Pamela
Olson is a student at Stanford and for the past semester has been
touring Russia.
Her writing style is comfortable yet gives you a real feeling of
being with her.
In our eyes she exemplifies what YAGO is all about.
If you are going to Russia you'll want to read this because Pam
truly gives you the inside on
"Where yago in Russia".
We think it's as good as that guy that from
Monty Python that did the PBS series on traveling.
Our
First Day
Sorry
for the delay in writing, but I have been pretty sick up until
now. Otherwise things are going well.
We got on a train to St. Petersburg at 11:00 Friday night and had a big
ole party (the 27 students, three profs, and three tagalongs with some
kind of ties to Stanford filled up a whole car). Our train was late to
St. pete's, so we missed our tour, but then we went to a restaurant,
supposedly "one of the nicest in St. Petersburg" but it was
just warm potato salad with pickles, oily borscht, a tiny greasy pork chop, about three peas, and stale apple cake. Tasty enough, though,
and the company was good of course.
Then we had a couple of hours to tour the Hermitage, and
it was really incredible, I can't begin
to describe it,
just magnificent, all the paintings and sculptures and marble works and
grand staircases (it is a palace after all), and then we had dinner at a
different restaurant, except we had the exact same meal as lunch! It was
kind of bizarre. Maybe it's a staple, or maybe Russian restaurants have
some kind of underground railroad of leftovers.
Then we went to a
really poor excuse for a Ballet, or I should say, a tragic one because
of the awesome talent mixed with people who couldn't do a proper
arabesque without almost falling over. It was called Bayadera, about a
priest who is supposed to be celibate but nonetheless falls in love with
this girl, and she's in love with this prince, but then the prince falls
in love with this other girl, and for some reason these aborigines in
loincloths keep jumping onto the scenes and bowing to everyone and
shaking their hands at the heavens and charming snakes (which that
special effect was so bad as to be hilarious), and there was this
interminable hallucination scene which involved all of the worst dancers
doing these protracted moves over and over again, and the whole back row
almost fell over every time... Then we went back to the hotel,
Gostinitsa Moskva, explored it a little, and went to sleep.
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