Cruisey

Hey everyone, I'm finally back! As much as I liked sleeping on a boat, sunning on deck, playing дурак (russian card game- best one ever) and being fed overly oily food, it's good to be home. We visited 6 cities- Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, and Volgagrad. I'd say my favorites were Kazan and Volgagrad. In Kazan we went into a mosque and a few orthodox Russian churches, all in which us women had to cover our heads with our scarves. The mosque was beautiful and light, and the orthodox churches were the exact opposite. They were beautiful, naturally, but also stuffy, hot. Every inch of the walls was covered in paintings of Jesus and all those friends of Jesus. Candles were lit with absolute disregard to fire safety, it smelled like christmas. There was actual, live chanting and singing, and a gold bedecked priest or whatever he is called offered who knows what to God and Jesus and all of Jesus' friends. It was incredibly moving and so personal. I almost loved the ritual, until I remembered I was covering my hair. It wasn't that I have something against showing reverence to God in this act, but it bothered me that the men didn't have to do it, only the women. If everyone was throwing scarves and hats over their heads, that would be great. But when only the women do it, it suggests that there's something wrong with being a women, like our hair offends the creator. Like maybe God won't notice that a few women crept into the church if our hair is covered. I'm not buying it, so I think I'll just remain methodist.

I liked Volgagrad mainly because of the statue we saw: The Motherland. Here's the wikipedia article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Motherland_Is_Calling

Another really cool place we went was Simbirsk, where Lenin was born and raised. We saw the house where we was born, his enormous, soviet style, completely hideous Lenin memorial museum, and the house where he was raised. Apparently, he was very good at gymnastics. Who knew.

Besides that, it was most fun just to be on the boat, hanging out. We drank, danced to bad electronic keyboard versions of Thriller and, incredibly enough, Bohemian Rhapsody, and did a huge scavenger hunt that I dropped out of within half an hour. Lets just say that the elderly German tourists did not appreciate our presence, except for one named Gunther, who was fond of our antics.

Another really "fun" part of the trip was the train rides. The train ride home was 19 hours. It was kind of fun until we had to sleep, which is impossible for me on a train. The bunks are really hard and you have to reposition yourself every 45 minutes so your body doesn't go numb. Fuuuuuun.

Anyways, I need to go now. I have an excursion today to a world war II museum, and tomorrow it's a bike ride through a botanical garden.