At Large in Petrozavodsk

Located just five degrees south of the Arctic Circle is the beautiful northern city of Petrozavodsk, little more than twice the size of Ann Arbor. It is the capital of the Republic of Karelia (one of Russia's 83 federal subjects, sort of like a state) and is more than 300 years old, having been built along the shores of Lake Onega as a manufacturing site. Its name comes from the Russian tsar Peter the Great and the word for factory, zavod. Although, one resident I spoke with suggested more poetically that the name means, “Peter behind the water,” (za vodoi = behind the water), which would also make sense.



This was the city I explored on foot from 10:00 this morning until 7:00 tonight. At first, I wasn't sure what to do. The only reason I had wanted to come here is because the majority of Veps live in Petrozavodsk, but their local population (about 4,000) is entirely swallowed up by the urban population (260,000). So I knew I had almost no chance of finding the Veps here. Yet I wanted to do something, so my hosts dropped me off by the shore of Onega this morning and told me to take a cab back when I was done exploring.



And off I went, without a map or any clear-cut ideas as to what I was actually doing. The obvious first choice was to explore the lake shore, and possibly from that alone, I fell in love with the city of Petrozavodsk. The weather was on my side, warm and sunny with no chance of rain. I might have stayed there all day, but a loud group of American and English tourists drinking kvass spoiled the serenity of the beach, and I set off down the main road.

Petrozavodsk reminds me a bit of Ann Arbor, in that there are trees everywhere and you are always either walking uphill or down. This afforded me some astounding views of the lake and made it very easy to navigate. I spent most of the morning souvenir shopping, but I was put off by the high prices, so I quickly changed tactics.



After lunch, I visited an art exhibition for 15 rubles (50 cents), where I impressed the attendant with my Russian. At first, she had been standoffish, but after I made the effort to jerryrig a couple sentences together, she dropped everything she was doing to help me figure out where to go next. Students of Russian: you can make a lot of friends quickly in Russia simply by proving you can say more than da, net, and spasibo. The exhibition attendant gave me directions to the scenic Round Square (think square as in piazza, not the shape) where the museum was located, the best place to start looking for information about the Veps.



The museum was full of information, but not the kind I was looking for. All I found was a couple old maps that located the Veps people in the region since the 9th century. In fact, the Veps have been here since at least the 4th century, so this was nothing new. The museum attendants were interested in why I had come all the way from America to study the Veps, but they had no advice for me. One happened to know the Veps Culture Society I had tried to contact before, but, she said, they were closed on the weekends. The University of Petrozavodsk, which offers a comprehensive Veps language major, is also closed on the weekend.

After that, I gave up on finding any information on the Veps in Petrozavodsk. If I had been able to plan my trip here, it might have worked out better, but the weather would likely have been a lot worse. So I decided to take what I can get: a beautiful day in an interesting city as nothing more than a tourist.

I spent the afternoon wandering as far as my legs would take me. When I got too tired to walk anymore, I went to the theater and saw Killers. I had wanted to see Toy Story to find out what Woody and Buzz sound like in Russian, but I missed it by twenty minutes. As for Killers... it was an excellent way to sit down for two hours.



Not long after the movie, I ran out of steam and found a taxi. I told the driver the address to take me to, and he looked at me in perplexity. I panicked, thinking I had said or done something terribly wrong. After a moment, the driver asked, “You live here?” I said no, I'm American, and he started laughing. He said I had pronounced the name of the street so well (Pityakanskaya) that I sounded Russian, but I pronounced the street number like a German. Go figure.

We talked the whole way back to my lodgings, and the driver only accepted 100 rubles from me for the ride. Denis, my host, assured me that 150 or more was the going rate, so once again, being an American that can clumsily spit out a couple sentences in Russian has worked to my advantage.

But now I'm exhausted, and I feel that I discovered for certain there is no actual research I can do here in Petrozavodsk, at least not this weekend. I explained this to my hosts, and tomorrow morning they're driving me to the bus station to go back to Vytegra a day early. I'm sad to leave such a beautiful city behind. Maybe I'll have to come back in grad school.