Pre-Russia prerussceptions

In August, I got a job in Saint Petersburg, teaching English to children.

I am writing this to progressively document my perception of Russia - starting from a state of not being in Russia, and continuing to a state of being in Russia.
What is the level of my current ignorance and cultural misconceptions? How has Russia so far entered into my English-woman psyche?
Russian literature, that potent and wonderful strain beginning, for me, with Gogol and his walking-talking noses. Dull, ridiculous functionaries. The hot, disturbed nights I spent while reading ‘Crime and Punishment’, the ridiculously hot summer of 2007. Repulsion and empathy for the anti-hero - a strange illusion of guilt - mingled together. Then three years later, continents away, more Dostoyevsky,this time the Karamazovs, where Alyosha/Alexei(how confusing Russian names then seemd) seemed to be a perfect prototype of a man with his gentle manners and innocent masculine beauty. I read it obsessively , on every bench I could find rest on in Montreal. My interest for the Karamazov Brothers first began months before I read the novel. It began at the Opera of Budapest, looking down at a scarlet stage, the beautiful but incomprehensible story below. The drama mirroring the step I was about to take, out into the Ocean, across the Atlantic. Russian classical music. It flurries in confidently amongst other classical music, without modesty, like hail dropping down to drown out the pitter-patter of the rain. Much of it has innate exclamation marks - Shostakovich! ! At full blast in a SUV, through the wide snow and wooden houses, listening to it and feeling a blast of despair, raising up a quiet redneck country into something sublime. . . .  Overflowing with Shostakovich as I smoked a cuban cigar in my mouth. Watching the slow puffs of smoke follow the rhythm of the music.
Tchaikovsky came earlier, and incidentally, as a gift when I left Hungary. High pitched and delicious, water coloured tinted fairytales, baroque expressive letters give so mch expression to the paintbrush.

Ra-ra-Rasputin, ‘Oh those Russians,’ presenting Russia as exotic and fascinating. That wonderful, superstitious myth.

 

A Canadian friend asked me why I would go to Russia, it’s not really some-where one goes it? An American warned me about who I hung out with, ‘You know, there’s the Mafia out there. There’s some bad people.’ Most people recognise St Petersburg as a fascinating, cultural city and congratulate me on having obtained a job there.