Merry Christmas and Happy 2011

It's been awhile since my last post, but being the holiday season, I figured everyone else was busy too so no one was probably dying with anticipation to read my little blog. To catch up:

We got a Christmas tree about a week before the big day. Cue Mastercard commercial:

Convince a friend to drive you to the nearest OBI: 2 hours of your life lost to traffic, impending guilt for also wasting said friend's time
4' Charlie Brown tree: $50
One stop at McDonalds for necessary re-fuling: $10 and future clogged arteries
Having a fresh tree to look at on Christmas: priceless

Or something like that. I think that maybe next year we'll get a fake one and just buy some evergreen boughs for scent. Here's our precious little tree all decked out:

On Christmas Eve we celebrated in Czech style, or pseudo-Czech style. The 24th is the main day for them, and so we opened our gifts at night, after dinner as is standard. For dinner I made salmon (not carp, though I was totally ready to take on the challenge), sausage and potato salad. That was Petr's request, and so it was done. The potato salad was a bit tricky because I didn't have a recipe, so I was mostly going by Petr's description of his grandma's salad and at the 11th hour I found out she uses both mayo and yogurt, so I made some adjustments and it turned out ok. Of course, I made another vánočka and some Spritz cookies, as a nod to my Scandinavian heritage and in memory of when my mom used to bake them.

Spritz cookies. They look unusual because I had to hand-pipe them in a pastry bag. No cookie press for this girl!

Christmas Eve dinner

We opened presents and I got an awesome camera from my parents (my old one has since lost the ability to zoom or review and delete photos), and an ebook reader from Petr while Petr got a watch from me, a leather and fur hat from my parents and a few silly things that I wrapped in order to make it look fuller under the tree. That includes toothpaste and kvas :-) This electronic reader is really great for me because I can put almost any book on it (all classics and older ones for free) and I can take it easily with me wherever I go. Perfect for a girl whose always in some foreign country where English book selections are limited and costly. Plus, though I love the feel and smell of a real book, I can hold thousands in one device, which is incomparable when considering packing and moving a library every four years or so. Excellent pick Petr.

On Christmas Day we basically lounged around and watched TV, but that evening we had a friend over for dinner. He's here alone and it was great to have some extra company. I made a whole roasted chicken, a nut and raisin pilaf, a fruit salad and apple pie for dessert. The chicken was especially moist and I was really proud that I pulled it off. We had good conversation and a nice meal- all in all, a really satisfying night.

*******

The week before Christmas Petr and I decided to make a short trip to St. Petersburg. It's freaking cold and dark that far north, but we figured that we'd see our fill of museums when the tourists are away, and then return again in the spring or early summer to explore the city and it's surroundings in more temperate conditions. On the 26th we took an overnight train, arriving in St. Petersburg after 8 am. It was really cool to take a sleeper train- I had never done it before. We had a coupe, so I got the top bunk, Petr the bottom, and then there were two other people across from us. The bed was surprisingly comfortable, the cabin warm and dark, and the movement of the train, soothing. And yet, for some reason, I didn't sleep well. I think I couldn't manage to convince my natural defenses that sleeping with two perfect strangers was probably not a threat. Oh well, that's what coffee is for.

We walked from the train station to the Czech general consulate, where we stayed for a minimal price. By the time we got into town that day, it was noon and in that northern land, it gets dark at 4. So we used our remaining hours of light to visit the Peter and Paul fortress, the first fortress of the city where there was also a great museum about St. Petersburg up to WWII and it's conversion to Petrograd. We rounded the day up by stopping at two famous churches, the Church of the Savior on Blood and the Kazan Cathedral. I'll take a moment to mention how odd the architecture is there. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and sort of embodies his attempt to westernize Russia. Anyways, up until the Communist Revolution, it was the home of the tzars and each successive ruler followed Peter's lead in keeping the city up to date with European fashions. That's why the city, with it's Baroque and Neo-Classical facades, looks slightly out of place in the midst of this snow-ridden Russian landscape. The only building that looks "Russian" is the Church of the Savior on Blood, which isn't even old (built between 1883 and 1907) and is in some romantic nationalist style. What is more common are these churches like the Kazan Cathedral, which is a smaller imitation of St. Peter's in Rome. 

We finished off that night with a walk near the center and a visit to the Bronze Horseman, a statue of Peter I immortalized in Pushkin's poem by the same name.

Petr at the Peter and Paul Fortress, looking out on the frozen Neva river

Church of the Savior on Blood

Kazan Cathedral

Peter I

The next day was entirely devoted to a visit to the Hermitage, one of the world's greatest museums. It is housed in the former palace complex and not only has a varied and interesting collection, but is a work of art in itself. Wandering through it's sumptuous rooms makes one get a sense of the luxury and wealth of the Russian tzars. They also have a pretty great Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection. For the first time in my life I got to see some of Monet's work in person, along with artists like Van Gogh, Cezanne, Seurat, and Picasso. It was awesome. Now to inundate you with pictures of  parquet and ceiling moulding. 

 This is actually a clock and when the hour strikes the golden peacock opens it's tail. Amazing.

 These parquet floors were amazing. Some rooms had as much as 36 types of wood.

 I've discovered something in the War Gallery

 I knew my cousin Billy had be to Bosnia, but no one told me he had fought for the Russians in 1812

Me and a lovely lady from Rome's Flavian dynasty. The 80s can not compete with that hair.

On our last day we visited a rather unusual museum which was the first public museum in Russia. The Kunstkamera is, um, eclectic. It definitely harkens back to the days when museums were rooms of collected oddities and exoticisms with little order. Of course, in contemporary times they've tried to present much of the collection as an ethnographic study, combining objects found around the world with some (rather little) information about various cultures. Then again, you walk from an exhibit on Philippines and South America (already somehow tenuously connected) into a room full of jars with severed limbs and hideously deformed babies. Yes, there was a time when people would pay a lot of money for a cyclops baby with flipper legs in a jar. As grotesque as this sounds, one has to keep in mind that medical science had to start somewhere, and dissecting limbs and studying deformations lead to a better understanding of the human body. Why some dude wants to collect said bodies is another story. But I've got to say, the modern audience is pretty fascinated with it all too. Circuses and freak shows attest to the human love of observing the abnormal. Just try to look away!

http://www.kunstkamera.ru/en/wprojects/

After that, we spent the last remaining hours of light walking to another museum in the bitter cold and wind. It was the first time we'd seen the sun since we were there, but with dispersed clouds came a frigidness that crept into your very bones. Our destination was the Marble Palace, a exhibition hall associated with the Russian museum. Honestly, we didn't care so much about the exhibitions there (photographs of famous Russians, a private collection of art and art objects of two wealthy brothers, and a small exhibition of Soviet-era advertisements) we just really wanted to get out of the cold and we only had 1.5 hours before the museums were closed, so we couldn't see any large collections. We went back, drank a lot of tea and had a bath.

The trip home was an 8+ hour ride on the train. I was engrossed in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the entire time. Overall, a pretty nice little trip.

Charming man

I'm saving New Years for another post. This one is ginormous enough.