the side roads are in bad condition and have few cars.
And then there's the killer death icicles....
This is the Hotel Marshal, a military school boarding house across the road. See the guys on the roof? Their alpinistas (mountain climbers) who rappel down roofs all winter long clearing these icicles all over town. You have to be careful about where you walk. It seems like every other building has caution tape warning pedestrians about the icicles. We had an American exchange student over for dinner the other night who had heard that 72 people died by icicles in Moscow last year. Another reason to avoid the sidewalks, hahaha.
The Neva River is almost completely frozen over, with only a small channel kept open. Big chunks of ice floated down from up river and crash up against each other and freeze into an ice flow with slabs 6" thick sticking up haphazardly. The hooded crows and black headed gulls hang out at the edges of the ice flows getting water and playing games. Here is the view towards Peter and Paul fortress:
We've also been doing lots of theater going over the last couple weeks at the Mariinski Theater. The tickets are super cheap, so we got tickets to ten shows in December and January. We've been to an organ concert, Turandot (an opera set in Peking re royal families, riddles, marriage, and death), Swan Lake, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (an opera set in Russia re merchant families, adultery, ghosts, and death), and The Tale of Tsar Sultan (an opera set in Russia, you guessed it, involving royal families, intrigue, marriage, and near death). We enjoyed them all except for Lady Macbeth, which was loooong and crude in taste and staging, so we left half way through.
Nathan & I will be traveling to Jerusalem tomorrow, followed later this week by the rest of the family, to visit Nathan's sister. We are extraordinarily excited for sunshine and warmth!
Here's a little bit of cuteness from the dairy, just in case you missed it in the pictures below:
We'll be better about posting more for the next month - and then we come home, woohoo! We'll have a shindig to share more from our travels and catch up with you all! Oh yeah, and if your wondering why I'm holding my arms up in the picture from Warsaw, its because I'm standing on the sun in the Copernican system of the planets carved into the sidewalk. Warsaw is very proud of its own, its own being Copernicus and Chopin.
And I could really use a Marble Oatmeal Stout right about now. Who knew these Europeans didn't do beer so well? (Jane, I'm sorry, I know I haven't been to the Czech Republic or Austria or Germany, so maybe I should say these Southern and far Northern Europeans) Whose up for a trip to Marble in late January?
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