Culture for All!

Every other week on Fridays we have an excursion at school. Our first excursion was to the Tver Way of Life Museum. The museum had several samovars, and the lady dressed up in old fashioned Russian clothes told us about them. In the end of the museum tour we drank tea in Russian style: the cups are rotated around the table until everyone has their cup full. After that you drink tea, and when you don't want tea anymore you turn your cup upside down. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures in the museum, but I took one sneaky shot before they told us. :'D

The museum was located in a beautiful mansion.

Hello ladies!

Near to the museum was a beautiful park and the statue of Afanasy Nikitin (Афана́сий Ники́тин), who was one of the first Europeans to travel to India.

The riverside of Volga is always beautiful~

A church in the middle of the town.

Because it was Friday night it was time to see the night life in Tver. We went to bar Kalinin where I overhead some Asian people talking... and it was Japanese! I immediately walked up to them and got a warm welcome. I probably sat couple of hours with them just talking in Japanese, I was so happy~ (Finally a language I can understand, YES!!) Then our group left for night club Kultura, where we just danced and returned back home before 2am. I don't have any pictures from there, but I have to say water pipes are really popular here in Russia. o__o

Speaking of Japanese... I found SUSHI! It was delicious. I bought these sets for me and Paula, an it cost 660 rubles (about 13 euros). It's so cheap compared to Finland and it was SUPER GOOD. They even had eel! <3

Tver is known to be a very multinational region in Russia. Our teacher told us that there's a meeting of all the nationalities in Tver at the market square on Saturday, so I went there with Elena. It was exciting to see all of their national costumes and  handicrafts from different parts of the world. There was also a stage with all sorts of performances from dancing to poetry. And the best part was that you got FREE FOOD from all the countries! Some of the foods were really tasty. :)

Some of the stalls.

Performance with national costumes from different countries.

Ingushetia and Chechnya

Israel

Ukraine

Dagestan

Georgia

Armenia

Turkey

Delicious food with rice, meet and fruits from Azerbaijan.

All the food!

We also found Finland!

Karelia

Estonia

Tajikistan

Uzbekistan

On Sunday we got on bus at 8am, because we were going to ballet in Moscow! Even though there are not that strict dress codes, it's suitable to have something better to wear. I had kinda mixed feelings about the trip, because the last time I had seen ballet was.. not so interesting. But the trip cost only 1500 rubles (~30€), so I thought why not. It was also the Nutcracker, so the closer the trip got, the more excited I got about seeing something so famous.

The trip to Moscow was HORRIBLE. Just outside of Tver the fog started to get really bad, and soon we couldn't see anything. Then we heard that a swamp had started to burn and all the smoke was getting mixed with the fog. It took so long to get out of there that the smoke got inside the bus too and I got a head ache (...and almost a panic attack), but eventually the fog cleared out and we got to Moscow. There were a lot of crashed cars and trucks, so we were lucky!

We saw practically nothing, I'm amazed we stayed on the road.

We're finally starting to see something...

The ballet was at State Kremlin Palace (Государственный Кремлевский Дворец).

The courtyard.

Waiting for the ballet to start.

I'm starting to look like a Russian lady!

We had to walk to our bus via Red Square, and managed to see as the guards got changed!

The Red Square! (Красная Площадь)

The compulsory Japanese tourist pose in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral (Собор Василия Блаженного).

I also started training Taekwondo here in Tver. The system is quite different from Finland, for example our coach is working for the Maxfit sport center and there's not an actual club. I had to buy a monthly card for Maxfit and with it I can visit the gym and other sport groups too. The trainers don't use dobok (taekwondo uniform), just normal sport wear. And you need to use shoes! It's so weird to train with shoes when you've trained your whole life bare-feet... :D Anyway, they were very welcoming and even though the training is different from what I'm used to, I find it interesting and useful.

By the way we already had our first exam on written communication... Even though the teacher had to shove it to my face that I'm really bad at Russian and I don't understand anything anyway... I passed the exam!!

Hunting of the Statue

 I finally got rid of the flu (expect for the cough) and I have two full school weeks with lots of homework behind me! I've had so many things to do, that the weeks passed without me noticing.

The main building of our University.

Our schedule. Apparently Finns, German and Chinese have the most lessons, because other groups don't have school on Fridays. Our courses include Russian literature, Oral communication, Written communication, Russian verbs and History and culture of Russia.

We have a canteen at the university, so I decided to try it out. On the first day we went there with Elena and we were sort of surprised how small it was. The meals were ready on plates and they just heated them up in a microwave.. BUT it was good and cheap! After we had finished our foods we noticed that a lot of people were coming from upstairs so we went to check it out.. and that was the real canteen! :'D We ate there the next day, it was also very cheap (and there were so many breads, pies and sweet puns to choose from). ^^

These were all the dishes you could choose, and then they heated them up in the microwave.

All this cost 92.80 rubles (about 1,90 euros).

This was my meal at the real Stolovaya, it also cost less than 100 rubles.

I also tried Селедка под шубой (layered herring salad). My friend said it's a Russian salad so I just bought it, I had no idea there was herring in it... I'm not a big fan of herring, but I managed to eat it all. :D

On Wednesday we got a nice homework from oral communication: ask local people how to get to a statue the teacher gave your group. We headed out with Elena and Sonja to find the monument of the Heroes of Chernobyl.

First we found Lenin's square.

Lenin!

Then we found this rider statue...

Cool looking Russian post office. One hint though! Don't visit post office in Russia if you're in a hurry. I waited there with my friend for 20 minutes, after which I had to leave and my friend continued to wait another 20 minutes...

More monuments on our way!

The building that doesn't look so stable.. I heard it was abandoned for several years because people were afraid it will collapse. Now it's a business centre.

We finally reached the park of the Heroes of Chernobyl.

We celebrated the finding of the statue at a super nice restaurant!

Milkshaaaake!

After finding the statue I went home and my host mom asked if I'd like to go to the newest shopping mall in Tver with her. And of course I wanted! It was quite far from the centrum, but it was the biggest shopping mall I've ever been to. The vegetable and fruit section alone was bigger than the biggest store of my hometown. :'D

Finnish cheese! ;)

On Thursday I made some onigiri (Japanese rice balls) and ended up buying all the wrong incredients because I had no idea what they were. But they tasted okay! Later we went to the library to join "Lingua Cafe" where we had conversations with Russian students mostly in English, but also little in Russian. ^_^

I didn't even get tuna. :(

Not the pretties onigiris I've seen, but this was my 2nd time making them. xD

The library where we have Lingua Cafe. Usually you're not allowed to go in without a library card or passport, but because we're stupid foreigners we got in.

Nice statue on top of a bank in front of my home.

 In my next blog entry I'll tell you about our ballet trip to Moscow!