One Day in the Life of Fyodor Mikhaylovich (Dostoevsky)

My illegally ran student internet is failing me! The University has cracked down on people like my guy in room 711 (yes, it is very ironic) and shut down these operations. But I will power though these tough times and use really slow internet from the cafe.

Well I hope everyone had a great Saint Patrick's Day! We went out to an Irish Pub in downtown to spend some time celebrating. I hadn't seen so many English speaking people in one area in about 2 months! I appropriately sat under the Texas flag all night. But the Irish pub is by far the least exciting thing I have done since my last update.



Like I promised I would 2 weeks ago, I finally got to see Lenin in his Mausoleum. A new girl named Sarah had just arrived the Friday before and said she would love to join Amitesh, Jack and I. Once again, she too is from Texas and recently graduated from UT. Why so many t-sipps in Moscow?! Anyways we woke up real early (like 8) and left by 8:30 to get to the metro by 9 in order to reach Red Square by 9:30 because the Mausoleum opens at 10. And yes, everything here does seem to work on 30 min intervals, its kind of strange. So after we got there we looked for the line, but since it was 9:30 am on a Sunday in -11 degrees C weather, no one was there! This was perfect because I had heard horror stories of waiting in line to see him. And I'm glad I didn't have to, because looking at a preserved corpse for 60 seconds is not worth a potential 3 hour wait in line. So next we had to check in all of our electronics and things capable of taking pictures. Then we just walked in! It was that simple. Interestingly, when you walk in you suddenly feel like your transported back to another era. The lights are dim, hammers and sickles adorn the wall, and the constructivist style of red and white granite plus all the guards standing in every corner makes you feel like you're back in the good old USSR. Seeing his body was probably the least exciting part of the whole trip. There wasn't much to see except for Lenin in a glass box. After we left the Mausoleum, we saw Stalin's grave which was sadly covered in more flowers than I had ever seen on a grave ever.


Stalin's grave with the flowers


Lenin's tomb.

The next exciting thing I did was visit the main Tretyakov Gallery. I finally got to see all the old classic paintings by Repin and many others. I also saw Vrubel's "Demon" and took illegal videos and pictures of it. One day I will get in trouble for doing things like this, but until then I'll just keep doing it. Luckily no one was around when I did it too.


After the Art museum I took the group of Americans to meet up with a friend of mine named Liza from our history class. She is Russian graduate student in linguistics who had worked for 5 years as a reporter covering defense issues! She has a friend who is the deputy director of the Dostoevsky Apartment Museum who offered to give us a private tour. Being a lover a Russian culture, I of course could't say no. So after we arrived at the museum they sat us down and gave us a brief history of his life and upbringing before moving onto the actual rooms. Once we started going through the rooms, Maxim (Liza's friend from the museum) told us to go ahead and sit down on the furniture. Our first reaction was "What!? No way! We can't sit on Dostoevsky's childhood furniture from the early 1800's." But after some pressure we sat down, and Maxim began to bring us some books...really really old books. Books that Dostoevsky had read and been influenced by. These books we were holding were published around 1820. It was absolutely insane. Maxim proceeded to tell us that the couch we were siting on is when Dostoevsky's father used to nap after work and also where the whole family would gather and recite their favorite poetry or literature. After spending about 30 mins reading and going through his library we moved on to a more modern room which just had some displays. Inside the displays were pictures, notes, artifacts, glasses, pens, etc. While we were looking at all of these things and still in awe over what we had just done, Liza and Maxim went to get tea and candy for us. Soon Maxim came back and before I ever realized what was happening, he was opening one of the display cases and pulling out Dostoevsky's reading glasses! Once again we all kind of freaked out as he handed them to us and told us to try them on. So we hesitantly put them on our faces and took a ton of pictures. I must say that Dostoevsky's head must have been fairly small because none of us were actually able to fit them on! I wondered, could this get any crazier? I soon found out yes. As we were drinking out of a 19th century tea set possibly owned by the Dostoevsky family, Maxim pointed out the grand piano (which they had put all the candy on top of) was given to the museum by Sergei Rachmaninoff, yes the Rachmaninoff who is one of the most famous piano composers of all time. He says that if anyone wants to play it to go ahead. I had briefly mentioned a few days before that I enjoyed playing the piano but was no good, plus I haven't played since the day before I left Texas. Well anyways, I was pressured to play and ended up playing a few songs that I had written myself on Rachmaninoff's piano. I don't think this day could have gotten any better, even if Dostoevsky and Rachmaninoff had risen from their graves to join us.



Me by Rachmaninoff's Piano and Dostoevsky's picture.

Me in Dostoevsky's glasses!

So yeah, Saturday was amazing but Sunday was a new day and time for new adventures. After a rough morning with our History professor, we left for the train to travel outside of Moscow (for the first time) and visit a friends dacha! Dacha's are summer homes that almost every Russian owns. They can be anywhere from a small hut no bigger than a fishing shack to a mansion bigger than most people's homes in the US. The dacha we went to was bigger than most homes in the US. It was huge and beautifully built. That was not really a surprise since the women who owns it and designed it is our professor on symbology and architecture. Well we spent the day there playing games, eating food, getting to know the Russians who had joined us and even playing some Risk (in Russian!). We got home pretty late and passes out quickly.



One of the small fishing hut type dachas which are most common.


Risk in Russian!

Well my battery is about to die and I just want to post this before the internet cuts out as well. I'll tell the rest of the stories from this week later!

-Justin