First night

Finn Air is awesome! The JFK-Helsinki flight was without a doubt the best flight I've ever flown. They provided me with a vegetarian dinner, and wine & beer were complimentary so I had a wonderful little single-serving bottle of South African shiraz and toasted with my friends behind me over the back of my seat. Breakfast wasn't nearly as exciting, as the vegan option was a half-pita with cucumber, tomato, and lettuce, but they did give us tolerable coffee. I did have to declare my violin at customs in St. Petersburg, but the agent who inspected it didn't give me any trouble and actually seemed interested in it. I was feeling so tired and laissez-faire by the time I got to customs that I leaned up against the table (which supported my enormously heavy hiking backpack) and plucked my violin lazily like a mandolin while he conversed with his superiors.

This city is beautiful and strange, although I haven't seen much other than the hotel, the river, and the view from the bus. The bus ride here was silent most of the way. I think everyone was overwhelmed. All of a sudden this thing we've been looking forward to is real, we're here and it's so much bigger and scarier than I thought it'd be. Looking out the window I felt like I could see the pulse of history underneath the city, each building another subsequent pump of the St. Petersburg's heart, from Neo-classical to baroque to boxy concrete Soviet-era apartment buildings, the skyline torn by spires and the smokestacks that jut from the staggeringly vast factories that have lined the Neva's banks since the mid-1800's. I feel history and it's a history I'm not a part of, and that's very...beautiful and strange!

After lunch and the second round of HIV testing (they're serious about it here; you can't get a visa unless you get a negative result), I returned to the hotel to nap. The flight was fun, but crossing 8 time zones means a loss of a full night's sleep, and by this time I was feeling it pretty strongly. I set an alarm for 6:20 so I'd make it to dinner at 6:30, but I guess I didn't set it well enough because I woke up groggy and disoriented at 8:30, having missed dinner completely. With the dual mission of finding dinner and finding alcohol, I set out from the hotel as part of a mob of students who were invested in at least half of those objectives. We stopped at a grocery store, a tiny, half-underground 10x10 room that was half cheese, milk, & meat, and half alcohol, but the only things I really knew how to identify & pronounce were "яблоко" (apple) and "кефир" (kefir), so my dinner turned out to be...an apple and a pint of kefir!

The group decided to buy a bottle of vodka and sit on the bank of the Neva, but I started feeling really uncomfortable with the dynamic, like I was a duckling invisible within a flock, just following out of helplessness, and it's illegal to drink vodka on the streets in St. Petersburg anyway (but not beer or wine), so I and three boys, Ben, Joe, and Jason, decided to drink in a real bar. We had a hell of a time not only finding a bar that sold cocktails and more than two kinds of beer, and also trying to order without seeming really dumb. We failed: the bartender laughed at us. We toasted to our first night in Russia, and then to Finn Air, and then to our terrible Russian. After a couple of drinks (absinthe isn't illegal here! it's delicious!) we strolled along the bank of the Neva in the dusky dark, taking our time in returning to our hotel. It was so beautiful, nearly 11:00 and still bright in the western corner of the sky, streetlights reflecting like strobes against the fluttering waters of the same river that's swallowed thousands throughout history.

And now...I'm on about 3 hours of sleep and breakfast is served in about 8 hours, so it's about time to crash. Tomorrow: several more hours of lectures, and a bus tour of the city!