The Hermitage - Ancient Egypt and Greece

We finally visited the Hermitage today. It is massive, impressive and absolutely gorgeous. It makes the British Museum look like a tatty load of trinkets that nobody wants.

On the way to the Hermitage from our hostel, you pass St Isaac's Cathedral and what appears to be the Naval Academy. This means a beautiful fountain and lots of men in funny sailor suits.

Not Paris. But it could be.

This guy treated us to both 'My Heart Will Go On', and 'My Way' - on the panpipes. He was not the weirdest person in the square.

Once we realised that our guinea pigs, the Japanese tourists taking flash photos, were not being dragged off by the many babushkas, we took full advantage of the lax rules. 

Eros riding a dolphin (which is not your friend)

Feeblest satyr ever, with thorn in his foot

Nothing gets past this babushka

The interior is a work of art in itself - everything is marble

Gigantic urn - that's actually how big it was

Luminescent water. No wonder we can't drink it.

The neon veils are a hen party, at the Hermitage. I adore Russians.

Starlings bathing. They are too cute.

Russia all over, really.

Jupiter!

Essentially, the Hermitage is vastly superior to any museum in my recent memory. I'm going to go live there.

Pervaya Nedel'ya - First Week

Spongebob graffiti

So far we've settled in enough to start thinking in rubles and remember to bring an umbrella, coat and sunglasses out with you at all times because the weather here is essentially the same as London, ie bloody annoying. I'm currently watching a programme in which I have seen someone being towed on a surfboard behind a car down a flooded road, someone planking on a bridge pushed by his friend into the river a good 100ft below and someone else somersault backwards off a bridge onto grass. TV is still awesome here.

We visited the beautiful park across the street from our hostel. We noticed that everyone talks in hushed tones so it's really peaceful, which is surprising because it's right next to a busy road. It has several islands that locals sit on to admire the water, with separate little ramps for the ducks. 

Then there's this chick. She's dressed as some kind of animé warrior, with thigh-high boots. Frustratingly, I wasn't able to get a closer picture without being a complete creep.

Russian take on cheeky monkey - not as cute

We have discovered that we can eat for ochen’ cheapsies by eating at a ‘Stolovaya’ or taking advantage of the bizniz lanch deals around the city, and then eating some combination of instant food and cheap baguette back at the hostel in the evening. Though I was given a 5000r (£100) note by an ATM the other day and because Russian cashiers are very begrudging with their change, I'm clearly going to have to break that in McDonald's. Shaaaame.

Good news, we have a fridge-freezer in our room. Bad news, we have a fridge-freezer in our room which intermittently makes creepy noises at night. Our first night here, I was shocked out of sleep to hear what I thought was several men imitating a train (don’t ask why), which turned out to just be the stupid fridge cooling down, but I've stopped noticing it now.

Speaking of sleep, we assumed that it was safe to try the local hooch last night as today is Saturday and we would get a lie-in. We drank some cheap wine out of a box, aiming for mid-price, 109r (about £2.50) for a litre, to see whether we needed to slide up or down the price-taste scale. It tasted like grapefruit juice until halfway down, until it tasted like cheap wine. I had to sit in the fridge to sober up, which was pretty effective. 

We then woke up just after 9am to this - the patriotic sounds of badly played tuba, drum, and various brass instruments. Looked out the window to see three men with a flag and many spectators gathered around the statue for the Octobrists, which is right across the street. A coach pulled up and amplified speeches were given. Then more songs were played, a bit of marimba, an electric guitar solo...it was too surreal for me to be really annoyed but if this happens every weekend, I will have to start heckling.

Also, the Russian women on our floor have complained about the crappy water pressure and the maximum lukewarm temperature in our shower. We all assumed it was normal in Russia for the shower to spew water half-heartedly, but luckily the Russkie saved us. I say saved us, management just turned off the hot water entirely for two days ‘while they fixed it’, so while the rest of us were left negotiating much stronger but absolutely freezing showers, the Russkie are filling up what looks like vegetable drawers from the fridge with hot water from the dispensers, presumably to throw over themselves in their rooms. Now the water smells slightly sulphurous and seemed to have a pale yellow tint, but I was so happy to wash my hair that I'm past caring. 

Above is Sennaya ploshad', with one of those melon cages I find fascinating. It's pretty nice during the daytime, although our rep, Seb, told us that at night it turns back into 'the ass of the world', as per its former reputation. Most notable for umbrella dispensers and a serious amount of pigeons. 

We thought it would be a good idea to let boiled water cool in our bottles because it would be clean. We did not consider the possibility of a melted, contracted bottle...

Really happy to see a kindred spirit seeing images in holes. There's also a puddle outside my hostel that looked like a face.

Settling In

Helloooo from Russia! Pictures will follow when I coordinate Internet access and having my camera cable on me. I don't have a lot of time until my next class, so here are some things that have happened: 

• Our second flight on Estonian Air was on a plane half the size of a normal one, that had propellers. Propellers. But also, complimentary warm mini muffins and mints, and a friendly stewardess who didn't mind both me and Ollie ruining our migration cards multiple times.
• Tallinn (Estonian capital) looks bleak from the air, has such a lack of urban planning it looks like a poorly-played game of Age of Empires and I'm pretty sure there was a moat around the airport.
• The hostel is actually pretty snazzy and we have free hot water dispensers, so if anyone wants to send me instant food, you do that, girlfriend.
• Russian TV is something else. We've been watching 'Голые смешные', or 'Funny naked people'. It's like 'Balls of Steel', except the pranks are that women get naked on the street and film people's reactions. There were such gems as burying a net under a (always topless) girl's towel on the beach and then picking her up in it. When they pranked a fat girl, a cartoon of a man pointing and laughing came on screen along with the sound of a pig oinking. Nice.
• We tried out a ' Столовая' last night, which is basically a dirt-cheap canteen. Sadly for us, we got distracted watching 'Давай пожениться!' - 'Let's get married!' which is like a cross between Take me Out and Loose Women, except the contestants usually get married (after a 30 second onstage date of course). Anyway, we got there not long before it was due to shut, so my dinner was yellow rice and cabbage. 50 rubles though, with a cup of tea, which is just over a pound. Boom.
• We also visited the Railway Museum, on my insistence, which had a surprising amount of old propaganda, several large paintings of Lenin and a real train carriage you could get inside. And it had a shower. On a train! More than my room has.

I will update more soon, because everyone needs to see the picture I took of the chalk Spongebob on the wall. And other stuff I guess. Lots of love! xxx

Leaving tomorrow!

'Soon-to-be-rich? - head resident of glamorous clubs'

Have fun in England, suckers! I will be living it up in Big P, like a босс. 

Before I Go

This is overwhelming...

So, safe to say at the moment I'm pretty terrified. In just over a week I'm flying to St Petersburg, courtesy of Estonian Air, landing at 22.40 Russian time and I'm not coming back for four months. Yippee? 

Despite my initial reservations - about the journey, the weather, the food, money, what to bring, my first accommodation, finding a flat, speaking Russian to actual Russians - I'm actually starting to feel really excited. So, for anyone taking the trouble to read this, here are some things from the month I spent in Kazan' that I hope to see more of, so I can bring you many more beauties and oddities:

Romantic architecture

Russian cuisine

Unflinching obedience

Eccentric taste

Non-EU regulated produce

Mind-boggling matryoshkas

Health and safety? Not in your bed

Or in your hallway. That's a feral dog

A tearoom, please! Not a misleading Italian restaurant

Local customs

Infrastructure equipped for the weather

Local celebrities

The mother of all mosquito bites

Devout Russian orthodoxy (holy water spring)

Patriotism and/or babes

Theatre and other cultural pursuits

Babushkas!

A pet monkey. Okay...this probably won't happen again

So, there you go comrades, hopefully a taste of what's to come. I will try to bear this in mind if the going gets tough:

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.

-Miriam Beard

But please do send me Marmite.