I've mentioned the Russian traffic a couple of times
And said that I would get back to it later.
So here we are
I don't know what you've heard about the driving culture behind the eastern border and I don't know what you've experienced and what you're used to,
but here's my experience and opinions.
When I got in my host family's car almost two weeks ago I didn't really have an idea what I would experience.
Let's just say that people in Petersburg have different driving habits than people in Finland.
At times it was a bit scary, but I got used to it. You know, the speed limits get more attention in Finland.
Overall it's more dangerous, people take a lot of risks, make very fast decisions and drive fast. And you can always fit one more car anywhere. People drive on the tram rails. And some of the drivers make epic u-turns. The traffic as a whole it often jammed and can often be described with the word "chaos". And still everyone reacts super fast and no matter how close it was there's no harm done. Might be that nobody really cares about the traffic rules, but no one wants to be in a car accident.
A thing that I noticed was that the driving was more restless than reckless. It must be horrible to every day spend hours in the car because of traffic jams. I can only imagine how many accidents there must be every year. And every time I'm surprised of how careful you have to be as a pedestrian, barely any car stops to let you cross.
I know that this is common in many other countries, but this was just the first time I got to experience a crazier driving culture properly.
And I'm alive. It was a really interesting experience.
So if you want to drive yourself in e.g. Russia and you've never driven there and you're used to the Finnish way, just don't. You'll thank yourself later.
Another interesting thing about Petersburg is the lack of mailboxes. Seriously, I've seen two during all of my stays. Post offices are also hard to find. I don't know how much you care, but I'm one of those who like to send a couple (haha a couple yeah right) of postcards when I'm abroad (and even if I'm not). So on Tuesday morning when I had my two (this time it really was just two) postcards I didn't really know what to do. My host mom dropped me off the at the hotel Moskva, where our bus picked us up later. And that was when I remembered that this hotel has a post office of its own, meant for the customers though. (Yes, I've stayed at this hotel once) I didn't really care though and we walked in, went up with the lift and I left my postcards at the post office and nobody else cared either.
The big program of the day was our visit to a regular school (1-11 grade). First a teacher gave a speech about the school and its history, but just briefly, because we really behind in the schedule. Then a group of girls danced some traditional dance (I suppose) and it was so cute.
During the following hours we visited some lessons in small groups. My group went to an art class, a Finnish class and an English class and it was so nice! The students in the English class were young teenagers, but the others that we met were 7-8 years old and they were so cute.
In the arts class they were drawing Easter eggs on greeting cards. Then at the end of the lesson some of them wanted to show us what they had made and told who they wanted to give this greeting card to. And they were all so cute, they were going to give the card to their mothers and grandmothers and they told some cute stories about what they usually do every Easter and so on.
By the way, Easter is the biggest and most important holiday in Russia.
The Finnish class was really fun to visit too. The kids could barely any Finnish (they had just started studying it, they were 8 years old) and they had difficulties to concentrate and were giggling all the time. The teacher look pretty done. He looked really tired.
Ah yes, there are just e few schools in Petersburg that teaches Finnish and this one happened to be one of them.
My host sister from last year studies at the moment in this school and we actually met in the corridor! I was really happy to see her!
And oh I almost forgot, we visited a music class too. And it was so different from what I'm used to, what Finnish students are used to. We have proper instruments and chilly lessons where we just play songs and sing and so on and sometimes we have to learn some theory. But here they didn't have any instruments but a piano and they just did some singing exercises and learned about traditional Russian songs. And they never really do anything else. My Polish friend told me that they have it the same way in Poland. The schools simply can't afford instruments. I really feel sorry for them.
It's was really nice to notice that I understood quite a lot of what was said, always at least what they were talking about. Well, on the English lesson they talked only in English, so that wasn't really a problem.
I've heard that the Isaks cathedral is so expensive that no one could today afford to build a similar one. And it is huge indeed and weighs a lot. But the most impressive for me is that you can go up to the tower and look at the city, the beautiful view over the big five million city (+ two million illegal citizen) and I can tell you that it is absolutely fantastic. Yes, the church was beautiful inside to, but the view from the tower got all my attention. I think there is a picture in my last post taken from the tower.
But the stairs oh my lord. They weren't that many but as one of those injured because of sports, my legs had a hard time climbing them. And no, there were no lifts. Okay, I shouldn't complain, there are people with a worse leg situation than mine. But just honestly, my calf, no, actually both of them, kinda cramped after that. So kids don't break your bodies with sports.
The last two times I've visited this city I've been to a theater, but both times I've seen operas because that has been the only option, or like on the school trip last year, everybody except basically me and one of my friends, voted for opera instead of ballet. They were indeed experiences, but I was so happy that we now would see a ballet instead. Opera wasn't really my thing, I mean, it was quite okay, but ballet is so beautiful and it really is easier and not that tiring to follow the story line. Just saying. The ballet was La Sylphide (contains spoilers) and it was so good. Well, as we were in the Marinsky theater, the dancers were of course professional and very good, but I still just have to say that it was so great! I enjoyed. This was the first classic ballet I've ever seen and it was just so beautiful. (I have seen a modern ballet back in my hometown that wasn't really good.)
And yeah, the theater itself is beautiful and so on.
This was the last day, the next day we would leave with our bus. And this far I had been speaking all the five languages I know. And believe me, my head was a mess. I had difficulties speaking any language and I came up with new words and mixed simply by mistake and entertained my friends at times.
I wish it had been on purpose. But it was kinda funny too.
And you know when you're so tired that everything's funny, also the terribly bad jokes and the jokes that really aren't jokes.
the next post will be about the last day
and I have no idea why the posts changed their order on my blog
stay online
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