Halloween, The Great Escape, Stray Dogs and Ukraine

In about 5 hours time I will be in a taxi on the way to the train station to start my very long journey to Kiev, Ukraine. I thought that since I’d be without internet for the rest of the week, I’d write a little update now. If anything, it gives me something to do with all of my excited/nervous energy!!

First on the agenda is a little bit on what I promised I’d write about in my last post (Expect; free meals, girly sleepovers, early Halloween, bar friends):

Free meals - We are really lucky in the fact that not only does one of our lecturers from Manchester University come to visit us to check how we’re all getting on, but UoM also pay for us all to go out for a meal. I researched the best restaurants and Joe went and booked us a table at Fortuna, which is an excellent restaurant about a 5 minute walk away from our accommodation. I couldn't wait to make the most of getting a feast, especially since I'd had eggs and spinach for dinner for two nights on the run before.The food in Fortuna was excellent, topped only by the company. It was the first thing we’d done just as Manchester students and it was lovely to have a catch up with everyone.

My starter was Жюльен на тарелке which translates to
Julien on a plate. It's not as impressive a name in English.
It was chicken and mushrooms with mozzarella in a
white wine sauce, wrapped in puff pastry.

Main - Beef Stroganoff 

Dessert - Mille Feuille (ish)

Girly Sleepovers - Stefka and I were lucky enough to get invited to Kristina and Frances’ flat for the sleepover of the year. It was a genuine girly sleepover, but this time with alcohol. We dragged our mattresses into their flat, because even though we live about two metres away from them, it’s not a real sleepover unless we actually sleep over. We watched films, drank champagne, ate caviar like true Russians (vom) and danced to our treasured 90s pop. We also made up a dance routine, which we now proudly whip out in clubs. The locals think we’re amazing dancers. They don’t say it, but we can see it in their eyes...

Sleepover snacks

Kristina made us 'Special Breakfast'.
They are the only ones here with a
toaster, this was such luxury.

‘Early Halloween’ - One of the occasions where we whipped out the dance routine was at Horoshii Povod. On this occasion we were going for our friend Robin’s birthday. We didn’t realise that Horoshii Povod was celebrating Halloween a week early though so we were a little underdressed. However, good old Tver had us covered by the way of a face painting station. Drunk and like a fool I got my face painted (I also slept in it and scared Stefka when she woke up harhar). It was a brilliant night. I even asked the DJ if I could dance on the big speaker...which is funny, because I am an awful dancer. I have no idea why Russia was celebrating Halloween early, but I was happy about it. Especially since real Halloween was a bit of a letdown (see below). 

Facepaint with the Finns

Speaker dancing with Rachael

Bar friends- I woke up after ‘Early Halloween’ to find that a lady called Ekaterina had given me her number and written St Petersburg on it. I was wracking my brain to figure out who she was and what I’d arranged to do in St Petersburg(?!). Then I remembered that I was sat next to a couple of Russian women who I decided to become friends with. They didn’t speak English so I delivered my best drunk Russian and eventually, after befriending these ladies, I agreed to teach Ekaterina English once I move to St Petersburg and she’ll show me around the city. I have no idea if this will happen, but watch this space.

My friend managed to snap this picture without me noticing.
That's me in deep conversation with my new Russian friends.
Ekaterina is out of the shot, but that's her neighbour, Olga.

Second on the agenda is Halloween:

Soo Halloween fell on a Thursday this year which was excellent for us, because we always have Friday’s off, so Thursday is always our going out night. A lot of people had planned their costumes in advance, but I was rubbish and thought I’d just decide on the day. I thought that if all else failed, I could wear all black and do some crazy make up of some sort. We found this amazing shop, which is a bit like a Russian version of TK Max.. but with a lot more fur, lace, spandex etc! I should take some sneaky pictures of Russian fashion to upload onto here at some point, because, man, it is something!

I originally picked up black leggings and a baggy black top, but then I passed this red dress which was only £2 and it claimed to be Vera Wang, so I couldn’t resist it. I decided that I’d be a ‘zombie bride’ type creature, compete with a bouquet of dead roses (thanks Russian uni halls for having dead flowers in vases everywhere, it’s not creepy at all). We came home and started on the makeup and the champagne. I then decided to customise my ‘dress’ which wasn’t the best idea when tipsy. On reflection there was definitely a bit too much boob on view!

The night was a bit of a shambles really for the following reasons:

1.     We somehow got locked on the university campus and had to break out.

I threw my bags on the ground and decided to
roll under the gate. 

This is me, enjoying freedom.

The Great Escape: Tver 

2.   Russia doesn’t really celebrate Halloween, so wandering around all dressed up did make us stand out as foreigners and it also stopped us getting into a few places. (Mainly the boys though, because some of them decided to go as stereotypical 'Gypsies', so they were wearing sweatpants.)

Stefka, Kristina, Frances (deceased pin-up girls) & Me

3.     We ended up in Chicken House once again.

I got in trouble for taking this photograph.
"Photography is forbidden in Chicken House!"

The thing I love about the clubs/bars here is that they all have free cloakrooms. This means that if we are wearing going out clothes then a ‘beer jacket’ isn’t required, we can take actual jackets!!  Being cheeky Brits, we take advantage of this. Over my little dress I had tracksuit bottoms, ugg boots, a ski jacket and a rucksack to put them all in once I got to the club. This did mean stripping off around the corner from each club though, which was a bit awkward. I got caught putting my tracksuit bottoms back on after our group got rejected from Zerkalo (low point) and a beautiful French man thought that I was going for a wee on the street. So he stopped everyone from walking past me, telling them all that I needed privacy!! I was like, I’m not that bad!! Hahaha!!

Since then we’ve been enjoying the start of reading week. I’ve been out to lunch with some great friends and explored around the Volga. 

Stefka, the Volga and a stray dog that adopted us. If you're looking for a word to describe the expression on Stefka's face, it's terror.

It was a troubling time. We thought Chenkov (I named him) was going to be with us
forever.

We went for a spontaneous night out to Horoshii Povod on Saturday night, which was amazing at first, but it ended quite badly and didn’t show Russia in a brilliant light. It’s probably best that I wait until I am back in England to write about that though. I’ve decided to play it safe.

Third and finally we have Ukraine:

I am seriously excited to go to Ukraine. Like I said at the start of this post, we leave in about 5 hours and then we’ve got a two hour train journey to Moscow, where we’ll be meeting our friends from Yaroslavl’. We’ve then got a 9 hour train journey to Kiev! I can’t wait! I love sleeper trains. I’ve packed all of my books and snacks (even though I did ‘accidentally’ start eating them before, m’bad).

We’ve booked to go on a day tour of Chernobyl on Friday as part of our trip. This is the thing that I am most excited about, but the more I think about it, the more nervous I’m getting. I’ve spent the last few nights researching it and it has proved quite difficult reading.  I know that it will be incredible to see an abandoned city and I can’t wait to learn more about it, however, I also know that it will probably be a very emotional and thought-provoking tour. I’ve been told that the radiation we’ll be exposed to should be no more than that of an x ray or transatlantic flight and we get checked for radiation multiple times during the tour, so all should be well on that front. (I hope!!)

Wish me luck!! Hopefully I won’t return with an extra limb or glow-in-the-dark skin or anything.

XxX