Санкт-Петербург

Санкт-Петербург is the blue plastic covering that I tuck around my boots upon entering the gymnasium for class. The crinkle of my each and every step defines me as an outsider to the students and professors whom I pass in the hall.

Санкт-Петербург is the little old lady that sits in each museum room, her official badge granting her the power to frown at and scold visitors. She terrifies foreigners and natives alike with her ominous glare: "no photos! hands off! SHUSH!" Perhaps the Librarian from the Black Lagoon has come to life and taken over Russia's museums.

Санкт-Петербург is the ice-plastered street that holds me to a slow pace everywhere I go. I don't dare look around at my surroundings lest the ice attack and send me sprawling to the ground. The slip and slide games of my youth come to haunt each step I take. I'm engaged in an endless fight against the ground, and my many bruises prove the unavoidable strength of gravity.

Санкт-Петербург is lying facedown on my floral bedspread, an Egyptian-themed pillow tucked beneath my stomach and a pen held tight in my hand. Words fly from my mind onto the pages of my journal, and I collect memories from the day in cases of letters and jars of paper.

Санкт-Петербург is learning and practicing the words "зеленый чай, пожалуйста" (green tea, please) during each cafe and restaurant visit. The drink has become an integral part of my Russian experience; I haven't gone a day without holding a steaming teacup in my hand.

Санкт-Петербург is getting to know Victoria; sprawling out on my brown plaid blanket, eating pastries, drinking tea, and chatting for hours about family, literature, boys, language, tattoos, travel, Shakespeare, and our futures. Superficially we have little in common: her brown curly hair and dancer frame contrasts sharply with my straight light locks and full body; dig a little deeper and we are similar at heart, romantics the both of us.

Санкт-Петербург is people-watching on the metro escalator: the hats and gloves and fur are fun, but I find the expressions fascinating. I ponder the destination of the smiling elderly gentleman with a bouquet of flowers in his hand; I wonder what would bring a smile to the dour-faced girl; I blush when I make awkward eye contact with a stranger from across the aisle.

Санкт-Петербург is the pigeon that always refuses to move out of my path. Dear pigeon: I understand that you live in a city full of people and you're probably used to humans by now, but I'd really rather not trip on you (the ice sends me to the ground often enough!). So if you could please, please, not walk right in front of me and decide to hang out by my feet, that would be much appreciated. Sincerely, Girl Who Would Rather Not Step On You.

Санкт-Петербург is missing the friends and family I've left behind, and trying to balance emails, photos, blogs, and messages with face to face interactions and city exploration. It's feeling sad that I'm not with those that I love, feeling glad to have such wonderful support back home, feeling lucky to go to a college I'm looking forward to returning to, and feeling excited to see new and old friends so very soon.

Love from Санкт-Петербург,
Shonabell

Midnight Train to Moscow

I squeezed through a tiny hallway, stepping into the cramped room that was to be my home for the next nine hours. Quickly shoving my bag below the benches and kicking my shoes off,  I hopped up on the table in order to let Ling, Faiyaz, and Alan into the small space with me. We bumped around while trying sort out everyone's personal items. Coats here, bags there, shoes under there: we made a mess of the place within seconds of entering. It was already half past midnight and we'd just gotten aboard. Still, sleep was pushed aside in favor of excitement for our first overnight train experience. Faiyaz and I had clambered up to the top bunks, where we clumsily attempted to make the beds. After about fifteen minutes of fighting with the mattress, balancing between bunks, and standing on the table below, my bed was hospitable. Now Alan and Ling had the floor to make their beds, and a while later everyone was tucked into their respective bunk.

The train started moving, and I laid on my stomach, my head on my arms, watching St. Petersburg disappear from the window. Ling plugged her phone into a speaker and played soothing music to accompany the start of our journey, and we talked and laughed in anticipation of Moscow. Stomachs growled and I pulled out the hazelnut wafers I'd thrown into my bag at the last minute. Alan was delighted by them and (much to my amusement) made continuous comments on their deliciousness after each bite.

Eventually, the lull of the train pulled us all into sleep. The car seemed to sashay its way along the tracks, moving gently from side to side while maintaining a perpetual forward motion. All too soon we arrived in Moscow; our eyes may have been puffy from the journey, our bodies sore from the cots, but our minds were open to the experiences and sights that awaited us. We gathered our things, tied our shoes, threw on hats and scarves and gloves and coats (did I mention that it's cold in Russia?), and made our way into the city.

Love from Saint Petersburg,
Shonabell

The City and the Night

The city itself is a lot more rundown than I would have hoped; plaster and paint peel from even some of the more magnificent palaces and residences. It reminds me of Lisbon in that way, as if the city has been slightly forgotten over the decades (a sentiment that makes sense in the context of Russian history). By day the beautiful architecture and bright colors of the many older structures are overshadowed by tacky electric signs and modern advertisements. The present and past fight for space in the packed city streets, a war which spills blood in the form of ruined views and chronological incongruence. 

The sun steps down at 4 o'clock, curtseying slowly to the sky and vanishing behind the horizon. Dusk dances, setting the city aglow in a short pas de deux. White and blue streaks illuminate previously forgotten corners of the city's French Baroque architecture. Eliminating all semblance of color, Dusk brings light and shadow to every traveler's eye. Her feet flitter across the rooftops, swirling the spires in her fleeting glow. The clock ticks at Небский проспект, ushering fur-coated wayfarers to cover as Night takes the stage. Feet scuttle in the metro, up steps and down snow covered pathways; doors close in Night's face as the people of St. Petersburg reject her arrival. 

Though many seek cover from her darkness, Night is kind to her folk; she envelopes them in calm, inviting them home for tea and time with family. The city sparkles. Peeling facades are quickly forgotten as my eyes wander along the St. Petersburg skyline. Some buildings are entirely covered in luminous designs, and the city feels magical. The snow and twinkle lights forge a layer of brilliance across the city streets; all at once I can see where Russian folklore makes its presence in this modern European city. My skin tingles with cold and wonder. Fur coats push past me; everyone is hurrying home. But I walk slowly, mesmerized by the lights, the chill, and the enchantress that is Санкт-Петербург.

Love from St. Petersburg,
Shonabell

Thoughts on Russian Christmas

My head is more often filled with random narrative phrases than not; when I walk through a city, sit and have tea with friends, even when I'm trying to sleep, I paint the scene with words in my head. Certain phrases will stick longer than others, and those that I like most end up either in my journal and/or (now that I'm posting again) on this blog. Sometimes I narrate my life in third person, other times I work out metaphors to represent the landscape, and occasionally I'll map out words to describe a world completely irrelevant to the one I live.  It's a rare moment that leaves me wordless, but that's exactly what happened at the Russian Orthodox Christmas services (we first went to the Kazan cathedral and later to the St. Nicholas cathedral) today. The singing, the architecture, the fixtures: they took my words away. I pulled out my journal this afternoon, as I usually do when I've been somewhere I think is worth remembering, and had no words to put on paper. My usually word-cluttered head was filled with nothing but screenshot memories of gold decorations and deep Russian vocals.

I type and delete, type and delete, unable to find the right words to describe what I saw, or rather, what I felt at the services. More than anything, I felt humble, even reverent. I'm not a religious person and often find organized religion frustrating, but the importance of these services to the people around me in the cathedrals today caused me to think a bit deeper about the presence of religion - Orthodox Christianity in particular - in maintaining the cultural identity of a people and place. I felt loss when Victoria and I discussed the inability of many Russians to practice their religion during the Soviet years, and mourned the many churches long forgotten due to the communist regime. I felt sadness comparing the clearly deep personal reverence of Russian Orthodox Christmas with the hallmark holiday I have always celebrated at home. Not because I would take back a single one of my wonderful Christmas memories, but because I would never be able to fully comprehend the relationship between the church-goers around me and the god to whom they are so faithful. I am filled, now more so than I have ever been, with a deep respect for those who maintain such historic religious traditions. 

Love from St. Petersburg,
Shonabell

Writing Again... From St. Petersburg This Time

Shawn Colvin's Twilight tunes out the airplane thrum. My hands are clammy from the slightly overly-heated air, but I grasp my pen a bit tighter and press my thoughts to the pages of my journal. The four of us (St. Petersburg-bound Colby students) sit, slightly cramped, in the middle aisle of this fancy two story plane. The stolen hotel pen is gripped tightly in my hand as my mind roams the cabin around me. On my left, Victoria sits next to the aisle, her feet slightly angled outwards. We boarded too late to fit her suitcase into the overhead bin, so she smooshed it partway beneath the blue patterned seat in front of her. Her light fingers tap at the seat-back screen, picking out music from the random flight selection, then her eyes dart back to the book in her hands and photos on her phone (I'm only slightly jealous of her multi-tasking abilities). She seems to have settled in for the trip, much calmer now than she was saying goodbye to her parents and walking through security. My eyes jump two rows ahead at the sound of giggling children, then dart back when I notice Victoria's attention is on them as well; her mouth moves into a slight smile. We may be exhausted from the hours of travel we've already put behind us, but our excitement for the adventure to come keeps our spirits high.

My hair won't stay tucked behind my ear so I take a moment to fuss with my braid. My hands fiddle with the slightly static strands while my mind wanders its way a day or two back to breakfast in Boston with dad, and the flamboyantly gay waiter who told me my hair looked like it could be on a Pinterest page (strangely one of the nicest compliments I've received to date, and one that my dad and I enjoyed laughing over multiple times during our drop-Shona-off-for-her-St.Petersburg-flight weekend). I smile at the accumulation of memories from the wonderful, if short, trip, and finish up my plait. The Residence Inn pen finds its way back into my hands, and I begin to write once more.

Faiyaz and Alan sit to my right, both occupied by Alan's book of Russian language tips. I laugh to myself as I empathize with their struggle to print Russian letters, a struggle I was all too familiar with a few months ago. I admire their dedication to this trip and the work they are putting in to get some of their pronunciations right. I give a suggestion here and there but am keenly aware that I could be steering them in the wrong direction; my Russian language skills extend the basics of declension charts and simple verb conjugations, with a few random vocab words thrown in to make everything more interesting.

It's not long before Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud drags me back into memories of the end of my fall semester, and I struggle to focus myself. I'm tired, and my ability to put coherent sentences together is deteriorating.

OUCH! The guy in front of me just reclined his seat all the way back and slammed me in the head. Fiyaz laughs at me while I glare silently at the back of the chair in front of me, rubbing my forehead and trying to reposition myself to write again. I grasp an idea, and go with it:

This trip is a rather sharp contrast to my last study abroad experience. I feel relaxed, in control, and more prepared this time (which is odd because I've done much less orientation work for this trip than I did for my year in Marbella). When I dig a little bit deeper into my honest memories of Marbella, it becomes pretty clear to me the reason for a lot of the stress and fear I faced in the early stages in Marbella: unrealistic expectations. And that's not to say that I have low expectations for St. Petersburg, nor that Marbella was a disappointment. Two years ago I struggled to balance my expectations of exchange life with the rather difficult reality of not knowing Spanish and not being automatically the most popular person in school. The same problem got me again my senior year of high school. College apps were HARD and my acceptance expectations weren't met: cue unhappy teenage girl. So when it came to accepting my admittance to Colby, I decided to focus less on expectations and more on living each moment as it was. And now here I am, off to St. Petersburg, having skimmed over the itinerary and packed all my warmest clothes. I'm ready. To be honest, I have no clue what is about to come at me. I haven't even gone so far as to Google the city and scroll through pictures online. I know that my mind makes great jumps and spins intense webs, and I've decided not to clutter myself with that craziness anymore. I won't let my brain twist the city into something that could only ever exist in my head, and then expect my standards become tangible in the city. When I get there, I will see it, explore it, sense it and let it become part of me. But until I do, St. Petersburg will remain a mystery. One that I am so very, very excited to see.

I look back at the pages of journal that I've filled: I'm writing again. I take a moment to consider this, pen tapping against the pull down tray table, and a smile spreads across my face. Life is good; it may be messy and wibbly-wobbly at times, but I feel like it's heading in the right direction. My path doesn't seem to have linear tendencies like I once expected it to, but every stop I've made along the way since my acceptance at Colby has been filled with more laughter, smiles, and fantastic challenges that I ever could have predicted for myself. I sit on this flight and, for the first time in a long while, I write. And that action, in itself, feels like happiness.

Love from St. Petersburg,

Shonabell