First days in Tver

Hi everyone,

I decided to start a blog so everyone can follow my adventures in Tver, Russia. I major in Russian language in Jyväskylä University, and all the 2nd year students there get a chance to study one semester at Tver State University. There's no better way to learn the language and culture than living in that country, so here I am!

We got to choose between living in a dormitory or living with a host family. Everyone else in my class chose to live in the dormitory, but I hesitated.. I was on exchange in Japan for one year in 2009-2010, and I knew that living with a Japanese family was the best way to learn the language and ways of the local people. Even though living with a family was a lot more expensive, I decided to stay with a family. I have my accommodation here with breakfast, so I need to pay for other meals myself. It costs 10,000 rubles, so about 210 euros a month.

The luggage of all 4 of us.

I survived with very little luggage, I think I had the smallest bags with me even though I had a guitar. xD

My mom brought me some diarrhea medicine to the station. 5 packs of them.. I'm not going to poop for several weeks if I eat all these. Thanks mom!

We left for Tver on 5th of September with 3 other students, because studies were going to start on 8th and we wanted to see the town a little before that. We took the Tolstoi train from Kouvola straight to Tver, it lasted about 9,5 hours! Our cabin was very cramped for 4 girls and their luggage of three months, but after 20 minutes of arranging we all fit in... :'D

We got food and water on the train!

The insides of the bag including a cupcake, yoghurt, mayonese, mustard, chocolate, juice and tea.

We arrived to Tver after 6am and people from the university were waiting for us at the station. When I stepped out of the train I knew I was in Russia - a lot of construction work going around and behind all the walls I could see a few domes of a church. The station (no surprise) had no elevators so we had to carry our luggage up and down the stairs... I felt so lucky I only had my huge backpack and guitar bag with me. ^^"

On arrival I was told I have to stay at the dormitory until Monday because my host family was travelling in St. Petersburg. Okay, fine by me, at least I get to know where my friends are living! BUT for some reason, even though my friends' apartments had extra beds, I couldn't go live with them for just the two days. I was escorted to another building, and the moment I stepped inside I figured it was the dormitory for Russian students. Nothing wrong with living with Russian students, but the quality was quite far apart from the international dorm.. :D

Welcome to the Russian dorm!

My room for 3 days.

I heard that I had one of the best rooms in the dorm. I even had my own toilet and shower!

Atleast it was a nice view to the yard!

And the dorm janitor! She refused to believe that I was assigned to live there, even though I was with a staff member who had all of my information and knew exactly what room I was going to get! Many times she said that there's no room 421, or they don't have the key. Luckily the chief of the dorm knew about me and showed me to my room. She thought I was a Russian student though, but the moment I said I'm from Finland her face brightened up, she took one of my bags and carried it to my room. xD

My room door.

The kitchen was shared with everyone living on the same floor.

...and so were the toilets. After seeing these I was happy I had my own. xD

I was later told that whenever I go outside I need to leave my key to the janitor. On return I had to say room number and they gave me the key. The funny thing is that almost none of them could understand my spelling for "421" even though there's not much to mistake... xD Haha, it was funny!

Volga

We love Tver!

Soon my friends came to get me from my room and we headed to the centrum to eat and get Russian sim-cards for our phones. We also took a little walk around the town and went to see Volga river. My first meal was blintz with bacon, cheese and ham filling, it was so delicous and cost about 1,30€! Yummy <3 In the evening we went to eat at an Italian restaurant and ordered pizza. I had one with 4 different cheeses and it was delicous, cost about 6€. So, eating out is definitely cheaper here than in Finland! :D

How about it? The restaurant was organizing "romantic game" in Russian style. ;)

The Sunday morning I spent painting, drawing and playing my guitar. Suddenly a woman walked into my room and explained something for 10 minutes in Russian. I couldn't do anything else but laugh because I had no idea what she was saying. :'D Then I said that I'm really bad at Russian and she started dancing around. Well, atleast the body language is understandable anywhere! She came to explain the dormitory rules, which were pretty interesting.

1. No smoking - these days smoking is prohibited in all public places in Russia (though I don't smoke).
2. When I go out, I have to unplug all the sockets because there's a risk of fire. INCLUDING the fridge?!
3. I have to make sure there's no trash on the floor when I leave for my host family.
4. I have to inform someone if I switch of the fridge/freezer, because there will be a flood on the floor. :--D

Well, I decided to eat all the things from my fridge right away and keep it switched off because I definitely didn't want a flood to happen. xD

Don't forget to unplug the sockets! I had the total amount of two of them in my room, one in the middle of the wall. It didn't even work, so I practically had one socket for all of my electric devices. :'D

The rest of our group arrived in the Sunday morning and they went to buy all the necessary things too. Me and Olesya decided to exercise a little, so we went to look for gym called "Maxfit" about 3 kilometeres from the University. I wanted to know where it was because I'm going to continue training taekwondo in Russia. After wondering around we finally found it and returned to the dormitory. x3 On the way back we stopped to photograph some monuments in the town.

We stopped by a book store and I bought Nabokov's Lolita. I've always wanted to read this book, so it's going to be good practice to read it in Russian.

They had a tank with small sharks at the shopping center Rubin!

The memorial complex of the Great Patriotic War (Мемориальный комплекс Великой Отечественной войны)

The fire never goes out.

It's warmer here than in Finland, so the flowers are still pretty!

Tsasouna (часовня),  chapel

 

Behind the chapel there was this tree with straps of fabric tied to its branches. And a tie? We had no idea what they were for.

There was a bridge with all these love locks.. :)

 

Monument to Ivan Andreevich Krylov (Памятник Ивану Андреевичу Крылову). He's the best known fable (animal story) writer in Russia.

Krylov wrote for example "The Wolf and the Crane". The park had many illustrations from his work.

With all 7 Finnish students together we went to eat outside. We found another Italian restaurant and went in, and to my joy they had a Japanese cuisine too! I ordered toridon and others stayed with Italian food. The servings in Russian restaurants are pretty small, you won't get full by eating them, but atleast they take the hunger away. My dish took really long to make (even though it's quite the fast food to cook), so everyone had already finished their food before I got mine! The waitress even collecter the plates away before I got food. ;__; Even still I liked my food (but it had too much vinegar).

I have a feeling I will eat LOTS of Japanese food while living in Tver, they have Japanese restaurants everywhere!

After this we returned home and went to our beds excited for the next day, because that was when our lectures started!

A graffiti next to my dorm door. :D