Just another typical day...

My roommate is leaving in a couple of days, and the city seems determined to swamp her with fully "Russian" experiences before she's gone for good.

The weather has regressed to something you'd expect in March – 45º and rainy – but even worse is the weather inside our room. We first arrived in January to a big hole in the window that had been taped shut, but were able to get this fixed. However, the windows were so poorly insulated that we had to tape them shut to keep some semblance of heat in the room. As it got warmer out, we took off the tape so we could open the windows. Apparently, in doing so we had overestimated the ability of St. Petersburg weather to remain warm and sunny, and our room is once again only slightly warmer than our miniscule fridge. It is so cold, in fact, that I slept comfortably last night in two pairs of long underwear (on the bottom) and a wool sweater and North Face fleece on top...all under two blankets.

But this is getting ahead of myself. Yesterday, I went with my roommate to the post office to mail one of her suitcases home (she's traveling around Europe for 5 weeks and doesn't want to have to deal with 4 months worth of clothes, etc.). We haven't even made it out of the building when the first obstacle presents itself: the security guard at the front thinks my roommate is leaving for good and wants to confiscate her dorm pass. We explain that she was just mailing the suitcase and would be back in a couple of hours, but the guard won't hear of it and repeatedly asks why my roommate hasn't given up her pass to the commandant. Eventually, we give up trying to explain and leave the pass, hoping that my roommate will actually be allowed back in.

We easily flag down a car, something I will greatly miss about Russia: hitchhiking is completely safe, wide-spread, and sometimes cheaper than taking public transportation. However, getting off our street proved trickier than we had anticipated. Several police officers were standing on corners up and down the street and prevented cars from passing. But why? I understand blockades on Nevsky, but on Korablestroiteley? (Side note: our ridiculously-looking street name means "ship-builders' street." The street itself runs all along the outer side of Vasilievsky Island and is therefore closest to the Gulf of Finland. It is not in any way central to any part of Petersburg, nor is it part of a route out of the city. Why it would need to be blocked off is beyond me.) Anyway, our driver gets out of the car and goes to talk to the person in front of us, then to the person in front of him, all the way up the line until he is chatting with the police officer in charge.

I get bored and start playing with my phone, then look up to see the driver sprinting back towards our car. He jumps in, slams the door shut, and we take off. We speed towards the metro, weaving in and out of other lanes of traffic, barely noticing the pedestrians who are forced to stop dead in their tracks, lest they be hit and killed, and who start yelling and gesturing wildly. At one point, we are mere inches away from being steamrolled by a truck, and I see my life in front of my eyes. I see our driver cross himself and hope that he has perhaps had a little sense scared into him. Then I realize we have just passed a church and cemetery and he probably didn't even see the truck that almost killed us.

We finally make it to the post office, where we wait for over an hour, and my roommate is told she can't ship a newspaper from 1905 that she bought at the rinok.

I can't wait to see what today will bring.