Days of signs

I dont know why I am suddenly writing in blue with this horrible blue underlining....anyway, here follows a few pictures from the past few days. Weddings here are extremely popular, and they make a big fuss out of them... The signs speak for themselves especially if you read russian...
This one is about korruption!
This was one / oh now the blue dissapeared! well this one was posted at the entrance to the Peter & Paul fortress, we were not allowed to ski, make fires, jump of the buildings, get drunk and so on.

This was also taken at the Peter & Paul fortress by the entrance to the toilet. It makes me rather curious about what normally goes on in a russian toilet ?

In the meantime

On our way to a restaurant in downtown St. Petersburg.
Just to prove that I'm actually studying here. We are often at school from 9.30 to 6 in the evening!!! No time to converse with Russians...

Breakfeast at the Dacha

I am staying at the dacha with my mother and this mornings breakfeast was all in blue. Big juicy blueberries, sweet cherries and soft plums. All bought at the lokal market in Pushkin, the nearest town in which the Ekatarina castles lies. Even now she only speaks one word russian she also managed to buy 1 kilo of big meaty kantarells and 2 huge slabs of beef for steaks. I finished school for today and will meet up with her later to visit a memorial grave for the almost 500.000 people that died in St. Petersburg during WW2.

My mother came to visit me in Petersburg. She is staying in a dacha, that belongs to a russian servas host. The dacha is situated some kilometers outside the city in an area full of dachas. A russian dacha is a kind of weekend house. Most of the houses look rather homemade giving them lots of character. Its easy to understand why people here have dachas, the air and noise in the city quickly becomes unbearable.

Saint Petersburg

I've arrived to Saint Petersburg to study russian. All of us students here study together in Tromsoe on a bachelor degree named Russia-studies. The universities in Norway have in coorporation with a university here in Petersburg a centre, where we are taught russian. The name of the course is practical russian. But they also allow us time for being tourists and on Sunday a trip to a nearby castle was arranged. The summer residence of Catherine the Great- or Ekatarina as her name is in Russian. To protect the floor they had us all wear these blue papershoes.
During the 2nd world war this residence was used heavily by the intruding Germans (nemetskij in Russian which means something like those who don't know, i.e. how to speak) Later the sovjet government had difficulties deciding wether to restore the residence or use the money to feed their people. The first alternative was chosen, which we can now benefit from ( if at least for 30 minutes or so)