Russia/Estonia Postscript: Food

[Last week I blogged my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for an intro and previous posts. This is the last part of my travelogue.]I wish I could write more about food in Estonia and Russia, but I tried very few foods that were new to me. We also didn't eat out much because restaurants are so expensive in the major Russian cities. That said, I did sample a few local specialties.

In Tallinn, I really liked a restaurant called Kuldse Notsu Kõrts. I blogged about its delicious potato-mushroom casserole here. The restaurant manager kindly shared the recipe.

In St. Petersburg we stayed with a friend of my mom’s and usually ate at home. We picked up groceries at some of the local stores—Netto is a reasonably-priced supermarket chain that I remember. The stores have come a long, long way from the scarce Soviet times. You can get everything that’s available in the U.S., plus local convenience foods like frozen pelmeni and manti (meat and lamb dumplings, respectively).

I have to note that produce and dairy products tasted better than what you get at U.S. supermarkets. The cucumbers were fresh and sweet; the tomatoes tasted like tomatoes. I’m still impressed by all the different dairy and cheese goodies you can get in Russia—dozens of varieties of farmer’s cheese, different kinds of kefir, rhiazenka and sour cream.In St. Petersburg we went to the famous indoor markets (Sitni Rinok and Senney Rinok), and I wanted a taste of everything. These places sell beautiful (and pricy) fruit, vegetables, pickes and preserves, cheese, fish, meat, spices, dried fruit, sweets, you name it. I didn’t take any photos because the vendors start hawking their goods as soon as you make eye contact, but here’s a sample pic. This photo and the one at the top of the post are by Shannon Rae.

As for restaurants, I’ve become a huge fan of Teremok, which I wrote about here. This fast food chain makes traditional Russian dishes like blini and borsch. The food is good and fresh, and the service is quick and reasonably good by Russian standards. I loved Teremok’s kvass (rye bread beer, below) and mors (a cranberry drink).

A Yulinka Cooks Travelogue: A Blast From the Past. Part 5 of 6.

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for an intro and previous posts. In this entry: down memory lane in St. Petersburg.]

One day, we go on a walk down memory lane.

We see the communal apartment where my parents lived in the early 1980s. I spent the first year of my life here.
We walk past the building where my dad grew up. He stops at the front door, considers ringing the doorbell, but thinks better of it.

There was a store on this corner, a public bathhouse across the street, he says. They’re gone now. Later, without us, he goes back to his old primary school, and gets kicked out by the custodian.

He had lived in this city for more than 30 years. Now, he has a whole different life in the U.S. His life is split in two.

-Does that make him sad, wistful?

-No. He’s firm on this. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing if we had stayed here.

Neither can I. It seems inevitable that we should immigrate to the U.S. How would my life have turned out had we stayed? I don’t know. I rarely even wonder about this alternative universe.

We go to Kupchino, a suburb on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. This is where we moved when I was a year old. Kupchino is home to ‘70s and ‘80s-era high-rise apartments, gray, multi-story blocks. These days, it's also filled with strip malls and big-box stores. They’re even building churches, unimaginable in the atheist Soviet times.

I may not remember the palaces and museums of downtown St. Petersburg, but I do remember Kupchino. I grew up here, I went to school here, I played on the playground in the courtyard of our apartment building. Today, everything looks decrepit, unkempt. Some apartments are boarded up.

This is where we’d be living if we hadn’t left Russia, says my dad. This place leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Everyone wanted an apartment here once, my mom sighs. There was a 20-year waiting list for one these!
Across the street from our old apartment building, there’s a children’s hospital. It was under construction from the early ‘80s to the mid-'90s. Now it’s open for business, but like everything else, it looks empty and abandoned. We visit my old school (below); it’s closed for renovations. So is the neighborhood library where my mom once worked. There's nothing here for us. We head back to the city. The nextday, we’re off to Moscow (where we almost get arrested).

A Yulinka Cooks Travelogue. St. Petersburg: The Good, the Bad... Part 3 of 6

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Previous entries begin here.]

My parents are debating whether Russia has changed since the fall of communism. Their consensus is this: Superficially, the country has changed. You can buy everything that’s available in the West. People are driving cars and traveling. Nearly everyone has a cell phone. What hasn’t changed? The Soviet mindset, the bureaucracy, the stone-faced apathy and rudeness of the clerks and cashiers.

When we arrive, our host, an old friend of my mom’s, says we may need to “register” our visa. What this means, we later find out, is that if you come to Russia on a homestay visa (issued to you personally by a Russian citizen)*, you need to check in and get special paperwork from the city where you’re staying. Fail to do this and you face heavy fines and other unspecified misfortunes.

So on a Monday morning, we head to a nearly police station to register. We’re told you can register here only on Wednesdays, 1:30-2:30 p.m., but other stations might be open. We traipse around two more police precincts before we’re directed to the city’s visa registration office.

Naturally, there’s a line. Registration is held from noon to 1 p.m. only, we’re told. People have been waiting since 5 a.m. Put your name on a list, someone adds, but you probably won’t get in. We sign a piece of scrap paper and wait. Someone else advises us to register at the post office. It's faster, they say.

Okay. Anyone know where the nearest post office is?

No one does. We go outside and ask strangers for directions. People shrug. The hell with it; we head back and wait some more.

Did you fill out the paperwork? we're asked as it gets closer to noon.

There’s paperwork?

Everyone laughs. If you don’t have the paperwork, you’ll be waiting here all week!

We race to fill out paperwork. We need multiple photocopies of our passports and visas. There’s no copy machine in the office. We go in search of one at a travel agency across the street.

Can we use your copier? We ask the young staffers.

They give us a deer-in-the-headlights look that's a customer service trademark here, but nod.

We make copies and run back to the registration office.

It turns out we need yet more copies of something or other. I keep our place in line; my parents race to the travel agency. It’s now closed for lunch, but they sneak into a nearby office complex and sweet talk the security guard into letting them use a copy machine.

It’s almost 1 p.m. now. Surprisingly, the line moves fast. At 12:55 p.m., we get called in. But it’s not us they need, it’s my mom’s friend, who invited us. She goes in; paperwork is issued; she’s out in two minutes. We get a little paper document that says we can stay in St. Petersburg. Lose it, and there will be hell to pay. (After we leave the country, our host must come back here and complete more paperwork testifying that we’re gone.)

We fly out of the registration office into the afternoon sunlight. We’re elated, we feel free. This is what it was like in the Soviet times, says my dad. You would bang your head against the wall trying to get something done. But when finally got it, you felt so happy! It’s different in the U.S. Everything’s easy!

*(I understand that if you travel to Russia with a tour group, or stay in a hotel instead of a private home, the travel agency or hotel staff can take care of the registration. Don't quote me on this, though; ask your travel agent.)

We spend the next several days seeing the city, which is beautiful and majestic and sometimes reminds me of Paris, but with grander architecture and a sadder history.

We take a few day trips, too...

Pushkin/Tsarskoe Selo (Czar's village). Pushkin, the famous 19th century Russian poet, went to school in these parts. This was also a summer residence of the Russian czars: Pushkin

Peterhof (palace, fountains and gardens)

Pavlovsk (park in the country; former summer home of the Russian imperial family)
Next: Down memory lane in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg, First Impressions

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for part 1 and here for part 2.]

St. Petersburg. We have a history with this city, my parents and I. My father was born and grew up here. My mom came here in her early 20s, hungry for big city life and culture. I was born in St. Petersburg and spent part of my childhood in this city, although the regal, famous St. Petersburg of books and postcards is a distant memory. This rankles my mom. “Don’t you remember this?” she asks me every time we stroll past a museum or a monument. “We took you here all the time.”

I don't remember riverboat tours down the Neva river or Spas na Krovi (Church of our Savior on Spilled Blood).
I don’t remember Nevsky Prospect, the famous boulevard where people go to see and be seen. I don’t remember Letny Sad (summer garden), a lovely refuge from the noise and dust of the city. I don’t remember the Bronze Horseman, the famous monument to Peter the Great. I don’t remember white nights. We catch the tail end of this phenomenon when the sun never really sets. The sky is indeed white long past midnight, turning milky gray from 3 a.m. all through the early morning. These photos were taken at 11:30 p.m. A few childhood memories do stand out. The Kazan Cathedral, for example, where, in 1987 or ’88, a Japanese tourist took a Polaroid photo of me. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to keep it. I remember the Hermitage. When I was 6 or 7, my parents took me here to see the Knight Hall, an exhibit of mediaeval armor, always popular with kids. I remember the Rostal Columns along the Neva river. Before we left for the U.S. in 1991, my mom took me here for a goodbye tour of the city. She wanted me to see the famous landmarks so that I wouldn’t forget. Who knew, then, if we would ever come back again?
This is the sentimental, beautiful, wistful part of the trip, the part that makes we wonder what life would be like if we had never left. Of course, I know very well that life would be harder and poorer had we stayed. Tomorrow, the vagaries.

Tomorrow: St. Petersburg, the good, the bad...