A Three Hour Tour

well here I am stuck to a plastic chair in Tuxtla,
mexico pouring with sweat. yep I finally made it south
of the border, and what an adventure it has been
already.
After an extremely sketchy flight into Mexico City in
a thunder storm I met up with levi at the airport.
Already some of the key features of my stay in mexico
city were apparent. Turns out that with something like
20 million people running around, everything takes a
bit longer. levi told me he was on the way, he said it
would be about 2 hours, I had a hard time
understanding how when the airport is in the center of
the city getting there could take 2 hours, now I
believe. He showed up,we got a hotel room in the
center of the city, where obviously got caught up,
however this time we managed not to get kicked out of
the place. The next day we headed up to the "beverly
hills" of mexico city as levi likes to call it, where
he went to class and I spent most of my time woozy and
trying to avoid scorpions in the room(only later did
it occur to me that when at high elevatons one
shouldn{t try and keep up with levi) After class levi
and I met up with one of his friends, neither of us
were interested in doing anything, just going to hang
out I was gonna meet some mexicans and the next day we
would see the sights before escaping the city for the
week.
However levi{s friend isn{t like that, he{s insistent.
Alejandro: "my friend we must go to the forest"
me: I don{t know it{s 10 at night where is the forest?
alejandro: just three hours that{s all, it is
beautiful

he wouldnt take no for an answer. despite the fact
that it was 10 at night and beauty is hard to discern
in the pitch black. so we piled into this extremely
beat up car and started to roll to the forest. The
first thing that strikes you about traveling in mexico
city is the speed bumps, thousands of speed bumps,
every street, most highways, every corner there is a
speedbump to keep everyone moving at a slow pace.
well that combined well with the blown rear left shock
of alejandros vehicle, so instead of a comfortable
ride, levi and I had to scrunch as tight as possible
to the right in the back of this car (another
interesting part was that this was also alejandros
first date with a girl from school, not the most
romantic night: cruising for 3 hours with 2 gringos
piled in the back) so the entire 1.5 hour trip was
taken at intervals of getting the car up to 60 or 70
miles an hour and then slamming on the breaks to a
standstill and very slowly easing the car over the
bump (even as we got well into the mountains, the
speed bumps persisted). Finally we got to a dirt road
"okay guys you have to walk from here, to bumpy" so
levi and I got out of the car and walked behind for a
good mile or so. then alejandro parks the car and we
proceed to the forest, which it turns out is guarded
by dogs and somebody{s house. But The view was
spectacular, the moon was full and we were high in the
mountains, we were right along a river, watching it
snake between mountains, it was about this point that
alejandro pulled out a joint, and it didn{t take long
before the view went from the most amazing serene
landscape to the most ominious and foreboding.
suddenly in the distance all i could here was this
large truck coming down the dirt road we had followed
and I even heard it park at the house we would have to
pass before returning to the car. Immediately my mind
was working out various horror movie scenarios mostly
involving the movie Duel. just as my mind is really
getting to an advanced state of paranioa alejandro
says "okay time to go" by the way it is now 1 am
therefore without the trip home it has already been 3
hours. so we start walking back by the house, while
the dogs are barking like mad, i of course can barely
resist braking into a run, but I do simply not to make
a fool of myself. We get back to the car and of
course levi and I are standing behind the car waiting
for alejandro to start the car when we see the dogs
approaching, they were about as ominious as my basset
hound, coming over tails wagging. just another moment
of foolishness. So alejandro takes of and we start
walking, but this time he goes pretty fast and levi
and I are actually running trying to keep up with him
(nothing like a little high altitude training) we
finally get back on the road again and I instantly
fall asleep, can{t wait to got to bed, of course every
thirty seconds once again we come to a screeeching
halt for a speed bump, meanwhile to the background of
mozart, alejandro starts questioning me "have you had
tacos yet?" ah actaully no, I haven't
"okay we{re going to get taco{s" its now 3am and we
are in search of a taco staand (not a very hard thing
to find in mexico city, about as frequent as a
speedbump) so we got ourselves about 5 tacos each and
then alejandro was about to force more on us because
we{d only had chicken and beef, no pork ones yet, but
we were saved because they were closing down. an
amazing night. Yesterday levi and I toured the city,
seeing the trotski(i consider this more of a
continuation of my saint pete{s trip than mexico city)
and the frida kahlo museum and then walking around the
center photographing every church in sight, most of
which are at a healthy lean and are sinking into the
ground, indeed a healthy bow can be seen on most any
building in the city. the church tour led us to some
of the dirties places i have ever been needless to
say, one square in particualar was simply covered in
fesces and had a truly ungodly smell (for an insight
into levi{s personality here{s his quote about that
square "wow this is absolutely one of my favorite
spots in mexico city") indeed the local homeless had
pretty much claimed it as there own. As for
everything else it is as you expected I of course am
sick from the water, could have been all those tacos
I{ve been eating. that of course made the 12 hour bus
ride i just took a little wilder(probably for everyone
else as well), but by the end of the day levi and i
will be drinking cervesas on the beach of the pacific.
oh and just one of the great details of my time in
mexico so far is the buses, just the fact that many of
the city buses are extremely decked out with really
nice rims and some of them even have lights
underneath, there is nothing quite like being in a
small volkswagen bus (the private line) turning to see
a monstrous double exhaust bus possibly with a lift
kit, and bright purple lights blasting from underneath
it, it{s unlike anything i{ve ever seen, i can only
hope the truro shuttle adopts the same policy.
ellejandro

Mayhem in Mexico City

well so I'm back in truro and for the first time i
will attempt to write an email not from abroad, not as
easy as you think. Well after the first few days in
mexico city we headed south to Chiapas, a southern
mexican state that borders guatemala. The bus ride was
fantastic, the bus chairs reclined ten times more than
the greyhounds I'm used to. There was only one strange
feature, unlike the greyhound buses and most buses
i've ever been on this bus went direct, no cigarette
breaks no meal stops nothing 12 hours no getting up.
Levi and I in the morning realized that this also
meant that they never changed drivers!?!? how is this
possible?? the same driver for 12 hours that doesn't
seem safe. then on exiting the bus all our questions
were answered, A baggage compartment opened up and a
alternate driver stuck himself out, stretched and
yawned. Apparently they have converted one of the
baggage compartments into a small bedroom for another
driver to catch a few winks complete with a
matress(this wasn't a one time thing, every bus we saw
this was the case, one of them even had a few hawaiian
shirts and a guitar in it, perhaps for those long
nights out before getting on the bus)
Neither levi or I have ever had what you'd call a
typical vacation, heading to the beach catching some
rays and drinking cervezas on the beach, so we decided
it was time. we headed to a really small coastal town
called puerto arista which lonely planet describes as
"a small town of 2000 people with a few chiapans
visiting on the weekends... but on semana santa
chaipans come by the thousands" yep it was semana
santa (easter week) and they were set up for spring
break mexican style (most of the visitors were
mexicans, in fact we only saw one other gringo) So it
was wonderful, 4 days of lounging, spring breaking
(yep), and watching chickens drink from coconuts. It
was just about then that things started to get
interesting, first thing that happened, we were
swimming and I stepped on something alive, it moved, I
moved but not fast enough, I got stung barbed or
bitten, so I immediatly went into 45 minutes of
paranoid breathing trying to come up with all the
things I could of stepped on that would send me to the
hospital. But that past and it was just a little
blood. the next day we took an incredible ride on the
bus again into the mountains, at one point it took us
4 hours to go 100 km because the road was so twisty
(indeed for most of the ride the bus hugged the
breakdown lane so hard and the dropoff was so steep
you had the sensation of flying) San Cristobal was our
next destination, a small colonial (i'm pretty sure
that isn't the right word, perhaps it is even PC) town
way way in the mountains. We arrived late and woozy.
The next day was a big day, we met up with one of our
fellow pilgrims from the camino de santiago, she was
travelling chaipas as well. Early in the day I
realized it was gonna be hot and that I should take
off my long sleeved shirt and put on a t-shirt, the
real mistake I made was that this t-shirt had a wide
neck, much wider than my farmers tan I had been
working on. thinking nothing of it we continued to
church hunt seeing some amazing pastel churches. That
night I didn't even feel hot, however at about 4 am I
suddenly woke up felt my shoulder and realized things
had officially gone "rogue" my shoulder had started to
bubble and was alarmingly hot, I ran into the shower
and took a real cold shower, which needless to say
dazed alarmed and having just woke up nearly sent me
into shock. so the next day instead of going on the
tour of the canyon with levi and sabrina (the other
pilgrim) I was in the hotel room with a wet towel
around my neck (I did get my revenge though, as it
turns out levi went on the canyon trip, sat out on the
boat sleeves rolled up, just thinking how great it was
not to have sensitive skin like ellery and how being
one 64th Native American really was helping right
about now, when he got home he said he felt a bit
nausaus, blaming it on some old pizza, then about 2
hours later he vomited and realized he had acquired
heat stroke, so we sat in opposite beds tossing aloe
between us for the rest of the night). lesson learned
(when you say 15 dollars for mexican sunscreen is too
much, you're gonna pay) luckily i didn't miss too
much, (we had seen every church and sight in san
Cristobal the first day) we headed back to mexico city
the next day (which was real close to a disaster as
well because idiots that we are, we never book ahead,
and it turns out that everyone in mexico is travelling
on the last sunday of semana santa because they have
work the next day...duh, luckily by going a mere 4
hours out of the way we found a town that still had
tickets back to mexico) So we arrived, exhausted, and
burnt, headed into the mexico city metro, just waiting
to get back to levi's house (for one thing I wanted to
resoak my towel) we were in a real packed car, and I
was just exhausted and for that one moment let my
guard down (yep you know where this is going) my
shoulder hurt and I couldn't really reach my pocket,
but I was just thinking to myself "boy I should have
my hand on my wallet like I always do on the subway
(even in the states)" reached for it and of course it
was gone, just like that. lesson learned (if you're
gonna be such an idiot as to not by sunscreen and get
burned at least don't let your sunburn get in the way
of your alertness) Well luckily my passport and my
american money were still in my bag, just lost my
liscense and atm card.
My last two days in mexico city were very tame, the
first spent in levi's room finally watching my
blisters heal, and then the second day we went to
Tiuhatiuacan or something like that, some of the
biggest pyramids in mexico, and catching a few Diego
Rivera murals. Then I finally got that well earned
plane ride to washington DC where I got a USA passport
stamp and was informed that my luggage would be coming
on a later flight, therefore when I got to boston I
would just file a lost luggage claim and the next day
they would deliver it to my house, "whatever fine at
this point I don't even care" was my attitude as I got
onto the plane to boston, then something occured to me
that really made me chuckle to myself (I looked quite
the fool on the plane) yep my return bus ticket was in
my bag, oh and of course I don't have any money or
credit cards (I was pickpocketed remember you fool).
lesson learned (when you don't buy sunscreen, you're
gonna get burned, when you let your guard down you're
gonna get robbed, and when you pack your bag leave
everything you're gonna need to get home on you, cause
their gonna lose your luggage, and then you're just
fucked!!
ell
p.s. united was kind enough to write me a voucher
home, my luggage arrived before I woke up the next
day, my sunburn is healing and you can always make
more money.
next stop: south africa, lets see how bad that can get

Travels with my Mother

No one said it would be easy, travelling never
is, especially with your mother. It started the
moment we were leaving "now you've got your tickets
right?" and "Now when we get to the airport we're
going to check our bags so make sure you have
everything you need" "yes sue", "Yes Mother". It's
almost as though she thinks i've never travelled
before. Oh well this is what you get when you put two
people on a trip together who both always think
they're right.
We arrived in Istanbul 2 days ago, after a terrible
layover in a Paris terminal which had no seats, or
actually it had about 17 seats for the 500 people
waiting in the terminal, and most of those seats were
reserved, i.e. empty and gaurded by a vicious French
woman who hovered overthem gaurding them for those
passengers travelling by bus (apparently bus
travellers get first dibs in Charles de Gaulle). The
experience was so awful that i have officially
renounced my defense of the french.
Istanbul itself is spectacular, after a minor hangup
at the airport (we didn't know we needed a visa) we
went straight to our hotel which has a terrace which
overlooks the Blue Mosque on one side and Aya Sofia on
the other,they serve breakfast everyday on terrace as
well. The first thing that struck me about istanbul
is the sobriety (after russia every one looks a little
more sober) instead of the common curbside beer
drinking there is nothing but juice and tea, people
running through the streets delivering tea from vendor
to vendor. Even the fishermen, who are on the shore
all day don't have that bottle of wine between them,
instead they are just pounding back a thermos of hot
Chai.
Kebabs have been disappointing, I was under the
impression that a kebab, doner kebab, gyro, Shaverma,
etc, were all the same thing, a wrapped meat sandwich
for the road, however here i keep getting myself into
trouble when i order a kebab, and immediately the
person tells me to take a seat ("perhaps he's just
slow at making them and wants me to rest" i think)
insted he comes back with a plate of food and i am
once again stuck with an immobile meal. And of course
they are so nice there is no explaining to them that
you've made another dreadful mistake and would like to
run away now.
Perhaps the most odd thing that has happened to us so
far has been our experience with the shoe shiners.
The first day as we were walking along the sea side we
passed a man walking with his shoe shine kit, as he
walked by he dropped his brush, I picked it up and
handed it to him, he insisted that i take a shoeshine,
i refused as i had already made my first mistaken
kebab order earlier and we were trying to make up
time. Then again this evening as we were walking home
the same thing happened and the man again insisted on
giving me a shoeshine, i again refused (why the hell
would i want my hiking boots shined). Now I was
beginning to get suspicious, was this a con?? do they
with a flick of the wrist drop their brush trying to
drum up a tip by offering a free shoeshine for picking
up their brush. Sue and I were having a good chuckle
about this (we occasionally do have good moments when
the two of us don't want to kill each other) when the
man in front of us again dropped his brush, this time
a woman picked it up for him I believe she was
Turkish, and he thanked her and walked on, so i don't
really know whether or not it is a scam or wether they
just need to redesign the shoeshine kit with a strap
to hold the brush on.
well my hour is almost up and the old lady upstairs
(who i fear many a person in this country thinks is my
sugar mamma)has demanded news from the world outside,
and seeing as how we've been bickering all day i'd
better just do this to avoid any further trouble.
ell

In the Approrpiate Places

well of course as always I forgot several tidbits of
information in my las email. For one I forgot about
Susan and I's misadventure at the Topkapi palace,
which after wondering around the wonderful gardens and
treasury we found a small door off to the side,
wondering in behind susan there was an immediate
feeling of mistake, there in the corner was a man in a
turban in a glassed off booth, reading a book into a
microphone, yet there was no sounds in the room,
Susan did a 180 of apprehension, but I pushed her into
the room anyways. The cases in the room were filled
with artifacts of Muhammed, His sword, Dust from his
tomb, a letter of his to a rival, it was certainly an
experience to casually walk into, everyone had a
headscarf, sue made a b-line for the exit I immediatly
removed my hat(!), a classic travel screw-up.
Immediately after I recieved an email from my one and
only Turkish (or Half Turkish) Friend condeming me for
saying that the Turks don't drink I was of course
proved quite wrong as a young man who works here at
the hotel, declared that he drinks and drinks heavily,
"I drink under the table, not on the table, Father,
Uncle no like, you!, you drink only three beer, when I
drink, i drink many beers, my cousin and i 12 each"
Needless to say we have a bar date for saturday, he
thinks he's gonna show me a thing or two (haha). Since
then he has been my in at the hotel, extra bread at
breakfast, extremely lame jokes when i leave
(including the one with the detatchable finger, and
some lame pick-up lines he doesn't seem to know are
pick-up lines)
Finally the most bizarre bit of information that I've
picked up is that the Turkish People have of course
perfected the Toilet-Bidet, simply by adding a small
nozzle on the inside rim of the toilet, which Lonely
Planet I think phrases best as "squirts water in the
appropriate places" No Thank You I think I'll decide
what is an appropriate place for water to be squirted.
Besides this I can think of nothing else at present,
except a few personal notes:
Levi, I tried to change my departure in Iceland, the
receptionist was as cold as ice and told me to go to
hell,
Russia Buddies, My mom and I dined on Blini, Pelmeni,
and Borscht at a nice russian restaurant the other
night, sadly no baltika.
ell

A Night Out

Well needless to say things have definitely picked up
in my life after the arrival of levi and Nate. Levi
arrived the first night and my mother, myself and levi
stayed at what seemed to be a nice parisian hotel by
the opera. After a firm and unwarranted warning the
first night by the owner as we walked down the stairs
"What is wrong with you?? Quiet now please, you cannot
be so arrogant, if you don´t treat us with respect we
will not respect you!!!" that was at 830 at night
because we were talking on the stairwell on our way
downstairs, an ominous beginning. Then the next day
as nate was checking in we were pulled aside
"gentlemen, no food in the bed, ever!!!" uh okay we
hadn´t even brought food into the room, but we
respectfully said no problem. Well obviously there was
going to be a problem. So we go out on the town to
celebrate our new adventure, and arrive home at about
3 now we knew we were dealing with a crazy hotel
owner, so we immediately went upstairs to bed, levi
and I though decided to go ask nate a question, no
prob right, well he was staying one floor down from
us. We walk down the stairs, immediately there is the
owner, he grabs me(i have the bruise) "out, out you go
out!!!!! you are drunk, fuck you get out" we are
immediately wrestled downstairs and thrown out. "can
we get our stuff?" "no you are drunk get out"
so there i was at 330 am in my t-shirt with levi
nothing more we could do he locked the door and kicked
us out. So we walk around town, hoping he´ll go to
sleep, but he is awake, I knock on the door, "just let
us get our stuff and we´ll go" "no 8 o clock, not
before or i call the police!!!" So we are stuck in
t-shirts on the streets of paris with my mother and
Nate in the hotel with no way of contacting them.
about 5 am the man is gone and a very nice attendant
there let us in apologizing for the owner saying he
was crazy. we get our stuff tell nate and sue we´ll
meet them at the bakery across the street. The
attendant tried to convince us to stay saying the old
guy was just mad and wouldn´t mind if we spent the
night, luckily we didn´t later comments made us sure
that poor boy would have lost his job. So levi and i
had about 12 espressos and 3 baguettes, finally after
saying good bye to susan (needless to say rather
awkwardly, indeed levi´s quote "don´t worry sue your
boy is in good hands" seemed somehow misplaced) we got
nate from the hotel at which nate said "thanks for
nothing" to which the owner said "fuck you!!! You
Arrogant Americans, go back to baghdad, fuck you
guys!!" and that pretty much sealed the deal on paris
for me. we got on a train where only one of us had
tickets for actual seats and sleepless, angry and
hungover we arrived in St. Jean Pied du Port. we got
there at 11, starving and rushed to the closest
restaurant where unexpectedly the most amazingly good
experience happened to us (and just in the nick of
time).
We went into the restaurant and were
immediately brought into conversation with an english
speaking basque seperatist, he immediately bought us a
drink. "food" "non, the kitchen is closed as is
everywhere else just stay here with us, we have been
drinking the very best of french wines all day so
ignore the others (indeed i could do nothing else as i
spoke no basque and that was all they spoke) there
was a lot of singing, a lot of chants for "basque
power", no concern for our pilgrimage, a bit of
discussion about the best way to cook a pigeon after
shooting it, and of course a lot of us trying to
explain why we didn´t like that good president of ours
and why we didn´t like schwarzeneggar. quite a wild
intro into basque country. I will tell you no more as
today i am two days past those incidents, but i had to
put them to email before i forgot (although i´ll never
forget that man screaming fuck you go back to baghdad) ell

30k a day eh??

It started at 7am with a crazed short frenchwoman
barging into our room screaming and yelling in french
the gist of which was that if we didn´t get moving
soon we´d never make it to roncesvalles (the next
town). so we packed our stuff and got to walking. at
first it was amazing, we walked through farms and
roads covered with cowshit. then we hit the mainroad
for a bit and we overtook our first group of pilgrims.
needless to say this inflated our egos, we were
feeling strong, the road wasn´t that tough and this
day was supposed to be the hardest one, well lets see
what we can do. we really picked up the pace for quite
a while, we got really close to roncesvalles, about 2
miles. And then we went off road and hit the
mountains, already quite tired after our last push we
started an excruciating climb, up painfully steep
fireroads surrounded by barbed wire (which it was all
you could do to avoid grabbing and using as a railing;
indeed nate did) Finally reaching the top shells of
men we immediately were hit by the wind so frozen,
starving, exhausted and humiliated we arrived into
roncesvalles and ate all the food availlable at the
small cafe there.
we checked into the first albergue for a good lie down
directly after. This albergue kinda reminded you of a
bad summercamp dormatory, stained small mattresses and
rickity old beds and so close together some were even
touching so you had to becareful of the man next to
you. One man came in and said to us "oh man i don´t
like this, kinda reminds you of guantanimo bay eh??"
but to us just the lie down was heaven, although
having only one shower for 30 sweaty pilgrims wasn´t
exactly and airfreshener.
One of the best things about the trip is the pilgrim
meal that is generally offered everywhere you go, it´s
like the usual set menus at restaurants across europe
except that here along the camino they give you twice
the food, half the price and wine, and everyone loves
you " what you are pilgrims oh here let me buy you a
drink" or "i´m gonna givve you the best meal i can".
this night in particular we had a huge trout each,
fries, a wonderful garlic soup and a bottle of wine
for about 6 bucks.
However of course you must walk 8 hours a day, which
takes a toll let me say. It´s taken me this long to
write because we wake up at 6am and walk until around
3 then we have to lie down a bit and then of course
gorge ourselves and be in bed by 9 or earlier, it
leaves little time for anything else. I´ve read 10
pages in my book. But the camino itself at least what
we´ve seen of it is amazing, and travelling at a swift
3 kilometers an hour is the way to see it.
immediately that level of silliness that 3 boys on an
extremely intense physical adventure can achieve has
been attained, all day long is spent laughing at the
silliest things, not the least of which is the fact
that my scallop shell (the scallop shell is the symbol
of the pilgrim here) cut me open the first night as my
bag fell, an ominous start. Or the fact that there
seems to be nothing in this country to eat that
doesn´t contain a healthy portion of eggs in it, i
think i´m eating about 10 a day which i´m sure can´t
be good for me. We hit pamplona after 3 days and
decided to take a day off, levi had an ingrown
toenail, nates knees were bruised (!?!) and i had
about 3 blisters (since moved up to 4, 2 on each
foot). so we went out, Pamplona on a saturday night is
quite the rowdy place, first of all we´re beginning to
realize that basque people are the nicest in the
world, the first ones we meet immediately love our
story of a couple of american pilgrims, get a good
chuckle out of it as there buying us a few beers, and
say "but seriously boys you won´t make it to burghos
(about half way)" in fact no one that night was
willing to believe that we were pilgrims and if they
did they refused to believe we would make it.
and that´s pretty much what it´s like, each day we
spend several hours walking and then approximately the
same amount of time "tending to our feet" stuffing our
faces and occasionally talking to people twice our age
doing the walk who always seem to be in better shape
than us(or at least they hide it well).


Well that peice of email has been saved on my account
for about 2 weeks, it is impossible to find any sort
of internet in small rural spain. i´m not going to
read it so if i repeat myself i´m sorry. after
pamplona we continued our walk (as we do) for 2 more
days before once again being hobbled to the point of
stopping in a town called estella. the great
highlight of that town was that it was pretty big,
therefore we hoped to get internet, alas every
internet cafe we went to either was down or had a
whopping 1 computer (why you would call it an internet
cafe is beyond me) also in desperation to escape the
10 egg a day and 2 pounds of ham diet of ours we went
out for the worst chinese of my life (which is saying
something) where levi´s chiken was actually raw. this
may not seem like a big deal to you, but to those of
us with 8 hours of hiking a day those 1 or 2 hours of
the day when food is involved are very important and
raw chicken is not the answer for an aching stomach.
by the time we started up again things had vastly
improved, the blisters were healed-ish, nates knees
seemed to have regained some of their bounce and
levi´s pinky toe was on the mend.
although i must say that about an hour a day is spent
dealing with the feets, applying antibiotic cream,
putting band-aids on, popping blisters, massaging feet
mid walk, indeed by the end of this i´ll probably miss
taking such good care of my feet.
we walked for 7 straight days, got quite a good rhythm
going, we even made friends with an australian couple
who were like us "party pilgrims" looking more for
adventure than any spirituality. we walked with them
to burgos where we had already planned a nice day of
rest, again though there was no internet, indeed we
can hardly get anything accomplished on these days of
rest because for some reason with out the packs our
feet hurt more and so we stumble through the streets
from kebab place to pizza place to more fried egg
place and back to bed. we´re lucky if we get laundry
done.
after burgos we hit the meseta, or the flat plains
which it turns out is essentially like walking in a
muddy wind tunnel, the wind howls so loudly you can´t
here the person next to you and you begin to think
your hearing voices. so that´s where i am, trudging a
long absolutely loving it, can barely walk at night
but that´s all i do during the day so why would i want
to anyway. there´s a ton more funny stories and funny
events but either i can´t remember them off hand,
they´re to ridiculous to mention or perhaps not funny
at all, it´s tough to tell anymore whats funny when
you´ve been with the same 2 people for over a month
with little outside contact other than a strange
australian couple and some very solitary pilgrims.
ell

The Flood

it´s feels like quite a while since i last wrote an
email, indeed we´re practically in santiago, just four
more days until the big celebration.
after burgos we walked two days across the flats,
where things got real weird, how weird well let´s just
say that we asked a woman where we could get a beer
after our walk and she said "no beer but head to the
end of the road and you´ll have fun" we walk to the
end of the street and what do we see? a group of guys
butchering a pig, a huge sow. unbelievable, she
thought that this was a good time?? go through a few
towns where the best thing going on on a saturday
night is animal slaughtering and you´ll start to get a
little weirded out. Nate is leaving the 4th of
december so we had to skip a few days ahead, about 90k
therefore we chose to blast through the flat lands by
train so that we could see all of the mountains by
foot(before you call us cheaters levi and i are gonna
walk to the ocean, 90 k in order to make it up). So we
fastforwarded to Leon just in time for our streak of
beautiful weather to end, let the torrents begin. On
the bright side we finally got to test our rain gear,
it works but just kinda. the land once again is
mountainous, we have past now though all the tough
challenges in the last few day, the highest point, the
biggest climb etc, most of which was done during some
god awful rain storms and winds whipping all around
the next day´s paper said winds over 100km an hour
(notice how i used kph to make myself look tougher)
but now at least they´ve stopped serving so many eggs
and we actually get soups and pasta. we´ve met a
variety of psychopaths, none of the religious kind
though one man who had killed a dog on his journey
with his swiss army knife (for some reason there are a
lot of crazed german shepards running free in
galicia), we met a man who ditched his family and
started walking from his back yard in paris. uh oh no
more net time, ell

A Mountain of Cocaine and the End of The World

when we began this pilgrimage a month ago levi told
the story of when he first heard about the camino from
someone other than me. he was in northern spain
visiting his friend when the landlord came in and
started trying to convince them to go on the camino.
after telling them about the trials and tribulations
of the trip, the blisters, the storms, the rain, he
said "but when you get to the top of that hill
overlooking santiago and see that city it`s like doing
a mountain of cocaine, needless to say we thought that
was the most ridiculous description for the feeling
you get at the end of a religious pilgrimage you could
get, so we planned on quite a few festivities for the
day of walking into santiago. finally after a few more
days in shitty galician pilgrim refuges (the only ones
where bedbugs were prevelant and where we kept
sleeping in the same room with a man who walked in all
leather and screamed in his sleep, who we later
learned was a crazy spanish special forces member, who
judging by the screaming had seen some crazy things.)
the day arrived and to say the least it was a crazy
one, i believe i was the one who jokingly mentioned
walking into santiago shirtless but levi was crazy
enough to put it in action. yep complete with magic
marker scallop shells you beloved party pilgrims
walked into santiago shirtless in the rain on december
1 2006, we may not have been the first to do it but
judging from the stares we got we might have been the
most original, people loved it, they just love to see
pilgrims having a good time and we were definitely
having a good time, spraying eachother with champagne
and beer. anyway eventually we put our shirts back on
and headed into the church knocked heads with the
saint of wisdom, hugged saint james, put our hands on
the tree of knowledge and came out the otherside
squeaky clean of sin and ready to party. we went and
got our certificates from god, got a hotel room and
went out to meet some more pilgrims, needless to say
it was a party, we met in front of the church and i
jokingly said "so off to the club then huh?" but they
were into it, just imagine the scene 15 grungy dirty
foul smelling pilgrims dressed in raingear or
sweatpants unshaved and ranging from 23to 65(mostly
towards the later end) marching into santiago's
trendiest nightclub on a saturday night jumping around
dancing and hooting and hollering all night, needless
to say the spaniards just kinda cleared away from us
and we did our own thing, mostly involved finding out
who was going to keep going the next 4 days walk to
the end of the earth fisterre, what in pilgrim times
was considered to be the westernmost point in europe
and the world (they were wrong on both counts it's
actually in portugal)
nate was heading home but levi and i spent another day
in santiago and then started walking out on monday
again in the rain, this time with no map, just going
on following the yellow arrows, yep we got lost, a
nice 5k detour to start the day, but we did roll into
the albergue that night and were back on the road.
Then the hurricane hit, i thought the roof was gonna
come off the rickety old building or the rain was
gonna break the glass, later we learned that the wind
was over 100k an hour and there was 40 litres of rain
for every 1 square meter, and this is what we woke up
to that Morning, but we were on a schedule, we had to
walk (everyone else was either staying another day or
takiçng a bus), we waited till 10 and headed out. The
camino was a river 3 seconds in and my feet were
soaked, parts were knee deep and higher and that was
with avoiding the deep part. trees were down in the
middle of the trail and then we started hearing
thunder and lightning. it took us longer to walk 8k
then i could have ever imagined possible, so we got to
the next town and took a cab, didn't want to, not
proud of it but there was no way we would have made it
before 9pm if at all, so tough luck. luckily the next
morning was beautiful and we walked our last 30k in
perfect sunlight and warm temps, we even walked the
last 3k on the beach to fisterre, so with the
exception of a few k we've walked across spain, levi
and i walked to the very tip of the peninsula drank
some wine and headed back down the road like kings,
nothing could have brought us down, not even the
incredibly sketchy road we were walking down, it was
so dangerous we actually though that a car behind us
was slowing down to give us a ride when...WHAM levi
got hit by an egg, as if we haven't had enough fucking
eggs some teenagers decided to get a couple of
pilgrims, oh well we still felt like kings, just laugh
it off, we were off to our celebratory meal. By the
time we reached town again it was already beginning to
happen, "I don't feel so good levi, i think i'm just
gonna go to bed" got back to the albergue and did the
first vomit, "ugh maybe it's just food poisoning" then
levi came back "you know i don't feel very good
either" his first vomit.
the perfect ending to the camino both of us sleeping
on some soiled mattresses in the hallway of the
albergue so we could be close to the bathroom as we
vomited for 17 straight hours.
numbers of miles walked:500
number of blisters on feet: 20
number of hotels kicked out:1
number of glasses levi broke at the club in santiago:3
number of flights of stairs fallen down:3
number of pilgrims who went home and immediately got
engaged: 1
perfect camino

Russian Emails

these were emails I sent from Russia, I put them up in
reverse order so that they read chronologically. I hope
to put up pictures with them soon too.

Letter From Afar

well so here am in yet another strange land for 4
months. First things first let's dispel some rumors:

1. Apparently it's not cold in Russia, or at least St.
Petersburg. the 16 of us left London wearing most of
our luggage and after surviving a bumpy plane ride of
drunken Russians (one of whom tried to smoke on the
flight and hit on the American girls) we exited the
airport again wearing almost everything we owned only
to take a deep breath of air "god damn it's like 45
degrees out why the hell am wearing 3 pairs of long
johns." everyday since I’ve seen the sun for most of
the day it's been nicer than London (not that that is
saying much)

2. Communism isn't gone it's on vacation, Lenin is
still flying high in front of the Finland station
awaiting his return. and our dorm life is far from
capitalist, everything is included.

3. Study abroad schools are slack? oh no I’ve got
Russian 3 hours a day, which is quite a bit
considering that it's light out only like 8 hours a
day. plus another hour of Hw. but we go on plenty of
field trips and small adventures like...

4. the Russian Hospital: not as clean as you'd think
with socialized healthcare. the needle did come from a
package though (might not have been a brand name or a
medical one but I don't ask too many questions). and i
think the paint chips and broken walls are just to
keep the patients spirits up (you pray to god to get
well and get out of there, in my case don't complain
about having to take a HIV test, I’ve never been so
not scared of a needle in my life).

5. All they do here is drink vodka and i won't be able
to escape constant drunkenness: false, they have beer
too.

6. will be the only one of the 16 students who won't
speak Russian... false know why? cause Russian is
ridiculously hard (there are three of us)

7. there will not be any Americans there wrong again
there's this really weird guy from Washington DC who
is obsessed with kickboxing and fighting, oh and
women, really really into women, his names Ben so be
on the look out ladies.

8. Dostoevsky is the greatest writer and the city of
St. Petersburg loves him: i bet you thought i was
gonna say false but not even 80 years of atheistic
communism can wipe fydor of the map, his salvation
thru suffering is very alive in this land of black
snow. honestly that might be all the myths i can
address right now, will address the myths of
babushka's, kvass, and others in later emails. this
being the first email it is g-rated after this those
of you with curious children might have to use a black
magic marker as we all know i am a casual cusser. what
can i say i get it from my father. I’m here, i just
went to Dostoevsky's house it was incredible, i feel
complete tomorrow we go to the hermitage for a field
trip. the avenues are as wide as the women's
cheekbones are high. everything is in some sort of
coded language that makes it difficult to understand
(apparently they call it Cyrillic) but I’m getting
there hopefully next time I’ll say goodbye in Russian
but right now I don't know the word peace ell p.s. by
the way I’ve seen 2 bear cubs just chilling on park
benches

Mistakes were made

yes as with traveling in any foreign countries people
will make mistakes, college students especially. When
it comes to shopping troubles can arise, certainly
when the language is so different, one tends just to
get the gist of the product you are buying and not
read those pesky side notes. for instance the other
day I fell pray to buying a very nice beer which had
no alcohol in it. also Jarrod, one of my suitemates
was nearly killed by some super spicy mustard, now we
like it but that first surprise bite sends you for a
loop. And of course the best of these mistakes again
involves Jarrod, who after a late evening of sampling
some of St. Petersburg’s finest vodkas, cracks a
energy drink on our way to remedial Russian 001. Now
we get to class and obviously i was expecting Jarrod
to be in bad shape but after Tatyana (our Russian
babushka teacher) told him "Jarrod I can see that you
can't read." I was laughing and glanced back at Jarrod
only to see that the side of the can said 9% alcohol.
which I think everyone knows. needless to say I didn't
tell him (I honestly thought he had finished it, he'd
been drinking it for 2 hours) He got to the point
where he was really unable to function at all. good
stuff. A few little notes on my Russian life, firstly
we have communal pots and pans held by our 24 hour
landlady at the end of the hall who has to deal with
40 college students. she's the one who if you choose
to call would answer the phone and try and track me
down (she's constantly walking into the rooms trying
to find someone usually mid "social gathering" oh and
she speaks no English.) The subway, besides being
similar to journey to the center of the earth in terms
of depth is very convenient and easy, interestingly
enough not very full most of the time, and on the
escalator, no one walks everyone just stands, not like
in England where if you occupy the left side or
"passing lane" your libel to be beaten. There are many
more things to address unfortunately the cashier at
this internet cafe refuses to cash my 1000 ruble
note(33 dollars) a common problem when you roll with
the big bucks like me. many have addressed concerns
that some people who should receive these emails are
not or that your email has changed, seeing how it's an
hour to the internet cafe and -10 f outside I'll leave
it to you cozy Americans to do the job, oh and as I
said I can't buy any more minutes right now (sometimes
one has to buy extra groceries just to cash a 500. but
nobody said it'd be easy) only 2 mins left gotta type
fast, which reminds me that some of you also are
concerned with my grammar and spelling, well last time
the keyboard had limited keys and few capital letters
available, this time I have to hit the spacebar with
my fist. ell

City of Breshnev

goosd news, I founsd that mxcdsonalsds always breaks
your thousansd for you!!! so up yours cxafe max!! well
it appears that a lot of you are more interestesd in
Russia than I thought, I've got all sorts of questions
regarding food, the amerixcans, the area I'm living
in, etxc (if you haven't alreasdy notixcesd tosday's
glitxch is being unable to type c without xc and no d
without sd) but before any of that nonsense will
someone please recxorsd the super bowl for me?? my
folks xcertainly xcannot sdo it, someone must step up
bexcause if bill xcower wins I want to see it. I live
in what the tourguisde affexctionately xcalls the
xcity of breshnev. Apparently in the 70's there was a
housing xcrunxch in sdowntown st. pete's so housing
xcomplexes were put up in quite a hurry, basixcally i
live on the outskirts, there is nothing but strip
malls ansd harsdxcore xcommunist builsdings
surrounsding me. On the upsisde the metro is only a
brisk (ands i mean brisk)9 minute walk away ands the
supermarket is only about three. it's not as sketxchy
as it sounsds or looks at first becxause of xcourse
you xcannot go more than i'sd say 12.5 feet without
meeting a sexcurity gaursd or offixcer of russian law.
The foosd??? dson't you mean the mayonaise?? axctually
i haven't enxcounteresd that mucxh mayo i've been
roxcking the mushrooms at every meal I xcan though
ansd I'sd say the foods is... interesting. I sdig it
lots of bliny's or xcrepes filled with any possible
xcombonation. haven't roxckesd the kebab sxcene but I
will bexcause they are my first ansd true love. the
amerixcans??? sdo you really wanna hear about them???
xcan't you just cxut ands paste?? Jarrod one member of
my suite, 29 looks like an aberxcrombie mosdel ansd
has spent 10 years in the air forxce as a survival
spexcialist. neesdless to say my new best friensd,
he's unbelievably funny, ands he's an olsd man like
me, not into the hardscxore sdrinking (exxcept for
that axcxcisdental 9 am energy sdrink mishap). very
into seeing the sights ansd full of unbelievable
stories. Chad: Jarrod's roomate ansd the sexconds half
of "the barracxks" as we like to cxall them, a marine.
quite, spensds most of his time studsying exxcept for
when he goes out cxlubbing ansd sdoesn't xcome home
til 6am. he's 23 ansd the skinniest marine i imagine
possible. Patrick, my roomate xcompleting the
"xcivilian" sisde of the suite maybe 20 years olsd,
from new hampshire. this boy loves vosdka ansd
sleeping, oh ansd jazz musixc, interesting xcombo. I
think we've excxhangesd like 5 minutes of
xconversation total. Pavel, russian born amerixcan
xcitizen a "moderate" in everything but his sdrinking
ands ego. Heavily sarxcasticx ansd kinsda a sdixck but
my friensd xcause he's fluent. he's an international
stusdies major so neesdless to say we have some
unpleasant xconversations. Jacob, very goosd at
russian is this gay boy from ohio. dsefinitely one of
my favorite people on the trip he's alreasdy got the
invite to the xcape. very interestesd in going to the
hermitage with me ansd jarrosd for several sdays. math
major Kendra: reformesd xcommunist, but before you
xcringe she's now just a soxcialist, after her arrest
in xcuba. Haven't spent nearly enough time talking to
her, but it's only been a week. Honestly that's all
the profiling i xcan sdo for now, maybe i'll work on
it some more later. I suppose you'sd like a sample of
my trips so far. the hermitage was ands still is
amazing massive is all i xcan say, oh ansd stolen, I
mean the russians must have gone to pixcasso's house
ansd taken what he hasd lying on the easel, they've
got like 5 rooms of him, very impressive art of all
styles ands periodss. tosday we went to tsarkoe selo
the tsar's summer resisdencxe we hads to wear little
booties on our feet whixch masde the harsdwoods floors
one giant icxe skating rink. we saw russia's 8th
wonsder of the worlsd "the amber room" whixch has
taken 30 years ansd like 10 million dsollars to
restore(hey, that's like a billion rubles, ansd keep
in minsd they xcan't finsd xchange for a thousansd)
the arcxitexcture was as always withe the tsar's way
over the top. but it was great. i took a bunxch of
photo's ansd i hope to get the website thing going so
everyone xcan enjoy. no bears, although it was xcolsd
however a wilsd sdog sdisd hang out with us while we
walkeds or ran the garsdens (we went to a new low
tosday as the bottom of the thermometer hit -20) i'm
now living full time in long johns. however it was
only -15 or so in st. pete's whixch is like 1 layer
less, so just about everything i own. Amazingly though
i'm sdigging the xcolsd ands my room here is warmer
than the one at my house (we're getting a spaxce
heater pops!!) so that's kinsda what it's like minus
the cxrazy lingo ansd sdrinking of my amerixcan
friensds here, whixch my parents neesd not hear about
xcause they assume I'm leadsing the paxck(whixch I'm
not). but for those of you who want a little peixce of
airforxce lingo here we go "okay boys our t.o.t. is 15
minutes, hey ell xcan you believe that those guys
winchestered 3 bottles of absinth last night?? well
charlie doesn't take a day off so neither dso we...
Pushkin in 15" ansd for your information I abstainesd
from the absinth, but yes that is what it's like in
russia, in the barraxcks, but hey at least I sdon't
neesd an alarm xcloxck anymore. if your not sixck of
these absursdly long emails yet fear not I'm stopping
off at mxcsdonalsds to break a thousansd on the way
home so i xcan sensd you more, if you are sixck of
them... well xchange your email ell

You ate where?!?!

okay looks like this keyboard is free from defects, so
any mistakes made are mine. Firstly a small anecdote
again about our incompetence as a group. I expect
Jarrod and I to make mistakes I mean we're in remedial
Russian, but when I go out with a large group of
Russian majors I want results, today obviously wasn't
that day. We went to the open air market today in a
whopping -20 (although weather.com kindly pointed out
that it feels like -32) Fahrenheit. we were told that
the open air market is open 7 days a week till 7 at
night, if you call 3 vendors and a stray dog open then
I guess it was open. after perusing the goods and
making a whopping 0 purchases we decided to eat,
fairly simple eh?? I mean it's hard not to find a
restaurant, well we found one and walked in all 9 of
us, should have turned around as soon as we realized
our host was wearing a corset over her sweater, but we
didn't... yep it was a strip joint. Well I mean we
already have our coats off and it's fucking cold
outside might as well stay. It was by far the best
food we've had yet (must have been a high class place)
and the girls were only practicing striping in full
sweaters and jeans (unfortunately for them the dance
area is right next to the door) Just goes to show that
we have absolutely no idea what's going on at any
moment.
This week was the first week of elective classes and
I've gotten acquainted quite well with 2 of 3 teachers
(one of them seems to be stuck somewhere, maybe
Mongolia??) here's what I got.
Tatyana: my Russian teacher, or as a kid who had her
last semester put it "satanic babushka" she's tough
and seems not to like boys ,it also hurts the boys
case that the one girl in the class is a auditory
genius who picked up German fluently in under 12
months, can sing the alphabet backwards including the
inversed melody... and she taught her self these
things. Whereas Jarrod and I spend most of our time
trying to correctly pronounce "ochin preyatna" only to
have her laugh at us. that's right for 3 hours a day I
deal with this cruella de ville.
my literature teacher (didn't catch the name) seems
very nice and relaxed no real deadlines just read
Eugene Onegin, crime and punishment, Anna Karenina and
A hero of our time by the end of the semester and we
should be fine. Very nice Babushka I sure wish she
taught a class of mine that didn't meet just once a
week.
"The General" Igor Dimitrivitch amazing man, possibly
ex KGB and certainly rocking a fake leg. he's teaching
my Kievian-revolution Russian history class and my
communist era history class. was quoted today "The
Norman’s are the yeast to the Slavic dough" If you
don't laugh at that I don't know what to tell you
cause I'm not about to talk to you about the Norman
theory, which he also said that if he had taught
during Stalin era "I would not be here for next
class". These Russians take their history seriously.
Tomorrow I've decided to skip Tatyana and head to see
fydor in his grave, seems like a good decision to me.
A word about the cold (I think I've included one of
these in every email, but shit it's cold) there is a
difference between cold at home and cold here at home
when it's "freezing" it means that the usual coat and
hat isn't quite enough but you bear it out, here it
means when you look outside on a nice sunny day you
can see the water particles floating by in ice form,
it means you can see your breath in the hallway. And
it means that everything you have... is one layer too
few. again a good quote on staying warm from the
general "it's not so much what you put on top of you
as what you put beside you" you gotta put the warmest
layer I.e. long johns and thermals right on your skin
man, if there's any air there it's gonna rock at about
1 degree. you can't really blink for too long or
you'll open your eyes to eyelash prison, and it's
beginning to get to that cold point where your scarf
is just a block of ice after a block (keep in mind I’m
never outside for more than like 9 minutes) those of
you who have heard Keith’s story of being the coldest
and hottest in his life in the same place within 6
months of each other... I have officially destroyed my
chances of that unless I catch on fire between now and
May. Do me a favor and go outside and turn on your
cars and leave them running, if this global warming
thing is for real I want to jumpstart it. Now I've
gotten some excellent emails back but some of you are
slacking, I'm looking towards the chimney sweep
department, you know I like a good update (or perhaps
they have already changed their email to avoid further
email updates) Tomorrow we go to the engineers castle
where Dostoevsky studied in his youth and tsar Paul
was murdered by his guards, luckily there are no
gardens really like Tsarkoe Selo, so I won't feel
wimpy when i choose the indoor version. More info as
it strikes me ell

Somebody Please Help Me!!!!

as you can see I'm sure I've been having trouble
adding names to the list, therefore i think everyone
just got like 3 of the same emails. For those just
added please just pick someone on the list and have
them forward you the others, it would take me to long
and these last few days have been too ridiculous to
cut short. but first some good excerpts about the
sights for my mom and Pop’s: for all you soviet
sympathizers I went to the Kirov museum maybe the best
museum yet complete with the jacket and hat he was
wearing when he died (bullet hole intact)
interestingly enough this is paired with the "soviet
schooling museum" which highlights achievements in
soviet education system good stuff lots of propaganda.
Very very in your face attendants but fun. then we
went to Pavlovsk yesterday which was beautiful, and
warm (1 degree) we went all around the park which was
filled with jolly Russians playing in the snow,
tobogganing and troika rides (we did a bit of sledding
ourselves and I crossed my first frozen river)
We also went to the Engineer’s Castle, which was a
former tsarist palace until Paul was murdered there
and no Romanov would set foot in it. Frankly I don’t
understand why we did either, apart from it being mid
restoration (most of the Palace looked like an
abandoned office, except for the rooms where there
were big surly workmen chain smoking, mixing paint and
chasing vodka with instant coffee) it was also hosted
by the most overly interested guide in Russia, I don’t
think many people go to this museum, he was telling
the most detailed boring stories, not about the murder
of the tsar or the engineers school that was here
before, instead he was talking about the reproduction
paintings, it was awful, not to mention we were forced
to here it twice once from him in Russian and then
again in English.
Enough romantic guidebook crap here we go: Saturday
night: we'd been planning on going to this Irish pub
all week, which we'd heard had the finest hamburgers
in all of mother Russia. after a nice 10 block walk
(the subway system has one flaw: the city center is
not involved) we get there and it's packed and no one
will give us the time of day (happens when Americans
roll in 15 deep in Russian bars) but we eventually and
miserably find some seats which they promptly mark
reserved (subtle hint) but we're here and staying here
at least for a beer, then someone orders one of the
burgers. It looks like one of those meals that if you
eat it you get free, this place was home of the ten
inch... hamburger (a little Adrian’s love there) so we
finally got into the pub style ate some burgers
watched Manchester United and had a good time.
But we had another bar to go to that we'd read about
in a guide book, so we go there or at least close to
it we had to ask directions in Russian from to Russian
women translation: "excuse me do you know where "the
scenic" is?" "no what is it" "it's a bar" "oh a bar,
follow us we're going to very popular Russian bar" I
know what your thinking great culture opportunity.
outside this looks like an excellent bar, it's in a
basement, many people and cars outside awesome. we go
inside and it is... a strip bar, what the F&*$^ck are
you kidding me?? again?? well so we decide to stay,
we've kinda made friends with the Russians and why not
if the girls don't mind neither do we. first rule
about strip bars... if the women aren't taking off
there clothes it's not a strip bar. “so where are we?”
we begin to wonder, just a dance bar with half naked
girls table dancing?? then one of our more eager
classmates tries to pick up a Russian girl and we
discover yep… it's a brothel. 5 outta 8 girls are
escorts. things are getting weirder, but hey this is
what Russia is all about right (Keith had just asked
me earlier that evening about the human trafficking
aspect of Russia, apparently he saw something on 60
minutes)... we decide to stay, then one of the girls
gets propositioned, that's right a man wanted to buy
her for his son (it musta been something with the
lighting and the extreme security of the place because
all this sounds a lot sketchier than it was) she
kindly refused. Then not ten minutes later the same
girl goes to the bar and orders a 2 drinks and is 10
roubles short, she turns to see if one of us can cover
her when the man next to her grabs her breast and
hands her a ten rouble note, needless to say that
didn’t go over well.
things were weird no doubt about it, but how could
they get more interesting?? I can only imagine that
the owner's thought pattern goes something like this:
"well we're catering to one indulgence why not add
another, and i find food network fascinating!!" yep
they wheel out a hotplate and food, stop the dancing
and music and bring out a chef "everybody pause for
the cooking demo" needless to say that was the last
straw, half naked women, Russian grandma
transvestites, prostitutes, propositions that's all
well and good but when you start making stir fry at 1
am it's time for the Americans to jet cause obviously
this is gonna only get weirder.
9 people 2 taxi's (or actually in Russia you just
take a car) 2 rules
1.split the military into two cars incase there's any
trouble
2. split the Russian linguists into two cars to help
the military boys in case of hostage negotiations.
so that was our Saturday evening anybody able to beat
that??? Now as you can see we've been having some
interesting experiences with safety as a group. one
guy here who lives off campus was walking to his house
when a man asked him for a light, (john at the time
had a laptop and a wallet with a bunch of cash on him)
and the man proceeded to mug him and take his hat,
gloves, and watch (quite honestly way more valuable
than any money are the hat and gloves).
Then one of those loud obnoxious Aussie’s that lived
down the hall and think the world is there playground,
was cold and drunk the other night5 and decided that
the best way to remedy this situation was to go to the
local police station (as Jarrod put it "if you've ever
watched discovery channel you know that's a bad idea")
next thing you know he's got a gun pointed at his head
and his cell phone is "confiscated". so perhaps safety
is not this city's strongpoint.
and just because i can here are a few more culture
shock moments I bought fish sticks thinking they were
mozzarella sticks or chicken (it's really tough to
tell sometimes), Jarrod tried to cook a pizza in a
frying pan (caution men cooking) somebody bought
moisturizer instead of shampoo, it just never ends oh
and my roommate ate some salami the other day followed
by a few hours later "i think that's the kinda sausage
you're supposed to cook" this shit happens like 4
times a day in the dorms did i mention jarrod and the
nutmeg?? i think i did. another interesting problem
for us: we still have yet to find a bar a real Russian
bar, it's either been the British pub (which comes
complete with British prices), strip joint, House of
ill repute, or the most commonly frequented one
casino's which are just slot machines skeevy gamblers
and high security which kicks us out once they realize
we're just there for a piva.
well that might be all i have to say. keep your
emails coming i like to think I’m not boring you all
to death. oh and I did laundry this morning and for 60
extra rubes you get the real deal, this little old
babushka does your laundry for you (while
chain-smoking like 4 packs an hour so your laundry
might not have the "febreeze fresh" smell) and she
folds it all military style, unreal. oh and the cafe
downstairs yeah I get a double espresso (straight from
Italia) for get this 10 rubles which is approximately
33 cents sometimes there is this attendant who only
charges 9 rubles too (I’d tell her to charge me the
normal price but my Russian consists of just adding
-ski to the end of each word) byski fromski elski


One down 15 to go(sorry I fucked up, this is supposed to be another entry)



yep that's right folks somebody's out of the race
she's going home. (she was the early favorite for the
early return flight and stuck it out and won the prize
for early return) Krystle: what she is doing on a
Russian trip in the first place was a mystery to us
all. She was the reason for so few phone calls home
from the rest of us because she occupied the phone
meant to be shared by the 30 odd students of our floor
about 12 hours a day leaving the rest of us very
kindly that 12 hour window between 11:30 pm and 11:30
am when all of you are asleep. She only ate at
McDonalds same as at home apparently, in fact her
doctor after clocking her cholesterol at 255 (or as he
put: that of a 70 year old man) reduced her to only
the fish sandwich. When she did go out it was 3 sheets
to the wind and she was asking "Who's your favorite
general???? mine's Patton what about you jarrod?? is
it the desert fox?" she's leaving on Tuesday after an
evening out with the Estonians on our floor which no
one has been able to find out what happened except
they were stopped by the police 3 separate times.
needless to say we're all thrilled.
yesterday those moving into home stay went to dinner
at their houses to meet the families and those who
weren't buddied up. I went with my roommate Patrick,
as you can imagine I didn't have a lot to say... no
Russian and Patrick’s fluentish. I only made one
sentence before I quit trying because I was due for an
international incident. I meant to say I think St.
Petersburg is very cold (my teacher has taught us all
of 3 useful things to say) but mistook the word for
cold with that for BAD!!! yeah I was done after that.
after a wonderfully awkward meal where the host had to
stand and eat while Patrick, myself and her 2
daughters crammed around the dinner table we sat down
for some small talk, the girls had to be evicted for
the chairs. Patrick who usually doesn't speak at all
was forced to carry the load, and instead of talking
about himself or music (he's a pianist and she's a
professional violinist) he starts talking about me.
Nothing more pleasant than sitting in on a
conversation about yourself and only understanding
like 3 words. So of course he tells her I love
Dostoevsky, oh shit you done opened a whole new can of
worms there. "I no like Dostoevsky, please why would
you like him?" gee thanks Patrick we talked a bit
about literature (it turns out that she can speak
English at least a little bit but the program pays her
to keep it hush hush) and I managed once again to
escape unscathed. then for the next 2.5 hours i was
subjected to Patrick on the piano (which was nice)
then the girls came in and played with him (also very
nice) and then the mother went crazy and began
scolding everyone (including Patrick) about not
playing correctly (this was less nice). overall though
a fun evening, especially when you compare it with
some of the other experiences.
Jarrod tagged along with a girl to a rich babushka's
house (her son is a Russian pop singer and the whole
apartment looks like a groupie lives there) where not
only did the 88 year old babushka rip her shirt open
at the table saying it was hot (yeah apparently she's
a little crazy) but this morning he was sick off of
the beats he'd eaten (the girl was a vegetarian so
they got only beats and bread). another girl's
babushka explained that she does only two things stays
in the apartment and uses the telephone and goes to
the store "nahodka" down stairs. Most of the meal was
spent pointing out which items came from nahodka and
which from other markets.
Finally I think it might be time to explain one of my
favorite terms Babushka'ed: to berated or attacked by
a belligerent grandma. how often does this happen you
ask??? often, very often. one day we were waiting for
some of us to finish grocery shopping and not wanting
to get cold we stayed inside this little mall area,
sure enough a little 4'7" babushka came right out of
her stall screaming at us in Russian. This was like
day 6 so no one knew what to do or what she was saying
so we just kept saying da, da and since there was
about 7 of us it must have been rather amusing.
another example is one girl was sitting on the subway
next to a young man when a babushka came on board and
rather than ask the young man for his seat she started
screaming at the girl and lecturing that because
babushka's used to make her move as a child (I imagine
that was pre revolution) she always made women move
(the man seemed to really enjoy the scene) and of
course I myself am Babushka’ed nearly everyday when I
go to class with Tatyana who just belligerently yells
net net net at me and jarrod for 3 hours.
yesterday jarrod and I hoofed it all around the city
and went up to the top of the cathedral and took some
amazing photographs and visited the ice palace (yeah
it was crazy, complete with elephant slide) someday I
will post them on the internet but probably not till I
return home sorry. tomorrow we go to the philharmonic
(yawn) and next week we go to Novgorod. Interestingly
enough we have thurs and fri off for men's day this
week (you only get one day off for women's day, but
that's probably to make up for the fact that women
live like an extra 30 years over men here) I think
that might be all I have for now. peace ellski

The Beginning of the Post-Frozen Era

you wouldn't believe it if you saw it... water on the
sidewalk my friends. I don't know if you all have
really had your SUV’s running this whole time or what
but I think most every Russian thermometer has broken
(most only go to -10 degrees Celsius) It's fucking 32
degrees here and shit is melting (I've been assured
that it won't stay). I didn't think I’d live to see
the day when I could go out in just a sweatshirt till
at least march but here I am warm and perhaps
overdressed by Russian standards (they run a higher
bac (blood alcohol content) than I do and can afford
to wear less). Speaking of vodka apparently there are
some nasty rumors circulating the US about a vodka
shortage in Russia...what!?!?!? are you kidding???
there are three yes three aisles in every store with
their own security guard patrolling them making sure
the national resource isn't pilfered.
now about my weekend... Well we went to the St.
Petersburg philharmonic on Saturday night for what was
dubbed "orchestra music" well we pile in to a huge
room (more chandeliers than people...a common
occurrence here) and listen to a 25 minute
introduction followed by the entrance of a pianist and
a violin player who looked like Roger Ebert. He
proceeded to give another 25 minute introduction at
which point those of us not asleep were treated to
about 5 pieces of music. then they musicians got off
stage so obviously we thought that there would be some
more instruments filing on... nope they come back out
(vodka break???) and play another 5 songs and file out
again (second vodka break???) they return a third time
at which point you can look at our group and see who
is making a break at intermission and not turning back
because they are gnawing on some part of their body or
clothing as though a bullet is being removed. (my
parents will be happy to hear I was gnawing on my
fingernails!!)
so we make a break for the closest restaurant we can
find. we go inside sit down, only after admiring the
abundance of dead animals on the walls do we
notice...the stage...yep you got it: strip joint. for
those of you keeping track at home that's 3 strip
joints in 3 weeks. No one was dancing, but there was
no doubt about it. another good meal, Viking themed,
good soup (my staple). then to cap this fine evening
off, it was someone’s birthday. Obviously we needed
champagne, so off to the neighborhood store. The
champagne section unfortunately was a little to close
to the vodka section where the armed guard was and
sadly he had such horrible BO (seinfeld-esque) that we
grabbed the first kind we could find.
Back at the dorm someone asked the question "why does
the champagne have cartoons on it??"...yep children's
champagne a big fat 0.0% alcohol (and yes there is
something rather disturbing with the whole concept of
a whole shelf of kids champagne but this is a country
with a bit of a drinking problem). oh well too bad,
just comes with the Russian territory. then last night
we went to another restaurant (double birthday) which
was good or bad depending who you were and what you
ordered. One girl ordered a tuna sandwich (never go to
close to home in a foreign country) and got tuna piled
on mushrooms and i think beans, no bread. Another
person ordered a ham sandwich and got 2 tiny pieces of
bread and uncooked bacon. i got mushroom soup and
bliny no prob, delicious (i learned my lesson one day
by ordering potatoes and vegetables as a side: 4
slices of grilled potato and a piece of lettuce).
a new interesting development in the dorms is the
bathroom situation, apparently Russian toilets and
baths are telepathically interconnected: once one goes
they all go. about 4 out of 8 rooms are currently
experiencing technical difficulties with the bathroom
scene (i.e. flooding of epic proportions), just more
communist spirit: share and share alike.
and my final little bit of adventure goes out to the
"leftists" shall we say (you know G.W. Bush is
listening) I went to the "Political History Museum" or
communist museum and saw the propaganda, the documents
and clothing of the period (no concrete computer but
one Breshnev era TV, looked like quality picture to
me) and of course I saw Lenin's study, his desk and
the balcony he addressed the proletariat from during
his time in St. Petersburg. All housed in the Tsar's
mistress's former house (Lenin always liked a bit of
irony). And don't worry I snapped up a bunch of
pictures (for 40 rubles you can take pictures of
everything in Russia except the amber room) including
some great soviet stained glass.
Still got 20 minutes of internet time so: a new
person profile Katie or Katya: the third member of my
beginner Russian class apart from Jarrod and myself.
she's kind of like a 5 year old except that she can
pick up languages annoyingly fast (as opposed to
jarrod and myself who have the learning curve of 5
year olds) She enjoys milk, coloring, singing
everything, and dancing (if you thought no one
actually danced like Elaine think again, and she does
bi-daily) she doesn't wear pants, just dresses (bright
idea in 30 below) she even had a blowout argument with
her mother before she left about taking a pair (she
took them but I think she's burnt them). needless to
say she and I don't really see eye to eye on a lot of
things especially because she is a shameless defender
of Tatyana (tatyana has never said net to her the
whole time, in fact she only says "I don't think Katya
is American I think she is Russian!! Jarrod and Ell
what is wrong with you?? why don't you speak like
katya???) again tatyana doesn't really seem to like
guys. that's all I got more from the motherland later
peace ell

Birch Twigs and Naked Babushkas

yep, that's right the American college students
descended on the St. Petersburg public banya. culture
shock?? try culture clash. here's how it happened: The
banya talk has been circulating for weeks amongst us
Americans, the year round students said it was the
most memorable experience in Russia, and since our
program director seems incapable of any sort of
planning or scheduling (how she got the job remains
something of a mystery) we decided to go ourselves on
coed night. We went with one experienced banya boy,
who claims to frequent the banya almost every week
(this immediately came into question when he couldn't
find the banya). After a good deal of searching we
find the banya which from the outside looks like a
huge public toilet (disconcerting I know) we go inside
and of course it's not quite up to some of the girls
(or guys) standards, typical Russian building, about
as clean as the hospital i.e. less than you'd like
with all the nakedness that's about to go down. we
walk in and RENT sheets and pay the entrance fee, a
grand total of 4 dollars. Modesty is already thrown
out the door when we are all given 1 room for our
belongings and to change into our togas. After we
change in shifts we begin the trek to the banya, first
there is the bar/ lounge area serving beer, potato
chips and an absurd variety of dried fish. We then
make a bathroom break before entering, of course my
delightful comrades don't watch the door properly
(there seem to be few locking doors in the banya)
while i'm using it and damn if a Russian man didn't
see fit to share the one toilet with me, again modesty
out the door. Then we have to enter the shower room,
if there hadn't been 10 other Americans with me I
might have turned back at the river of mud coursing
through the shower room (those sandals I bought before
going: best investment ever) we did our rinsing along
with maybe 30 other crazy naked Russians who were all
beating each other with birch twigs/leaves (they
actually have quite a variety of branches each with
it's own mystical properties). Finally Banya time: we
go into the warm up room, a small wood paneled room
with the classic hot rocks in the center. Good sweat,
I felt like Kramer, alright I can do this it's hot but
relaxing; banya is not to crazy or anything just a
sauna. then I’m informed that this is the warm up
room: oh shit. we go into the next room and there is a
rickety wooden platform about ten feet high in this
room, you ascend the staircase, the railing is like
400 degrees and each step adds about 50 degrees. on
the top of this platform there are about 12(small
area) Russian men and women covered in sweat beating
the crap out of each other with these twigs, all ages
all sexes most naked. huh I guess this is kinda
insane. just as your eyes are adjusting to the dim
lighting you realize you're completely drenched and
the far wall is just a huge brick oven. I try and run
my hands through my hair...yeah don't do
that...untouchably hot. then the Russians notice that
there nice banya experience is being invaded by a
bunch of American college students. "Fuck that let's
see what these kids can take. Open the doors" oh yeah
they open the oven up throw some beer on it...yeah you
heard me beer for that nice bread baking smell.
suddenly a insane wave of heat hits you, you can't
even keep you eyes open (it's like when you open up a
400 degree oven in the kitchen and you get that blast,
except we were already in a 400 degree oven) you feel
like you might be getting burnt through and through.
then they do the helicopter, spinning a towel over
ones head and subjecting us all to insane blasts of
heat (you'd think it would be cooling, nope the only
thing you can do is assume the crash position and beg
for mercy) at this point every one including the
Russians are grunting and groaning in agony. Gotta
hold out, gotta show these Russians we're tough. I
think the first time we lasted about 7 minutes(that
was probably my best showing of the evening). then you
descend (which unfortunately brings you closer to the
firewall) and get out of there and run to the ice cold
bath do a quick dunk and head to the bar. phew that
was crazy, but that was just round one. we get to the
lounge area and watch some Russian Olympic hockey
(nothing better than a bunch of hooting and hollering
with some semi clad babushka's). next round we skip
the warm up room, buy our own beating leaves and let
the sweat fly (oh yeah did I mention the nastiness of
the flying sweat...I won't go into any further
detail). I strike up conversation with the man next to
me, we talk hockey. As you all know I know nothing
about hockey but it doesn't seem to matter as long as
I agree with him that Russia is going to win we have
no problems. He beats me for a while, I beat him, good
times. well it's getting on about 10 o clock or 10:30
at night, obviously the management has decided that
everyone has had enough to drink (your changing room
doubles as you private drinking room as I pass them
you see Russians pounding vodka and chasing it with
pickles, which apparently is tradition, I imagine it
primes you for that big chunk of salted herring in the
middle of the table) So it's time to open up the
outside pool!! the what!?!? you ask yeah next thing
you know instead of the cold pool indoors we are
running through the snow into the luke warm pool
outside under the stars, and just like Kramer says
"the air is cold the water is hot... it's
sweeeeeee-eet" of course the water might be like 95
degrees, so the effect isn't quite the same. but
nothing like a bunch of Americans doing cannon balls
at 11 at night to clear out the pool (before you
cringe about Americans being loud and offensive
everywhere we go I'll have you know that the biggest
splash came from a Russian grandpa or "Dadushka") yep
all in all it was a pretty spectacular time. I awoke
this morning to notice I probably lost like 7 layers
of skin so I know have that healthy pale Russian look.

In other events Jarrod went to his home stay meal
(the one before was someone else’s that he tagged
along for) where firstly the girl he went with was
forced to help cook the meal while he relaxed,
secondly the meal again was disgusting. it consisted
of fake crab meat mixed with mayo, sour cream, and
lemon juice mmmm, what could you possibly put that on
to make it even more tasty??? how about raw fish
soaked in a castor oil like substance??? yep that
might do it. (he managed to not puke until he got home
and neither did the girl who went with him, who was a
vegetarian and had never had fish before...ever) the
house itself I cannot describe any better than
Dostoevsky who we've come to the conclusion described
it about 150 years ago as in Marmeledov's house in
Crime and Punishment (according to jarrod not much has
changed except there are live wires hanging from the
ceiling) He will be sleeping on a couch in his own
room, the mother sleeps on a bunch of log's strapped
together and towels laid on top of it and the daughter
sleeps behind a partition. yeah we've got a pool going
on who's moving back into the dorms first and jarrod
is rather a popular bet. although I told him he can't
move back in until I go for dinner (apparently they
also ate the world's spiciest mustard, I must try it,
it came from a can and jarrod thinks it might be
Stalinist Era) well I can't believe it but I burnt
through a whole hour writing this silly email. I hope
it's not too boring. stay in touch ellski

To The Finland Gulf

I've now been away from Russian class for 4 days,
totally forgotten everything. I'm definitely getting
Babushka’ed on Monday. But on the bright side I have
seen some really interesting things. On Thursday a
group of us went out on a museum mission, First stop
the anthropology museum. Why on earth would i go to an
anthropology museum you ask? Well apparently Peter the
Great, the founder of this city took it upon himself
to eliminate some superstitions that seemed to be
circulating around Russia during his reign. One of
them was that deformed children were the product of
the devil, obviously the truth had to be put out
there, Peter informed them that the deformed babies
were in fact the result of the mothers fears and bad
thoughts about having a deformed baby (perhaps
something to look into you perspective mothers out
there). Well how do you get the message across to
millions of peasants?? yep you pickle deformed babies,
Peter would pay peasants money for their dead babies
so that he could pickle them and put them on display,
and they're still here 300 years later. Wild stuff,
and rather nauseating.
From there we went to the Defense of Leningrad Museum
where, a small World War II museum, the most exciting
thing that happened there was that somehow we wound up
with 10 tickets for 4 people, no one really knows how
that happened because the words sound nothing alike
but since they were a whopping 30 cents a piece we
took the hit. then yesterday we went to Novgorod the
oldest city in Russia, complete with a church for
every year of it's existence. Simply ridiculous, it's
a small town and it has like 56 churches (yes sue I
took plenty of pictures) that's like 2 per block. we
saw some guys doing the polar bear club thing when
it's 15 below or something ridiculous like that.
Apparently it’s not just jumping in cold water here,
instead they cut the hole in the ice way out in the
middle of the river so that you must calmly walk
(running isn’t allowed) in your speedo out there to
freeze, jump in and then walk back, all at -15 not
including the rather brisk wind.
And today I made a trek to the Gulf of Finland, which
if you look at a map might seem rather close, seeing
as how St. Petersburg is a port and on the coast. But
that is just a lie the closest subway is a good hour
walk from the sea. Oh and doesn't that sound romantic
a nice walk through the city and then along the
coastline. No, no it's not, it became real weird real
fast. Barbed wire and barking rabid dogs were all I
saw. Since the other day when we saw a man just
walking into the subway by our dorm get attacked and
bitten by a rabid roaming dog dogs strike the fear of
dog in me (the only way he repulsed the dog was to
start barking back at him). When I finally got to the
Gulf it was on lock down, couldn't come close to the
water. got a glimpse over a bridge and turned and
headed back, I thought for sure I was gonna get mugged
as I seem to look American (I got flagged today too in
the subway, finally I got asked for my "documents" I
was beginning to think it wasn't ever gonna happen).
So all in all a good week. Well it seems lately that
we've developed a confidence problem as a whole, we've
been here a month, we have the basic idea of how
things work and now we've been confidently trying new
things. Bad Idea, for instance we tried a Korean
restaurant the other day, keep in mind that we really
don't know all the words in a Russian restaurant,
Korean menu in Russian?? it's just a crapshoot what
you get. What did we get?? Sick. then after that
nauseating meal I decided that I needed a bliny or
crepe, now I’d heard that the potato ones off the
street were particularly good, well this particular
bliny stand didn't have a solo potato bliny and we
didn't know what the word next to potato was, turns
out it was some sort of mayonnaise/sour cream/
ketchup/ sweet sauce. No Joy there my friends. we got
back to the dorm and one girl didn't make it out again
(but her soup did).
we then continued our poor food day by eating a kebab
which I had no problem with but one of the kids
managed to be number 5 this week with non alcohol
related illness. More and more our ordering adventures
remind me of Keith in France when he said "I've eaten
a great deal of something, but I don't know what it
is" only to find out it was tongue (which mind you
seems to be incorporated into 9 out of 10 soups here)
one of my staples here is these "meat" filled
pastries, no one is quite sure what they are or really
what meat they even taste like (they serve them in the
cafeteria downstairs so they seem to be safe).
In Novgorod I ordered a meal, paid for it and never
received it, everyone else got served but not me
(after seeing the dish I was quite pleased that it
never arrived) thankfully it was only a 2 dollar
entree, because there was no chance of explaining in
this little cafe the concept of refund.
that's all I can handle right now, I have more to
tell but this internet cafe is making me nauseous as
the haze of cigarette smoke is pretty bad. Sorry I
never answer anyone’s emails except with these bulk
ones, someday I will. As to the question of mailing
something here, it is apparently rather expensive and
slow (apparently customs helps itself to any food
products and opens any boxes, perhaps tries the
clothing on) oh and it's not even in Russia, it's in
Finland, but I can get it. but email is king for
contacting me (I might have to by a soviet gasmask for
next time though.) ell

A Thousand Doobers Each!

so let me see the last time we spoke I had taken a
long walk?? sounds about right. well not a lot has
really been going on. at least as far as sight seeing
but as far as cultural experiences it has been rather
intense (I love this place so much, you can't get used
to it, every moment is shocking).
firstly there have been 2 house warming parties this
week as many of the foreign students are moving into
actual apartments. I luckily only attended one, where
the most serious incident was being Babushka’ed at
about 1 am (nightgown Babushka’ed is really quite an
experience, this one was flailing around quite
angrily). However when we arrived at IMOP we did have
another incident with the guard. you see the deal at
IMOP is that you have a curfew of 12pm you're not
supposed to return any later, however if you do the
guard has to let you in, obviously this leads to some
interesting incidents, this time in particular the
guard wouldn't allow us in and we had to call someone
already in the building. He came down and tried to
reason with the guard, apparently he wanted a 1000
rubles (things are never simple here) and he finally
let us in saying "I just like to watch them dance in
the cold". again this was the tame party.
The other party I didn't attend however not only did
it get out of hand (the other could be called more of
a soiree), people got stuck in the elevators for
several hours (never trust a Russian elevator, i
realized that day one when we were told that the
elevator in our dorm wouldn't stop on our floor, still
doesn't, never will). Then the cops came, now unlike
in America when the police get involved, they don't
just pour out the beer and disperse the party, they
want cash, lots of cash. They started by rummaging
through all the drawers and everyone's coats taking as
they wished (Chad only realized this morning that he'd
been quasi-mugged, some marine he is!) then they
demanded a 1000 rubles from everyone, at which point a
girl nearly fluent in Russian (thankfully) said this
is outrageous and slapped the cop and said "we're
calling the American embassy" (nothing scares Russians
quite like the American embassy) yep, they ran with
their tales between their legs.
On a slightly tamer note everyone has moved into
their home stays now, and the dorm is nearly empty
(finally some reading time!). Jarrod (who has
apparently developed something of a cult following
among those of you reading these emails) has moved
into his home stay where again he was subjected to a
nearly inedible chicken dish, but on the bright side
he was told "This is your last free meal, after this
it will be 7 dollars a meal" so Jarrod is off the
hook, he can just look cheap instead of nauseous. Now
you might think this sounds absurd: 7 dollars a meal
(you could go to a restaurant for that), but it turns
out most of these babushka's are just in it for the
money, each week you see a line at the ATM in the
lobby of babushka's eagerly forcing their exchange
student to pay up in American dollars, Babushka
robbery if you ask me. They all demand their money
immediately and in American dollars. I myself now have
a room to myself (although generally when there is an
empty room the digiorna or hall attendant manages to
bring a new German kid in while you're sleeping, for
some reason she refuses to give you notice either)
Although my motivationally challenged roommate Patrick
has left most of his wardrobe and shoes in my room
because he was to lazy to really pack.
And now to my favorite part of the week, my
experience changing our return tickets at the Moscow
station. So we're told that "it's not going to be easy
to figure out the ticket system": bad sign. Well we go
to the station and after about 30 minutes figure out
where we need to return the tickets(you can't just
change the dates you must return them for less money
and buy them for more). We return them with almost no
hassle, then we find quite easily the line to buy new
tickets, no prob. After getting babushka'ed once or
twice (they simply cut you, no one else does just
babushkas, I’ve even seen them break into someone’s
conversation with the attendant to get what they want)
we finally get up to the window, now as you know I
know 0 Russian, and wisely I went with 3 people who
have studied at least 2 years of Russian, thinking
this would be a piece of cake. Turns out 2 years is
simply not enough Russian to order a train ticket from
Moscow to St. Petersburg on the 19th of march, the
lady is screaming at us, we're writing on scraps of
paper she's writing in some sort of indecipherable
Russian cursive. it's bad, there are some rather large
Russian getting quite impatient with us(I’ve never
seen so many 7 foot tall people as I’ve seen here).
all Chad can shout is vecherom or evening. finally we
manage to get our tickets and are walking away when
Kendra says "hey guys we said 19th right?? Cause these
are for the 12th" #$@@^%$%$%$%^%^&%&^^!!!!!!!!!!! now
we're angry, which as everyone knows gets you nowhere
fast. Kendra goes storming back to the lady (in a
reversal of fortune a babushka made way for us, I
would have too, nothing better than laughing at the
Americans) of course the woman starts screaming again
saying that we said the 12th not the 19th (they are
extremely close in Russian) and being angry and fed up
Kendra doesn't take the fall (always a mistake) and
yep she tells us we must return them at the other
counter. so all in all we lost about 300 doobers or 10
dollars and about 1.5 hours of our lives.
One final bit for all you Ahkmatovites out there... I
went to the house today, seeing not only her house and
works (including several first drafts that look
astonishingly like the scribbling of another poet in
my life) but also Joseph Brodsky's study in the
adjoining house. And there is hope for the poets
because there were about 50 people in the place,
packed by poetry standards I’d say.
a little post script for the jarrod fans: Both of the
kids in his home stay have run away in the night
(possibly to escape the meals) and as of yet haven't
returned, I have no idea what that means but i thought
you'd get a kick out of it. ell