Graduation Night

After dinner of pike and boiled potatoes at the Idiot cafe last evening, the highlight of which was a toast taught to us by our resident southern belle, Cleila - here's to heat: not the kind that drops shacks and shanties, but the kind that drops slacks and panties - oh, and I detect a trace of encoded classism and racism - I headed back to my dorm hoping for hot water and a cool breeze. Neither was available, so I sat in my room and worked on my computer until it died (my converter is not working, and my computer not accessible to me, making working really difficult - well, impossible.) so then I listened to music on my mp3 player until that died, and then i tried working on my palm pilot, but then that died...

oh, so I checked for hot water again, but there was none, and the water cooler in the hall was empty...

but before all that was a trip to Club Revolution, a "new" nightclub just off Nevsky Prospekt that is a section of a converted shopping arcade, many floors and subsections of dark areas lit by black lights, back rooms with movie projectors, small areas with small bars on several levels with a small stage on one "central" level where a dj or other entertainer might set up. The key to visualizing this place are the following: low ceilings; small areas with concrete floors; many discontinuous serpentine, not-to-code stairways; a high area at the very top of all this that is small, surrounded by windows and providing of a view of the rooftops of petersburg. This top room is where the readings last night were, three winners of previous writing contests for SLS. I found my way over there with Peter the poet from NYC. And then a group of women went to the Idiot where we were overcharged for mediocre food.

This morning i was up early to catch a tour bus to head out to Peterhof. That trip was good; the sun was hot, the weather good, and best of all, I got out to the country and stood on the Baltic Sea and waved at Finland. Took many pictures, but because of my dead computer battery, have no way to include these here. Peterhof is Peter the G's summer palace, replete with fountains and lots of rococo stuff which is amazing to look at and stunning to contemplate that Stalin pretty much left it all alone and that it was not until the Nazis moved in that the palace was robbed, burned, torn up. But, all that is history that you can read in better and more accurate detail in your lonely planet. what i came away from the experience with was the appreciation for the forest and parkland that surrounds the palace and extends to the sea. The rest of it seems to be so much frippery, kind of a disneyland prototype, games for bored adult children to play. now we wander through and look at the games but don't play them.

But getting up early this morning to take the 30 minute bus ride out to peterhof was made more interesting by the fact that last night was the mass graduation party on the Hermitage square. Millions, yes millions, of young petersburgians come into teh city centre for this "celebration" which is essentially a huge drunk, and this morning on my way to catch the tour bus i stepped over and around unconsciously drunk teenagers, evaded those who were still tottering around clutching beer or vodka bottles, and watching where I was walking lest I step in the ubiquitous streams of urine that flowed as steadily as the alcohol. Garbage and broken bottles were everywhere, and the park that I sat in the other morning to eat breakfast becasue my restaurant had "run out" of food, was filled with probably hundreds of young people in various stages of dress, consciousness, and sexual arousal. I suppose you might say this part of the city had a carnival atmosphere; yet, at the same time, which was just before 8 am, there was a team of hundreds (and those were just the ones I saw in my relatively short walk from the dorm to the bus) of maintenance workers dressed in lime green safety vests, sweeping the shattered glass and debris into dustbins and then into green garbage bags, which were already lining the streets. While two drunken teenagers clutched one another beneath the safety of a park bench, a man or woman would be patiently scooping up the broken beer bottles that had led to this embrace. Meanwhile, up and down Kazanskaya Prospekt moved a couple of street cleaners, you know those machines that have circular brushes and which spray water? Those street cleaners were spraying water on the streets and brushing up the urine and debris on the streets.

Well, I know that Betty wanted me to tell her what the Hermitage smells like, but I haven't been there yet, so I'll tell you Betty, on June 24 (or whateve date it is right now, I've lost track) 2007, the streets of Petersburg flowed with urine, which I suppose is a fair trade and a lot more bearable than having them flowing with blood.

When I returned from Peterhof this afternoon, there were still people standing in the streets with garden hoses as they sprayed.

that's it for today. of note: on the way out of the city I saw block after block of highrise apartment buildings, and then some mansions of the nouveau riche (not sure what term they use here for those guys. it's not the oligarchs, but probably the generation behind the oligarchs, the younger children of the oligarchs who learned by watching to stay out of the politics of the nation) and then the highlight: the Baltic.

I stuck my fingers in the Baltic and tasted, but it did not taste salty.

love,
Anne