It took over a month, but I've finally started to miss Russia little. I was pretty homesick by the end of the semester, so all I could think about was my upcoming awesome summer back in America. Now that I'm back in the good old USA enjoying said awesome summer, I've had some time to reminisce. Here are some things that have been on my mind since I got back:
- My commute here in DC is about 40 minutes each way. After my hour journey in Petersburg, the commute here feels like nothing.
- Food is probably on the top of my list of Things I Miss About Russia. I'm trying to make some of the things I had there, but others are too weird or complicated for me to attempt. I'm not quite ready to try making my own Herring Under a Fur Coat yet.
- "Step back, doors closing" doesn't have the same ring as "Осторожно, двери закрываются"
- I LOVE LOVE LOVE not having to pay for everything in cash. It's a big inconvenience having to run to the ATM all the time and plan out how much money you need for a week.
- Dryers are still the best things on Earth. I know they aren't technically a necessity, but I'm an American and I hated having to hang my clothes to dry and the subsequent process of taking them down when they had turned to cardboard overnight.
- On that note, everything is so soft! Tissues, toilet paper, clothes...it's just wonderful.
- Every so often I do notice the "personal space barrier" people create on the metro here. The only time people pack onto the train cars like sardines is if it's rush hour and they absolutely have to. Even then, I find myself thinking we could fit more in a car than are there. It's funny, we all try to have our bubbles of space but we still say "excuse me" when navigating through the crowds on the metro cars.
- I will never take cold drinks for granted again. I order a coke and it's ice cold and refreshing. I never did figure out how Russians (or at least Smolny) managed to buy refrigerators that don't refrigerate. And it's not like you could root around for a cold one since you had to get the cashier to buzz open the fridge door once you got to the front of the line.
- I love not feeling like a criminal when I enter stores. There's a security guard in the front and that's it. Going into Russian supermarkets always made me paranoid for the amount of security personnel they have.
- There are so many people jogging here! (Including девушки!)
- After Russia, I feel like no one smokes here. And I love it.
- I know I'm crazy for saying this, but I sort of miss Russian weather. Summer has always been my least favorite season and DC can get really humid. Granted, Petersburg is probably very humid now too, but my memories of it are primarily cold ones. How long is it until autumn?
- The Petersburg metro system is absolutely wonderful. Here, I pay up to 5 times the amount I did in Russia for worse service. Trains here stop on their tracks because they're timed so terribly, there's constantly track maintenance somewhere, and escalators are often frozen (come on, they're short escalators! If Petersburg can keep theirs working, why can't DC? Probably because you can't tell people in Petersburg to just walk up and down those things. I can't even imagine it.) Just paying for my transportation every day is my biggest expenditure here. I've already re-filled my metro pass multiple times, whereas I can count on one hand the amount of times I re-filled it in Russia.
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