- Day 1
- Restaurant hunting in a St.
Petersburg hotel. Block I to Block II back to Block I
back to Block II up to the 6th floor back to Block I.
Fight between bar keep and waiter over seating
arrangements. Dining room full of Spaniards. Decent but
underwhelming food. Haake Beck beer (with a Joerg Haake
present).
- Day 2
- Touring: Pushkin, Pavlovsk,
St. Petersburg, Hermitage. Relatives: Chechens on TV,
food & drink on the table.
- Day 3
- Rain. Subway. Norbert
Streitz's talk. Impossible questions from improbable
Russians. Interpreting over lunch. Mad dash to the
airport. Wrong airport. Mad dash to next airport. Right
airport, wrong floor. Aeroflot flight. Five kilo/person
carry-on limit, applicable, apparently, to foreigners
only. Two-stage passenger loading: first the front, then
the rear of the plane. "Or else it'll tip
over." Camping out on the tarmac for 15 minutes.
Pre-flight drink service, just like in first class.
Leather-clad goons patrolling the aisles. Crew and
bodyguards strolling up and down the plane.
Audi through Moscow. Milling about
in our hotel at the Academy of Business and Agriculture
(or somesuch), waiting for additional foreigners. Subway
ride to Lenin library. Quick stroll along Tversky
Prospect. Money changers. Mafia concerns. Dinner at a
Georgian restaurant. "How much is it?"
"How much have you got?"
- Day 4
- No bus, no bus, no bus, no
bus. Bus. Mad crawl through rush hour traffic to the
conference site. Eggs for breakfast. Bus tour. Mad crawl
through rush hour traffic. Shit weather, no bus parking.
"Moscow in a minute." Visit church on Tolstoy
street. Traffic. Monastery. Take pictures, get in trouble
with priest, too bad film didn't load properly in St.
Petersburg! Lunch. Conference. Bus to hotel.
"Information please, help me
find my uncle..."
"Sorry, we have no white pages"
"What about directory assistance?"
"Nope"
"How do I place a call to the US?"
"You give us the number, and sit by the phone for a
couple of hours. It'll ring. Trust me!"
Ballet in the evening.
Mad-dash fast-food break during intermission. More
ballet.
- Day 5
- In search of food & drink
one Moscow evening. If you: don't want to spend $40+ a
head; don't want McDonald's; don't want Pizza hut, what
do you do?
Well, there's Pizza, Arbat-style: $30 for a medium.Rest of the evening: Caviar &
vodka in a cafe; scenic tour of the Metro: Station of the
heroes of the revolution, concrete dogs and all.
- Day 6
- Conference. Yawn. Conference
reception. Salad Eggplant fruit marinaded peppers stuffed
whatsits salad salad meats pickles. Vodka.
Vodka on the bus back. Vodka past
the security guard. Vodka in the hotel bar. Vodka as the
drunk Romainian construction workers sing derogatory
songs about French ex- prime ministers.
- Day 7.
- There must have been a day 7.