My First Six Weeks in St Petersburg: The Good, The Bad and The Downright Strange.

We’re almost six weeks in! I can’t believe I’ve been living here for almost six weeks already. We’ve all settled back into Russian life so quickly that it really feels like we never left. Petersburg is one of the most incredible cities I’ve been to and it’s completely exceeded my expectations! There are so many things to appreciate here. That being said, this is Russia.  Last week, I was appreciating some of the impressive architecture on Nevsky Prospekt and then a man walked past me, walking a cat... on a lead... and the cat was wearing a tracksuit. Everything about that was just wrong.

Here’s a brief summary of my six weeks living in Saint Petersburg. It is with great pleasure that I present to you; The Good, The Bad and The Downright Strange. 

The Good

• THE FOOD. I am having a complete love affair with the food here. There are hundreds of Stalovayas (canteen style dining halls) all over the place, but shamefully I’m yet to nip into one. There are just so many other places to go. Nevsky Prospekt is especially good, it's full of Turkish, Georgian, Italian, Japanese (etc) restaurants and little cafes, filled to bursting with freshly prepared pastries and cakes. And the bonus is that THE MAJORITY ARE ALL TWENTY-FOUR HOUR! Last week at 4am, I was sat in an incredible little Italian called Marchellis, where I had the best carbonara of my life. There are also pizzerias everywhere. I haven’t eaten this many pizzas in a long time. Yeah, just so much food. Heaven.

Cafe Singer

I should say, these were taken after a night out at about 5 or 6 in the
morning which is why we look a little worse for wear. But still, PIZZA!

There is also a McDonald's down the road which has a 24 hour 'walk-through'!
Much better than the one in Tver that was a 45 minute walk away.

My breakfast!

Olivia's breakfast pancakes

Opera Cake

We went to a restaurant called, 'Soup Vino' for Alice's birthday. The soup was incredible!

The vino wasn't bad either!

I will definitely be leaving Petersburg the size of a house.

• The things to see and do! I don’t think I will ever be bored here. There are so many museums and monuments to see! There’s ballet and opera! Cinema, bowling and massive shopping centres. I know these might not be that exciting to some, but we were so starved of these things in Tver, that it is such a novelty having them here! There are obviously a lot more things that I haven’t listed, but I’ll just write about them as and when I see them.

Watching an opera at The Mariinsky Theatre

• The exchange rate - As you are probably aware, the value of the rouble has hit record lows. This means that now we’re getting so much more for our money. We’re used to 1000 roubles being about £20 and now it’s only about £16. Also, this means that this month’s rent worked out as only £263 instead of £310. Bonus!

•  The weather – Saint Petersburg has been uncharacteristically warm recently! Usually, February and March are still extremely cold and snowy in Petersburg, but this week we’ve had temperatures as high as 6°C. I’m not going to be fooled though. A few weeks ago we were lulled into a false sense of security when the weather reached temperatures around 8°C, but then suddenly things changed. We got home from at night out at 5am - no snow, not too cold, then went to sleep, woke up at 11am and BAM... SNOW!

The view from my window. There was at least 4 inches of snowfall, but I don't think this picture quite captured it

Have I mentioned that Saint Petersburg is beautiful? Because it really is. I sat on a bench yesterday, overlooking a frozen lake, surrounded by beautiful buildings. I can imagine that this will only get better as the weather gets warmer and then we can really appreciate places like The Summer Gardens.

Disclaimer: That is not me sitting on the bench. I was sat on a bench behind. (This picture was taken about
a week after the one above, so you can see how it's getting warmer!)

• There’s a lot choice of venue for nights out! In Tver, we had four places available to us; Club Cultura (never went), Zebra (wish I never went), Zerkalo (also, wish I never went) and Horoshii Povod (good, but started getting violent towards the end). In Petersburg, there are just too many to list. I’ve only been to three clubs/bars so far; Circus, Radio Baby and Cuba Libre. They’ve all been good so far though! –No complaints!

Our first night out in Circus! Drinks were about £6 for a single though, so not great. Still lots of fun!

Before Radio Baby - Preparing for our lie in the next morning!

First night in Radio Baby - Champagne bought for us by Hannah's parents (Thank you Sheryl and Mark!)

Our second time in Radio Baby, the following week

(Sorry, I uploaded it straight to blogger for a change, instead of youtube and the quality isn't amazing!)

We've also managed to find one or two cocktails...

 The Bad

• Holy shit, this is a dirty city. Saint Petersburg is the third most polluted city in Russia and sadly, it does show. 1) When walking down the street, buses drive past and carry with them a sheet of dust which just covers you. If you’re unprepared (like me) then it’ll go straight into your eyes and you’ll have to hobble around for a while until your sight comes back.  2) It is more than acceptable to spit in the street. This is definitely a cultural difference, because no one here bats an eyelid, we all think it's completely and utterly disgusting. Without exaggeration, since arriving here, I haven’t been able to walk down one road without having to be really careful about where I step. 3) I was in a bar a few weeks ago and they had unisex toilets. The obvious pee-on-the-seats/floor/everywhere was expected, but coming out of my cubicle to see a man blowing his nose into his hands and then washing his hands in the sink... not what I was expecting. It almost put me off my Raspberry Mojito. Almost.

• Most people here can speak English. This is especially noticeable in shops and restaurants. Today, I didn't hear what a waitress was saying to me, so I asked her to please repeat herself, but instead she just said it in English. Helpful, but not from a language learning point of view. Tver was definitely better in this respect, because it forced us to speak Russian everywhere.

• I’ve not been able to find a library to use yet. With sharing a room (and a small desk), sometimes it’d be handy to slope off to a library for a little bit and get some work done. Annoyingly, we haven’t managed to find one. Our friends, who have been living here since September, have also had this problem and the libraries that they have found have all got strange rules like, ‘no coats, bags or books to be taken into the library’ which isn’t ideal!

• I've had my purse stolen already! On my first trip out to a big shopping centre, we'd only been in about 3 shops when I noticed that my purse was missing. Just as I was telling my friend that it was gone, my phone started ringing. I answered it and there was a Russian lady on the other end, asking me if I was shopping in this shopping centre and then told me that she had my purse in River Island. This was so weird, because I'd not bought anything yet, let alone in River Island so there's no way I'd have mislaid it or dropped it. Anyway, we went straight there and my purse was returned to me (about £75 lighter!!). Apparently it was ditched somewhere and the security returned it to River Island, because it's a River Island purse. I was so lucky though, because all of my bank cards were still in it. I'd be buggered if they'd taken them. Also, it was lucky that I had my MTS card with my mobile number on it, or I'd probably never have been reunited with it. It sucks, but it happens and it could have been worse. I've always thought I'm really vigilant when shopping and I always make sure my bag is in front of me, but obviously I'm not vigilant enough. A (slightly more expensive than hoped) lesson was learnt.

The Downright Strange (I wish I had photos of some of these)

• As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the tracksuit-clad feline being led around Petersburg on a lead. I've seen dogs dressed up, but never cats and why was this cat on a lead? Seriously, who on earth walks their cat on a lead?! 
• We left a club at 5am on a Saturday morning and amongst the taxi’s outside, there was a woman offering rides on her horse (not a euphemism). Imagine getting a horse home instead of a taxi!
• I was stood in Palace Square and two men tried to get me to hold monkeys for a photograph... monkeys in ski suits. I definitely didn’t think I’d be seeing monkeys in Saint Petersburg.
• While walking back from The Mariinsky Theatre, we spotted two horses walking down the middle of the road. As they got closer, we noticed that the people on the horses were not only riding bareback,  but they were also swigging on bottles of beers. Just casually riding down the middle of the road at about 11pm... drinking beer... on horses.

I think I’ll designate a special section under each post for all of the strange things that I see. I am certain that there will be many more to come.

We've had this week off school, so I’ve spent it gallivanting around Petersburg. Will update you all soon!

XxX

Welcome to Saint Petersburg!

Hi Everyone!


I arrived in Saint Petersburg last Monday 17th at about 1am after the most hectic day of travel I have ever experienced. We decided to arrange our own travel, because we were sure that we could do it cheaper than the price of the group ticket arranged by RLUS. We succeeded.. but it was definitely a more difficult way of doing things. Instead of flying from Heathrow to Saint Petersburg (which in itself is annoying because I live in The North and would need to get down to London), we decided to fly from Manchester to Moscow. Here's our day's travel in a nutshell:

5.30am - Arrived at Manchester Airport and joined massive queue to the baggage drop. Don't you just love getting stuck behind huge school groups..

7.40am - Flight departed

*The flight is only about 4 hours, but Russia is 4 hours ahead, so I'll switch to Russian time now*

3.35pm - Flight arrived in Moscow

Time to land!

5.00pm - Managed to finally get through airport security, drag luggage through airport and board the aeroexpress train to take us to the metro.

6.00pm - Arrived at the Paveletsky Rail Terminal and boarded the metro.

7.10pm - After a lot of wandering around, we finally managed to find the Leningradsky Railway Station and boarded our train to St Petersburg.

11.15pm - Arrived at the Moskovsky Railway Station in St Petersburg.

The boys went off to find sim cards, James tried to find somewhere with wifi since he'd arrived in Russia without checking where he was going to be staying...vital information that he obviously needed, and we finally got our first opportunity of the day to eat something!!

Unfortunately the only food available to us at the time was this pizza.
It had some sort of garlic paste on it which burned the mouth.
Not the best 'first taste' of Petersburg.

1.15am - We arrived at our hotel and went to bed for some much needed sleep since we were up in 7 hours to take a placement exam for our language course (oh the joys).

Overall, I think I saved about £320 doing it this way. Was all the faff and luggage lugging around Russia worth it? As much as I hated it at the time, it probably was.

I'm currently living in a hotel, which is less of a rock and roll experience than I'd imagined. It's right in the centre of Petersburg though which is brilliant and we have our room cleaned once a day, sheets changed once a week etc which is handy! It's also really clean, so I'm not complaining.

Finally, here is the ever awaited tour of where I'm currently living! It's not the best video I've ever made and I've got a sore throat so it's all nice and croaky, but nevertheless, enjoy!

(Sorry having issues with technology and it wont let me add the video to the end here, so you'll have to just follow the link to youtube until I can sort it out!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlqxJY2K_rU


XxX

Ass and Foot: My experience travelling in traditional platzkart style

In November 2013 my friends and I decided to travel to Kiev, Ukraine during our reading week. Since the cheapest and most traditional method of travel is to travel by train in third class (platzkart), we decided to book it.

I was so excited to travel on a sleeper train again. I’d travelled on one once before when I was fifteen and travelling from Hong Kong to Beijing. It was such an amazing experience; I just ate, read and slept. Heaven. Platzkart, however, was a completely different experience!!! I have no idea why I’d just assumed it’d be the same. Even just googling the word ‘platzkart’ comes up with posts titled, ‘Platzkart Hell’ and ‘Nightmare in Seat #37’ etc. Looking back, I should definitely have researched them beforehand. I obviously would still have travelled platzkart, but I would at least have been a little more prepared.

I kept a diary while I was on the train so you can get a good idea of what I was thinking and experiencing! It’ll be like you’re there with me... lucky you...

And yes, the title ‘Ass and Foot’ does probably give you an idea of what you’re in store for.

Ukraine is two hours behind Russia, but I've kept all of my entries in one time zone (Russia's) in a bid to keep things simple.

5^th November 2013: From Moscow to Kiev

7.30am – I’m currently sat on the elektrichka to Moscow. We left our accommodation in Tver at 5.40am this morning to allow us to get the 6.54am elektrichka to Moscow. Surprisingly the journey’s pretty busy and there are several unappealing smells in the air. 

(I can’t believe we were complaining about the smells on the elektrichka, little did we know what we would be smelling in platzkart!)

*I took a break from diary writing for the first half hour on the train, because I am incapable of doing anything in a simple manner and managed to cause a bit of a commotion when boarding the train.  I spent the first half hour cringing, almost in tears, wishing I was elsewhere. This is why:

We boarded the train and my god, there were beds everywhere. Everywhere! We thought we’d booked bottom beds, but it turned out that we’d ended up with the top bunk beds. Excellent. The people on the bottom bunks had already sat down and made their beds up which meant that we had to manoeuvre around them to sort our beds out. My bed had three sets of bedding piled on it. The woman in the bed below Stefka’s was really nice and told the man below mine to help me move the bedding sets.

Oh hello there commotion! Is it time for you to rear your ugly head? Yes? Great.

This kind Ukrainian man didn’t realise that I’d just put my litre of fanta (in a McDs takeout style cup) on the edge of my bed while I put my bags down. He knocked it off. It crashed to the floor and fanta splashed out ALL over the aisle, our little dormitory, just everywhere. I have never seen fanta coat so many surfaces. It really was the worst situation. We were already a source of amusement on the train, because it’s not very common to get foreigners travelling platzkart, so everyone was already staring at us and then the silly foreign girl went and spilt her drink. Then the tutting began. The heavy sighs and dirty looks as people tried to cross the river of fanta to get to their beds. Then a Ukrainian babushka started shouting at me. I wanted to curl up into a little ball of cringe and just roll off the train.

I do not speak Ukrainian. I do not understand Ukrainian, so stop shouting at me IN UKRAINIAN. I know you’re indicating that you want me to mop it up, but I’m on a fucking train, where exactly are you expecting me to magic a mop from?!

I decided to go to the toilets to get some toilet roll to mop it up with. After pulling on the toilet door for a minute or two (while still being stared/scowled at, might I add), I realised that the door was locked (they only unlock them during transit). So I had to go back to the fanta lake and just deal with it.

I rolled out my mattress, climbed onto my bed (read: coffin) and hid from the babushka, who was still loudly making comments about me.  Once on my bed I apologised to the people below for the spillage, and they just laughed and said it was fine. Phew.

 (The conductor eventually mopped it up)*

1.30pm - I am currently lying on my bed. I have literally half a metre of space to lie in between my bed and the shelf above. Luckily it’s not driving me mad at the moment because I don't mind being all contorted, so I can just about sit up, but I can see this getting old very soon. 

The view from my bed

Stefka on the bed opposite me

Hannah Anderson (left) was the only one out of our
group to get a bottom bunk, so we were able to seek refuge
on it from time to time. It allowed us to sit up straight for a few
minutes, but it wasn't much cooler.

4pm – I have had two hours sleep I think, but I’ve just woken up because it’s too hot. Far too hot. It’s like that exhausting heat that makes all movements a huge effort. I can’t move, I am so hot. We’ve been through 2 passport controls, one leaving Russia and one to get into Ukraine. They’re quite intense. I got told that I needed to be sat on my bed during the control, but due to the lack of space above me, it’s really awkward talking to the officials with my knees either side of my head...

4.56pm - The lights went down and someone's just bumped into my foot ahh. Personal space please?! Ha this reminds me of my friend Kristina who travelled to Kazan and was woken up by a man who was squeezing her foot for absolutely no reason, before just walking off. If someone does that to me I’ll freak out.

5.30pm - The lady in the bed below’s phone keeps ringing and her ringtone is ‘Strangers in The Night’. It’s making me laugh.

6.15pm - I forgot where I’d heard ‘Strangers in The Night’ and started singing it to Stefka. Then I remembered that it’s the woman below’s ring tone and that’s why it’s in my head. She’s definitely heard me. Awkward. I’m going to hide in my bed.

6.25pm - People keep walking through the aisle trying to sell things and they’re also trying to sell things through the big windows when we pull up to stations. They’re selling strange things like teddies, toys, dolls, dried fish and apples.

I’ve decided I’m just going to lie still on my bed while I try to cool down. The lights keep going off so it’s quite difficult to read my book. Anderson has just given me some Pringles.

6.35pm – The heat on this train is really something. I’m just lying, flat on my back all clammy, too exhausted to move. I don’t usually get claustrophobic, but I’m getting a bit like I just want to get the eff off this train. Or at least sit up!!!

7.00pm - There is an overwhelming smell of B.O coming from a nearby man. Excellent. At least we haven’t got too long left now.

*Really strangely (and I can acknowledge just how strange this it), I really don’t mind the smell of B.O. I’m assuming it’s one of those acquired scents like petrol or nail varnish etc? But it’s just not a smell that usually bothers me. This smell, however, was even managing to turn my stomach. The eye-watering/can-taste-it-in-your-mouth strength was just too much.*

7.10pm - We have realised that our journey is an extra two hours long!!! We didn’t take the time difference into account. We thought that when our ticket said arrival time 7.19pm, it would be Russian time. We didn’t click onto the fact that the departure time would be in Russian time and the arrival would be in Ukrainian time. So it’s only 5.10pm in Ukraine right now, meaning we’ve got another 2 hours left!!! Ahhh!! I can’t actually believe that we thought we’d be getting off in 9 minutes, and now there’s another two hours!! THAT’S ALMOST ELEVEN HOURS ON THIS TRAIN! Can’t sleep, it’s too hot, can’t move, it’s too hot! This is not fun! Why didn’t I bring shorts to wear!!! Get me off this train!!

*I was completely and utterly too hot and bothered to write anymore. But you can imagine how those two extra hours were...*

9^th November: From Kiev back to Moscow

7.40pm - We’ve just had quite a hard time trying to board the 7.16pm train and the conductor was really apprehensive about letting us on. We think it’s because the border officials ripped half of our visas off and kept them, when we were on our way into Ukraine. She seemed to be really bothered by this. She just stared at them, kept us all to one side while she let everyone else board and then reluctantly let us on in a this isn’t over kind of way. Urgh! This type of thing really stresses me out! At least we’re on it now. Just a little worried about crossing the border back into Russia!

It was pretty easy to find our beds this time. Once again we’re on the top beds, but at least this time we knew where to get our mattress from and how to sort our beds. I’m currently sat on the lady below me’s bed. I don’t have my bedding yet, but she’s already got hers so she invited me to sit down, which was really nice of her!

7.52pm - She’s just asked me if I’m Hungarian! Haha! 

9.06pm - The smell on this train is really overwhelming. Like, seriously. The absolute nicest way to describe it would be to say that it smells like ass and foot. A lot. It’s like ten times the strength of the journey here and that was BAD. At least it’s not as hot as it was. My bed runs alongside a window, so maybe that’s why I’m marginally cooler?  

9.28pm - I keep burying my face in my book so I can smell ‘new book smell’ instead of ass and foot. It works for a few seconds. This is the reason that I do not and will not ever have a kindle. Stefka has a kindle and what does she have for a bit of ass and foot smell relief, nothing. You can’t smell a screen, Stefka!! Okay, I need to stop writing now so I can bury my face in my book for the next hour or so.

10.15pm - I’m having a bit of a curtain war with the woman in the bunk below. She obviously wants the curtains closed because she’s trying to sleep and she doesn’t want any lights zooming past her window, understandable. I, however, would like the curtains open a little. Not a lot. Only enough so I can fit my hand through and hold onto one of the window bars as I sleep. My bed doesn’t have one of those little cot bar things to make sure that I don’t roll over and fall off my bunk, so holding onto the window bar as I try to sleep is giving me a bit of comfort. But this woman below keeps sneaking the curtains back together whenever I take my hand off the bar. Like now. I’m writing this, so my hand isn’t on the bar, and I can see her slowly sliding the curtains back together. Sneaky fox!!

11.24pm - ICE CREAM. Those crazy sales folk who board the train and roam the carriages trying to sell bizarre things have just managed to make our journey bearable for 6 minutes. One of the ladies was selling ice cream. WHAT A WOMAN. She knew that we were all sweaty and overheating, too heat-fatigued to move. She saved us! Also when we asked her what flavour it was, she just said, “белое” ('beloye'= white) haha. White isn’t a flavour silly lady.

10^th November 2013

2.17am - The conductor has returned given us our migration cards, so we must be getting close to the Russian border.

2.19am - We can’t work out how to fill in our migration cards. Purpose of visit, is it purpose for going to Ukraine, or going back into Russia? Leisure or Education? Dates, does this mean our Ukraine arrival and departure dates.. or original date arriving in Russia and future leaving date? .. or date leaving Ukraine and Russia departure date? We are confused. I think it’s because we know it’s an important document and we don’t want to get it wrong. I’m going to hold off on filling it in until I’ve asked the conductor.

2.21am - Everyone else decided to fill in their form and now we think they’ve made mistakes. My form’s still blank, but the conductor seems to be hiding from us.

2.46am - hahaha I spotted the conductor and because I was the only one out of my coffin bed, I had to run through the carriage to catch her before she vanished again!! It was one of those moments, when you get there, she looks at you and then suddenly you think, ohh my jeez what the am I going to say?! How on earth am I going to explain all of our queries to her in Russian? (She didn’t speak any English). Anyway, somehow I managed to converse with her. Meaning I had to break it to her that our annoying group of foreigners needed 5 new forms. She did not take it well.

3.00am – The conductor keeps checking on us and shouting, “Кошмар!!” (‘koshmar’= nightmare) when we do something wrong. She also upgraded it to ‘Mamma Mia’ when things got really bad.  I didn’t even know that Russians used that as an expression!! The women in the beds nearby keep hiding their faces under their blankets whenever the conductor mutters кошмар at us, because they’re laughing too much at it. So much awkward!! 

4.14am - Man, it smells so bad. It is so clammy and it just smells so, so bad. I feel like I'm trapped in a tin of stench and someone has put that tin in the oven. 

Please take note of all of the overhanging feet contributing to the smell.

As you can imagine, this also contributed to the smell.

5.37am -  We’ve done our border checks now. Thankfully we had no issues! I’ve slept for a little bit on and off, but not a lot. We’re due into Moscow at 9.06am, making this train journey about 14 hours long. To be honest, it’s been a lot more bearable than the first journey!! I think I’m going to try to get a few hours sleep now before we get into Moscow. 

9.52am – By some miracle, we’ve just managed to run and make it onto the train back to Tver!! We literally got on it minutes before the door closed. Also, it seems to be a fancier train. We thought about going to Red Square or for breakfast somewhere in Moscow before catching the elektrichka back home, but Stefka, Jordan and I agreed that we’re all too tired and would love nothing more than to just get home.

*Funnily enough if we had have just nipped to Red Square, we would have seen this gent nailing his testicles into the ground!  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24896784 

I’m actually a bit gutted that we missed seeing his protest first hand, but that being said, I was so tired that I probably wouldn’t have believed what I was seeing anyway!*

If you ever travel platzkart, I urge you to pack shorts and a vest top to change into, take a lot of water (you will be thankful for the hydration) and be prepared to spend hours on end breathing in some of the foulest, warmest, most pungent smells you'll ever have faced.

I'll leave you with this self-taken photograph of Jordan's face, which manages to perfectly sum up his and all of our feelings about travelling platzkart...

XxX

So, you need another HIV Test, hey?

As you probably know, my first HIV test did NOT go well. In fact, it terrified me and left me living in fear of my second one. If you’ve not read about it, then I’d recommend you do so now, so that you can compare the two (or even just for a laugh at my ordeal). Here's the tragic story of my first HIV test - The HIV Test: So... it turns out I'm a fainter .

I’ve been back for over a month now and after having received my official letter of invitation from Russia a few weeks ago, I had all of the documents that I needed in order to apply for my next visa... that is with the exception of my much needed negative HIV certificate. Not wanting to leave it to the last minute like last time, I decided to go and get it done.  

I did, however, decide to do it differently this time round. I went to London.

If you need to get a HIV test done, GO TO LONDON. The Mortimer Market Centre to be specific. I cannot thank Will Brockbank enough for suggesting this, and I will go to my grave shouting that this is how it should be done.

The Mortimer Market Centre offer free rapid HIV tests and they are so much better than the alternative. I think the best way to show how different it was this time, is to put it in a table, comparing the two.

Arrowe Park Sexual Health Clinic (06/08/13)	London Mortimer Market Centre (15/01/14)
Waiting room attire: Predominantly shell suits (do people still say shell suits?!). Fake tan and a good old scouse brow -a very popular combination.	The London crowd were altogether more stylish. A lot of fur, leather-look garments, DMs and well applied makeup.
When my name was called, I was met by an older lady, Grey Bob (and a scowl). Followed by the ‘are you a fainter or a fitter’ question. Classic.	When my name was called, I was met by a smiling, gorgeous Irish staff nurse (he did give me his name, but I was too swoony to take it in).
Once I told Grey Bob that my HIV test was for a visa application, she pretty much got on with it.	Even with the test being for a visa, the sexual health questions were more intrusive than Grey Bob’s.
A vile of blood was taken from my antecubital fossa, causing me to faint and also causing a lot of bruising on my arm.	The test was done with a finger prick. My finger hurt for about 7 seconds and unsurprisingly, my fingertip did not bruise. And I didn’t even almost faint.
I had to wait for 15 days for the results.	I had results in 60 seconds.
The certificate was supposed to cost £80. (Luckily I didn’t have to pay because they’d not set up their banking yet. However, if I were to go again, I would have had to have paid).	The certificate was free and printed out for me as soon as my results were ready. My train ticket to London obviously is being classed as an expense, but it was only £46 return and would have been cheaper (£25 return) if I’d booked more in advance. A lot cheaper than the £80.
I spent the rest of the day curled up feeling sorry for myself at having fainted for the first time.	I spent the rest of the day sightseeing around London like a huge tourist.

So, to sum up, if you don’t have a service local to you offering you free rapid HIV testing, then I cannot recommend going to London for it enough. Do it. You will not regret it.

Here are some pictures of me having fun in London to convince you.

Greetings from Leicester Square

Tube time.

Buckingham Palace

XxX  

Awkward Silence

Hello!

Okay, so there haven't been any posts in a good while and I realise that's rubbish, sorry! This is for two main reasons:

1) I am not in Russia at the moment, so I didn't think you'd want to read too much about my normal life in the UK. (Although, I'll probably write a summary post about how I've been enjoying all things British before I go back to the Motherland. SO MUCH FOOD HAS BEEN CONSUMED.)
2) I've been working around 25-40 hour weeks since I've been home, so finding the time to blog has been difficult since I fall asleep almost as soon as I get home most nights. I know, I need to calm down. I'm wild.

I'll be working a lot less over the next few weeks though, so I'll finally be able to write up my diary entries from Ukraine and my visit to Chernobyl. I'm so excited to write up about my tour of Chernobyl and upload all of my pictures, of which there are A LOT and they really are quite overwhelming images. I'm not sure if I've said this in any of my previous posts (sorry, I don't feel like scrolling through to check, coz sleeepy), but basically, I want to spend a day or two writing about Chernobyl, because I made a lot of notes during the tour and I want to double check that everything is correct before I post it. I want to do it justice!

There will probably be a lot of posts coming at you thick and fast over the next few weeks. Brace yourselves!

XxX

GOODBYE TVER: The things I'll miss and the things I won't miss...

Part of me can’t believe I’m actually typing this, but... my time in Tver has drawn to end!!  It barely feels like any time at all since I was sat, stressed out in my living room, with all of my clothes sprawled out over the floor in a desperate attempt to pack. I’m currently sat on my bunk bed in Godzilla hostel (Moscow) looking at the pile of suitcases and bags in the corner of the room. I am so excited to be coming home. Beyond excited! My friend Hannah and I can’t help but look at each other and shriek in excitement more or less every ten minutes. There are obviously things that I will be sad to leave behind though, namely the people. I have met some lovely people while I’ve been in Tver and the thought of having said goodbye to them makes me feel all emotional! While I’m yet to fall in love with Russia, my heart belongs to the beautiful friends that I’m leaving behind here.  Thank you so much. You have given me an amazing three months.

Goodbye Flat 24!

I decided that during my last few weeks here, I would do as many things as I could, which is the reason why I haven’t posted in so long. I went ice skating... and fell over spectacularly. Over a week later and my knees still appear to be getting more and more bruised!

I’ve ‘graduated’ from Tver State University!! This was, of course, after sitting numerous surprise exams; being told about them either on the day or the day before! Luckily, all of my grades were quite good, which was a nice feeling and meant leaving on a happy note, academics-wise.

Certificate of completion

I’ve been to the circus. I know the circus is always a subject of controversy when animals are involved, but I thought I would check it out anyway. Sometimes, even when you’ve heard other people’s negative views on things, you need to see them for yourself in order to form your own opinions. This was one of those times.

I’ve faced packing dilemmas that I never thought would cross my mind. I found myself doing things like staring at my full bottles of shampoo and conditioner thinking, ‘well, I can’t pack you, you’re far too heavy. So... do I wash my hair more often this week, or just use more shampoo and conditioner when I do shower?’.  Why was I ever having this conversation with myself?!

I had the absolute most amazing leaving drinks send-off, along with Stefka, who was leaving the following weekend, and Jordan and James, who flew back last night. It was probably the best night out I’ve had in Tver.

Manchester Students Unite! 

My friend, Hannah, from Yaroslavl’ came to stay with me for a little while!

On Tuesday 26^th November, the time came to leave Tver, because we’d decided to spend our last few days here, in Moscow. Hannah and I set off for the station at 4.45pm to catch the 5.45pm train.  We thought we’d give ourselves an hour so that we could get some food before we got on the train and basically just play is safe;  the train times have been known to change unexpectedly. The night before we left Tver, it started snowing. There were a good few inches of snowfall overnight, which made for a pretty difficult journey to the station. We boarded a tram to the station, thinking it’d all be plain sailing from then on. We were wrong. About 5 minutes into our journey, we heard a bit of a thud and our tram came to halt. The woman driving the tram got out of her little pod and ordered us all off the tram. We all looked at each other like, what?! It had taken us long enough to get all of the bags onto the tram. As we got off, it became very apparent that a car had crashed into the front of the tram.

Please take note of car attached to front of tram in the background

Russia may be a lot of things, but it is never boring. We then had no choice but to continue on foot. I can’t thank you enough Jordan, James, Kristina, Frances and Saidi!! Your bag carrying/pulling/dragging skills were amazing and we genuinely would have missed our train without your help! 

Now that we’re in Moscow, we’ve been filling our days as best we can. 

GUM shopping centre looking all Christmassy!

We’ve been to red square every day and we’ve finally been to see Lenin! Which was underwhelming to be honest. You basically enter a fairly modestly sized room and you walk up some stairs onto a raised platform, where you walk around Lenin and then down the stairs again. You have to be constantly moving, no stopping for a look, so in the 8 seconds that I had to walk past him, I didn’t really get to see him for very long at all. We also went to a vodka museum, which was pretty interesting. However, they did promise us a free shot of vodka during our tour and that wasn’t offered to us at any point.

They had a massive collection of vodka brands and bottles (as one would expect from a vodka museum, I’m sure). My friend pointed out a beautiful pink bottle of vodka on one of the shelves. It was called ‘GIRL’, and the slogan underneath read, ‘FOR GIRLS ONLY’.  Well ladies, I don’t know about you, but personally I do not drink vodka unless it comes in a pink bottle. Sometimes I won’t even settle for that, unless it comes with a rainbow and a pocket sized unicorn and a pack of lady tissues for my lady emotions. (I know this kind of advertising isn’t limited to Russia.)

We also got to have our last Moscow meet up with Kristina and Frances, which of course came with its own tearful goodbye. <3

Over the past three months, I decided make a note of the things that I’ll miss/things that I won’t miss after I leave Tver. Enjoy!!

 THINGS I WON’T MISS

1. The silverfish in the bathroom. Countless times I would see them scurrying about on the bathroom floor. Even now in Moscow, I’ve just been chased around the shower room by one that was trying to climb onto my foot.
2. No matter how much we cleaned, our flat was always dirty -especially the skirting boards!
3. The acts of racism, homophobia and hypocritical attitude towards it.
4. Sexism-Even in our textbooks and reading exercises there would be blatant sexist comments and phrases thrown in there for good measure. Here’s an example of one of the sentences we were reading in a text about future careers, ‘I like science and maths, but I cannot become an engineer, because that is a man’s job’.
5. Shots come in 50ml here. I think I’m right in saying that 50ml is double the size of the shots we get in the UK? That is TOO MUCH for one shot! It takes me about three attempts to finish it. Three long, painful attempts.
6. Having to walk to the pump whenever we needed water - Not being able to drink the tap water was a pain at first, but we got used to it after a while. The only problem came when we didn’t realise we’d used up all the water in the evening and then the following day we’d have no water for chai! Nightmare!
7. Showering and then realising that the water you’ve been showering in is brown. This happened a few times. Also, there would sometimes be metal fragments in it. Not ideal.
8. Not being able to have a bath. We didn’t have a shower curtain and the shower head wasn’t fixed to the wall, so we had to sit down in the bath tub, holding the shower head in order to shower without soaking the whole bathroom... that is the closest thing we got to a bath and I’m a girl who likes her baths!
9. Waiting 30mins for the kettle to boil every time you need a cup of tea. This took some getting used to and was the biggest pain when we only had 30mins between classes, so we couldn’t even nip down for chai. Exceptions were made towards the end of the semester though, when we just brought our freshly made chai up to the second class with us.
10. The glacial speed of the internet. It came and it went. Don’t get me wrong, I was really grateful that we had wifi in our accommodation, but I have to admit, I’ll be happy when I have my high speed broadband back!
11. The babushkas in my accommodation- terrifying. All of them, terrifying. I thought one of them wasn’t too bad (the young one), but she screamed at me last week because our hallway was making too much noise, and I happened to walk past her at the wrong time and feel the full force of her wrath.
12. The babushkas in the shops- customer service is not a thing here. At all. If you were in a position where you serve the public, then that’s exactly what your job is. To serve. It is not within your job role to make small talk, be polite or smile at the customer. You simply need to serve them as quickly as possible. It’s not seen as rude in Russia, it’s simply all that is required of them in their job role.  As a foreigner though, having worked in customer service and having been taught certain phrases to say to customers when serving them/to at least make conversation or even just SMILE, I find it a bit blunt to have zero customer interaction when at the till point.
13. Disorganisation! Things do not run like clockwork here. Lots of ремонт (repairs) about and shops скоро открытие (opening soon) with no date or indication as to when they’ll be finished or open. This was particularly sad because there was a Cinnabon shop taunting me in Tver, because it was ‘скоро открытие’. It was ‘скоро открытие’ for the whole three months that I was there. It still remains unopened.
14. Not being able to buy spirits in a supermarket after 9pm -especially if you fancied a spontaneous night in/out that involved alcohol.
15. Awkward grammar lessons. The worst lesson of the week was grammar. Sorry, but it was. It was just a class spent completing exercises from a textbook and not being taught anything new. We’d not even reached verbs of motions by the time we’d left, because we’d been so busy recapping all of the basic grammar, like cases. Very annoying. The grammar lessons at Manchester are so brilliantly taught that they had well and truly set the bar. A bar which was not even almost met in Tver.

THINGS I’LL MISS

1. Everything being within walking distance- My flat was on the first floor of my building and lectures took place on the second floor. Sometimes I would leave my flat with seconds to spare before the start of my classes and still be the first person there. There was also a 24 hour supermarket less than 5 minutes away!
2. Free cloak rooms- In all clubs/bars/restaurants there are free cloakrooms. This means that you can layer up for your walk to the venue and then strip off once you get there. On some wintery nights, it was definitely needed! This also gave us the chance to carry both heels and flats with us, which meant no heel-in-hand-bare-footed-walks home.
3. How cheap everything is! The beer, supermarkets, restaurants etc. On one of my last days in Tver, I went to a cafe and ordered, a ‘soft scramble’ (a fried egg on toast with cheese and bacon..ish), a freshly baked croissant with jam and two glasses of champagne. That meal totalled 190 roubles, which is about £3.80. I’m yet to find somewhere that offers something similar in England.
4. Bread- The bakery in the Perekrestok supermarket sells the tastiest, freshly baked breads. I was eating so much bread that for a short period of time, I had to limit myself to one day a week when I was allowed bread. Bread Sunday. My will-power only lasted for two weeks though before I needed my daily bread fix again.
5. Lectures starting at 10am. Man do I love a lie in!
6. Having a three day weekend... every week! No explanation required as to why I’ll miss this!!
7. People thinking we’re interesting because we’re English. I met several people who had been studying English for years, but had never spoken to a native English speaker before, so they were quite keen to chat to us. Understandably, this happened less often in Moscow though. Rather the opposite in fact. Even when trying to speak Russian, they would often reply to you in English. It would appear that not everyone loves a trier!
8. Being able to speak English and have the people around you not understand. This was amazing. There are very few places nowadays where people don’t understand English, so this was such a novelty. It felt like we all had a secret language.
9. Crazy dancing – We did this frequently. We stood out as foreign anyway, so thought we’d embrace it. We even made up dance routines during drunken evenings in and we would do them during drunken evenings out.
10. Champagne and vodka. As you can imagine, incredibly cheap. Bottles of ‘champagne’ for £3 or less and the same for vodka. With vodka, however, I learnt that you should spend at least £5 on a bottle of vodka if you don’t want to be horrifically ill the next day. If anyone recalls my Vodka We Need To Talk post, then you will know why.
11. Sleepovers – I’ve not had a sleepover since I was about 11, so having the opportunity to slide our mattresses across into neighbouring flats for sleepovers was so much fun. More fun than as a child though, because these sleepovers involved wine.
12. Movie nights – Everyone loves a movie night.
13. Awkward grammar lessons - Some of these lessons were so awful, that you had to laugh. There were so many awkward silences and just generally awkward situations floating about. I added this to the ‘miss’ list quite early on though, thinking that the lessons would get better... they didn’t and instead they generally just got more frustrating, so that’s why it’s also been added it to the list of things that I will not miss.
14. THE PEOPLE. Meeting so many people from so many different cultures was so interesting! I didn’t know that there would be Finnish, German, French, Columbian (etc) students studying in Tver too, because I thought it would just be RLUS students! It was so exciting to get to meet everyone.
15. The funny graffiti  - I’ve taken a lot of pictures of the graffiti I found. Mostly the random English words which were dotted about! I’ll upload them all in a post soon.
16. It being acceptable to drink vodka on its own and also to be able to just order a glass of vodka in bar without the barman/woman looking at you like you’re Drinky McDrinkerson.
17. Being able to use the word ‘кошмар’ (‘koshmar’ = nightmare) to express my distain for a situation. You can put so much emotion into it that saying ‘nightmare’ in English simply won’t do.

I’ll be touching down in London town (sorry couldn’t help it) at 5.45pm this evening!! EEK! And then I will fly to Manchester and touchdown at about 9pm, hopefully. While in England, I’ll write up my posts about Kiev and Chernobyl and anything else that I feel is mention worthy.

So to sum up, THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME, TVER! It’s definitely been an experience that I won’t ever forget!! Now, please, for the love of god... someone hand me a roast!!

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