Pirozhki!

Location: in the Gulf of Finland, just north of Estonia

I am back at sea!

Yesterday was my official final day in St. Petersburg. At approximately 20:00 the ship pulled an impressive u-turn in the Neva river and we headed back out to sea the way we had come in. Now we are cruising at 11.2 knots and heading for Hamburg, Germany, where we will arrive in approximately three days (on the 5th.) There has already been an hour time change, so I am now only 10 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time!

So on the morning of my final day in St. Petersburg I was on yet another field program (I did a bunch in the first port, but I really think it was the best way to see everything!) in which I went with a group of about 20 students to a Dacha community in a forested area just outside of St. Petersburg. Dachas are these little country houses which many Russian families use as summer houses. This practice was especially popular in the Soviet Era, when Dacha plots were given out to families from the nearby city. After the fall of the Soviet Union, those who had received a Dacha were allowed, with only minimum paperwork, to keep and own properties (in Soviet times, nobody was really allowed to own anything - everything belonged to everyone and was equal.)

Anyhow, our big moose of a bus passed through the forest of Russian white birch trees and successfully navigated the little streets of the Dacha community (I think it was called a Camarova? But that is probably very misspelled) and pulled up to the houses that would be hosting us for tea. I went with a larger group to the Dacha of a woman called Katya, who was really nice and spoke great English. She showed us around her home and told us lots of stories about her family, her life, and the history of the Dacha Community she lives in. Katya's parents-in-law were living in the original Dacha built back in the Communist era, and she and her husband were living in a new house with electrical and running water that they had constructed so that they could live there year-round. That was where she served us tea, pirogi, and snacks (after two shots of vodka each to welcome us. Which means that I got my chance to try some vodka after all - in a SAS sponsored trip!)

We learned that Katya belongs to a family of actors (her husband's nephew is Mikhail Boyarsky, who is very famous in Russia), that her father fought in World War II, and that her grandfather was a priest who was shot and killed by authorities who weren't thrilled with religion at the time. Katya has actually written a book about her family history, so she was very knowledgable and fun to listen to. She served us traditional black Russian tea (yes, there is tea that's grown in Russia!) and tasty snacks along with it, including filled pastries called pirozhki. The ones she served us were baked by her mother-in-law and had potatoes that she bought from a neighbor and mushrooms that her husband went out and collected from the forest behind the house. It was pretty awesome. Actually, I think that that whole visit was the neatest thing that I did while in Russia.

So the bus returned, and I headed off to spend my remaining rubles before getting on the ship for the final time. I had budgeted pretty well, so I didn't have a ton of rubles left. What I did less well was to go to a souvenir shop to spend the last 290 (about $10), so I came back having spent almost double that - but with a lovely scarf! Come on, who doesn't want to reply to "Hey, where did you get that scarf?" with "Oh, you know - St. Petersburg, Russia." Am I right?

...Anyway, now it is the following morning and I need to get my butt in gear and head to class! I have World Literature, and then lunch, and then Medical Anthropology.

Thanks for your comments, and have a great night! (I think it's midnight for you now.)