As part of my attempt to see as many St. Petersburg museums as possible (I've already been to a ton and have barely made a dent), I visited the Museum of Naval history with a couple of friends. Of course the highlight of the day was seeing Peter the Most Awesome's first boat that he sailed when he was sixteen. So cool! But despite all that awesomeness, there were a few random things that I wanted to share.
1. This museum marked my penultimate success in fooling the ticket lady into believing that I am a Russian citizen. At museums there are different prices for Russian citizens and everyone else (and different student rates too). In general, our strategy is to give the cashier our студентческие билеты (student IDs) without saying a word. We don't want to give her a chance to detect an accent. Even a few words can be dangerous and will result in paying a higher price. Usually we are successful. On this particular day we followed the normal protocol. But the cashier got wise and realized that we weren't Russian citizens...everyone except me. I got to pay the 50 rouble Russian student price while the others had to pay 120 roubles. The price was no big deal (a dollar fifty versus four dollars), but this was a very proud moment for me. Of course this does not at all reflect back on my Russian ability since I said nothing, but all the same I like it when people think that I'm Russian.
2. After we got our tickets (and Max and Ethan had finished being mad at me for getting the lesser priced ticket), we noticed a funny thing. These tickets were surplus USSR tickets which formerly cost only 30 kopecks (which now amounts to approximately thirty cents). The new price had been stamped on top. I'm not really sure what this says about the museum. Either the original printers of the tickets were a little overzealous and optimistic about the success of the museum, or maybe we were the few visitors that were still choosing to visit. Anyways, I thought these tickets were pretty funny and very Russian.
1. This museum marked my penultimate success in fooling the ticket lady into believing that I am a Russian citizen. At museums there are different prices for Russian citizens and everyone else (and different student rates too). In general, our strategy is to give the cashier our студентческие билеты (student IDs) without saying a word. We don't want to give her a chance to detect an accent. Even a few words can be dangerous and will result in paying a higher price. Usually we are successful. On this particular day we followed the normal protocol. But the cashier got wise and realized that we weren't Russian citizens...everyone except me. I got to pay the 50 rouble Russian student price while the others had to pay 120 roubles. The price was no big deal (a dollar fifty versus four dollars), but this was a very proud moment for me. Of course this does not at all reflect back on my Russian ability since I said nothing, but all the same I like it when people think that I'm Russian.
2. After we got our tickets (and Max and Ethan had finished being mad at me for getting the lesser priced ticket), we noticed a funny thing. These tickets were surplus USSR tickets which formerly cost only 30 kopecks (which now amounts to approximately thirty cents). The new price had been stamped on top. I'm not really sure what this says about the museum. Either the original printers of the tickets were a little overzealous and optimistic about the success of the museum, or maybe we were the few visitors that were still choosing to visit. Anyways, I thought these tickets were pretty funny and very Russian.
3. Every time I visit any war-related museum in Russia, I am always struck by the significance of language and word choice. Most of these smaller museums are without any English translations, which is good for practicing Russian. I think we're always amazed at how much information we can glean from such technical descriptions. I always find it interesting that in the context of WWII Russians tend to refer to the Germans as Fascists and not Nazis like we generally do in the US. This difference in title says a lot about the historical perspective of Russia. I feel like the Americans viewed the Germans as an enemy, but to the Russians they were much more than an enemy. It was an ideological struggle: Fascism vs. Communism. I think that the Russians felt a real possibility of their system falling to fascism. The threat was so close and was on Russian soil. This is something that America did not feel in the same way because the threat was not so immediate. For this reason I think that the Americans more often referred to Germans as Nazis because this was a more detached term. Perspective is so important, and it's interesting to see the differences in the perception of history. These thoughts only scratch the surface of differences in the historical perception of WWII, but this is definitely something that I've been thinking about lately.
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