Home » Russia » Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part I)

Hello my dear subscribers,<br /><br />Tomorrow I am leaving to my next trip It is not only my travel addiction, that drives me. I have to travel for health reasons also. Life in America is pretty unhealthy. People in the not so prosperous countries walk for groceries, walk to work, run after overcrowded buses and fight with others to get inside. This provides them with much needed amount of daily exercises, the natural way. Americans almost do not walk. They go everywhere by car. Every task which requires even a small muscular effort is mechanized or automated. Even two story buildings have an elevator. This, along with abandons of food produce an un-intentional result. Americans became fatter and fatter. Dedicated people with strong will, would wake up earlier and go for a jog, go to gym and eat, not tasty, but healthy vegetables. This way they stay in shape. Ordinary folks don't do that and get fat. A Stunning 70% of Americans are overweight.<br /><br />This is an unexpected result of a sincere efforts to make people's live better and easier. I did not get overweight yet, but I definitely got out of shape during four months of sitting in front of the computer and traveling between the computer and the fridge.

Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part I)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 18:13:34

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of four relatively young people (20-30 range) from America. Two of them happened to be my children. Every foreigner coming to Russia is supposed to see a ballet. Half a dozen theaters in SPB (St. Petersburg) show the ballet Swan Lake. Our schedule was tight and we did not have much choice, so we went to see the Swan Lake at Tovstonogov Great Dramatic Theater. The music was great, decorations and costumes too, but ballet performance... I realized that ballets which I saw before, mostly in Russia, were excellent. This ballet performed by a group called SouzBaletExport or something like this, was targeted for foreigners. I do not know about Europeans, but in America ballet and caviar are exotic and expensive Russian products with which normal people are not very familiar. So most people attending performance were very happy. I was happy too because it helped me to understand the difference between good and bad ballet performances. You have to experience bad things in order to appreciate the good ones.
OPERA

We went to see the opera La Traviata. It was not specially made for export and it was good. Opera as well as ballet are not American favorite arts, so I have to give some explanations to my group. Most difficult was to explain what "courtesan" means. The main character of opera La Traviata, Violetta Valery, is a courtesan. It was difficult to explain to people growing up in puritanic American society, the values of French High Court. In French High Court adultery was the way of life. In America, the president was almost impeached for adultery. I told them that a courtesan is something between a call girl and escort service lady. I love La Traviata and remember most of the melodies by heart. I can even sing most of the songs, because in Russia the operas are performed in translation to Russian language, so it is easy to remember the words. I am not such an opera lover, every person of my generation can do the same. And here is the ...