And then there's the ones in the black coats...
Trip Start
Dec 01, 2009
1
6
13
Trip End
Jan 12, 2010
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Friday, December 11, 2009
It made todays little excursion a funky adventure, as the footpaths at Lenin Square metro were iced over, and I had to take baby steps to avoid falling over. What I couldnt understand though was how every woman I walked past under the age of 30 was powering over the ice in high heals. I thought about mimicking the soldiers who were shuffling over the ice as if they were skating but decided it was probably more difficult than it looked, and was taught in basic training or something like that, and I just wasn't in the mood to go head over heals this morning. However, I got to my destination, and succesfully negotiated the acquisition of the first lot of my Osmolite. Though there was a certain amount of charades and reaching for the dictionary on my part, but we got there in the end.
And the most exciting news of all, Yann Tiersen is playing live at a club near where I am living, and I got tickets for tonight.
Three pretty exciting things, which are currently making up for the fact that as of this morning I am Crohn's sick. Not bad, but enough.
Speaking of soldiers. There is an inordinate number of them in the city. Officers or officer cadets, rather than grunts though. I've never seen so many walking around before. There are major training academies in St Petersburg, and maybe they are all closed for the summer months and that's why I haven't seen them until this time. Maybe they are getting ready to annex the North Pole. Chiefly, they walk around in squads, almost proceeding, in great coats and big fur hats, and they are all built to a scale of about 110% of a normal person. Very impressive though. You get the feeling ordinary bullets would just bounce off them. They come in three varieties, those in standard infantry green, who you definitely wouldn't want to stumble across in a frozen trench. Those wearing dark blue, who look more or less like aritocracy and are possibly at the naval academy. And then those wearing black. Sharp, merciless, "Don't f#ck with me" black. I've no idea where they are from, and I really, really don't want to find out. I jumped onto the metro this morning only to find out that the carriage contained what looked like a squad of the men in black. Who all got out at my stop. Who all walked in step with me to the escalator, and at the very centre of whom I found myself on the long, slow ride up to the metro's exit.
However, about an hour later when I felt it was safe to breathe again, I realised that nothing had happened and I was, beyond belief, not being questioned in a cell at the end of Liteiny Prospect (former head office of the Cheka) or being deported back to Australia.
Wouldn't be anywhere else though. Am thinking of heading to Poland or the Czech Republic (or possibly both) on Monday, depending on how I'm feeling.
Hopefuly will get the chance to capture some snow shots with my camera over the wekend.
