Georgian style!

The title is an inside joke. And I'm so happy and proud that I have inside jokes with Georgian people. You may already guess what a perfect trip me and Heidi had to Tbilisi, Gori, Signari and Mtskheta!

Everything started from South-Korea in 2007 when Heidi met some random Georgian people in her student dormitory. A promise saved to video camera "I'll come to Georgia"

became true one year later when we flew to Tbilisi, Georgia. I got to be Heidi's travel partner because of my (poor) Russian skills.

This is what happened.

After a night train from St. Petersburg and one day of killing time in Riga Latvia, I finally met Heidi at the airport of Riga. Already tired from the night train but still excited and happy about the forth coming trip we're reading Lonely Planet (LP) at the airport. I wanted to collect all the information because I had no idea what to expect from the country which just 9 months ago had a war with Russia and lost two of its regions (South-Ossetia and Abkhasia) to separatists movements (and to Russians). Despite the openmindness we had about Georgia, we failed to predict what was coming up.

What we experienced in Georgia, was hundred times better than we coud have ever wished for.

First, landing to the airport where four nice-looking Georgian guys were waiting for us with a sign of a Finnish flag and text which said "Tervetuloa". Welcome like that leaves nobody cold and we were sold. Even though it was 2am when we arrived to the hotel, boys wanted to take us up to the hills to see Tbilisi by night. The brand-new Trinity church, TV-tower and statue of mother-Georgia (with sword and wine glas in her hands) were lightened and the city looked amazing. What was less amazing was the road up to the main tourist attraction of the city. The country have had money to built crazy-big presidental castle but not to fix the roads in the city center. Later we learned why.

Next two days we spend wandering around Tbilisi, eating tons of khatsapuri, visiting churches (in Tbilisi they have church in every corner), admiring the ancient old town, being annoyed by the staring of men and feeling bad for street dogs and beggars. When the evening came boys and Kate picked us up and took us to drive around Tbilisi. I could have never guessed how much I could enjoy driving around with techno at the background. It was like getting back one part of youth I never had! But the driving wasn't only a typical Finnish style "pilluralli" but a special moment for political and all other kind of conversations.

We learned that Mihail Shaakashvili used to be a good president: he fixed the main roads, renewed the electricity system of Tbilisi, closed road bandits behind the bars and got Western financial and political support to Georgia. But then something happened and the power got into Misha's head. Now he's having vacations at the fanciest resorts in Turkey, inviting porn-start-massage-person from Hollywood to entertain him, building a white house for himself which is three times bigger than the original US White house and closing down independent media. Not so democratic actions any more. The last Misha-theatre (term used by our Georgian friends) was "the military coup" which was nothing more than an attempt of Misha to portray himself as a strong leader. Poor tie-eater, I think his show failed.

In addition to the political discussion we had really good conversations about many other topics. One of the most interesting topics was gender roles and gender equality, an issue where our opinions varied a lot (I got a nick name Ms. Feminist). Although I see Georgian mentality as an European one, their culture is still relatively patriarchal at least in one sense: boys can do more or less what they want but girls are expected to save their virginity for marriage. The demand of virginity leads to sick side effects: some girls do all other kind of kinky things (I mean anal- and oral sex) except the actual intercourse, boys can keep one ”mental” girlfriend and other girls for sex (with the acceptance of the number one girlfriend!), young people get married too hastily just to be able to be together, boys to use prostitutes (big majority of Georgian men have bought sex) and to the over-important role of sex in society. Because it’s so hard to have, boys brag about their sexual experiences, which leads girls into shame because eventually everybody knows who had sex and with whom. The result of this system is that nobody, neither girls or boys, are happy.

Of course the Western (or at least Scandinavian) system is not perfect either. Instead of valuing virginity, for us it’s a symptom of freakiness. The opposite social pressure, the demand to have sex leads to too early sexual experiences. In Finland it’s more and more common that girls of age 12-13 have sex already. That’s at least as dangerous as the demand of virginity.

The different up-bringing of girls and boys in Georgia is a symptom of a patriarchal culture. Hannu Raittila argued in his new book ”Ulkona” (my great, great travel book in Georgia) accurately: Welfare society is the best thing women have faced. When the society is family-centred, it’s usually also patriarchal and men-dominated. Welfare society with its kindergartens and gender equality programs liberate women from the economic dependence of their fathers and husbands. In Georgia women are highly appreciated by men but they’re also expected to have children and take care of housework (including washing their husband’s shitty underwear: sentence from which I’ll be remembered in Georgia). Childless woman is one of the biggest tragedies in Georgia, which is also the reason why our friends couldn’t understand why we consider adoption to be an option for getting a child.

Heidi and me were also a bit offended when (male) acquaintances of our Georgian friends didn’t shake our hands or spoke to us. When we asked about it, Georgians explained that even though they didn’t speak to us, they spoke all the time about us. They just valued our space so much that they didn’t feel that it would be appropriate to speak to us. That may be the truth but me and Heidi sensed patriarchalism is this tradition: women are ”owned” by their father or husband which is the reason men also discuss for the women as well while women are left out of the conversation. But still after the explanation were felt less offended, they were just really polite to us in Georgian style.

Even though we disagreed greatly in some things, we had super good conversations with our Georgian friends. Usually I have such an in-depth conversations only with my boyfriend and with my closest friends. We were amazed how thoughtful and deep 20-year-old Georgians could be. Still few days after the trip I have been floating in this strange spiritual mood: one week of good discussions left stuff to think about at least for the next month. Even though Heidi and I have travelled quite a lot, at least I haven’t meet such political youngsters who also appreciate their traditions more than any other nation I have met. And indeed we got the opportunity to participate Georgian traditions also by ourselves!

Hospitality is one of the most famous and highlighted traditions in Georgia. ”Guest are gift from God” we heard more than once or twice. Heidi and me tried to fight to pay our own meals but it turned out to be impossible: for Georgians guests are always only a joy, which is why they wanted to pay all the meals for us. Guests are invited to join Georgian style dinner supra, which is a traditional feast with wine and food more than you could ever imagine. Georgian food is above excellent: khatsapuri with cheese, potato or mushrooms; pkhali with beans, nuts or spinach; lobio with beans; khinkali with mushrooms and potatoe; aubergines with nut sauce; cheese filled mushrooms; fresh Georgian-produced vegetables and fruits; spicy adzhika or ajapsandali and so on. And as vegetarians we could only taste the meatless dishes which was big tragedy for our hosts (in Georgia being a vegetarian is just a big joke). In supra you flush the food down with excellent Georgian wines, which you’re only allowed to drink when the toastmaster, tamada, rises his glass and proposes a next toast. Unlike in Russia, you don’t drink only for ”health”, ”beauty” of ”friendship” but you listen a five to ten minute speech about various topics with long explanation and historical background of the toast. That’s why you can never really get drunk in Georgia because you only drink at the same time with others. In Georgia is a shame to be drunk (yet another thing which makes Georgians more Europeans than Russians). We enjoyed supra more than once but what was shocking for us Finns was the fact that part of the tradition is to order so much food to the table that you manage to eat only max. ¼ of the dishes. All food is shared but still my Finnish children-starve-in-Africa-and-there-was-the-winter-war-so-finish-your-food-heart was crying to see all the food go to the bin. All the khatsapuris I could save to my stomach are thrown away all the time!

Despite the abuse of food, the best memories of Georgia are from supras which we had with Ziki, Zuka, Kate, Irakli, Levan and George. The toasts toastmaster raised led to good discussion about love, future, politics and life in general. Even thought some of the toasts were rather sentimental, Heidi and me jumped straight into the tradition. I could speak about love and life in a way, which would have felt super ridiculous in Finland (where people rather shut up than reveal their deepest thoughts). In Georgia it felt just normal. Maybe I dropped part of my Finnish cynicism to Georgia (hah, I wish).

Other great tradition of Georgians is their summerhouse culture, which is amazingly similar to Finnish one. We had a great opportunity to visit Irakli's family’s summer house in Eastern part of Georgia which was one of the most beautiful areas I have ever seen: snow-topped Caucasus mountains on the background, wine yards and sheep shepherds on the green countryside which was filled with medieval castles and churches. Another surprising thing was the amount of donkeys we saw: in almost every back yard there was a donkey helping in the farm work. The summerhouse was quite similar with the Finnish ones: with garden to grow own vegetables, small (empty) animal shelters and modest rooms for sleeping. Actually the house where we were was above average but the summer cottage culture was quite Finnish: the houses are the home farms of the parents of our friends and Georgian children spend their summers at the countryside. Parents and students visit summer places on holidays and weekends. Just like we in Finland!

In addition to the supras and cottage trip offered by our friends we faced amazingly open-hearted hospitality from total strangers as well: babushka at the orthodox church fed us with home-made cup-cakes, taxi driver's babushka sent us bag full of famous Gori apples and the relatives (babushka again) of our friends offered us a really good dinner in Gori, in their super fancy restaurant which usually hosts political and economic elite of Georgia. Less attractive part of Gori was the museum of Stalin; the museum is the center of the small city and some how the guide forgot to tell us the bad things Stalin did. Our guided tour went more or less like this: "Stalin was born here, he also studied here, then he was chosen to be the leader of Soviet Union, then he wan the war against nazis and then he died". What happened to the 27 million dead Soviet people and to Ukrainian famine? Luckily intelligent Georgians (like our friends) know truth about their anti-hero.

All in all on our Georgian turnée I learned more about international politics (the Georgian-Russian war was one of the main topics in our conversations), life and from Georgian culture (now I sound sentimental in Georgian style again) and I think our Georgian friends also got something (gender equality I hope) to think about from us. Heidi and me promised to be Finnish godmothers for the future children of our friends and to put some feminists ideas into the heads of little Georgian boys and girls. In the same way I hope that Georgian friends would teach parts of their culture for Finns: especially appreciating older people and valuing traditions are things we should learn from Georgians.

Any way, fundamentally we're quite similar: small 5 millions people's countries next to Russia, with our unique languages nobody speaks enjoying our summer cottages and beautiful nature.

p.s. Returning to Russia after Georgian hospitality was a smaller culture shock than I expected: babushkas in the bus offered me some shampanskoje to celebrate the Victory Day which today fills the streets of Russian cities with army parades and concerts.

Crushed Expectations

It's amazing how a city, people and even the whole country can change totally during the time. Or actually they remain almost the same, but your interpretation changes.

For example Petrozavodsk, a city in Russian Carelia, felt really unwelcoming, cold and rude three years ago while now, when I visited city last weekend, the image I got was totally opposite. Even though I ended up to awful nightclubs and met random stalkers on a Sunday walk, Petrozavodsk felt warm, welcoming and an interesting city.

For an explanation three years ago I knew hardly any Russian and working in a small Finnish newspaper in Russia wasn't only an easy experience. Nobody understood me nor I understood them. When I went to cafe and ordered coffee I got milkshake; and when I went to restaurant I managed to order potatoes with smashed potatoes. In a marshrutka it was always a horrifying moment to get out because I didn't know how to stop minibuses. Maybe that's one reason why I always got lost when I travelled to the Soviet style suburban to aerobics which was held in a local school number 42 (in Russia school don't have names, only numbers). And of course I met hardly any people because I didn't know the language, and it didn't feel too good to sit alone in the bars and waiting for somebody to talk to me (I tried once but left quickly because I realized how it looked like to be a lonely girl in bar). 

To be honest, I was a bit scared to go back to Petrozavodsk last weekend for a seminar on environmental politics. But as always my prejudices collapsed almost the minute I arrived. City looked so friendly, clean and quiet after the busy and growded St. Petersburg. The student dormitary were we stayed was newly renovated and super-neat, only minus was that the light didn't work. But it didn't mind because sun was shining during the day and in the evenings we were exploring the activities of Petrozavodsk. Also the University of Petrozavodsk where the seminar was held was more modern than I expected and computer rooms filled with brand new computers!

City itself looked almost the same but the atmosphere seemed to be totally different. Maybe also thanks to my imporved Russian skills, I got coffee everytime I ordered it and this time I could order something else with potatoes than other kind of potatoes. People in the public transportation helped us to get out at the right bus stop and even the statue of Lenin and Ulitsa Karl Marx were more funny than scary this time.

Same theory applies for people too. I always thought that Russian girls were a bit silly with their high heels, mini-skirts and non-stop mirroring. I also felt that Russian women were somehow exhausting because of their arrogant and rude attitude. Maybe that's because I don't know too many Russian girls personally. After three days of seminar in Petrozavodsk with Russian students I had to crash my prejudice. During the seminar I became fan of Russian girls.

After a three days with Russian students, who were all under 20 years old, I was more than impressed by the level of their education. Especially the girls in the university of Petrozavodsk were not only beautiful (or ridiculously beautiful like my American friend call Russian girls) but also smart, confident and what surprised me most, fluent in English. They all studied international politics which include one year of studying only English. According to their professor the students of IR should be fluent in English. What a change of paradigm, before Russian language was the only important language now but obviously the new generation knows the importance of globalization.

During the weekend in Petrozavodsk, or actually during the whole spring, I have started to appreciate Russian girls more and more. I thought before that they are rude and selfish but I have started to realize that they are only confident about themselves. At the seminar they were always willing to speak in front of the class and they weren't afraid of telling their opinion out loud while Finnish girls were usually unwilling to stand in front of the class and speak English in front of a big audience.

Maybe that's because Russian girls don't take themselves that seriously: they can go to strip aerobic without any problem because they are confident enough and also their sense of humor can handle also some silly things. I could never wear as high heels or as short skirt as they do because I would feel that all those super-feminine things make me less convincing. Like the looks of person determines what's inside the head. Well, in Petrozavodsk I learned that you can have both: model-appearance and brain of a scientist.

Maybe one day I will have the same confidence and self-respect to give a shit about what other people thing about me. It still far away: only on Tuesday I missed my last chance to participate the strip aerobics at my gym. I already was at the door but I didn't have the guts to enter the room. Instead of learning some new, interesting moves I escaped to the spinning room. What a boring finka I am!

Forced Communality

After the horrifying school shootings in Kauhajoki and Jokela, Finns started to seek for the lost "communality" (=yhteisöllisyys). It was amazing for the Finns how these young boys could isolate themselves from society which alarmed people to ask where the Finnish sence of communality had gone.

After living in Russia, I know where it went: the searched and desired communality escaped to our Eastern neighbour. Although Russian state with journalist-killings and with cruel wars in Chechnya can seem awfully cold-blooded and ruthless, the every day life here is filled with face-to-face interaction between people. And I think these everyday meetings are the glue which keeps society together. 

Even if you feel like not speaking to anyone, it doesn't work in Russian. In a normal weekday you'll face at least the following meetings with fellow citizens:

When you take the marshrutka to university, first you hail to stop it and maybe ask the driver if the minibus takes you where you're heading to. Then you climb into the back seat and start to search for the right amount of money to pay the ride (fee is something between 15-30 rubles). Because there are no electronic tickets or automats, you have to always pay in cash. So after finding the right amount of money, you ask the passenger in front to you to peredat, pass forward, your money to the driver. It's purely impossible to stay mute in Russian public transportation. Even if you manage to pay the ride without using a single word, you have to stop the marshrutka by shouting "Ostanavite, pazhaluista" to the driver when you want to get off. 

So before you even reach your university you have talked - or at least muttered something- to some people you don't know. Next step in daily routines is entering the university. First you have to greet the babushka who's guarding that only students and people working in university get in. If you forget to do this and thus look suspicious they may check your student card. After guard-babushka, you head to the cloakroom where you leave jacket for another babushka. If your jacket is somehow hard to hang, you will hear about this. (Once babushka criticized that my jacket was hanging too much on the other side because of the original design)

At the university you can become part of faceless mass only in Finland. In Russia the small study groups (3-8 students) force you to open your mouth on every class you want it or not. At the cafeteria between the classes you have to order everything behind the counter (unlike in Finnish self-service university kitchen) and probably explain why you cannot pay with smaller money. Sometimes even note worth 100 rubles (2,5 euros) is too big for them.

After university you go to the corner shop next door to buy some food. Usually they are Soviet style shops, where you have to ask for each item behind the counter. Again you probably have some discussion about with what kind of money you can pay the food. Some times you even get advice (unwanted) if you buy something "stupid". I have fought with babushkas about lip balsam which was "too expensive", whether cold beer is unhealthier than warm one and should bananas be in a plastic bag or not (I think not, and babushka though it was the most stupid thing ever NOT to pack bananas into plastic). Try to mumble something about nature protection in that situation.

When you finally leave the shop with the food babushka allowed you to buy, there will be many more encounters before you get home. It happens more than once a day that somebody ask you direction on a street. Once at Nevski Prospekt (main street of St. Petersburg) I was asked "Where's Nevsky Prospekt?". Believe me, this street is hard to miss even if you're not standing on it!

Only tourists use maps, Russians trust more each other (and also the tourist with maps) in order to find the right direction. Maybe this is because during the Soviet time the maps were either forbidden of fake ones so that Soviet people couldn't find their way out from the communist wonder land.

In addition to the lost Russians, you may meet some babushkas who need assistance. Especially during the cold winter months, the babushkas wear some much thick clothes they can hardly move. More than once or twice babushka has shouted me "Devushka, come here to help me" which means that I have had to pull them up on stair(s) because they are too packed to lift their legs high enough.

On a street you also meet people selling all sort of stuff (herbs, tights, fish, books etc.), bumming cigarets (the unwritten rule in Russia is always a give one if you have) and unfortunately also people begging. 

You may also go to gym, where it's almost impossible to train without the instructor coming to you to order you to have heavier weights or to do some motion in a different way. In trains (if you're girl) you never have to lift your luggage to the self because there are always some Russian men doing that for you. In a train between Finland and Russia, it sometimes shameful to see how Russian men help women while Finnish men are sitting quietly and doing nothing. Or at most telling their stupid businessman wanna-be-funny jokes in Finnish when they think nobody understands them.

So all in all, you meet at least dozen stranger during your normal routines in a normal day, not to mention your friends and other people you choose to meet. Sometimes, or actually quite often, it is really annoying to face all these encounters everyday, but that is what communality is about: meeting people, even when you prefer to be left alone.

In Finland like in some other Western welfare countries the services and state support are functioning almost too perfectly because the society is working without people having to really meet each other: machines sell the bus tickets, you get into university with an electronic key, on a lecture you study with dozens of other people without hardly any discussion with the professor, at the gym even the skinniest anorectics can exercise without somebody telling them to stop, on a street people almost never ask direction from strangers, and in some shops you may even pay for a machine instead of a shop assistant.

Of course in Russia, there is no welfare society taking care of people, which is not only a good thing either. Despite (or because of) all its dysfunctions, in Russia people still have to lean on each other. Maybe this is one reason why they never had a large-scale school shootings.

Russian Icons: from Lenin to Gazprom-children

A week in St. Petersburg and I have started to like Russia again. The spring sun, good gigs, interesting lessons, and the fact that someone blew up Lenin's ass have compensated the anger I gathered during the visa fight. And naturally I need to have the right state of mind to celebrate the 200 year old relationship between Russia and Finland. Year 1809 Russia wan Finland from Sweden and gave the area an autonomy. Some consider this to be the beginning of the state of Finland because before that we were part of Sweden without any (special) rights.

So how could I feel gloomy when Russia and Finland have survived next to each other already that long. There were some good times and some bad times but all in all we have managed to put up with each other already two centuries!

One example of the shared history between these two countries is visible at Finlandskyi vokzal where's a statue of Lenin. This is the first statue of Lenin ever made and it was placed at Finlandskyi vokzal where Lenin arrived from his exile from Finland and where he gave the famous speech which started communist revolution. This was 3rd of April 1917. First of April 2009 somebody decided to make the statue of Lenin even more attractive tourist sight by putting a bomb between poor-Lenin's legs. This "terrorist-act" (like Russian press called it) was quite accurate work because the bomb has destroyed statue only around Lenin's butt. I had to go and see the buttless Lenin myself and I wasn't the only one. People were laughing and photographing Lenin while construction workers tried to hide the statue by building wooden box around it. One could say that this was the best April joke ever if the ones who claimed to be responsible for the bomb wouldn't have been fascists.

Less explosive event happened at Sotsi-club, where Risto and Pintandwefall had arrived to celebrate the 200-year old Finnish-Russian relations. Pintandwefall attracted mainly Russian part of the audience while Risto and his crazy Finnish lyrics charmed the Finnish fans. Even Risto forgot sometimes to speak English between songs because the small club was full of Finnish expats living in St. Petersburg. And it was scary to notice how everybody knew each other. It was like a big family gathering were you rather avoid some people and enjoy only meeting few of the party guests.

I believe that Finnish consulate and exchange programs connect people better than Nokia and the rest of the Finns living here must have met in bars, house parties or at least in a restaurant cart on a Sibelius- or Repin-train on their way to Russia. Finnish president Tarja Halonen said on her visit to St. Petersburg last Sunday, that there are 4000 Finns living in the city. I'm pretty sure they (or we) all know each other some how.

To balance the time in a smoky clubs, I have started to guljat (means more or less walking without destination) more now than during the darkest winter months. Spring sun has dried the streets from snow which has brought cyclists and rollerblader back to the streets. Usually they are young boys and girls who dare to ride a bike in the city center but this spring there's been a new group of cyclist in the city, the gastarbeiters. Men from Central Asia and Caucasus have find the new vehicle, maybe because they have to travel from one construction site to another to look for a job. Unfortunately many of the works of gastarbeiters disappeared after the financial crisis which made their situation even worse. What would Lenin think if he'd saw how the new proletariat of Russia, the gastarbeiters, are being treated?

Living in a big city like St. Petersburg might be exhausting, but luckily Russian Federation knows how to amuse people on the streets. Maybe the lack of advertisers have increased the amount of state adds on the streets. They're quite hilarious for a Finnish eye because they advice people to "live in a right way". Slogans can be something like "Take care of your children", "Choose love over alcohol" or "Don't make noise during the night, neighbours are sleeping". But my favourite adds are not the life-guides but the adds of Gazprom. The most common is add where's simply written "Gazprom, for children" (picture with the head quarter of FSB, the successor of KGB) with picture of a blond-haired and blue-eyed child. It's a bit unclear what they want to say by that add. But they also have an add with a very clear message; it says "Gazprom. We take from nature and give it to people."  What could be a more accurate slogan for a gas and oil company?

How (not) to Get Russian Visa

If you're planning to stay 3 months or less studying in Russia, you have two options: you can pay 250 euros to travel agency and they get you a multivisa in few weeks without any fuss or difficulties. Or you can get a "free" student visa in one week. If you choose the latter option, this is what may happen.

Your exchange University promise to deliver invitation for the visa one month in advance before you start your studies. You trust them to be on time and plan another trip for the last week before your studies. On that another trip you also need your passport. But if the visa comes on time, you can get it and your passport back well before your trip.

But: the invitation is late so you have to apply for a second passport (50 euros) because your first passport is at the Russian consulate still when you want to go to your another trip. Plus you have to pay the express delivery fee (70 euros) in order to start your studies in time. Finally you get your visa, probably one day before your departure, and it's one-time-visa, which doesn't allow you to go back to Russia if you leave the country.

But no worries, Russians promise to change one-time-visa into multivisa in two weeks. But because you no that Russian bureaucracy isn't the fastest one, you plan to leave the country only six weeks after your arrival just to make sure that the multivisa is ready by that.

Next six weeks you ask almost every day the visa offisers "Are you sure, I'll get the multivisa on time? I have leave the country soon". Visa person may keep your passport and other documents in a plastic bag on a floor (see more: one of the previous bloggings) and still convinse "Visa will be on time". Even the same morning when your flight is departuring they call you and say "wait a half an hour more". They do it three times so you almost miss your flight. But eventually you leave country without visa, without knowing when, how and from where you can get back to your studies in Russia.

The second your plane takes off at Pulkovo you start to miss Russia. The whole emotional rollercoaster they make go through gets you addicted to the country. On your holiday you're all the time a bit worrying how to get a new visa. You may forget the problem for moments while you're skiing in the sunshine at the Swiss Alps with your good friend, spending time with your wonderful boyfriend, playing Scrabble, eating cheese fondy, getting first degree sunburnes on your face at the Alps, drinking after-ski beers and minttuvodka-redbulls. But still, when you least expect it, the visa problem hits you again.

You try to get the visa from the Russian embassy for Switzerland. You fail because you're not registrated in Switzerland. Instead of using your Swiss air return flight to St. Petersburg with free drinks and food and leather seats, you book new flights without any drinks or food to Finland (200 euros). You go back to Helsinki, because the exchange University sweared that they have send you a new invitation to the Russian consulate for Finland, you just have to apply for it.

So once again, you order insurance sertificate from your insurance company, get new passport photos (20 euros) and fill out the visa application. You go to consulate and bring your documents there. Everything should be okey, they have the invitation, you have all the right documents and even an extra HIV-sertificate they don't even need.

But everything is not okey. Russian embassy sweares that they don't have your invitation while Finnish post office is swearing that they have delivered it already week before. And even if you would have the invitation, it's a wrong kind. It doesn't allow you to get a multivisa, only one time visa which you can not even hurry by paying 70 euros like you did with the first visa. So you're in danger to miss so many classes that they will kick you out from the courses.

You feel crushed: What to do now? Should I now get the tourist visa through an agency or trust that the university will sort things out? Again, you choose the latter option: you contact the University and they promise to send a new invitation by DHL delivery system. The new invitation should arrive in two days.

The next two days you cannot do anything. One good way to spend your forced spare time in Finland is to drive to Tampere to meet friends, pack rest of your stuff at your old apartment and avoid your thesis superviser so you wouldn't have to explain, what are you doing in Finland when you should be in Russia studying.

After two days you drive back to Helsinki car full of boxes and filled with hope. You call DHL and they say that the invitation will be at the embassy by 12 am. You go there with your documents. They say, that the mail hasn't arrived yet so you wait patiently 1,5 hours the delivery guy to bring your invitation. When the ambassy is closing, guy still hasn't arrived. You start to feel desperate, but then: embassy founds your invitation somewhere so you have waited for nothing. But the invitation doesn't help, again it's a wrong kind: "You can only get one time visa, but this time you can hurry it".

You're feel devastated, you burst into tears, slowly crying gets hysterical and the consulate worker shouts: "Calm down, women". But you can't, you just keep crying like an animal which awakes unwanted attention (remember to bring sun classes to hide your red eyes). Between your tears you manage to fight with the man: "Why you Russians apply the visa contract in a different way than EU? All the Russian tourist get multivisa without any problems, why can't I?!", "Why do you want to destroy my studies and life?" etc. Finally you leave the application for the man and run out.

You go home in a hysteric state of mind. What happens now to your studies in St. Petersburg, your exchange stipend and to your Planeta Fitness membership? I haven't even tried strip aerobic yet! Where are you going to live if you cannot go back to Russia?
Then your father comes home. "Calm down! I'll make some phone calls". After five minutes he comes to you and say: "We have a meeting with the Commercal Consul of Russia tomorrow morning. We'll get the visa for you."

Next morning you wear neat clothes, like your father who also wears a watch he got from the Russian presidental administration. You walk into the Commercal representative office, where nice Russian secretaries ask if you want coffee or tea. While waiting for the meeting, you have time to admire pure 60s style interior of the lobby with brown leather couches, brown walls, bronze sculptures and so on.
After a while the Commercal Consul enteres the room and escorts you to the conference. You sit on the other side of the table than the Consul, sip your tea, wonder should you take a Russian or a Finnish chocolate (eventually you take neither) and listen the conversation between your father and the Consul. Father: "Mister Consul, you know that we have known each other many years, that I have worked for Russian and Finnish business relations already 27 years, and that we have always had a really good relationship. That's why I dare to ask for your help to get a visa for my daughter". Consul: "It's nice to meet you again, and indeed the relationship has been good al this years and maybe I can help you some how".
Then the Consul grabs his (Nokia) phone and calls to the head of the visa department. After 5 minutes. "Everything should be okey, the head of Visa department is expecting you in 15 minutes". We run to the next door building where friendly words and shaking hands starts again. You explain your problem (in extreme situations like this your Russian is almost fluent). Then he disappears and comes back with the same junior officer who made you cry a day before. Same show starts again: "We cannot make you a multivisa with this invitation and we can make it only by Monday", the junior officer claims. Then the boss just calmly orders: "Make her a two-time-visa and now". Junior officer leaves the room with clearly disappointed face. You get the visa in 20 minutes, which you spend watching Russian TV at the office of the head of the visa department. You never meet the junior officer again. You won the fight and you walk to the train station to by tickets (60 euros) for the next day.

So eventually the "free" student visa may cost you 400 euros with new flights, new passport, new photos, express delivery fee and finally the train ticket to Russia. Not to mention the emotional trauma you get.

At the very end: when you have to go to Russia, get the tourist visa through an agency. You'll save lot of money and trouble.

Praise to Russian food

When you first come to Russia you usually loose some weight: shopping is pure agony, vegetables at the shops are more or less suspicious and big supermarkets are either expencive, far away or at suburbans. The university food is bar of Snickers or cold salad while in Finland I got used to super good, state-subsidized meals.

But then after a month or two when you uncover the secrets of Diksi (local chain of corner shops), where you have to 

queue (they teach queuing at Russian class in some universities), pay, shop and behave in a specific way (which includes babushkas passing you in line and shop assistants yelling at you); when you discover the stuff it's worth paying; and when - this is the best - you discover the restaurants St. Petersburg has to offer, you get the lost pounds back, unfortunately with interests usually.

The worst thing you can do in Russia, is to try to eat the same food you eat home. Don't even try that, you'll fail, loose your money and became angry because of the shit

ty food. Of course you can find pasta, pizza and other all universal dishes from local shops here but the best dishes are the ones you can only find in Russia.

Naturally there are world-famous blini's with all sort of original, exotic or weird fillings (meat, caviar, smetana, jam, chocolate, roe, vegetables etc.) but the best blinis are the most simple ones: with potato, cabbage or/and mushroom. It's amazing what Russian's can do with the simple and cheap ingredients! (well, they had some difficult moments in the

ir history when they had to learn to eat only potatoes, cabbage and onions) Same the-simpler-the-better-principle goes with other Russian national dishes as well: pelmenis, varenikis and pirozhkis are best when they're filled simply with potatoes or mushrooms.

Russian food is not only delicious, but also cheap, fast and easy to prepare (at least the half-ready-made ones). Blini's you can buy from the kiosk which tempt you in ev

ery corner of the city, pirozhkis are sold in bakeries and cafes, pelmeni's on the other ha

nd are best to prepare home: just boil water and throw frozen pelmeni's in for couple of minutes, and a vot, dinner is ready.

If you are against fast food (even the delicious, non-mass-produced Russian one) and want to start the cooking from the scratch, begin by going to market place (rynok). If you want to find good veggies or something else than vacuum-packed meat, you have to skip soviet-style produktis and make the effort to shop at rynok. (The best one is near Vladimirskaya metro station, where you can also buy part of your purchase from the babushkas who

 have their shadow-market next to the official market hall). At the rynok you can buy all the (boring) normal stuff but also Russian delicates like tvorog (something between milk and cheese), marinated tomatoes and cucumbers, cheese (especially the smoked cheese is worth testing), roots of garlic, home-made chili-paste, pickles, Russian chocolate, tens of different kind of honeys and many variations of sauerkraut.

I love all the items mentions above, but sauerkraut has became my favorite. During the past weeks I have eaten it cold, hot, medium, fried, in a soup, with pasta-sauce and blended with noodles. Sauerkraut costs almost nothing, you can buy it in every shop a

nd it's super-super 

healthy and above all, it's really good! In addition to sauerkraut I have also sneaked smetana into my daily diet. In Finland I consume smetana about twice a year (laskiainen ja joulu) but hear it somehow belongs to everything I eat. In Finland I consider smetana to be unhealthy, but here I feel that it makes me good, so maybe you just need more energy in Russian life than in the life in Nordic welfare state. Or maybe I just loose control here.

You can keep your stomach and mind relatively happy with the fast food and home-cooking, but the restaurants here in St.

Petersburg blow your mind. The goods ones are not on the main streets or near Hermitage, so here are some self-discovered rules you have to obey in your food-searching-process in Russia.

Rule number one; never go to a restaurant, which claims to be a restaurant (pectopah); instead go to cafe, bar, tavern or even club. The best food is always there which doesn't scream restaurants! Rule number two: the shabbier place, the better food. If it shines, don't fall for it. Rule number three: try ethnic restaurants in Russia, even if the Russian restaurants are goodm the ethnic ones are something special!

The top of exotic experiences is Georgian food that has overwhelmed each of my friends who has had the opportunity to taste piece of khatsapuri or lobio. You cannot really find Georgian restaurants in the Western world so in Russia you definitely have try them at least once. I'm like a khatsapuri-missionary here because I always drag my friends (and friends of 

friends) to try the Georgian food at Lagidze (our favorite, located close to circus, at Fontanka) where the waitresses already know me there and greed me by laughter because I'm like a tourist guide every time I go there "you have to try this, let's order this, don't read the menu, I'll decide etc.". Maybe I go there too often, but the food is just fantastic. Especially before hard night out you need the amount of energy khatsapuri, few beers and 50g of vodka gives you; after that set you can stay up all night (and for example meet nice Swiss boys).

The other good ethnics here are sushi-places (with happy hour between midnight and 5am, oh mama) and Chinese restaurants (Tan Zhen) which is my other hangout after Lagidze. Chinese food is somehow more Chinese here than in Finnish Chinese restaurants where food has been compromised to adapt the Finnish taste (read: no taste or spice, everything is just covered with sweet and sour sauce). And the best thing in Georgian, Chinese and sushi restaurants here is the tradition to order food together. Portions are planned to be shared so instead of eating whole plate of one dish you can try many different things and still get satisfied. I think you even eat less when you share the food because nobody wants to look too greed over a shared dinner. Hah, another tradition I want to take back to Finland!

So altogether, don't believe those suckers who speak shit about Russian cuisine; they have only been eating at McDonald's and PizzaHut at Nevski Prospekt (unfortunately many Finnish exchange students do that).

Instead go to the shabbiest cafe on a semi-shabby street and you will get the best food of your life!

Stalin's samovars

Our Russian teacher entertained us again last week by telling real life curiosities from Soviet way of life. Discussion started as a civilized conversation about history but ended to crazy laughter. We were discussing about Valaam monastery (Valamon luostari) which used to belong to Finland before WWII. Stalin's Soviet Union got the monastery i

sland together with lake Ladoga in the peace treaty and Stalin decided to kick the monks out and bring the wounded war veterans in to the monastery. In Stalin's Russia invalids and handicapped peopl

e weren't allowed to live in the cities because they didn't represent ideal Soviet worker. Solution was to hide them in to far-away islands and the ones who had lost both their legs and arms in the front were send to Valaam. Those poor armless and legless people were called samovars because "you could put them onto shelfs like teapots". Our teacher was telling this story with a poker face but none of students could avoid laughing to this awful, awful story. Every day life was so dark during the Soviet times so the jokes about had to be even darker. As awful as the jokes are, I still love them! One of the best characters of Russian people is their sense of humor, it's black and tragicomic but it always reveals the real thoughts of the Russians.

Even if the humor is coal-black the city is getting brighter. The first symptoms of spring are already visible: my favorite street dog moved back to close-by park where it spends summers and ice is falling down from the roofs. Even the sun has shined the past three days. But the most visible sign of spring is the up-coming Women's day which is one of the biggest holidays in Russia. Here (and in Ukraine and in Azerbaijan) Women's day is an official holiday while the rest of the world hardly notice the

 holiday. This year 8th of March happens to be on Sunday so the the official celebrations started already today: on TV president Medvedev is hosting a dinner for women (probably the only day of the year when women are invited to Kremlin) and men are flowering 

their colleagues at work. Family members and the loved ones receive their flowers, chocolate and gifts only on Sunday.  Women's day was originally created by some German communist feminists but today the holiday is everything else than celebration of women's emancipation, it's more praise for traditional gender roles in which women are women and men are men. But like my teacher said: "Everything eventually turns upside-down in Russian". She also said that I should celebrate the day as a day for "wonderful women, which we all are". Monday is naturally public holiday because here all the weekend holidays are compensated during the next week after holiday. I'd like to have same system in Finland too!

I have been celebrating my womanhood by shopping at local beauty mecca for Russian women Rive Gauche (рив гош, whose plastic bags every self-respecting Russian women use for carrying her most valuable things) and visiting local hairdresser where I got first-class service. Some people say that Russians can be sloppy and do their work ineffectively, but when it comes to beauty the quality is excellent! I have never got as accurate haircut in my life (except the previous one I got in Russia), the girl was cutting each hair one by one and the result was more than satisfying. You can see the same trend in aerobics: you have to always do your best or the instructors will come and kick motivation in you. All things are not that effective here (read: I still haven't got my visa and the argument with the administration has been going on already 4 weeks) but at least I can be happy about my new hair style and growing muscles.

In addition to Women's day celebration I have been efficiently breaking my Lent promises whole week. Unlike I promised, I have done only few things for my thesis and instead of studying I have concentrated on partying. On Wednesday we (three Finnish girls) went to a house party which was in tsarist-style decorated super cool apartment. It was a hard core -student party but only new friend we managed to make was yet another Finnish girl. For some reason I

only meet nice Finnish girls here instead of making Russian mates. Well I got one new Russian friend (the boy whom I met in bar which is apparently the only place to meat new people) and we met once on a walk which started a bit confusingly: this Russian maladoi tselovek (=young person, which is what they call young men here) fell down on a slippery street which was a bit funny because he got so embarrassed. After he survived from his shame (it took quite a long time) it was nice to speak some Russian but with my language skills I can keep up a conversation max. 2 hours. If I meet him again, I don't have any new things to tell him, at least not in Russian.

Another slipping from my Lent happened yesterday when we went to see Stereo Total at A2-club. This German-French crazy electro-duo was best entertainment I have experienced for a long time! The artists as well as (Russian part of) audience were dancing like maniacs and the whole atmosphere was refreshingly sincere (compared to rock-police and -snobs which you meet time to time at Finnish clubs). Of course after gig like that we had to continue party to another bar (to the Other Side to be exact). We were trying to get a typical black cab (illegal taxis which you can hail and stop any where any time to get a cheap ride; usually they are Ladas driven by Caucasian men) but this time we got a ride from a stereotype of a novyi Russkiy business-man with his fancy big car. Car was bought from the Vladivostok so the wheel was on the wrong side and our driver was a bit lost. But extra sightseeing tour didn't mind while sitting in a comfy car with fur seats and East-oriented techno on the back ground! Life in Russia can be quite nice time to time even if Lent promises fall in parts.

In pictures: Typical view from my home street: man drinking beer and reading wall-newspaper and girl with bunch of flowers; glimpse to my University and Medveved with the ladies