Vodka Toasts and Midnight on the Neva

I thought that my last entry was going to be my last entry, but as it turns out, I couldn't sleep last night after the two hour midnight cruise down the Neva for the opening of the bridges. This is just an excuse for a party, a big one, and the Neva, especially in the open area between the Hermitage and Hare Island (where the Peter and Paul Fortress is), is filled with dozens of flat bottom tour boats which in turn are filled with mostly inebriated tourist groups. The boats leave from various locations along the canals, where the boats tie up at the foot of the stone staircases that are built right into the canal structure. As the boats putter along the canals, people stand around on the back of the boat or sit in a sunken covered area at the front. Most people drink, and there is an onboard bar more than happy to keep you drinking beer or vodka.
The drunker people get, the higher the stakes, and that's not because they may fall overboard, which is always a possibility, I guess, but doesn't seem to happen that I could see, but because as the boat passes under some of the lower canal bridges, people need to be aware enough of their surroundings to know when it is in their best interest to duck, and how low. Some boat personnel are pretty good at warning their passengers to duck, but the guy on our boat last night left us to our own devices, and I'm assuming that lawsuits launched by unwary "Americans" as a result of concussing under a bridge are laughable.

So, we ducked our way along the canals and under the bridges, and although there had been a downpour a couple of hours earlier that flooded the floor of the Dagastini restaurant I had been eating at, and had soaked everything in my shoulder pack, which I had left on the floor by my feet, by the time we got to the midnight boat ride, the rain had stopped and I was able to demonstrate the Canadian way of opening beer bottles with no twist top -- using my teeth.

In the area between the Hermitage and Hare Island is a huge water fountain embedded in the river, and at night the fountain is lit by lights and a laser light show. The building exteriors are also lit up by bright lights, and along the roads and bridges that surround the mid-river lighted fountain hundreds of people stand around to watch the light show and the dozens of canal boats that churn gallons of diesel fuel exhaust into the Neva.

Okay, now, back to the world of showers. I have not had a hot shower for more than a week now, but every morning I turn on the hot water tap in the shower, just in case the hot water has been turned on since the last blue person emerged from the shower room. The other morning when I turned on the hot water, water the colour of coffee and the consistency of diesel oil poured out into the bottom of the stall, and before long the crib of the stall was filled with cold, black water. I watched it pour out, fascinated with what I was seeing, and it looked like the water that might come pouring out of a tap at home if the well was about to run dry and the pump was pumping the watery sludge at the bottom of the well. After a few minutes, the water did not start to run clean, nor did it start to run hot. So I turned off the hot tap and resigned, turned on the cold tap and began my morning ablutions.

Some mornings I just can't face it.

The good news is that tonight I will be in Milan, which I believe has hot running water, and will have a single room, by myself, and will lie on the double bed and watch the night fall from my window at a regular time.

You are invited to a vodka party at my place. I now have the full routine and practices for correct toasting procedures, and since I have had the pleasure of eating and drinking Russian for the past month, I want to share it with you. To prepare, you need to get some good Russian vodka (Smirnoff is not Russian) and throw it into the freezer. Leave it there until I get home. Then, when I get home, Steve is going to make some rye bread, and I will make some blini, borsch, pickled herring, pickled pickles, pickled garlic, pickled cabbage, pickled onion greens, and pickled eggplant, and a radish/cucumber salad. And I will make some great pastries and we will eat all this food and drink all the vodka (except I don't like vodka, so I will have to pretend -- I'll show you how, though) and make the toasts in the proper fashion, and then I will repeat all the stories that I have told you on the blog and bore you silly. I'll even show you my slides!!! ha! PErhaps I may have a few insights into the Russian soul, and the impact of the switch in drinking habits among Russians from vodka to beer. I have statistics and everything! And I will do screenings of Russian movies, and am already on the hunt for soviet era movies starring a bizarre looking woman named Lola...

And, of course I'll have all the SLS gossip which won't interest you in the least because you weren't here and don't know the players, so that will stay stored within my imagination for the time being.

It's about noon here for me now, and my plane leaves at five. I still have money left, so I'll go and blow it on a lunch and some souvenirs, then off to the airport at 2 pm...

love

Anne