Snow! - and Library Adventures

 So, now that I learned how to walk fast in the cold while avoiding the ice, I have to develop the skill of walking in 10 cm of snow/slush without slipping. It snowed almost all day yesterday, plump and glittering snowflakes happily dancing all around. Luckily I live in the center, where they clean the sidewalks, so that by noon today everything was pretty much shoveled. One thing that shocked me: I don't think I saw a single man shoveling. They were all women. Well of course Russia is known for the very short life span, for both men and women but especially men, and this made me think that it's true, I hardly ever saw a man that looked older than 55. And every place I go, they're all run by (often elderly) women. I mean, I am talking mainly about museums and libraries, so I don't know how relevant this is. But yeah, those shoveling ladies did strike me.

Oh, and as far as my library work goes, nothing exciting to report. But I wanted to tell how the National Library works, as it struck me as something incredibly tortuous. So first of all you need a library card, which is pretty easy to obtain since all you need is your passport and visa. Then, when you enter the library, you have to leave your coat - which is nice, and all your books - not so nice. I mean, maybe I wanted to work with a book from the library and my annotated edition, but that's prohibited. But again, other libraries in Europe do that. The thing that I find supremely illogical is that, after going through a sort of security and swiping your card, you have to "declare" whether or not you have a computer, at which point you'll receive a piece of paper, with a little mark if you have a computer, without if you don't. You have to fill it out with your name and ID number, then go to another lady on another floor, who will date and stamp the little computer sign. Then you go to the reading room, where you get your books and work. Oh, and by the way, the library has something like 7 locations in the city, and when you look up your books in the catalogue there's no way to know in which location they are, so you just go and hope for the best. For each book you get, they put another sign on the paper, and when you return them they date and stamp (for each book). Eventually, with your glorious piece of paper all signed and stamped (they told me it's the most important thing in the library), you can walk towards the exit, give the piece of paper to the exit guard (who sits in front of the entrance guard), who will check it and finally let you out. Just look how long it took me to explain the mechanism, and guess how long it took me to figure out how it works!

I really like when people do this thing that they put all their objects on the floor and take a picture. So I tried, with the difference that this is my bed because I thought the blanket looked more Russian (it does, no?). I'm not very satisfied with it, but I guess these are the essential objects to my SPB life.