Krakow, Tuesday 9th September; futzing around..

I've been trying to work out some improvements to my blog, like how to put a 'fold' into each post; and how to add photos, and that. Not very successfully as you can see!

I guess I could investigate the blogspot list of goodies and see if I understands it a bit betterer.. anyone who cares to write in with suggestions for brain-dead travelling blog-dags is most welcome.

So, what we up to? M is still suffering ennui and self-shoulda/coulda/oughta wrangles. I am not so down, but SO tired.. we got up for brekkie after I'd had a good 9 hours of sleep, and afterwards I lay down and went out like a light for another 2 hours.. weird. Even for me this is kinda long. Cuts into the day of prospective touristing too.

We both have a strong sense of relief that tomorrow we travel (by train) to Berlin. A return to Western life! M speaks fluent German, so negotiating the city, the usual shopping/banking/posting/Netting details, and making our eccentric way through the days, should be much easier. I know that lotsa lotsa people don't speak English, but I'm getting a bit distressed by the 'blank face/don't wanna know' reaction from most people here. It's too much like Beijing, 10 years ago, especially the 'don't wanna know' part. In shopkeepers, waiters and the service industry in general, I don't understand the hostility - don't they want the money to keep in business? Me no get it. Me want peoples to be NICE to me. Foolish moi.

Two days ago we leapt up at the crack of breakfast and joined a group of about 10 people for a bus and walking tour of Krakow, the Old City. Our guide, the glamorous Caterina, was very good, explaining the significance and historical value of the places we visited - I particularly enjoyed seeing the remaining one synagogue still operating, and the old cemetary next door. Of course the two World Wars have had a huge influence on the city, both visually and culturally, and the markers are plain. As we saw in Riga (yes, yes, the Riga walking tour blog entry is coming) there are bullet holes, walls built from the rubble of previous structures, and restored and over-built sites of all kinds. One part of Krakow which I particularly enjoy is the parkland which encircles the Old City - it used to be the moat with a huge stone wall. Now the walls are largely gone, and the moat has become a park. This green belt around the city is a strong reminder of dear old Adelaide, the home town of your faithful correspondent.

After our tour finished (as we walked through the street where one John Paul II was once the parish priest) our legs were gone boom. We retired for a siesta, before going out to a short concert in a nearby stone church - the church of St Giles. The performance was a collection of pieces for organ and soprano. It was a strange concert - the soprano had a beautiful coloratura and was clearly experienced in stagecraft and presentation. The organist complemented her performance by playing as if he'd never seen the music before that morning. I was speculating about whether his right hand could play faster than his left, and the numerous times when he and the soprano seemed to disagree about which piece they were actually playing. He performed a couple of solos, not very well at all. He chose speed over accuracy, and his lack of musicianship was stunning. I took a couple of sound recordings on Le Camera, but I think they aren't worth keeping. The clash!

Yesterday was fairly quiet, we rested and read for ages in the morning. In the afternoon we went out to see a concert at the cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, but it wasn't on for some reason. I've written about this in a piece which I hope to upload very soon.. I had a good shopping opportunity after this, making my luggage to Berlin look kinda complicated. Oh well, that's nothing new.

Today my favourite thing has been the time I spent sitting in a cafe in the Market Square, having lattes and super-fresh raspberries, oh NOM, and watching the world go by. And what did I see? Firstly, a bloody lot of smokers. So many people busy inhaling themselves to death. Then, a lot of icecream eating, hand-holding, strolling, pigeon-feeding, busking, eating and laughing. It's a lovely day today. Every day we've been here, we've heard at some point the piercing top notes of a counter-tenor who aspires to the type of musical interpretation we experienced with that organist at St Giles - this fellow means well, but his approach to pitch is to belt out a high note and hope for the best. Agonising! He sings Schubert's 'Ave Maria' with all the delicacy of a hippo burping after dinner. Today he began 'performing' on the church steps (another church) just as I finished my second latte. That was enough to send me on my way to this Net cafe!

Shortly we'll be off for an early dinner, and then our final Krakow concert - back to the Bonerowsky Palace for a piano recital of Brahms and Chopin. And I need to do some feverish packing as we'll be up at 5:45 am, ouch ouch, to get on the 7am train. Which I most decidedly do NOT want to miss.

Better go, then. Today brought to you by 'Enjoy', those delicious raspberries, and a sigh of relief.

Riga; Monday 1st September

Riga, Monday 1st September.

Hey, it’s spring in Canberra which makes it autumn here, I expect the autumn weather in Riga is warmer than Canberra temperatures.. I hope I’m wrong though. It’s been a balmy 18 degrees today, sunny with a light (and, it must be said, slightly chilly) breeze. We’ve had a very romantic day.. what with the miracle of M wanting to go shopping, and the weather, and the wonderful closeness we’ve had all day. Could this be because we’ve engaged in the ultimate relationship intimacy??? - no need to blush, I mean the shopping, for heaven’s sake!

First stop, breakfast. I had a good sleep, but was still terribly bleary. I struggled into my jeans (I LOVE MY JEANS) and tottered out with M. The breakfast room is outside the hotel, across the alleyway, and into another room via a door which BANGS closed. It opens and closes a lot, and the BANGS drive me mad all through the meal. No, I don’t have a hangover, it’s just too damn early for noise. I was partly mollified by finding porridge, very creamy porridge, and salted but no so much that I couldn’t cope. Yes, I am a weirdo who eats porridge (and eggs, and even chips, I hope this confession doesn’t mean I lose half my readers!) without salt. Prefers these things without salt. Finds the salty versions anything from somewhat unpleasant to downright inedibly horrid.

No muesli or fresh fruit in this buffet. There’s salad and cottage cheese but that’s lunch food. You see my problem, I have these funny ideas about what gets eaten when. With what. And whom, definitely with whom. One can’t show one’s morning, or even early afternoon, face to just anyone. Seeing anyones running off shuddering is so lowering... yeah, I can’t pay attention to myself tonight. Hang on, I’ll try a bit harder...

Erm.. oh yes, breakfast. We fiddled around in the room writing our shopping list and getting the princess vertical and purrfumed and laces tied and eyes open with brain somewhat connected.. and leave at 12ish. Doesn’t matter, the shops are all open until 6pm at least. We leave the hotel, walk about 20 steps, and we’re in a store selling Latvian linen, a stupendously low-priced speciality. And in the SALE box is a loose weave linen table cloth that we fall for totally; immediately; quick as a flash. Out with the Visa card to limber it up ready for a busy day... next stop is the amber shop. Darling A, my Latvian angel, has given us more information about Riga and its environs and shops and attractions than we can do justice to in a month, never mind our attenuated visit of only three days. One of the items she’s given us is a card for a particular amber business, which is perhaps 250 metres from our hotel. However this branch of the shop is now closed and the other is further away than we want to go, today. We’re shopping while walking around the northern side of the Old City, so we return to another amber business nearby. I like this shop’s wares, they have modern settings of the stones, and they have a huge range of the different colours and styles of amber. In we go!

M tells me that in Latvia, amber is traditionally worn in three forms: beads, brooches and blouse fasteners. I’m not sure what a blouse fastener is compared to a brooch, and I can’t see in the shelves of goodies anything which differentiates between the two. I quickly rule out necklaces, because I want to see the amber too. I don’t wear earrings, so that’s two big lots of stuff we can pass by... I’m drawn to bangles and rings. M finds brooches, and they are a mixture of engraved pieces - very traditional styles - and huge circles and butterflies. I don’t like them much, and they’re very expensive. Nup. Let’s look at bangles. There are some styles I like a lot, butter yellow rectangles of amber strung on elastic.. elastic doesn’t seem posh enough for a flash birdy present. The bracelets made of pieces of amber set in silver and linked into a chain are even more expensive, and although we both like them a lot, we do need to eat on the rest of this trip!

We end up focussing on the rings, which are every shape and colour of amber, and of course a range of sizes.. I bought a beautiful tear-drop shaped piece of honey-coloured amber in St Petersburg, to wear on a chain. The rings which catch my eye are butter yellow. The rings M prefers are a glassy olive green with amber highlights. We look around a bit more and I see a small yellow amber heart. So a decision is reached - I’ll get the heart for myself, to wear on my arctic silver fox pendant chain, and M will choose a green amber set in silver ring. So, dear patient readers who wade through my long descriptions, I have now a humungously beautiful and large gorgeousness of a ring, which I may not take off for several years. All day, since we bought it, we’ve been holding my hand up to the light to admire it. Shall I try to describe the design?.. hmm... it’s a sort of rounded-edge triangle, an isosceles triangle, set in a flat band of silver about 4mm wide. The stone is not flat but ground into a rounded but bumpy surface... and it’s kinda big. Kinda.. as big as .. half a large marble? As big as .. bigger than I thought we could afford, bigger than I deserve and certainly bigger than I’d have the nerve to buy for myself. It’s LOVELY. It’s a very special gift and I feel much better about the nought* now!

* I mean the nought on the end of my age...
~~~~~~~

I also had a fun time in a ‘beauty’ shop - just skin care, hair stuff and makeup. But it’s fun re-stocking things like soap and shampoo by inspecting brands I’ve never seen before, and trying to translate the Latvian words for ‘sensitive skin’ or ‘mild mint’. I end up with a big bag of loot; olive oil soap and tea tree oil - this more for the smell than any practical purpose, although I know it’s an excellent mild anti-bacterial - and new hair clips and a real sea sponge for the shower and a third lipstick!!! Profligate consumerism. Heh.

Our next stop is an internet cafe so M can do some money stuff. No laughing. This is not irony but a check on our money-management dudes in Australia, to see if a transfer has happened. Yes! Then M finds a little ‘milk bar’ which has, oh bliss, a half-decent American newspaper (The Noo Yawk Herald Tribune), and some more trashy mags in English. Maybe all I really wanted for my birdy was a bunch of mags! [And speaking of which, last night I was thinking to myself, in a wakeful patch, that I might ask me mum to post me two things which would make the last few weeks of this trip super-fabbo - a tube of my preferred toothpaste, which is not available Over Here, and a few bits of the Sydney Morning Herald for general marital consumption. No, not Vegemite, I can manage without that. But having the right taste in me gob after scrubbing would be kinda good. It is the littlest things, when you’re travelling...]

My next triumph is finding a store called New Yorker, which sells women’s clothes. For young, slim, trendy women. Chicks, if you must. There’s nothing for me in there, but I find some cute things for my teenage nieces, my darling dorter (hi dollink!), and a friend who has hoped for fabric but alas I have not found anything for her. At the counter I find tights in mad colours and patterns and grab a handful, they can go in the ‘general gifts’ box along with the silly socks I bought in the beauty shop. Yellow fishnet ankle socks anyone?

After this we need lunch. We return to the Double Coffee cafe, because we know they have actual sandwiches. And good coffee, and freshly-squeezed juice, and comfy chairs. Easy.. then the happy spenders return to the hotel for a siesta. I fall into bed surrounded by plastic bags of goodies, but still wearing my new fabbo gorgeous spiffy and love-given ring. Lucky, lucky me...

At 6-ish we’re refreshed, I’ve squeezed out another lot of shirts and such to dry all over the room, and M has identified a walking tour around more of the northern are of the Old City.

It’s a lovely two hours we spend here - passing through the streets of graceful old buildings; churches; romantic laneways; the Swedish gate and Jacob’s Park; sculptures (probably) of martyrs; Parliament House; the Danish Embassy; a small part of the river embankment... I took zillions of photos and some film; M was very patient when I kept stopping to snap close-ups of bits of building. I like old doors and fancy ironwork and cherubs and columns, and peeling old walls and bits of ancient woodwork and mossy bricks with trees growing out of them three floors up; and uneven stone steps and huge doorknobs and dates carved into mantels. And shots of M when he doesn’t know I’m taking them; and steeples against the dusk clouds; and any cat, live or handmade, that I can find.

M’s leggies are falling off as we return to the square where we started. We stop in the Four Rooms cafe, which is housed in a building dating back to, truly, 1207. Jaw drops to floor... I took a few pics of the stone walls, the beams and the rafters. They didn’t come out too well, the flash bleached-out details, and the natural-light shots may be too shady.. we’ll see.

The meal is delightful - I’ve opted for darling A’s recommendation of potato cakes with salmon and sour cream. This restaurant serves the dish with large pearls of red caviar.. double nom. Our waiter is very friendly; when we get chatting we discover he’s emigrating to Australia in a month, hoping to enrol at Canberra University! We’re suitably amazed; even more so when he produces some Canberra contact info for his course and the lecturer is a colleague well-known to M. The world is indeed very small. Of course we invite him to contact us; M produces his name card (I MUST make a name card for myself; I’ve been mulling over what I’d say about my ‘work’ - a source of great amusement to me. Like, how to describe a life filled with optional activities? I totally refuse to say Home Duties or even Domestic Manager; I don’t do anything particularly more than anything else. It’s far easier to describe myself when travelling, thus: A Dag; Abroad; Again. I must work out how to translate THAT into a life/work description!) and we make sure that he understands that we mean it when we say please contact us. His name, it deserves to be recorded, is Dmitri Stroganov. This stroganoff is following me around!

Now, I’ve opened all the goodie bags and played with the contents. I’ve discovered that the new ring sends little glints across the screen as I type, and we’ve had a very magical day. With luck, more of the same tomorrow - magic I mean, not all that shopping!

Today brought to you by Prrrrada by the bucketful; overlaid by Chanel No. 5 ditto; the aroma of the real, propurrly made cuppa tea at the Four Rooms place; and Essence de Hubby, a peerless and powerful nice thing.

Goodnights to you all! And please pat your cats.f

Hermitage Museum etc, 19th August

The Great Palace of Tsar Peter 1st, otherwise known as the Hermitage Museum, is 10 minutes walk from our hotel. Yesterday we walked through the square outside the palace buildings; photographing monuments and crowd scenes. Today we’re heading inside.. we wanted to get going at 10am but for some reason I just could NOT sleep last night, so it’s more like midday by the time I catch a bit of zz after dawn and M pours coffee into me.

We join the queue at 1.45. It’s cool and grey, raining just a little bit, but quite comfy. The queue looks to be about 300 people long, to the front of the building. But as we get closer we see that it snakes inside a huge courtyard, and once we’re inside there, it snakes along nearly three sides of the courtyard to the main entrance. All the way along, people, mostly women, come along and try to persuade us to leave this queue and go over to the other side of the square to buy tickets. We’re not sure why, it doesn’t seem to be linked to joining a guided group. We watch closely to see what other people do. No-one goes off, so we stay put. M wanders around a bit, looking for any English signs, or any sign that leaving this queue is the right move. Doesn’t seem to be. After we’ve been waiting for about an hour, the wind has strengthened and we are cold. The queue has more or less stopped moving, and many of the people in summer tops have goosebumps. M trots back to the hotel for extra clothes for both of us, and I stand using my umbrella as a wind-shield, jiggling my legs and saying to myself ‘isn’t it LOVELY to be COLD?’, over and over...

M takes a bit longer than I am happy with.. can I see the end of the queue? Has he been shut outside in the square, according to some Russiansk rule of gate that we didn’t know about? Has he fainted and fallen over a cobblestone and been carried off by a noble Russian horse-ambulance to the nearest field hospital? Has he (and we know, don’t we dear readers, that he is entirely capable of this) stopped on the way back to get me a takeaway coffee??? I shiver and try to think more positive thoughts, like ‘Won’t I enjoy the museum by the time I get in, it must be so incredibly Russian royal extravaganza’ .. hurray, here he is, carrying an extra t-shirt and my trusty, warm and wonderful pashmina. [Dearest reader, if you go anywhere that might be the tiniest bit cool or rainy, take a pashmina. They work wonderfully well as raincoat, umbrella, shawl, jumper, arm-warmer, kidney-belt and (even) twisted into a small bag. They don’t stretch, run, fall to bits, chafe, loose colour or show the dirt. One of my best ever purrchases, thanks Cath for talking me (easily) into it!]

The goosebump girls have sent one of their party over to a kiosk to get coffee and rolls. They devour them, then light up slim cigarettes. I guess all additives might help at this stage. 


We get to the door of the ticket office not quite 2 hours after we join the queue. While we’re in the doorway (a revolving door held unmovingly open by force of numbers) lots of people are pushing past, trying to get to the loos I think. They really shove, one woman nearly takes off my arm with her bloody alligator of a handbag. I get rude, saying ‘NO WORRIES, SHOVE AWAY ME DARLINS, IT’S ORRIGHT I DON’T NEED THAT ARM, WHAT ARMY DID YOU GET THROWN OUT OF?’ and it’s ok, no-one understands a word, in fact they don’t even react to my tone of voice. Grrr....

At the ticket office there is a sign saying we can buy a multi-visit ticket. But asking for one is hopeless, the ticket-seller just scowls at me and gestures towards the information desk around the corner. Why on earth would the ticket-seller to THE most important museum in St Petersburg speak English?? I am NOT abandoning this queue! Two tickets for one expensive visit please. The museum closes the doors to entries at 5pm, and closes overall at 6pm. We don’t have much time, and we must have something to eat.

Getting in is another hassle - we go through the security sensor thing (like at an airport) and the guard gestures to M’s plastic carry bag and growls something. We ask politely what he means, and he shouts ‘GARDAROB’ at us. Oh, ok, we’ll go and put the nice plastic bag in the cloakroom will we? Okey-doke. Here we go, just harmless little Aussie tourists, nothing worry about at all, at all... down a flight of stairs past a very pongy loo, and the cloakroom attendant doesn’t want to take the plastic bag. I say “Sorry??’ and she smiles, takes the bag, and waves me away. Phew. We go back through the security sensor thing and once again the guard shouts at M. He doesn’t like M’s raincoat. We’re going to explooode... a woman rushes up to us and says we must check his coat in too; when we ask why she looks at us as if we came down in the last shower and says ‘It is the rule.”. Right. Down ze stairs; out wiz ze cloakroom card... the nice lady takes the raincoat and this time we’re ok, we get through the sensor and stagger towards the cafe. Two hours and counting..

Something substantial is required after all that. And of course, now we’re inside it’s stuffy and hot. Of course. We have ham rolls and a pizza thing, beer, coffee and some fairly magnificent chocolate and poppy seed cakes. M is so far gone he actually asks me to go back and buy more cake! Wowee.. I’m so impressed I give him the rest of my beer (Petersburg-brewed Baltika beer, 5.5%, I’ll be wobbwy if I drink it all, it’s a 375ml can..).

Now, 4.50pm and here we go, French Impressionist collection. Up one flight of stairs it says. They don’t say ‘up one four-staged flight of stairs equivalent to nearly three flights of normal stairs’. Puff puff. Then we hike to Room 143, only to find the nice museum attendant taking in the sign which says ‘Room closes at 5pm’. Ripped off! We nip in anyway, and have 5 minutes of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Seurat, before another nice museum attendant (all middle-aged Russian battle-axes with formidable handbags) chucks us out. I’m thinking ‘We spent all that time and money for 5 minutes of THAT??’ but what can we do?

All is not lost, we keep walking through huge galleries and along tapestry-lined hallways, admiring the parquet, marquetry, urns, thrones, gilt everythings, marble everything-elses, and see a number of salons, ballrooms, throne rooms, a huge bronze tomb, dozens of noble portraits of generals (including Wellington, who looks a right snob). There are of course dozens of portraits of the nobility and the royal family members, especially the dainty princesses in their ornate satin gowns, and the dowager duchesses in their HUGE strings of HUGE pearls, and lace caps like waterfalls down their back, and rings and crosses and jewels set into the bodies and swathes and swathes of fabric in the skirts, like theatre curtains. And dawgs. Cavalier King Charles, and Pointers seemed to be the favoured types. The dogs are universally painted as barking playfully at the satin-slippered feet of the be-gowned and curlicued madame. I bet it took ages to pose for a portrait like that, probably took up half the day when you were filthy-rich and had nothing else to do but count your peasants.

We’re both reminded very much of the looooooooong walk we had through the Vatican when we went to see the Sistine Chapel - that was at least an hour and a half of stomping up marble staircases and along obscenely-richly decorated galleries and through panelled salons and around gilded atriums.. it made us both quite angry, to see the lavishness of the art and sculpture and think of all the starving folk who paid for it. This palace is much the same, but dingier. There has been a lot of restoration work, pictured in photos around some of the galleries, but a lot of the walls and floors are very dirty, and the higher reaches of the rooms (I don’t see a single ceiling less than eight metres high) are very grey and dusty. Think of what it must take to keep even basic cleaning up to par... armies of floor-sweepers and mops and dusters...

I enjoyed a throne room which had rows of urns on each side - the urns were made from huge pieces of polished malachite and lapis lazuli and Belarus quartzite. Gorgeous colours. I rather liked the effect of a ballroom lined with gilded marble columns, and a pale marquetry floor. That was a very light room, with about 10 bronze and gold chandeliers, each 3 metres in diameter and positively bristling with chunks of crystal. We found a small salon of Italian 17thC religious paintings from the San Bernadino monastery in Italy; allegorical Renaissance scenes. These paintings have been restored and the blues and reds really glow. We were thrown out of that room too.

Our last room before we give up (it’s hot and terribly stuffy, of course none of the windows are open, I expect nasty fresh air is bad for museum pieces..) is a small display of porcelain - just little fribbles exchanged between Tsar and Duke, for example. Like this: the Duke and Duchess of Russianovsky took part in a play ‘After Homer”, and the Tsar had a token of his esteem made to thank them: a porcelain THING (an epergne?) about two feet high, possibly it’s an urn underneath but it’s so ornately decorated with maidens and sheeps and flowers and garlands; gilded, painted, glazed and embellished, that the original form is quite hard to discern. It probably cost the average yearly income for about 500 starving villages. And these pieces were the tiniest fraction of the collection - another piece, nearly a metre wide, made from very fine china, depicted Catherine the Great seated on her arched throne, wearing a dress at least thee times her width (ie with panniers; what a crazy fashion - then again, it meant you could balance yourself out with really big hair!); down a flight of steps decorated with Roman statues were a number of noblemen and women paying their respects; and a fountain played behind the throne, water splashing down into a little circular moat surrounding the base of the steps. This piece was part (part!) of a dessert setting. Only dessert. Nothing special...

Museum fatigue, heat, outrage and sheer gobsmackery are the end of us. We totter towards the exit signs, joining the throngs who are slowly being herded out from the vast reaches of the palace. The hatchet-faced attendants don’t muck around, I can’t hear any please or thankyou going on. We’re buffetted by guides rushing through with last-minute tour groups, who are using pretty aggressive body language to get to see things along their way. As they are walking against the tide, the tide gets biffed. I nearly lost my balance when a determined woman stepping right in front of me and just shoved me out of the way. M said he’d biffed her right back as he passed her, my hero..

Retrieving the bag and raincoat is no problem. Getting outside only requires one last charge through a crowd.. into a cool breeze coming off the river. In the distance we see more huge, gilded monuments, two significant churches, and more palace-type buildings. I feel a bit faint-hearted, all this history!

Totter totter back to the hotel, my only thought being to cool off and get some grog into me. M has been out for wine (Romanian Chardonnay -- A$7.5) and lemonade, so the soothing sound of a B gargling will commence any minute now.

Tomorrow we may well choose the City Bus tour, followed by the City Canal tour, to save our feet! We want to go back to Hermitage Museum, but I think a day’s grace is a good idea. And we’ll have to get there a lot earlier to have time to look at the other 7/8ths of the museum we didn’t see today!

~~~~~~~

A couple of NBs: when M went out this morning to try to buy newspapers, he ducked back to the big bookshop on Nevsky Prospekt and, although he failed to find the St Petersburg Times (due out today), he bought me a little fridge magnet; a tiny photo-frame with a silhouette of a little black cat. He’s going to translate it for me in a minute... it says ‘Cats leave their paw-prints on our hearts’; aww...

In the museum queue, there was a bloke wearing another grunge t-shirt - he was, like Matti, also getting on, I’d say in his 60s, with watery green eyes, possibly German. His t-shirt said PHANTOM LIMBS in black-dripping-blood font.

Did I tell you we found the Stroganoff Palace yesterday? It doesn’t remotely summon up the urge to eat sour cream in me, but if we get there to have a proper look I’ll report back about any connection with the dish.

Russian fashion: many of the women, all ages and sizes, wear very beautifully cut trousers. I saw some very elegantly-dressed people today; a woman in a red linen dress which suited her so well, she was stunning; a man in a stone-coloured textured linen suit, with dark loafers and THE most understated, well-fitted and tailored dark grey jacket I’ve ever seen; and several 30s-aged women in trouser suits who were wearing purrfect trouser shoes. Beautiful. I am not making comparisons with myself, because this is designer gear, for really rich people, and I am a pragmatic Aussie tourist in my trusty red shoes.... and anyway, *I* have hand-made silk nighties from Bangkok, so ner. (M took a spectacularly horrible photo of me in one, this morning, but the glazed-puffiness of face and air of fatal bleariness was far too confronting for me to keep it. You can make do with the funny shots I took of myself in the mirror at the Helsinki Modern Art Museum.)

The other variant of Russian fashion is the babes: skinny black jeans rool, worn with the highest heels you can imagine. Seeing some of these young women teetering across the cobblestones today made me even more determined to stick to flats forever. The prevailing look is coloured hair - anything but your natural colour, and for preference fairly big splodges of colour rather than any attempt to look blended; baby pink lipstick; smudgy dark eyes; long fake fingernails; candy-coloured plastic shoes, little midriff-exposing tops, or cleavage-central. The blokes wear their shirts out, tailored straight across the hem so they don’t dip at the back, with loafers rather than sneakers, and nearly always with black jeans or grey trousers. I only see goatees on foreigners. Occasionally you see a Viking with wild red and orange hair flying everywhere; these blokes invariably wear old dark green t-shirts and long shorts, and have incredibly huge ugly feet.

We stopped at a “Produkti” shop - this is a very small room down three steps from the footpath, divided into three counters; one selling booze, one selling chocolate, sweets and soft drink, and the other what we would call a small delicatessen. The woman there is NOT going to smile, she doesn’t understand our English, and even making a gesture towards the fridge where the “Moloko” (milk) is seems to test her patience. We bought some UHT milk here the other day .. this time I see a plastic bottle (a la Lite White) and think goodie, fresh milk...

Today brought to you by ... a fabulous cup of tea* at 3am, which I made myself. I disturbed the night-receptionist, who came rushing out of her little room looking adorably flushed and sleepy.... some Gucci which I can’t really smell; eau de St Petersburg Museum dunny, which I can :/ ; sweaty old man; and the sizzle of the lamb shaslik I had for dinner in an Azerbaijani cafe. We went there because they play classical music, but as soon as we sat down they put MTV on. Damn.

The fabulous cup of tea nearly didn’t happen, because when I poured the milk into the cup it was so sour it was completely solid curds and whey. YukkkKKKK. Made me feel quite ill. I turfed the whole lot into the bin, I couldn’t even tip it down the sink, thought I might block it!

[... and why, do I hear you ask, did I not notice this when I bought the milk? Because the milk bottle is entirely encased in a heat-shrunk plastic cover which is the label, nutrition info, cute lil cow symbol, and measuring marker for quarter-litre gradations up the side. So mere globs of blecccchhh can’t be seen by the untrained (not cynical enough) Aussie eye.]

St Petersburg, Day 1 August 18th

Dear bloggie,

My first full day in Russia has been hot, humid, interesting, hair-raising, expensive, cheap and thrilling......

... after a biiiig sleep-in, which M in particular really needed, we had coffee in our room (missed breakfast by an hour at least). The reception person was quite happy to put on the kettle so we could make our own plunger coffee; she supplied us with cups and spoons, and later let us wash the plunger out in boiled water. (She also supplied a plug for the basin, which the maid eventually found after searching four other rooms, and a hair dryer, hurray no fringe issues!) We pottered around the room; unpacking, washing shirts, reading maps, talking about what we’d like to do, laughing at each other. It’s our wedding anniversary today (we celebrate every month) so there’s a festive feeling... we’re also remembering what a pain it is to wash your teeth in bottled water (and how very interesting it gets when the bottled water is sparkling!), and how much care we need to take for clean hands etc. We’re trying to remember what lengths we went to when we lived in China 10 years ago. There was no antibacterial handwash then... I think we made do with lavish soaping - and lots of it.

Anyway, eventually the first expedition hit the road at about 2pm. First we went to a bakery cafe around the corner (we walked around the block last night after dinner, spotting local points of interest) and had bagels, croissants and coffee. Quite a decent latte I must say. I think this KaveHaus might be a chain, it has that uber-regularised feel about the menu and the look of the food. Fine with me, means it should be clean and safe. M ordered a cup of American coffee, which is how you get a long black. It came in a big mug, about 3/4 full, with a jug of hot water on the side. M, as he always does, got out his little water bottle to add some cold water to it so he could drink it straightaway. And heh, he’d refilled his bottle with the sparkling water at the hotel, so his long black fizzed up like a capuccino! He tried stirring it, and then added some sugar, but dear readers, DON’T try this experiment, it’s kinda nasty... I wanted a small cake to round out my brunch, but even though I stood patiently at the counter making eye contact with the 5 or so staff, no luck. They were very involved in having an argument with some [possibly Bulgarian] blokes at another table, who we think were arguing about the bill. Then some young Russian girls came in, sat down and immediately began waving imperiously and impatiently at the staff, who of course all rushed over to offer their services. Except for the dude making the coffees, who shook his head lugubriously but continued to fail to see me. So I went and sat down, thought I’d have a little rest before trying again. Then I found the menu of cakes, so I more or less grabbed the little waitress the next time she passed, and strong-armed her into taking my order. The cake was described as a “cottage cheese pancake”, but I would describe it as a ricotta and nut cake with orange glaze. Whatever it was, it was very nice, filled up my tummy. And we wont’ talk about how I missed my gob and poured coffee down my front, a waste of a purrfectly clean shirt...

Now, off to the Tourist Information Centre, which Lonely Planet gives an extremely average mark as a source of help. It’s only 10 minute walk through the Admiralty Park (the Admiralty Building is right at the end of our street, about 50 metres away), but then we have to cross an Arc-de-Triumphe-esque multi-lane ring road to get over to it, and no pedestrian crossings in sight. In the end, we hold hands and run. M is nervous but I reckon the buses can see us.

The TIC is in fact almost useless - hardly any print material, a few very ordinary souvenirs at very extraordinary prices, and a woman behind a desk who is NOT inclined to offer any actual service. We wander around, reading what we can, and grabbing some maps, brochures and handouts. We’re looking for concerts, but apart from a lavishly advertised “Folk Songs and Peasant Dances” extravaganza there is no sign that classical music exists here.

Time to go for a walk and see ... we walk across the huge square, minding out for the huge statue, the beggars, the other tourists and the horse-carriage rides. The buildings are ex-palaces, elegant and very ornate. One has a row of dudes gesturing along the roof, looking very noble and triumphant. Many of these buildings are being renovated, all around us is scaffolding and that funny building-wrapping thing where a picture of the building underneath is wrapped over the scaffolding so it looks as if it’s still there. We first saw that in Venice, at the Guggenheim Museum, but I thought it was a fixture. Innocent little me. M is a bit apprehensive in the crowds, and twice a car tries to run him down on pedestrian pathways, so he’s nervous. I take his hand, say “THINK OF YOUR MANTRA” sternly, and lead on. Once we get out of the square and back onto the main road, which is incidentally the main shopping street (Nevsky Prospekt), he’s fine. We’re sticky-beaking away, noting that we’re in the high-end shopping district, with brands like Chanel and Max Mara on the storefronts. There are plenty of independent shops too, largely women’s clothing and tobacconists.

We find a music store which sells cds, dvds, musical instruments and scores. Aha! M-type shopping. Inside is a plethora of covetable things, arranged in wooden cabinets with glass lids, and interesting vertical cd-case displays which somehow lock each cd into a slot, so you can read each side of the case but can’t remove it. I find some recordings of Sergei Rachmaninov playing himself, recorded between 1919 and 1929, now re-mastered. Happy Anniversary to M! He’s lost in the scores, but comes away saying he wants to return when he’s not so fazed, to look more closely and perhaps buy some Tchaikovsky.

We wander further east, crossing two canals and noting the boat rides, which are heavily spruiked on each corner of the bridge by women with tiny amps and mikes. Some are English-guided so we’ll have a go at that another day. When our legs run out of oomph, we cross the road by going down a flight of steps and under the road (that’s probably how we should have crossed into the square, we’d forgotten about this method). We’re now looking for a newsagent or similar, with faint hopes of English newspapers. We know there’s the St Petersburg Times printed in English, but apparently it’s mostly ads, so a nice grittily-opinionated Brit newspaper would go down well. [I grapple with the crosswords (haven’t finished my sacred haul of Sydney Morning Herald crosswords yet, I keep them for when I need to feel successful) and complain about the bad-tempered columnists; M just reads them and tells me what’s happening in the world. And if any of it is happening in Australia - not much it seems, we’ve had almost no news from home via newspapers. - !!! OR via emails from our dear ones, HINT HINT HINT !!! - I know we could Google, but somehow we don’t want to spend time like that. And this blog may not get onto the webs for a while; the wireless connection at the hotel is kaputsky. I’ve seen Wi-Fi at one or two cafes, so I *could* get it done later... AND we passed the Mac shop, so I know I can do it if I really want to. I might even take M’s cd and get it loaded onto the puter, now THERE’S a thought...]

We come to a STOCKMANN shop - aha! Something we recognise. M is doing incredibly well, translating Russian, and even I have had some success, although I must say that the words I know from reading choral scores aren’t exactly in the popular dialogue. But a few clues help, and M has already bought a Russian/English dictionary, so by Saturday when we leave, we’ll be chattering away like locals. And yes, coffee is KAFE. Easy!

There’s a huge, dingy pile of a something important building over the road - to my delight this is the Palace Stroganoff! It certainly looks like quite a lot of very old stroganoff has been weathering all over it for some centuries.. it’s also being renovated; the top of the arch is covered in shade cloth. I have photos of it, very school of Pentridge architecture!

We go into Stockmann in case there’s a big bookshop, and/or papers, but this branch only has clothes. HOWEVER!!!! the shop opens into a delightful atrium cafe, which has a L’Occitane shop. And WHO has been looking for just such a shop, to replace her almost-finished Tired Leg Cream, absolutely vital travelling unguent to the House of Moi?? And WHO found L’Occitane in Helsinki but they only had half the range, and nothing for leggies??? Wonderful. Purrfect! I get the cream, and the two young Russian women serving me try to talk to me - we manage to agree that the products are beautiful, and that almond oil is the most luscious of all. They give me a fist-full of free samples - creams, scents and lotions. Fabbo. Yum. Lucky me! So Happy Anniversary to me too, the lovely Tired Leg Cream is my gift from M. And, dear readers, I do swear by this stuff, it’s made of rosemary and camphor, and when you rub it into those hard-working little legs n feet, it’s cooling and soothing and makes it all better. And excellent value for money, as all L’Occitane products are. Who me, justifying expense??? Never! I’m just being purr-agmatic.

There’s a big souvenir and bookshop on the road back to the hotel. We investigate closely, even though the inside of the shop is about 10 degrees hotter than outside, and very humid. M finds his dictionary. I find some books with textile prints, and various interesting things to photograph, like a Russian translation of a Sophia Loren cookbook, and many expensive books with jewelled covers, behind glass. And, bleugh, a lavishly-bound ginormous edition of, erg, all the Playboy centrefolds. This book comes with its own dark-blue briefcase with gold locks. Bleuuuggghhh...

Hot. Sweaty. Gotta take these leggies back to the hotel and cool off. Our room isn’t air-conditioned, but we have two fans and a high ceiling to absorb the heat. It faces north-east, so there’s little direct sun. I’m grateful to collapse on the bed while M rustles up a pot of coffee. Now we’re listening to Tom Waites, reading the Lonely Planet about the Hermitage Museum, which is our destination tomorrow. M says there is an internet cafe inside the museum, called Cafe Max, so we have to go!

Tonight will be brought to you by the music cafe down the road, which has been playing bassoon quartets each time we’ve passed. Today brought to you in general by the smell of washing powder, eau de Russian drain, and some of my Earth incense, which makes us feel more at home than anything else.

Mammon, move over!

Yep, move over, I've been shopping.. window shopping.. does this mean I've bought a lifetime supply of windows? Nope. It means I've given myself delusions of grandeur about what I might just have to get up to tomorrow...

The Scandinavian influence in home furnishing design is so strong, and so familiar. All that Arabia-ware and Ittalla especially resonates with me, from items (mostly crockery and vases) I know well from childhood households (in Australia, I mean). The updated styles are still very school-of, too.

We spent today like this: M took 8 kg of stuff to be posted home (ahem, that was the Sami museum, a collection of papers, and quite a lot of our cold weather gear). I lay on my heatpad to try to quell spasms in my back... I lay there, channelling Ella (hi babe!) (my physio), and did some icky sinus wash stuff as well. Then it was all bombs away to be ready to meet Tuomo by 12 o'clock. He came in to the hotel beaming, because his second grandson was born this morning. We spent four hours with him; walking, driving, having grilled salmon and dill potatoes at the Harbour Market (and me being driven mad by stall after stall selling raspberries, cloudberries and the most highly scented strawberries I've ever had me nose near..), seeing cathedrals Finnish and Russian, various civic centre piles like the President's Palace, the Town Hall and National Theatre, the Opera House (which looks like an old post office, very dreary), and then a marvellous half hour in the Rock Church. This church was built in the 70's, by excavating a huge rock not far from the city centre, and re-using the granite rubble and walls to build a very space-ship like structure. The ceiling is a huge dome, with a copper circle floating above a strip of glass which draws your eye up, up to the rock wall inside and out. The chapel is quite starkly modern, cement floor and lower walls, grey metal seats with cerise fabric covers, and a long slice of copper panelling running horizontally around the top of the 'ground floor' walls. The colour clash of the copper and the cerise, reflected by and in the copper in the afternoon sun, had me reaching for the camera to try to record the colours.

Tuomo dropped off two fairly replete tourists at about 4.30. Our last stop with him was at the Sibelius memorial sculpture and wind-pipe sculpture - this is made from many steel pipes, all different diameters, and clearly resembling organ pipes. You can stand underneath and put your head up the pipes, and hear them 'singing'. Mostly fairly deep tones, and kind of breathy, like whale music. Wonderful!

M needed a break from facts, figures, wonders and wife. So I charged off to do a few chores and then reward myself with a visit to the Stockman department store, which I am assured is THE place to go to buy everything in central Helsinki.

Well, I tried. I cruised the ground floor, standard highly tempting shiny things for women department - purrfume, makeup, accessories (Prada sunnies, darling), belts and bangles and baubles and silly socks and sexy stockings and all that. I succumbed, but only to the socks. Two pairs of purple knee-high socks, to go with the fabbo purple suede boots I bought yesterday.

I cruised up several floors of the store, mooching and being amused by what was familiar and what wasn't, and the behaviour of the people, until my feet started yelling at me. A shop assistant pointed me to the cafe (just round from the skinny-girl's knickers, if you need to know). I fell into a blueberry strudel and a coffee. I pulled out the English newspaper I had with me and tackled world news, smarmy superior English columnist writings about the Olympic fervour and how it would never be done HEAH, my DEAH. Gee, I dislike snotty writing like this...I don't mind opinions, but why so rude?

I tackled the crossword and was just about to take my revived self off to the home furnishings and textiles, when a familiar face appeared at my table - Terttu! And her partner, who is a Viking. Another coincidence in a day of them (next blog entry will detail this bit). Lovely to see her again and assure her that I am feeling better and ta-da! up to touristing again, etc etc.

Now I must leap off the puter and go to eat dinner before M dies of diet. Friday night in Helsinki, the beeyootiful people are out, the Helsinki Festival starts tomorrow with a city marathon, and anything, just ANYTHING, could happen with my Visa. Yippee!