The Great Train Escapade

Day 4

Rivulets of sweat are streaming down my face, I'm wheezing and gasping like an asthmatic-with a stoma, and my eyes are soaked -sweat and tears intermingling.

We had left the hostel about an hour earlier, laden like lumbering beasts of burden. By the time we were de-escalating into the metro, we were already feeling rather toasty, our winter coats like an unwelcome embrace. We were then thrust into the crush of people. Meanwhile, my mind was flooded with safety tips syncopated with trying to stay with the group, "Camera-check-blond hair-Bethany-purse secure-check-white coat-Dave-don't stare-check-tall person-Mark-don't panic-um, um...." We scurried/power walked/penguin waddled from train to train, the threat of getting smashed in the doors (again) ever present. Finally we reached the station, set our bags down, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Well, it was the WRONG station!!! We slung our burdens back over our shoulders and set off at a dead run. We sprinted for about thirty seconds, paused to bob and weave, and sprinted again. I fought as hard as I could, but the rest of the group was disappearing into the distance. Suddenly, I was twelve again. My blue Adidas shorts were hiked up half way to my neck and the rest of the cross country team was nowhere to be seen. I snapped back into real time, my bag and back breaking and my heart aching with the sickening feeling that I was running through an impossible nightmare. Finally, when I was convinced I was about to collapse into a sobbing, gasping heap, I saw Natalia up ahead, an angel of mercy practically wreathed in celestial light. Emas called out, "You made it!" in his typically easy-going, boyish way, though I could tell that even he was visibly relieved. And that is why I boarded the train to St. Petersburg approximately three minutes before it departed.

Besides the Great Train Escapade, there were a couple other notable events which transpired. The day started out with a snack at the McDonald's, our cheeseburgers steaming in the early morning chill. Next we got in line to get into the Red Square. We passed through a metal detector manned by guards with contempt for tourists burning in their eyes. When we finally entered our ultimate destination, one guard angrily gestured for me to take my hands out of my pockets and other guards spaced every fifteen feet gave us their undivided attention. Then we descended a dimly lit staircase into the ominous and all encompassing darkness, into the inner sanctum. And there he was in his glass display case, as though he were someone's butterfly collection and not a man who had changed the course of history. Just as in the pictures he had his trademark goatee. I noticed that one of his hands was open and the other was clenched. His skin looked a bit waxy, though overall he looked great for having been dead since 1924. Mostly, he just seemed small and frail. I almost expected a nurse to bustle in with a tray and ask, "Mr. Lenin, would you like some chicken soup now?"

We also went to the New Tretyakov Gallery which we were told was modern and Soviet art. Upon arriving I was relieved to see that they had kept the cubism to a minimum. The pieces consisted mostly of pencil sketches, vibrantly hued surrealist paintings, and images of infectiously happy and healthy men, women, and children. There was one of a female shot putter I particularly liked. She stood there contentedly as the metal sphere sat in her palm and the sunlight danced in her golden hair and reflected off her strong arms. If only things could have worked out that way...

The Symphony

Day 3

Today we had lunch at one of the many "pancake" places which serve crepes filled with meat, or in my case, chocolate and bananas. After an interminable walk (someone referenced the Exodus from Egypt and waiting to die while we were walking) we arrived at Christ our Savior Church. After covering our heads and passing though a metal detector, we entered the vaulted coziness of the candle lite church. One facet I couldn't stop staring at was a fifteen foot chandelier in front of the arching windows. Sunlight streamed in, richly glinting off the filigree and gold. We then went downstairs to a smaller chapel filled with pictures of the saints. I noticed one woman in particular who was delicately lighting a candle. She paused for a few moments, waiting for the person in front of her to finish. When it was her turn she walked quietly up to the picture. Then she drew her face near to the saint's and tilted her forehead to his as she gently whispered, reminding me of two lovers I had seen on the train the night before.

Once our time in the the church was up, we went to the Vernishazh Market. And just for the record, I actually negotiated (which was about as much fun as having a root canal during a Novocaine shortage.) Then we went to Arbat street where I savored a Starbuck's chai latte. By the time we got back to the hostel, we had very little time to get ready for the symphony. Five girls in a small, enclosed space trying to go from sweaty and frizzy to radiant and styled in fifteen minutes looks a little like the end of the world. We somehow managed to get to the concert on time and decently attired.

The concert was a tribute to Paganini and as the orchestra played the first couple pieces, I was under the impression that the audience was thinking, "Isn't it nice that we're so cultured, what enchanting music, what shall I make for dinner tomorrow?" But then the soloist/conductor said "Vivaldi" in his next introduction and there was a murmur, possibly even a twitter from the crowd. Finally, they would get to pay homage to a classical rock star. Shorty thereafter, as a mama's boy was wailing on the harpsichord, the crowd finally stopped wondering "Chicken or fish?" The soloist/conductor Sergey Stadler was a rather corpulent man. The intensity of the music was actually reflected in his jowls which quivered like a seismograph. It seemed that he should look more like the silver fox of a first violin with his metallic hair and trim figure. When the solo ended and soloist/conductor was taking his third bow, the applause of the Silver Fox was transparently dutiful.

After the concert ended, we got ice cream at McDonalds, even as the cold seeped through our coats. But we couldn't have cared less, we were so warm inside, so utterly intoxicated by Russia. We went back to the Red Square to see the already beautiful structures awash in magical lights. I stood there gawking, vaguely aware of other students taking goofy pictures and performing the Electric Slide. It just seemed like such an incredibly profound moment and I wanted to be in it so badly. As we left the Red Square, the thought that I will never see this sight again kept rolling and reverberating inside my head.

The Kremlin

Night 1 & Day 2

About ten minutes after I first penned my previous entry, I was practically unconscious, so deep was my rest. The sweet lullaby of the clacking tracks and the gentle sway of the train engine had rocked me to sleep. When I awoke a couple hours later, the air was rife with excitement. Carly was dutifully studying the itinerary and Hannah was pouring over the Russian alphabet. Soon after, the Latvian and later Russian border police poured onto the train, sifted through luggage, checked passports, and communicated via grunt. Honestly, I was a little disappointed that they weren't scarier. Oh, and every now and then someone would randomly break into song (and sometimes dance) from the animated movie Anastasia.

Fast forward to about noon the next day. We had already checked into Godzilla, our predictably green painted hostel, and were now going to the Red Square. St. Basils, aka the Candy Land palace, was so whimsical, colorful, and bulbous that it made me think the architect had had a lot of fun. Although if I remember correctly, he was the Italian who had his eyes put out so that he could never make anything as magnificent again.

Next we went on a tour of the Kremlin and the Armory within it. The Armory is basically Russia's treasure house. Diamond encrusted prayer books as big as pillows, ornate carriages with wheels twice my height, and serving dishes big enough to bathe in made quite the impression. Even the guns, swords, and shields were inlaid with tortoise shell and spangled with precious stones.

The tour paused at the coronation dress of Catherine the Great with its silvery luster, delicate details, and Disney princess proportioned waist. Next to that gown was a dress that had belonged to a significantly portlier woman. Ana Something-Something was one of the fattest, ugliest, and most reviled rulers in Russian history. From what I could gather of the tour guide's version of English the story goes something like this...Ana was a princess residing in the Baltic region when her relatives invited her to come and marry into the Russian dynasty. Once she arrived, she shredded the contract and declared herself Empress of Imperial Russia. For ten years she let her German boyfriend rule as she was far too busy with her favorite sport: hunting. Eventually she becomes so incapacitated (whether from obesity or disease I'm not sure) that she actually has servants lead game outside her window so she can shoot them without moving. She also decided to make a palace entirely of ice, inside and outside. To complete her nifty little project, she poured water on some of her handmaidens and let them freeze overnight.

After that we visited the gilded chapel where many czars had been crowned. By the time we were done with our three hour tour (and yes, that reference was made a couple dozen times), we were footsore and freezing. Luckily it was time for the circus! Nothing like cotton candy and contortionists after a long day of looking at beautiful things. My favorite acts were the acrobats. One act had them floating through planets and stars, glowing neon under a black light, another act was a Latvian couple who were able to fly through the air together in perfect synchronization, and there was also a young girl who sprinted across the spray of a shooting fountain and then shot into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Hannah alternated clutching my armor in terror and maliciously biting off gummy bear heads. Again.

Hill of Crosses

Hi Everyone! For those of you who didn't know, I spent last week in Russia for fall break. Some of my next posts are going to be exactly as I wrote them and some will be looking back from now. Hopefully, I'll have them all up by the end of the week:)

Day 1

I am currently on a yellow train hurtling though the frosty autumn air. Our destination is a foreboding specter in our mind's eye, a land of czars and palaces, a land of crime and punishment, a land of mayhem and mystery...but I'm getting ahead of the story.

So this morning I awoke to the sound of Hannah fiercely whispering, "Cole, COLE!"
"What?" I painfully moaned.
"It's time to leave NOW!"
"Dang it!"This is what I got for staying up late packing and talking to friends. Luckily, I know my tendencies so well that I had laid out all my clothes the night before. After jumping into them like a firefighter and making my bed in a manner that would induce Martha Stewart to tears, I flew down the stairs.

The next few hours on the bus were a haze of Celtic music, someone violently puking, and throbbing neck cramps. As I finally awoke and glanced out the window, I was shocked at the sight of our first destination, the Hill of Crosses. The bus unloaded us, and as I walked toward the hill, my feet were heavy with apprehension and my eyes were hypnotized by the eerie sight.

Hundreds of crosses, thousands of crosses, millions of crosses shot up from the flat landscape and formed a gray mountain in the midst of green farmland. Within basic boundaries, crosses streamed, poured, and gushed forth from one another. Some were behemoth medieval marvels and others were smaller than a quarter. Jesus wore several variations on mind-blowing agony, sometimes he looked angry, other times-heartbroken, and occasionally there was faint glimmer of hope.

My reaction was mixed, as one moment I would be contemplating the faith of so many and the next I would be estimating how many vampires the place could withstand. Eventually, our time was up and I savored the image of the Hill as it faded into the horizon. Then Emas got on the loudspeaker to share some of the local lore. He started by saying that if you leave a cross and make a wish, that wish will come true. The exception is making a wish for someone's death which will allegedly result in the death of one of your siblings.

During the times of the Nazis and the Soviets, Lithuanians used the Hill of Crosses as a sign of peaceful resistance. They wanted to leave a part of themselves in their beloved homeland, even as they were being shipped to a desolate tundra. Even more chilling was the story of the man hired to demolish the hill many years ago. He brought his infant son to the Hill that day and began to bulldoze. At one point, he had to get out in order to toss aside some crosses by hand. Suddenly, the bulldozer starting rolling of its own accord. His child tumbled out of the cab and was crushed beneath the wheels. From that day forward, no one dared harm the Hill of Crosses.

That story, as well as others involving strange sounds, powerful miracles, and weeping Marys, have cemented the Hill of Crosses in the mind of pilgrims as a powerful symbol of hope, an unsettling visage of faith.

Floor Activity

I had spent this past afternoon studying and was desperately needing a break from annuity tables and yield curves. Hannah had plans to go to the school play and I really wanted to go with her. The only problem was that my roommate is the RA and had planned a floor activity for the evening. I decided that I would be supportive, that I would do what Jesus what do. At six, Tanya came up to my desk and told that it was time to go to "Oriental Night!" I scoffed, "What are we going to do, belly dance?" I had totally been joking...

Internship

Last week I started my internship at E!Motion, a website design company. Wandering into the quaint office where five guys diligently work made me feel a little like Snow White. This wasn't helped by the flower stickers plastered on my computer, nor the big silver heart on my power cord. My job is basically to catalog different websites in order to establish basic data on Lithuanian e-commerce. I'll be getting my nerd on as I answer questions such as "Does the website use Google analytics?" and "Are the URLs SEO friendly?" I'm looking rather forward to the challenge.

In some ways, my college experience here in Lithuania has been more normal (for lack of a better word) that my experience at Taylor. I love Taylor and I miss it dearly, but there I things I really enjoy about being here. It's nice to go to boisterous basketball games, to go dress shopping at the mall with friends, to go out on a Friday night and have no one mention classes or chapel or Linux. (And yes, I am aware of the blatant contradiction in this post.)

Eagle Eye

Last night we decided to have a cinematic experience. After we sat in our assigned seats and happily started munching our contraband candy, the previews began. Then all of a sudden, a guy in the front row stands up, starts singing "I like to move it, move it," and dancing crazily. After he dances out of the theater, a picture of different kinds of Ipods comes on the screen. We all just looked at each other in astonishment. The movie we saw was Eagle Eye or "Sakalo Akis," which I highly recommend. The only downside to seeing the movie here was that most of the humor was lost on the rest of audience, so we had to keep our guffawing to a minimum.

In general, things are becoming more...not comfortable, just easier. I no longer into collapse into bed every night like a wounded jelly fish and I'm beginning to feel more competent at navigating, well, everything. I've also been surprised by how much I 'm beginning to like living in an actual city. It's kind of refreshing.