Russia - 8 Hours... unbelievable!

I had the most amazing night of sleep last night. Albeit I didn't actually get to bed until 3 am, I slept like the dead until my alarm went off at 11. I probably could have slept well into the afternoon but work and duty calls. This was probably the first night that I slept that hard and that long. I wasn't even drunk last night, I drank my beers slowly and had a good dinner at the golden brick with the rest of the group that had arrived so I sipping beers alnight didn't get me tossed. After I woke I heard voices, tinny and forced in their approach through my window. looked through my vertical blinds and saw that my room faced the courtyard of the building. That's why it was so dark. The courtyard is very small and we're on the second floor. A heavy metal grate is over all our windows. I'm starting to like this minihotel. The minhotel is a combination hostil and B&B. The woman that runs the place is very sweet and everyone who stayed there in past years said its the quietst of the places to stay and probably most secure. We have the entire mini hotel. Its the entire second floor of this building. There are about 12 rooms in there. Maybe moore. Bathrooms are communal but you get a room with clean sheets and a clean towel. I think that addresses most of one's needs. I'm gong to be rooming with James Boobar, our resident Dostoyevsky Scholar. He's a hoot, a hard drinkin' man with a wonderful sense of humor. We got along well last year but I only met him in my last few days.

Back in time now... just a bit... It was a long day. Between the tours I did for the incoming crowd, there was tons of helping situate people in their respective domiciles. Some had to be taken to the "Profilactory" AKA Dorm, in the center of the Gherzen University complex, to helping people order lunch at the cafe In the Inn which is staffed by some very curt girls that are well on their way to becoming old soviet women. Wait, the USSR is gone... hm... must be genetic. The food at the inn is great. I had breakfast with Tom this morning (I should say Tom 7. There's also Tom 11 (AKA Tom Hill of SFSU (in)fame[y])) They were nickcnamed that by Tony Mochama who is arriving from Kenya today along with a large party of Kenyans from Nairobi. We had omlets, tea, bread and I had Olivye (russian potato salad) and Tom had a greek salad. Sleep and a good breakfast, essential fuel to function through the day. Today is going to be more tours, more arrivals and then the comencement dinner at a restaraunt not far from The Church of Spilled Blood. After that I'm sure there'll be a night of revelry and then hopefully people will have the sense to get to bed earlier because classes start tomorrow morning at 10am.

The disorientation of new arrivals is infectious. After the group dinner at the Zalatoy Kirpich (Golden Brick), the new Georgian Restaurant under the hotel, we went to the beer garden. One group went to Fort Ross, but wound up at the garden. I kind of wish we had gone to the Fort. There were an interminable number of drunks on the streets due to the holiday which decided they wanted to see "The Foreigners". I think with a group as large as we have, we might be taking the party indoors in the future. Its more epxensive. The draw of the garden is that its really bloody cheap. But its just more pleasant not to have to worry about the revlers that range from recent high school grads proving their adulthood by downing more booz than they have blood in their body to your average russian bumb in the throw of a bottle. Things will calm down soon. But yeah, the disorientation. Its infectious, although I got my bearings quickly, remembering which way to walk, what to avoid, e.g. groups of drunks on the side of the street or near the park, just cross the street and take the extra steps. But yeah... they'll learn quick. We'll have a talk about all that tonight at the reception dinner. How to keep a low profile in a city that invites you to live as large as the literary gods that line the avenues that bear their names.

Oh on another note. This world is bloody small... I mean so bloody small I could die! You will never believe who is here. So at dinner, I'm sitting one table away from this woman that looks oddly familiar. I mean really familiar. She and another woman migrate to our table because we're smoking up a storm. Later we sit down together at the beer garden asking each other the usual questions: "Where are you from?" SF!!! Yeah, I just moved from there to Brooklyn. Oh really? Then it dawned on me, you're not Rebecca Anderson are you? Boom... yes... Rebecca Anderson, former graduate advisor to Fourteen Hills and mastermind of the Ecstatic Monkey literary promotions... Wow this is a small bloody world. Mind boggling, really! Anyway, we had a good chat, it was good to see a friendly face. Her last semester at the university was my first. I had seen her at oneo f the EM events.

Well enough for now, duty and honor call... or my cell phone will start ringing in a minute. One thing I was contemplating last night, it has to do with the sound of language and its relation to the individual. Although by sound I feel at home, I know that the sounds I produce mark me as a foreigner. A Russian girl bummed a light from me. I said sure and spoke to her in Russian as I was standing with a group of Americans at the time. She was a little floored, or maybe didn't expect to hear her native tongue from the mouth of someone that spoke such clean English, beer soaked but clean. In any event, the ability to identify with the language, which creates a false feeling of familiarity bears a counter weight in the fact that my familiarty is the exact distance in regards to how distant I am to the city and the people. The closer I try and get the more distant I must ultimately feel by the fact that I am so close, but so far away thanks to accent and limited vocabulary. I'm wondering if Walter Benjamin could shed some light on this. I feel like a facsimile, a work of photography in the work of art that is St. Pete's. But this is all erudition and right now I have actual work to do.

Vsevo dobroyo...

-L

p.s. apologia for the spelling mistakes, the keyboards drive me nuts here!