For three weeks I tried to build on my feeble memory of Melbourne CAE Russian night school classes from 2004, at St Petersburg University's Russian Culture and Language faculty's summer school. The classes were held at the impressive Smolny Institue which attracts its daily quota of tourist buses whose occupants snap away at it'a almost wedding cake Baroque sumptuousness.
The experience of returning to classes comprising much younger people from many countries ( my classes were made up of Americans, Finns, Germans, Poles,an Italian, Spaniard, Mexican and a young Turkish Hotelier, who has to deal with hordes of Russian sun chasing guests in the summer) was a challenge and I did not react well to the strictly didactic style of the mostly female professors, accompanied by lots of tests and homework every night. Clearly they knew nothing of differing learning styles and were not accustomed to the sensitivities of this mature and otherwise well educated Russian language dunce. Some of them had no English as a second language and so it was hilarious when they spoke in German or Italian to students of those nationalities who then explained to the rest of us in English what was required of us in Russian.
It's position at the far end of the Nevsky Prospekt gave me the opportunity to ride there in crowded mini buses, knee to knee with secretaries, clerks and young budding executives and, every afternoon, to walk its full length back to town for both much needed pedestrian exercise and also to drink in the sights sounds and smells of daily life in this glorious icon of a city.
Cars being stopped by poorly paid traffic cops seeking income supplementation and surly gun toting militia stopping a man just in front of me, for no apparent reason, but to check his papers and show him who is boss. But then the real joy, those fabulous, imperturbable, high stepping beauties-the young women of the Nevsky parade
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