Borscht for dinner, blini for breakfast

How much more Russian than that can you get? Exactly. Not much.

The one thing conspicuously absent from the whole week? Vodka. Not one sip, although it wasn't missed much.

Besides lots of food, we saw a lot of palaces, churches, more churches, museums (well, only two actually), more palaces and so on and so forth. I never realized the city is so big. Five million people, apparently. So I guess it makes sense. The inner city (within the Fontanka river) is apparently UNESCO World Heritage. So yes, it's beautiful. According to my friend the buildings have been renovated a lot over the last few years and it shows. I was there when the ice was just melting away from the canals. It must be stunning in winter, covered with snow!

The rest of the city though, is just big, ugly, dirty and dusty.




The rearwindow of the car above is not an exception, at all. As a matter of fact, most cars couldn't even let you see through their windows... Supposedly it's all part of the season, and there will be a big street-cleaning-exercise in April to get rid of all the dirt. I'm not convinced. I saw plenty of cars exactly like this in Moscow in June last year...

What else. Ah, bureaucracy. In the end it turned out okay (well, I'm back at least). As my friend described it:

exactly because regulations change so often and no one knows what is going on it is possible to survive in Russia as you can always find a way to make it work.

That pretty much summed up my experience as well. No one wanted to take the risk of registering me as they used to before Jan 1 so I ended up paying for a few nights' accomodation in a hotel, where I never stayed. *sigh* Then they told me I should come back to the hotel to pick up a voucher for customs. When we got there the voucher wasn't ready yet. When we got there for the second time the voucher was nowhere to be found as apparently it was sent back to the authorities already. But, I also didn't need it at customs anyway. So why did I have to come back to the hotel again?

Ah well, it's all part of the fun I guess ;-)

Finally, one of the best things was finally seeing a ballet performance in Russia. I saw La Bayadere at the Mariinsky Theatre. Excellent night! The theatre itself is gorgeous and I had a 2nd row seat. Very cool.
Hmm, these probably are the highlights. Enjoy the pictures!

And I think I finally figured out how to put a few seconds of the ballet (well, the applause) here. Not much, but fun to play around with YouTube ;-)

Morgen

Terwijl ik mensen bel, cv's uitstuur (en nog een uitzendbaantjegesprek heb geregeld, yikes!) vind ik dit:

.

En morgen wordt het nog beter

om over overmorgen maar te zwijgen

het is beangstigend je te bedenken

hoe fantastisch het over een week zal zijn.

.

Het is werkelijk overweldigend.

So fuck it, anyway

.

Uit Manifest van poetryslammers Dorota Kwinta en Marta Skotnicka via Als ik er ben dan bel ik

Finally - some more things to look at

St. Petersburg/Kazan Cathedral
Originally uploaded by macchi.

I've finally managed to upload the rest of my Saint Petersburg pictures (have combined them with the other Russian pics on flickr though). Weirdly enough, it's a bigger set than my China trip.... Hmm.

Enjoy, stories are (still) to follow!

As expected..

... I kind of knew that just earning money wouldn't be too much of a problem, and as it turns out, I guess it really won't be.

I have an interview for a new temp gig on Monday already! Gah!

I'm not sure if I'm happy about this though. I've told them that I definitely don't want to start working at anything before mid-April, and this is actually for more hours than I'd like but the organisation could be pretty interesting, the work sounds okay, and it could be a way to get into a bigger organisation. But still, this is much sooner than I want to think about this!

But first, time for the weekend. Wheee.

In more good news

A few cool things that I'm looking forward to in the next few weeks:

* in two weeks time I'm again going to Motel Mozaique with a friend, partly to see Zita Swoon again but also to have a good night out with more new bands. Wheee!

* spring! It's pretty much here already and it's making me feel so much better. I've resolved to take advantage of the weather and more free day time to start experimenting with my camera more. So hopefully this will result in a more visual blog aswell.

* more theater... one of my resolutions for this year was to see more live music. Luckily that has worked (yay) but it has also meant not seeing so many plays on stage anymore, something that I love as well (not to mention the fact that I haven't seen a dance performance for years. grrrr). Wednesday I'm seeing a new play by a local (but by now, famous) author Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer De eeuw van mijn dochter. It's supposed to be a critique on contemporary Dutch politics so am quite curious!

A whole new world

Even though I am going back to the office tomorrow - and next week for one afternoon - my work there is pretty much done. All that is left is two more documents to file, clean up my computer, and attend a big party from a couple of colleagues.

So, for all intents and purposes I'm finished working. Walking out of the site to the bus stop today felt so good. Relief of being away from there, excitement about whatever is next, some regret about not doing this sooner, and so much more.

I still have no idea what is waiting for me after the weekend. Every once in a while I almost panic thinking of a big black hole. Most of the time I cannot wait to find out, the world is at my feet. I've taken back control of what I'm going to be doing from now on and it feels sooooo good.

*disclaimer: don't be surprised if there will be despairing posts of what next to do appearing here by the end of next week ;-)

Babyshopping!

Strangely enough, although late '20s would be about the time that people start having kids, my social circle has been very empty of kids so far. Buying houses and talk of mortgages - yes. Weddings and hen nights - yes. Kids or pregnancy stories - no.

So, Sunday's toy shopping for tonight's dinner was quite out of the ordinary. But in a sense also perfectly rationalize-able - after all, the couple that I visited are in their late '30s.

It was still weird being in a toyshop though - trying to pick out a cool toy for a new(-ish; with all the hecticness of the past year we've been out of touch for a while) baby boy. Luckily, he loved it. His parents will have to live with the constant rattling of it I fear... And an evening of wearing the boy out so he'd sleep and trying not to wake him up again after he finally did sleep.

It'll be a different world when this starts happening to friends closer to me....

Question of the week:

"So, what are you going to do on Monday?"

In pictures

A quick preview of the rest still to come...








No, it wasn't really as cold as the pictures let on.
Yes, it was a week of many colourful cathedrals and extravagant palaces. Oh, and of long chats with a friend; of relaxing; of wandering a new city. More stories to follow!

Saint Petersburg - or: escape from Real Life

Now that I'm on a plane again, I've resorted back to my tiny notebook from China & Baikonur to write down my impressions. It strikes me again how I should do this in real life as well.

Because sitting in an airplane flying off to a new place doesn't feel like real life. At all. And yet it's the only thing I feel like doing over these past few weeks.

Sitting here I almost get a 'flash-forward' to the time that I still have left until April. That flight is more extreme though - a mystery trip, of sorts. I'm on my way somewhere, but I don't know when this plane is landing, or where that landing place will be. And that's just until April.

More in general, life over the past 1,5 years has felt like a rollercoaster. A very long and windy one, with high ascents immediately followed by deep plunges.

I love rollercoasters. I love the thrill of being on one, the adrenaline screaming through your body. Not anymore though. Can we stop the ride? This one is going on for too long, I can't see the finish and whatever is in between is too fogged over to see. I'm tired of this, I want to jump off.

The comparison doesn't completely match of course. With a rollercoaster you finish at the same place as you started. And that's not the case for me. I'm heading to a better place and knowing that, I'll hang on to the ride for now instead of jumping out of the carriage. Those things never work out well.

----

For now, I'm descending towards Pulkovo-2 airport, where I'll be met by a friend who I haven't seen for 1,5 years. Bring on the vodka!