Take Me To Saint Petersburg: A Successful Slavic Shrovetide by Sadovaya

It is now three days since the Maslenitsa celebrations and, coincidentally, St. Patrick’s Day. All of us have recovered from pancake-induced comas and the ‘irish’ among us from hangovers.

Now I shall tell you the tale of Maslenitsa in Saint Petersburg.

It was Iuspovoskii park (m. Sennaya Ploshad’/Spasskaya/Sadovaya) whither ‘Team-Let’s-Get-Cultured’ ventured to uphold their erudite name. A rather spectacular slip on the ice upon first arriving in the park might have given the Russians the impression the Team was combining two celebrations. However, upon seeing that we were merely too foreign to remain vertical in such frozen, icy conditions, our reputation remained intact.

Onwards we moved, past brave Russian children sledging at break-neck speed down a treacherous-looking hill. The lake which formerly dominated the park was, naturally, a frozen white death-trap. In order to prove our foreign-ness does not extend to lack of courage, we took on such a mammoth task and succeeded. [Cue: ‘Why did the students cross the pond?’ jokes]

Smugly enjoying our success we were met by a Tsar and Tsarina singing traditional Russian songs, men taking turns in climbing up a tall pole and shirtless-in-the-snow young lads ‘wrestling’. Fascinated by the pluck of the latter, we resolved that we will never be quite as daring as the Russians.

After standing for fifteen more minutes transfixed by an improvised Ice-Skating Show, we left to warm ourselves in the stolovaya. Unfortunately our ability to stand the cold was not as finely-tuned as that of many Russians, and so we missed the burning of ‘Lady Maslenitsa’, who symbolizes winter.

Nevertheless, culture was experienced and our mission was accomplished. Excellent.