Snowstorms, Skating and Sillyness - 24 Hours In Tallinn

As you can see from the title, it's now got to the point where I'm having to make up words (not to mention repeat them) to make the alliteration work. I suppose it's not exactly surprising though, given that I've made my way through 14 weeks' worth of titles, that the inspiration is wearing a little thin. But, while the inspiration may be lacking, the adventures certainly aren't, starting with last weekend's trip to Tallinn, Estonia.

It started with a bus journey, a six hour bus journey to be precise, which along with the six hour journey back meant that we spent 12 hours on a bus for 24 hours in Tallinn. Still, Tom and I were determined to make the most of it - actually, I'd originally planned to catch up on some sleep, but Tom had different ideas, and seeing as he was sitting next to me, I was powerless to resist!! It started when he discovered the 'in-coach' magazine, and, as I'd been telling him about Vera's annoying habit of pointing at all the cats on the TV and shouting 'koshka!', decided to thrust an advert for some kind of pet insurance into my face repeating "Do you want to kiss the koshka?" over and over. The TV at the front of the bus kept us entertained for at least another hour, first by informing us that not only did our seats recline, but the aisle seat could also be slid out into the aisle, leaving a small gap between the two seats. Of course I had to test this immediately, it was just unfortunate that it happened to coincide with us turning a rather sharp corner, leaving me fearing my imminent death. We were also amused by the music videos, featuring an array of people in successively stranger costumes - culminating in Cher's 'Turn Back Time' video, in which she seemed to have neglected to put on any clothes whatsoever! Tom then took it upon himself to make up as many inane games as possible, including 'I went to the Harry Potter market and I bought...' (which generated such amusing quotes as "What are you going to do with a Quick-Quotes Quill? Quote people to death?" and "Oh shit! Uncle Vernon isn't the only important character whose name begins with a 'V'!" and an awful lot of controversy over whether or not you could buy people) and 'How many fish can you draw?'. But the favourite had to be the 'drawing things with your eyes closed' game, if I ever get round to scanning them in, I may post some of the results of this game as they were utterly hilarious. All of this madness was fuelled by the combination of sleep-deprivation and unlimited free espresso with sugar from the in-bus coffee machine. Has anyone seen the episode of Outnumbered where Ben drinks a double espresso with five sugars and says he feels 'zingy-zangy-zongy'? I know how he felt...

Even if the bus journey hadn't been quite so hilarious, the 24 hours in Tallinn were well worth travelling for! Tallinn is, despite being a capital city, as small as Durham (at least in the Old Town, from which we didn't bother to stray), with beautiful architecture and a really Christmassy feel. The heavy snow (literally so heavy that we could barely see through it, and it looked like polystyrene balls falling from the sky) and the Christmas market were probably mostly responsible for this - I was feeling nostalgic for the Durham Christmas Market, but not any more! This was more modelled on the German markets, with little cabins in the snow surrounding a giant Christmas tree, hot mulled wine and carols blaring from the loudspeakers. Tom and I used the pretence of warming up our feet (and in our defence they were freezing) to do a crazy little dance down the street. We then spent an hour ice-skating, on an open-air ice rink near the town hall (I was appalling, but tom and Rachel helped me, and by the end I could manage a wobbly circuit without holding onto the side) before more shopping and dinner. Dinner was our first taste of spicy food since arriving in Russia, which was amazing, in an underground restaurant decorated with hundreds of Santa Helena wine bottles, and was followed by a cider in the Hell Hunt pub. The seats were a little strangely-situated, next to a spiral staircase which people kept disappearing down, perhaps never to be seen again, but the cider was good!

The next morning we had another walk around the town, some lovely food in Matilda's Cafe, and an encounter with a crazy woman in a shop. As we were staring at the swing which she had erected in the middle of her shop, she explained to us that it was there because she has a dearth of customers for most of the winter, so "from Mondays to Fridays I swing". Then, when Tom attempted to collect his change (which happened to be in 100 crown notes) she decided to tell him an interesting story about the woman on the notes, who is, apparently, a 'poetrest'. Good for her.... We also had a couple more encounters with the locals, thanks to us two incredibly friendly Estonian ladies now think that we call Denmark 'Norway' (in our defence, both countries are located next to Sweden), and Tom has broken my heart irreparably by informing a shopkeeper that we will never be together. If you are reading this, Tom, my heart is broken!! Broken!!

The journey back to St. Petersburg was somewhat less exciting that Saturday's bus trip, although it did allow me to sample the bus's excellent mochachinos. It also allowed Tom to test-drive some new games, notably 'How many fish can you draw on your visa?' and 'What would happen if you ripped the corner off your visa?'. Unsurprisingly, they didn't catch on. And so (despite a mild trauma at the border when my visa was feared to be lost forever and Tom delighted in telling me that I would have to take up residence in one of the 'border houses') we returned to St. Petersburg...

Shopping, Sushi, and Snow, Snow, Snow - Winter Arrives With A Vengeance!!

So, after a long dark November, in which even the Russians began to wonder when the snow would arrive, it's finally here! And, as if to make up for coming late, it's decided to come in abundance. For the first week, it snowed without stopping, not even for an hour, and although it's now slowed off slightly, we're still yet to have a snow-free day. Unfortunately, the Russians are adept at dealing with snow, and so we've had no cancelled lessons, no snow deep enough to wade through, and there are men shovelling the snow off the streets while it's still falling (see http://www.thebubble.org.uk/columns/life-in-the-big-ger-city-snow for more on how the Russians refuse to let snow faze them!). But, with temperatures of -15 C and falling, the river completely frozen over except for a small path carved out of the middle, and reports of the first death by falling icicle, I think I'm still being treated to a true Russian winter.

It's unfortunate that this weather came just as I'd decided to treat myself to a new pair of boots, which are far too lovely to wear in the snow - while it may not be at wading level, a wonderful mound of slush develops at the point where you step off the pavement to cross the road, perfect for ensuring wet tootsies if your footwear is unsuitable and destroying lovely new boots. But anyway, I was very pleased to get these boots, as I've been looking for a while. Russian women are extremely well-shod (well-clothed in general in fact, enough so to make me feel like a slob every time I look at them!) but seem not to cater to any shoe size much above a European 40 - as I'm a 41 going on 42, this has caused a slight problem for me. After scouring the out-of-town (or at least out-of-city-centre) shopping mall 'Mega', which is not quite as huge as the name might suggest (I'm not sure it's even as big as the Oracle in Reading, although it does contain an Ikea and a French supermarket!), and finding nothing, and trying on what felt like every pair of size 41 boots in every shoe shop in St. Petersburg, I finally came up trumps. They are knee-high, fur-lined, and with just a high enough heel to satisfy my feet (seriously, they demand heels, it's a problem!) while still being low enough to make walking possible. And they even got the Vera seal of approval, although she did feel the need to point out the two other pairs of boots in the hallway of my Russian home - if she could see the number of pairs that I left behind in England, she'd probably have fainted.

Well, that would be the snow and the shopping taken care of, which just leaves the sushi! Recently, it's become a Friday tradition for most of our Russian class to go for sushi in the shopping mall in Sennaya Ploschad. I think we've become a bit of a standing joke with the staff there, as the waitress was definitely hiding a smile behind her hand when we turned up today and started messing with the seating plan - if you only provide tables of four and five people come in, what else do you expect? I'm slightly amazed by the Russian love of sushi (in the food court where our favourite haunt is situated there are two sushi restaurants, and several more surrounding Sennaya Ploschad), mostly because it's so different to most Russian food - low on carbs, low on grease, and high on vegetable products. However, it does have the advantage of being mostly raw fish dishes. Russians do love raw (or at the very least cold) fish....