Although, I do have to say that the only perk of waking up at 4:15 was seeing Claire's train attire. And I so wish that I'd had my camera out. Anyway, she was waiting in line for the bathroom wearing... Anyone? Socks. Underpants. A tank top with no bra. And a hat. No pants. No pants. NO PANTS. I understand that it was really really really hot on the train, but no pants? Socks and no pants? I fail to understand. Completely and utterly. Katie, you should make a "no pants" dance.
Anyway, we got into Kazan around 6am. Everything was fucking dark and really cold. Especially after being on that train for so long. Anyway, our hotel was within walking distance of the train station (and, in fact, close enough that the hotel shook when the trains went by), so we walked for twenty minutes in the cold with all our crap. However, we did get to nap for a couple of hours once we got to the hotel. And this hotel was definitely a step down from the last one, judging both by the size of the rooms and by the fact that in Kazan, you have to pay for your showers. I roomed with Laura W. again, the misadventures of which will be related shortly.
So we napped for a couple hours before having to make it downstairs for breakfast and excursion time. I have somewhat mixed feelings about the breakfast offered by the hotel in Kazan. While they were definitely more organized and had a much bigger buffet, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that salad, macaroni, and meatballs are considered breakfast food. And they didn't have any yogurt. I like yogurt a lot.
After breakfast, we had a big bus excursion around the city of Kazan and a walking tour of the Kremlin. The Kazan Kremlin is actually pretty neat. It's inclosed in a giant white wall and they have a mosque inside. Because Kazan is not just Russian, but is Tatarstan and is also Moslem. Which means that they also have some really crazy awesome looking architecture, and the Tatars mostly speak Tatar (duh) rather than Russian. Although everybody knows Russian.
We walked up to the main gate of the Kremlin with the huge clock tower that the guide told us something interesting about, but I was too far away to hear her and wasn't paying attention anyway. Then we walked around the outside of the Kremlin for a little while and looked out at the city and got oriented as to where our hotel was in relation to the Kremlin. The answer was: not very far away. Then we wandered inside the Kremlin walls and took a look at this cool new mosque that had just been built. I can't decide whether it looks more like the Disneyland castle or some kind of alien spaceship. Definitely more like an alien spaceship at night. Any votes?
The mosque was cool because we actually got to go inside. I'd never been inside a mosque before. We had to wear special plastic slippers over our shoes, just like we do most other places that handle a lot of tourists. It was pretty cool, although we had to go through a metal detector as we came in. I'm not so sure how I feel about that, although I'm pretty sure that the answers are along the lines of "not that great" and "kinda freaked out." But yeah, the mosque was neat. No pictures of the inside because that's taboo.
Then we continued our wanderings up to the leaning tower of Kazan. Supposedly, according to what I understood from the guide, in the time of Ivan the Terrible, there was a really pretty girl. And Ivan the Terrible really wanted to marry her. But she didn't really want to marry him, because, you know, he's Ivan the Terrible. So he locked her up in this tower. And then she jumped out and killed herself after maybe he threatened to do something to her family? That part I wasn't so clear on, but I did get that she jumped. That doesn't really explain why it leans, and the guide said that the tower was actually built after the time of Ivan the Terrible, but there you go.
Then we went into the Orthodox church in the Kremlin. It was super big, and I think it was pretty, but they shuffled us in and out so fast, it was hard to get a good look. Because if you hadn't gathered already, I really dig the churches and icons and stuff.
On our way out of the Kremlin, we went through the "secret" bastion, or whatever the fuck the big things in the middle of the wall are called. It's called "secret" because it was how the people of Kazan got the jump on invaders. The way this works is that it's the only bastion with two arches. The main road went through this bastion, and the invaders would have to pass through this bastion to get into the Kremlin. However, both of the arches of the bastion had portcullises, and when the invaders, or part of them, were inside, the people of Kazan would drop the portcullises, trapping the people inside. Then they'd shoot at them or do other nasty things through little arrow holes in the walls. Medieval warfare is fucking awesome.
Then we piled onto the bus to go see the icon "The Lady of Kazan." There was some story about a fire and a dream recurring three times that somehow had something to do with the icon that I'm totally unclear on. Because the icon "had revealed itself three times in the dream" and I totally just don't know. I though that the icon had been destroyed in the fire, but maybe not. Who knows. Anyway, we went to see this icon that's super famous and apparently really beautiful, but it's hard to tell because they have a gold and silver cover over it to protect it. Although I did feel smart when one of the guys asked me, "Why is Mary black? Did they paint her that way?" Uh, no. Mary is black because the icon is painted on wood, and then varnished, and gets darker as it ages, like most other paintings. The church also had some other icons, but nothing that was super exciting or interesting. Although Jonathan did get reprimanded for standing with his back to the iconostasis. And then he started bitching about it, which actually made me kinda angry. In the Orthodox religion, icons are a direct manifestation of God, and standing with your back to the iconostasis where the icons are mounted is like turning your back on God, quite literally. It's a respect thing. Even if you don't believe, you should have the courtesy to respect other people's beliefs and not get pissed off when they ask you to do so.
Enough ranting about religion. After the icon, we drove around the city a little bit in the big bus. Kazan is at a weird stage right now and it's undergoing a lot of urban renewal. Many of the buildings downtown had been abandoned and left to rot, but are now being torn down and/or renovated. Like in Nizhny-Novgorod, Kazan is building a lot of new apartment buildings. But the weird thing was that I didn't get the sense that Kazan was that big of a city. Granted that it's about the same size as Nizhny, but it feels totally different. There just don't seem to be as many people, and it makes me wonder where they all are. Do they actually live there? Or are they building, hoping to attract new people to the city? It's a mystery.
After we stopped even pretending to pay attention to the guide and answer her questions, she told us that she'd just stop talking and let us look out the windows of the bus. Which she didn't. But that was okay, because we were on the way back to the hotel and lunch. Mushroom-noodle soup is really yummy.
After lunch we had free time. I ended up going up to my room for awhile because I wasn't quite ready to brave the town with the rest of the group. Laura W., the long suffering roommate, joined me. I tried to set down a record of the events thus far in my little black book so that I could remember the most amusing incidents for the blog later, but mostly we just ended up gossiping about the other kids on the trip. And we mostly determined that pretty much everybody sucks. Actually, this is a lie. There were a few people who were okay, and some that were neutral, but by in large, the group sucks. I could go into detail about what I dislike about each person, but this would really only be gratifying for me, since I'm the only one who knows them.
By the time that it was starting to get dark, Laura and I decided that we should probably brave the streets of Kazan to at least check out the main pedestrian walkway and find something to eat for dinner. We shuffled out into the cold and made it down to the main drag, which looked a lot like it did in Nizhny-Novgorod, only with more souvenir stands. And buildings in the process of being torn down or remodeled. Or maybe both. So we wandered around in the dark for awhile and then decided to look for a grocery store to buy things for dinner since neither of us were either feeling all that hungry or up to negotiating ordering things at a restaurant. So, we wandered over to where I thought that Natasha had told us the grocery store was and it turns out that I'm just bad with directions or misheard. But we did find a mall. And Russian malls are weird. They're a little like American malls in that they have a lot of stores, but these stores are all really small. And they're usually more like cubicles in an office, except a little bigger. So we wandered the mall until the security guard kicked us out, at which point we resumed our hunt for a grocery store.
I accosted a lady on the street, but she claimed not to know where one was. The outdoor rinok was long closed, but after going down a sketchy back alley that we didn't know was going to be sketchy until we were halfway through it, we found a grocery store. But first, how did we know the alley was sketchy? Because it didn't have many lights. But most importantly, because there was a silent casino with the doors open, and in front of it were three black Mercedes with lots of Tatar men piling in and out of them with doors opening and closing in no particular order. And if that doesn't scream sketchy situation, I'm not quite sure what does. Here are some night pictures of downtown Kazan.
After buying nutritious things like cookies, ice cream, and juice, we headed back to the hotel with the plan of hanging out in the room for a little bit and then trying to find Phoebe's room where there was theoretically another drinking party happening to celebrate the first night in Kazan. However, being the big nerds that we are, we started studying for the GRE and totally missed whatever drinking happened that night. Then it was midnight and time for bed.
So here's where we were idiots. Is everybody ready? Because the denouement doesn't come until tomorrow. So, I got into bed and put my headphones on to try to go to sleep and when Laura came out of the bathroom, I asked her if she had locked the door. At which point she said no, and that she didn't really think we needed to. I said that we should, but didn't insist, because the chances that something happening were pretty small. So we turned off the lights and went to sleep without locking the door.
Anyway, we got into Kazan around 6am. Everything was fucking dark and really cold. Especially after being on that train for so long. Anyway, our hotel was within walking distance of the train station (and, in fact, close enough that the hotel shook when the trains went by), so we walked for twenty minutes in the cold with all our crap. However, we did get to nap for a couple of hours once we got to the hotel. And this hotel was definitely a step down from the last one, judging both by the size of the rooms and by the fact that in Kazan, you have to pay for your showers. I roomed with Laura W. again, the misadventures of which will be related shortly.
So we napped for a couple hours before having to make it downstairs for breakfast and excursion time. I have somewhat mixed feelings about the breakfast offered by the hotel in Kazan. While they were definitely more organized and had a much bigger buffet, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that salad, macaroni, and meatballs are considered breakfast food. And they didn't have any yogurt. I like yogurt a lot.
After breakfast, we had a big bus excursion around the city of Kazan and a walking tour of the Kremlin. The Kazan Kremlin is actually pretty neat. It's inclosed in a giant white wall and they have a mosque inside. Because Kazan is not just Russian, but is Tatarstan and is also Moslem. Which means that they also have some really crazy awesome looking architecture, and the Tatars mostly speak Tatar (duh) rather than Russian. Although everybody knows Russian.
We walked up to the main gate of the Kremlin with the huge clock tower that the guide told us something interesting about, but I was too far away to hear her and wasn't paying attention anyway. Then we walked around the outside of the Kremlin for a little while and looked out at the city and got oriented as to where our hotel was in relation to the Kremlin. The answer was: not very far away. Then we wandered inside the Kremlin walls and took a look at this cool new mosque that had just been built. I can't decide whether it looks more like the Disneyland castle or some kind of alien spaceship. Definitely more like an alien spaceship at night. Any votes?
The mosque was cool because we actually got to go inside. I'd never been inside a mosque before. We had to wear special plastic slippers over our shoes, just like we do most other places that handle a lot of tourists. It was pretty cool, although we had to go through a metal detector as we came in. I'm not so sure how I feel about that, although I'm pretty sure that the answers are along the lines of "not that great" and "kinda freaked out." But yeah, the mosque was neat. No pictures of the inside because that's taboo.
Then we continued our wanderings up to the leaning tower of Kazan. Supposedly, according to what I understood from the guide, in the time of Ivan the Terrible, there was a really pretty girl. And Ivan the Terrible really wanted to marry her. But she didn't really want to marry him, because, you know, he's Ivan the Terrible. So he locked her up in this tower. And then she jumped out and killed herself after maybe he threatened to do something to her family? That part I wasn't so clear on, but I did get that she jumped. That doesn't really explain why it leans, and the guide said that the tower was actually built after the time of Ivan the Terrible, but there you go.
Then we went into the Orthodox church in the Kremlin. It was super big, and I think it was pretty, but they shuffled us in and out so fast, it was hard to get a good look. Because if you hadn't gathered already, I really dig the churches and icons and stuff.
On our way out of the Kremlin, we went through the "secret" bastion, or whatever the fuck the big things in the middle of the wall are called. It's called "secret" because it was how the people of Kazan got the jump on invaders. The way this works is that it's the only bastion with two arches. The main road went through this bastion, and the invaders would have to pass through this bastion to get into the Kremlin. However, both of the arches of the bastion had portcullises, and when the invaders, or part of them, were inside, the people of Kazan would drop the portcullises, trapping the people inside. Then they'd shoot at them or do other nasty things through little arrow holes in the walls. Medieval warfare is fucking awesome.
Then we piled onto the bus to go see the icon "The Lady of Kazan." There was some story about a fire and a dream recurring three times that somehow had something to do with the icon that I'm totally unclear on. Because the icon "had revealed itself three times in the dream" and I totally just don't know. I though that the icon had been destroyed in the fire, but maybe not. Who knows. Anyway, we went to see this icon that's super famous and apparently really beautiful, but it's hard to tell because they have a gold and silver cover over it to protect it. Although I did feel smart when one of the guys asked me, "Why is Mary black? Did they paint her that way?" Uh, no. Mary is black because the icon is painted on wood, and then varnished, and gets darker as it ages, like most other paintings. The church also had some other icons, but nothing that was super exciting or interesting. Although Jonathan did get reprimanded for standing with his back to the iconostasis. And then he started bitching about it, which actually made me kinda angry. In the Orthodox religion, icons are a direct manifestation of God, and standing with your back to the iconostasis where the icons are mounted is like turning your back on God, quite literally. It's a respect thing. Even if you don't believe, you should have the courtesy to respect other people's beliefs and not get pissed off when they ask you to do so.
Enough ranting about religion. After the icon, we drove around the city a little bit in the big bus. Kazan is at a weird stage right now and it's undergoing a lot of urban renewal. Many of the buildings downtown had been abandoned and left to rot, but are now being torn down and/or renovated. Like in Nizhny-Novgorod, Kazan is building a lot of new apartment buildings. But the weird thing was that I didn't get the sense that Kazan was that big of a city. Granted that it's about the same size as Nizhny, but it feels totally different. There just don't seem to be as many people, and it makes me wonder where they all are. Do they actually live there? Or are they building, hoping to attract new people to the city? It's a mystery.
After we stopped even pretending to pay attention to the guide and answer her questions, she told us that she'd just stop talking and let us look out the windows of the bus. Which she didn't. But that was okay, because we were on the way back to the hotel and lunch. Mushroom-noodle soup is really yummy.
After lunch we had free time. I ended up going up to my room for awhile because I wasn't quite ready to brave the town with the rest of the group. Laura W., the long suffering roommate, joined me. I tried to set down a record of the events thus far in my little black book so that I could remember the most amusing incidents for the blog later, but mostly we just ended up gossiping about the other kids on the trip. And we mostly determined that pretty much everybody sucks. Actually, this is a lie. There were a few people who were okay, and some that were neutral, but by in large, the group sucks. I could go into detail about what I dislike about each person, but this would really only be gratifying for me, since I'm the only one who knows them.
By the time that it was starting to get dark, Laura and I decided that we should probably brave the streets of Kazan to at least check out the main pedestrian walkway and find something to eat for dinner. We shuffled out into the cold and made it down to the main drag, which looked a lot like it did in Nizhny-Novgorod, only with more souvenir stands. And buildings in the process of being torn down or remodeled. Or maybe both. So we wandered around in the dark for awhile and then decided to look for a grocery store to buy things for dinner since neither of us were either feeling all that hungry or up to negotiating ordering things at a restaurant. So, we wandered over to where I thought that Natasha had told us the grocery store was and it turns out that I'm just bad with directions or misheard. But we did find a mall. And Russian malls are weird. They're a little like American malls in that they have a lot of stores, but these stores are all really small. And they're usually more like cubicles in an office, except a little bigger. So we wandered the mall until the security guard kicked us out, at which point we resumed our hunt for a grocery store.
I accosted a lady on the street, but she claimed not to know where one was. The outdoor rinok was long closed, but after going down a sketchy back alley that we didn't know was going to be sketchy until we were halfway through it, we found a grocery store. But first, how did we know the alley was sketchy? Because it didn't have many lights. But most importantly, because there was a silent casino with the doors open, and in front of it were three black Mercedes with lots of Tatar men piling in and out of them with doors opening and closing in no particular order. And if that doesn't scream sketchy situation, I'm not quite sure what does. Here are some night pictures of downtown Kazan.
After buying nutritious things like cookies, ice cream, and juice, we headed back to the hotel with the plan of hanging out in the room for a little bit and then trying to find Phoebe's room where there was theoretically another drinking party happening to celebrate the first night in Kazan. However, being the big nerds that we are, we started studying for the GRE and totally missed whatever drinking happened that night. Then it was midnight and time for bed.
So here's where we were idiots. Is everybody ready? Because the denouement doesn't come until tomorrow. So, I got into bed and put my headphones on to try to go to sleep and when Laura came out of the bathroom, I asked her if she had locked the door. At which point she said no, and that she didn't really think we needed to. I said that we should, but didn't insist, because the chances that something happening were pretty small. So we turned off the lights and went to sleep without locking the door.
posted by hillary at 6:05 AM
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