I arrived in Heathrow to find that the authorities had shut down Terminal 4. All the connecting flights, international I believe, were cancelled and passport control was a mess! We sat on the plane in what I can only describe as total gridlock. There were five other planes trying to get into their slots when we touched down. When we finally entered our docking slot off the runway the captain announced that the mobile stairs hadn't arrived yet. This was nothing compared to the 10 switchbacks of the line to get through passport control. After walking through, finding my luggage in a sea of bags I walked into the terminal building and there was Erez pretending to be the paparazi with his camera out taking pictures. I could've strangled him, the last thing after dealing with a massive hangover from the night before, that I wanted, was to be photographed looking like death warmed over.
Saying goodbye to friends in Russia was painful. I can just imagine them right now going to bed and or wandering in from Achtung Baby after having danced the night away to bad mixing and tall cold beers. Boobar and I woke up shortly after 10 in the morning. I think it was close to 5 when we finally went to bed. The boat ride was the perfect thing, or method of exiting that city. To see the Winter Palace and Hermitage from the water, along with the opening of the bridges is how the city was kind of meant to be seen. The buildings aren't terribly tall in St. Pete's but their massive size, big fat constructs hiding even larger and more spacious courtyards makes for deceptive sense of distance. On the river things are put into a little bit more perspective. Everything in St. Pete's is massive, and then you get to London and the sense you get here is that everything has shrunk and has been packed in tightly. The streets are tiny and the facades of the buildings remind you of Amsterdam except that nothing is leaning quite in the same way as those old Dutch buildings, falling and being supported with metal tie rods and all kinds of hacked engineering to keep them in place. I'm in total withdrawal, I dropped a coin in the Nevya last night, and made a wish... I was as I am now a little nostalgic... ok, a lot.
So anyway morning started out painful, really painful. My normal state of being in the mornings is one of slow moving, stale breath from too many cigarettes, beer vodka and whatever else we had for dinner that night, and I can usually shake the haze in a matter of minutes. I wish that was the case this morning. No, the haze lasted for most of the day. I don't remember who it was, maybe Jessie, but someone handed me a shot of cognac on the boat, this ontop of two different kinds of beer (the boat had warmm bud on it, disgusting) and then there was the vodka we had at Kilikia, about 700 grams of it... between friends, toasting to an absent comrade in arms, the cognac did not do me good, or the beer I had when I got Achtung Baby. That was a really bad idea, achtung baby... it was absolutely unnecassary, we should've just gone back to the mini hotel and drank the good vodka boobar had in the fridge, but no, we went, and we left quite quickly. I feel a little bad, at one point I saw Boobar get up to go and without saying goodbye to anyone, as I had sad many goodbye's before we embarked on our river/canal ride, I left, ran out of the place, I was feeling quite drunk and just had to get home... self preservation instinct I suppose. Shaking the fog was tuff, but I managed to shower, finish packing and then Boobar and I headed off to Zoom. Now this was a monumental moment for Mr. Dostoyevksy himself, James is never awake before noon on the day of one of his walks, but for me he was up and out at 11 am to go have breakfast. Mariya joined us for a quick bite and I was able to say goodbye to her then. She left and then Sasha joined us. Casey came through Zoom and she took down my email addy to keep in touch and so forth and so on. Boobar and I sat with thousand yard stares, like Sheen and Dafoe in Platoon, we were completely indifferent to those that crossed our path for any number of reasons. We finally disembarked from zoom and headed back to the mini to get my crap. From there it was a walk to the 301. Nastia, young Tanya, Gleb, Timur were all in the office. Low and behold here comes Igor up the stairs... "let's go eat" I just ate, "nah, tam yeda na hooya blat! let's go have real food" Igor, my cab is coming in 20 minutes. "ladna, ok, I'll see you off" I miss that crazy bastard... so he did just that. I had a throng of well wishers seeing me off, it was sweet, touching and made me want to change my ticket, but maybe this place will be good for me, a little decompression, a little something different... maybe just a breath of air... but I miss the stench of ladas and moskvitches, the thick summer air of the swamp on which the city sits and the stale breath of good friends drinking well into the night... mostly I miss them all...
So tomorrow, it's erez's birthday, we'll walk the town a bit, shoot some pics, if I can, I'll rouse myself extra early to try and catch the london eye which is a five minute walk from here, in the morning light, and then go to the tate and or british museum, not sure which yet, but we'll figure it out... I think we'll take a walk arouund Westminster and visit the churches in the neighborhood... and hopefully, nothing will blow up while we're out and about... a big cheers from fish and chip land...
From that night in Fort Ross or Grand Cafe Nevsky when I was called as backup because two very drunk Russians were harassing an equally drunk Igor and company... this is what happens when Igor takes pictures... that's the right logic, right?
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