In the end of January two courageous foreign students learning the Russian language at Petrozavodsk State University –Morgane Hanssens and Nicola Dockray had a small journey around the most renowned historical places of the Russian North. But where did these courageous students come from? Nicola came to Petrozavodsk from distant London. She is going to stay here till September and then she will go back to her studies at Oxford University.
Nicola really enjoys living in our northern Russian town. “I like the climate, lots of snow, the lake, everything is beautiful here”, she says. Morgane came from the heart of Europe – Belgium. She had studied Eastern European languages and cultures for four years and then decided to have one-year practice. She managed to get a scholarship from the Flemish Government and now she is studying Russian at our University.
It was Morgane who organised the whole journey on her own and asked Nicola to join her. At that moment Morgane had looked up information on the hotels and hostels where they could stay, buses and trains they could take and all. She had made excellent preparations for the trip (she had even made a timetable of buses and trains so that not to lose time and not to get lost). Nicola confirmed that the trip had been very well-organised.
The trip lasted for 1 week – form January, 27 till February, 1. The students visited three Russian cities – St. Petersburg, Novgorod, and Pskov. In St. Petersburg the travelers had a walk along the Nevsky Prospekt at 5 o’clock in the morning, so it was very dark, but beautiful. Surely, the main thing that strongly impressed them was the architecture of the city. “It is pretty Italian but more colourful”, says Nicola. The girls also visited different water canals. Vasilievsky Island, the Russian Museum of Ethnography and the F.M.Dostoevsky Literary-Memorial Museum - other places of tourist attraction – were visited by girls as well. On the whole, the girls called St. Petersburg the “yellow city” as there are a lot of yellow buildings there.
The students stayed in Novgorod for one day; they went to the Novgorod Kremlin and also to main churches. The thing that girls were sad about was that the church with the paintings of the famous icon-painter Feofan Grek was closed to keep the paintings safe. But Nicola and Morgane did not despair and in the evening they visited one of the Novgorodian museums. At the museum they saw the first letters made of birch bark which survived through the time from the Medieval Novgorod. In general, Novgorod seemed to be a nice and quiet town.
Pskov was also worth seeing. It was interesting for girls to see the Pskov Kremlin because it was more like western, to be precise, Baltic citadels, and not traditional for Russia as its walls were not red or white, they were grey. So the girls felt the influence of the West where they came from. And this fact gave comfort to their hearts.
All in all, the trip was very nice. “Nice” is the main word for Morgane and Nicola’s general impression. Surely, the trip left some personal impressions and we are not supposed to know about them, but we hope that they are really strong in the finest sense of the word.
