For the record, yes, I have pictures. They will be on facebook soon for sure. You can either find them there, or you can wait for me to show them to you and explain them all come June 2nd.
Here we go.
MARCH 25th: Left for Moscow on the train from Moskovskii Vokzal at 10:40pm. Fell asleep in my bunk after my train-cabin-mate Zoltan told me about how he wants to smack vegetarians sometimes.
MARCH 26th: Got up, got off the train, bleary-eyed and tired. After noticing how incredibly warm it was (no winter coats required for the first time since arriving in Russia! It was probably 48 fahrenheit, so I just wore my sweatshirt, We got on a bus, where we took a half-sleeping tour of Moscow. It actually was pretty great, and I was pretty awake by the end of it all. Saw the Red Square, some cathedrals, etc. Pictures will cast a more detailed glow on this portion of the trip. Went to St. Basil's cathedral, got awesome pictures. Went to the Tretyakov museum. Ate at a Mexican style restaurant in Moscow. This is very important because it marks the FIRST time I had spicy food in Russia. After all of this, I spent the night in the hotel hanging out with people, deciding that despite waking up a bit, walking all over Moscow all day had tired me out once again, and I would do more with my time tomorrow.
MARCH 27th: Woke up, went to the Kremlin, forgot my camera. Too bad, Evan. We went to the museum there too, where I saw many historical things, like old dresses that Catherine the Great wore, the crowns of the individual Russian Tsars, and lots of swords and things. After we were done at the museum, we had free time for the rest of the day, so some friends and I grabbed lunch and then went back to the hotel to shower quickly. It was at this point that Brenna Garth and I booked our hostels for our train trip in May-June. I also had the GREATEST IDEA EVER. I had my own bathroom. We weren't meeting up to go out for an hour and a half. I took a bubble bath. It was AWESOME. Probably one of the most relaxing things in the entire world, just taking a bath, drinking cold lemonade (fantastic!) and listening to music. After that, I met up with everyone, which includes Brenna, Brenna (black hair), Wes, Nadia, and myself. We walked around the downtown areas of Moscow, found dinner (I ate bacon-wrapped shrimp! also drank a double-chocolate stout), and walked some more. It was very nice out, the sky was a fantastic shade of red, and there were city lights everywhere. It was still warm too, and skateboarders were beginning to show up around the city. During our walk, we started using an entertaining little way of making decisions, and started referring to ourselves as the DPD (Democratic Parliamentary Duma). It was a good night.
MARCH 28: Woke up early! This was because our little group wanted to make sure we could get into Lenin's tomb, which we did. So yes, I have now seen V.I. Lenin. The tomb was lit in such a way as to foster the maximum amount of creepiness. It was eerie and quiet, and I'm sorry but I only have pictures of the outside of the tomb. But yes. So. We got lunch at a pretty generic place. I was incredibly thirsty and managed to drink about 1.5 liters of water during the meal. After eating, we decided to check out the market where you can buy basically any Russia-related souvenir on the planet. We had been told to try to haggle with the guys there. Wes got a cigarette case that has a lighter built into it, which actually looked kind of cool, and totally would've been my kind of thing, except I don't smoke (and no, even 19 ruble cigarettes didn't convince me to start. I guess I'll be a non-smoker forever). I ended up only buying something for myself. I figured I'd get souvenirs for other people in SPB, so I wouldn't have to bring them to Israel. I got a belt with the old hammer and sickle on the buckle. It was listed at 600 rubles (~$20) but I managed to get it for 450. Either way, $20 is about what a belt costs anyways.
But then, it was time to head out. I met up with Lauren and Jackie, and we took the train to the airport, where we boarded and headed for Riga. To our surprise, Wes and Eve (2 other CIEE students) were on the flight too. However, they were headed to Istanbul, which is where quite a few of us were going. We got to Riga, and ran through the terminal to make our flight to Tel Aviv.
MARCH 29th: We Arrived in Tel Aviv around 4:30am, then took a train to the central bus station. It was too early for buses, so we hopped on a taxi to our hostel. They checked us in (surprising us with a 3 person private room for the same price!) and we immediately fell asleep until noon. Then, of course, it was time for the beach! It wasn't crowded at all which was wonderful, and the sun was out! (Though it should be noted that the sun was out EVERY DAY of this trip, even in Moscow). It was warm, probably in the mid to upper 70s. We relaxed, and then got up, only to find ourselves in a game of volleyball with some british folks who were visiting for Passover. Passover. Yes. It was of course that time of year. This meant that we ate matza, as no leavened bread was available, and most stores wouldn't even sell you anything with wheat in it. As it just so happened, when we went to a grocery store, we accidentally bought matza that was "traditionally permitted only for the sick and infirm." A woman had been saying something to us in Hebrew at the store. I guess that's what she was trying to tell us. Oh well, it was way better than any of the other matza we had during the trip.
We also learned that pretty much everyone in Israel seems to speak about 4 languages. At any given time, we could hear Hebrew, Arabic, English, and Russian. This means that we didn't take so much of a break from the Russian language. As it was, we had spent too much time in Russia and kept accidentally speaking it to the Israelis anyways, which was no problem because they would just switch over to it and respond. It was kind of awesome. However, this was also the day we learned about the train bombing in Moscow. It wasn't something we were happy to hear about, but we were glad we had left when we did, missing the bombing by about 8 hours. We had gone through the stops that had been hit about 10 times over the course of those 3 days in Moscow, so it was weird to think about it.
MARCH 30th: More of the same. Relaxing. We were beach bums, and took a walk around Tel Aviv. We had some amazing ice cream! For the price of a small dish, you could have up to 4 flavors. I just had coffee and rum cherry, but Lauren was more adventurous and had mint lime, mango-something, and coconut. I tried it, it was great (especially the mint lime!). I took pictures of graffiti. We ate at yet another mexican-style place too, because we had missed spicy food so much. This was the night when I realized that I needed to shave. I also realized that I had packed razor blades, but not my actual razor. Hmm. Yeah. So when you see pictures of this trip, you can note my increasing facial hair.
Also this is the day when I spoke in Russian to an Israeli man on the beach.
In the night, we went to a produkti (we always referred to them as that, because we didn't know what else to call them, but convenience store would probably be appropriate), and bought a bottle of Israeli wine. It was pretty good. We played pool in the hostel after eating our self-made spaghetti dinner, and went to bed.
MARCH 31st: Upon waking up, I found that my camera had mysteriously stopped working. I could still look at my pictures, but the lens wouldn't come out or open up. I was severely unhappy. There was nothing I could do though, so I made Jackie and Lauren promise me that they'd take extra pictures and send them to me. I'll be getting those tomorrow.
We went to Jerusalem! It was kind of hectic. We got there and it was super busy because of passover, and people from all kinds of religions were everywhere. Hassidic Jews with their curly curls, normal-type Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Also notable were the Palestinians, which there were not so many of in Tel Aviv.
The whole city seemed like one huge bazaar. Everyone was selling something. We drank fresh squeezed orange juice at a little outdoor cafe that only served orange juice, grapefruit juice, and lemonade. The man running it was extremely friendly and very funny, so we didn't mind too much when the drinks cost us 15 sheqel each. For reference, $1 = 3.75 sheqel. In retrospect, that was one of the cheapest things you could find in Jerusalem.
We got to our hostel, and knew right away that it was not going to be great. The owners were not very nice, and the beds weren't great. On top of that, it cost more than our first hostel, which was an awesome place. We dropped off our stuff and walked around a bit. We saw some sights, but nothing too amazing that day, because it was just so busy and there were so many things to look at in the shops.
APRIL 1st: We seriously toured Jerusalem. For the record, we were staying in the Old City, so there was a lot of history there. We saw the Wailing Wall. We saw the Dome of the Rock where Muhammad (the muslim prophet) ascended to heaven. We saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is the place where Jesus was crucified, and in fact to get there walked to path he walked with the cross. His tomb was closed, which was too bad, but we still saw the church that's built around it. We also saw the Mount of Olives, outside the city walls. It was all incredible. Later in the evening, we met up with one of Lauren's friends, who lives just outside of town. He's Palestinian (but was born in Texas), so when we left the country we denied having met anyone, because we would've been held back and searched (not that we weren't anyways). He showed us around, and bought us this orange flavored fried-cheese desert thing, which tasted surprisingly good.
That night, we spent a long time talking to Dan, a Canadian man staying at our hostel. He's been traveling around the world for 6 months! He's in his mid-fifties, and decided to travel because his 3 sons are all living on their own now, and both of his parents died in the last few years, leaving him with a large inheritance. He started in... Thailand, I believe, and has been making his way west ever since. He's supposed to be in Haiti by Friday, and his big tour ends on the 26th. We gave him our email addresses so he could update us on his adventures.
APRIL 2nd: We woke up early once again, and actually took a shrut (minibus) to Bethlehem, where we had to go through checkpoints upon arriving, because the city is walled off and under Palestinian control. So yes. I was in the Israel West Bank, which as you probably know is one of the less safe places to be on this planet. The border guards were nice though, and in fact one of them asked where I was from, and I said Minnesota. She asked where in. I said Northfield. It turned out that she's a St. Olaf alumni! It's a small world.
When we got into Bethlehem, we took a taxi tour of the city, and saw a lot of roman ruins. We weren't really THAT interested in it. We came to the city for one thing, and that was the Church of the Nativity, famously known as housing the spot where Jesus was born. And so we went. It was impressive, and there was lots of security.
We left shortly after our visit there, and returned to Tel Aviv for one more night on the beach. We got a new hostel, which was pretty nice. Everything turned out fairly well. I talked to a guy staying there, who, as it turned out, is from Minneapolis. 2 Minnesotans in one day. Like I said, small world. Lauren and Jackie and I acted crazy on the beach and took lots of pictures, and realized how much we were going to miss the tropical wonderland that is Tel Aviv. An Uzbek man came up to us while we were sitting in the sand and started telling us about all of his problems, that he's 25 years old and the #1 motorcross racer in Israel, and he has $4 million dollars and 5 houses in different countries, and his mom is the owner of a chain of hotels, and he has a Russian supermodel girlfriend (who was there, but ignored us the entire time, barely speaking 3 words). His problem, actually was that he didn't want to marry her, but his mom wants him to, and he didn't know how to tell her that he didn't want to get married. Yes,this was all in Russian, and yes, he had certainly been drinking. We told him to just be honest with her. Then we got Gelato. Such was our last night.
APRIL 3rd: Woke up at 3:30am, took a taxi to the airport. Flew into Kiev, waited on our 6 hour layover in the most boring terminal in the entire world. I realized at some point that while I had purchased some souvenirs for people in Israel, I hadn't gotten anything for myself. Such is live. Then we flew back to Moscow, took a Marshrutka (minibus) to the metro, and took the metro (going by the 2 stops that were attacked, which was weird and kind of eerie) to our train station. Got on the train, began our 8 1/2 hour ride back to St. Petersburg.
APRIL 4th: Arrived at Moskovskii Vokzal, walked the 10 minutes back home. I immediately shaved. It feels good to be smooth again. I ate breakfast/lunch, and started writing this. It took me an hour and a half. I finally managed to fix my camera, while writing the March 30th portion of this update.
All in all, I think this was a great vacation, and I would absolutely revisit Tel Aviv. Now I just need to get myself ready for my next challenge: Returning to school after having a week and a half off. But that's one for tomorrow.
Any questions?
Evan
