Waking up at entirely the wrong time – too early! And tonight is the overnight train to Moscow. Sleep deprivation will set in soon.
Weather forecast: 1 degree C with mixed rain/snow showers. Ouch. The worst possible weather. Colder, but not so wet, would be much easier to handle. We’ll see how today goes.
Russian news: there’s a lot more of the story told with pictures, even a segment called “no comment” where they showed some ambulances being stopped at a military checkpoint in the west bank with no audio commentary at all. The newscasters, mostly men, are all very young; by appearance, I’d guess in their late 20s. Quite a bit different from the sort of newscasters you see in the US. It’s fun to hear them say “Bagdad, Eerak” which is roughly the transliteration, and “Parizh, Franciya”. Sorry to be mangling both the Russian and the Russian to English conversion, but I’m getting the hang of it. Maybe by the time this trip is over I will have learned how to spell and a little bit more language beyond my “please” and “thank you”.
Now it’s off to try to find somewhere to upload this and maybe even make a phone call home.
OK, more news from later on Wednesday morning: one of our group (who came over separately a few days ago) already had his pocket picked on the metro. So be careful! At least no stories of muggings or anything like that, so maybe safer than NYC. They recommend against drinking the water, too, and bottled water (at least where I’ve found it thus far) is insanely expensive.
It’s 8:30am and still basically pitch dark outside. Yeesh. But my practice with the alphabet is starting to pay off: I can almost sound out words as well as your typical five-year-old. Now if only I knew what the words meant. Luckily context gives a lot of clues, plus there are a lot of words that are cognates to languages I do know. Unfortunately we stopped in Frankfurt on the way to StP so I keep wanting to speak German (which I studied for a year in grad school) instead of attempting to use the few words of Russian that I know. Oh well, a few more days and maybe a little sleep will help with that one.
Anyway, agenda for today (Wednesday): meet our guide, walk close to 2 miles along Nevskiy Prospekt to the Hermitage, get a tour there for a couple hours. Then lunch, and a visit to the world-famous school 239, home of Perelman’s math teacher who has also coached a lot of students to great success in international Olympiads. We’ll get a chance to see a math lesson, a math circle after school, and some informal chat about what it’s like to be a teacher here. Then dinner, some hanging out for a few hours, and get on the midnight train (sleeping 4 to a car) to Moscow.
Now if only I can find someplace to upload this thing! There are internet cafes everywhere but I’m just hoping that the hotel will unlock the door to its business center. Yay, they did! And only 90 rubles per hour (approx 25 rubles/$, so that's pretty cheap).
Comments