Maslenitsa

Maslenitsa post.  Definitely over a week late, but this is a better week and I have finally finished my post.

So Maslenitsa.  A week of family, friends, and a whole lot of blini.  This past Sunday, the last day of Maslenitsa, there was a program excursion to an island waaaaaaaay in the northern part of St. Petersburg.  It was super informal - whoever wanted to go would meet up at a specific metro stop and walk over to the festival together.  Whether the group stayed together or not was up to us.  So my friend Lauren and I met up at our metro stop and headed over.


My being a surprisingly social person (despite the fact that I am also a surprisingly quiet person at times), and totally eavesdropping on the conversations around me to try to pick up some Russian, I heard English.  Someone else was speaking English, and it was English English.

Thus did I turn to Lauren and announce that I was gonna go make friends.  Because that's not weird at all, me just randomly starting a conversation with a complete stranger for the sole reason that they speak the same language.  Well done, Caitie.  Not weird at all.  Turns out it was a good idea.  They were two really nice girls from England, Georgie and Nadia, who are also studying at Smolney.  We chatted for a bit before we arrived at our station and went to join the program group.


So Lauren and I were just standing around on the edge of the program group.  We tend to do that, quite frequently actually, since the people on the program cliqued up something fierce.  Anyway, we looked over and there was Georgie and Nadia, joined by another girl and a guy, just milling about in the metro entrance.  They looked like they were unsure of where to go and what to do, so Lauren and I went over and asked them to come join our American group.  We met the two newcomers - Jade and Charlie - and, later joined by our friend Alicia, we proceeded to spend the rest of the day with them.


Awesome!!  The place we went to was by Yelagin palace waaaaaay in the north, like I said earlier.  There's a ferris wheel nearby that I can see from across the river mouth in my little room at my homestay.

The Yelagin palace is just north of Petrogradskaya - it's very green and to the north on the right.  It's winter still, so it was still gross and mucky and gray out, but you could see the beauty in the grounds.  Which were littered with festival goodness.  Blini stalls were EVERYWHERE, with sooooooo many different fillings to choose from.  There was a pageant with a guy in the back dressed as a red sun - he looked pretty drunk, doing the dorky two step at the back of the stage, but he seemed happy enough.  At the front was a guy with a nice beard and his assistant.

Here they are. Look at that assistant in his fancy dress

We spent a good chunk of the time wandering around looking at everything at the festival and trying to meet up with Alicia, who unfortunately let me try to navigate.  I get lost with GPS running in my car, so I don't know why we thought it was a good idea to let me give the directions......


Anyway......Maslenitsa.  We wandered around the entire grounds of the palace complex watching the shows and eating blini - mine was cabbage and mushroom.  Now those of you who know me know that I HATE mushrooms.  If I find them in my food, I pick them out and mutter under my breath about how my fork even had to come in contact with them and how horrible that is and grrrrr.  But this is Russia.  My professor has been telling me for years that people here go out and pick their own wild mushrooms and cook them up.  And they taste different here.  Back home they taste like rubbery dirt and broken dreams.

Deathshroom indeed

But here, I don't know what they do to them, but they have barely a taste.  They're minced small enough that you don't get that super rubbery texture, and there's just a hint of flavor.  And no lingering taste of earth.  The cabbage is cabbage - Russians know how to cook that well.

Mmmmm yum

After exploring most of the festival, our group wandered back to where we found a Nutella blini stand.  The thought of warm blinis and melty Nutella was just too good (tasted fantastic too - mine came with bananas).  Nadia fought her way to the front of the stand while Lauren joined a tug-of-war group.  They did pretty well too.  And her prize was a nice warm blini.  They even came wrapped in a cone for eating on the go.

As we finished eating, the tug-of-war dissolved into a circle dance.  The people in the circle would pinch in and go under the arms of two people, also in the circle.  Then as the circle returned to its former round shape, another section would pinch in and repeat.  Dancing and circling and pairing off at one point.  Alicia jumped into the circle and the rest of us just kinda stood there in a weird mix of surprise, awe, and jealousy.  So Charlie jumped in, then Lauren.  Then I joined, and I got Georgie in too.  Jade and Nadia passed on the dancing, but caught part of it on camera.

Fancy dancing over with, Lauren, Alicia and I said goodbye to our new British friends and went back to do a last wander-through of the palace grounds before heading back to our homestays.  We got sidetracked by an exhibition of Russians on horseback attacking things with spears and swords as they thundered by, spearing bottles, slicing sticks with hats on them, picking up said sticks from the ground while still on horseback.  It was wicked cool, but I am short and people are tall, so I didn't see too much.  I had a nice view of one of the hats-on-a-stick though.


We also got sidetracked a little further down.  In another clearing with more blini stalls there was a fabulous game.  Essentially, you stand on a really wobbly log that barely fits your feet and beat the other person - who is also on a really wobbly log - with a sack of straw.

Weeeeeeeeee are the champions, my friend..........

And that was Maslenitsa!  We went back to our homestays after that and I had a nice dinner with my host mom (with more blini!) and spent the rest of the night hanging out with my host family and being social with them.  All in all, a very good day.