(no subject)
One of the few reasons I was glad to leave Finland was the language. I have no facility with foreign languages, but I like to muddle through sometimes as best I can. I'm usually pretty successful finding cognates and deciphering at least the warning signs in the Western branches of the Indo-European language tree. But Finnish is Finno-Ugric and features mostly umlauted vowels; my immediate response on encountering a word in Finnish is to try to solve the anagram. So I've been grateful to reach Russia, where I may not be able to understand the language but where just reading the alphabet feels like a major victory. I can become inordinately proud of myself just for sounding out a word. I missed phonics in first grade (as I could already read) and I suppose I'm trying to make up for it now.
Of course, I can reach that reward all the more quickly when the source text is "Макдоналдс" rather than a long placard on the culture of the ancient Scythians. Yes, I was a little lost in the bowels of the Hermitage Museum this morning, trying to find my way towards more recent cultures. I wasn't quite certain whether I wanted to be touring the world-famous art museum, the Hermitage, or touring the Czar's Winter Palace; one is of course juxtaposed on top of the other but I'm not sure I was able to give either my full attention. We kept circling through the galleries, making sudden jumps in era and subject, striving desperately to see everything and sometimes feeling that we hadn't seen anything. Museum fatigue set in rapidly and we went to a couple of churches: the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in the Fortress and the Church on Spilled Blood. The Cathedral is a reminder of why they shouldn't have held the Baroque era outside of France and Italy; it's a travesty in lavender and chartreuse. I was expecting similar garishness from the Church, as the outside is a turn-of-the-century nationalistic sentimentalization of stereotypical Russian style. But instead the art nouveau interior was soaring and gorgeous, alive with golden and indigo tesserae. It was as though the Byzantine cathdrals of Ravenna had been reimagined by Alfons Mucha. What it lacked in subtlety it acquired in sublimity.
Tomorrow we transfer onto the boat, and I expect that I will finally be weaned from the broadband connection on this trip, so updates may become spare.
Of course, I can reach that reward all the more quickly when the source text is "Макдоналдс" rather than a long placard on the culture of the ancient Scythians. Yes, I was a little lost in the bowels of the Hermitage Museum this morning, trying to find my way towards more recent cultures. I wasn't quite certain whether I wanted to be touring the world-famous art museum, the Hermitage, or touring the Czar's Winter Palace; one is of course juxtaposed on top of the other but I'm not sure I was able to give either my full attention. We kept circling through the galleries, making sudden jumps in era and subject, striving desperately to see everything and sometimes feeling that we hadn't seen anything. Museum fatigue set in rapidly and we went to a couple of churches: the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in the Fortress and the Church on Spilled Blood. The Cathedral is a reminder of why they shouldn't have held the Baroque era outside of France and Italy; it's a travesty in lavender and chartreuse. I was expecting similar garishness from the Church, as the outside is a turn-of-the-century nationalistic sentimentalization of stereotypical Russian style. But instead the art nouveau interior was soaring and gorgeous, alive with golden and indigo tesserae. It was as though the Byzantine cathdrals of Ravenna had been reimagined by Alfons Mucha. What it lacked in subtlety it acquired in sublimity.
Tomorrow we transfer onto the boat, and I expect that I will finally be weaned from the broadband connection on this trip, so updates may become spare.