Put a little something in our lemonade.

A month drains away, and here there are practically no marks to show for it. Sorry to the three or four of you that might be concerned or saddened by this. In compensation: some impressions of varying opacity bundled into one really long paragraph:

Adventures and misadventures in solitude and society, a bout of flu, and a whole lot of pasta from the hands of our Italian, Sabrina. Julia makes the best sandwiches in Petersburg and she gives them to me on the cheap. Russian Banja’s (complete with birch-branch beatings, slow-sipped beer, and every imaginable physical variety of naked man), dramatic or not so dramatic political happenings, and unsuccessful attempts to venture out to the parks at Pushkin, Pavlosk, or just, really, the theater on a Saturday night for some more cultured, civilized air. Someday I’ll make it to the famed Petersburg water museum. A bout of manic snowstorms and a plus 8 degrees Celsius two days later. The slush lives in my shoes and my toes poke through the holes in my socks in curious but sometimes uncomfortable ways. The Petersburg-hop is a spread-leg ballet leap over the massive puddles that form against the curbs here; a reason for Russian dance renown, no doubt. But we’re already well past the sun setting at seven o’clock and given the rather rudely arriving end of daylight savings time today we’ll soon be lit well into the evening. You can feel the vitamin d. From the states I received three (three!) mix cds and a chocolate bar so precious I still haven’t managed to eat it. But then there’s the whole crate of guilt for the postcards I still haven’t managed to send (is this a defect, a compulsion, or just plain inconsideration). Wrapped up in books, hidden in looks: looking for a clean, well lit place and trying to get by with all of my F-A-C-U-L-T-I-E-S intact. Rereading Shakespeare. I seem to be living between Internet binges and obsessing about those far away American politics. The Obama speech last week got me all misty-eyed, which was sort of difficult to explain to the Europeans in the room with the computer. I have decided to return to the states in late August and my trip back has a 1.5 month stopover in Frankfurt. Expected destinations include Berlin, Ghent, Nice, Paris, Milan, Zagreb, and with any luck the Monastary in Bulgaria on top of a mountain surrounded by lakes. My lot is trekking to Irkutsk and Baikal and Mongolia (!?) in a week and a half (about 5 days on the trans-Siberian) and I decided to sit out to save money, energy for European adventures. Also, I’d like to get some serious studying done, my recent success on the state exam in Russian notwithstanding. Trading English lessons for Italian, English for Bulgarian, all the while struggling to explain English conditionals. Maybe I’ll get some French in there too, although I think Maria et al are determined to preserve its status as the secret female language. Finland is apparently the mecca of hipster fashion and tasty condiments. Even the Heinz ketchup smuggled in from Helsinki tastes divine also the Finnish accent in English, Russian is totally humorous and simultaneously, strangely, attractive. I’m thinking of words like mellifluous.

Also I finally got a haircut, again Sabrina’s work.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I’ve got a photo date with Ljena our friend (and teacher) Dasha’s fiancee.

That’s more or less it. I’ll bid you all adieu, to shape my old course in a country new…

And so I’ll leave you with some Pavich which I’m reading in Russian, translated from the Serbian.

Вечером здесь достаточно вытянуть руку и ночь упадает тебе прямо в ладонь.

Krasota!

Update: Anny has finally given photographic proof that in Morocco the goats traipse about in trees (!?)

Some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground

Nothing much to say about the Elections, as things turned out pretty much exactly as expected and you guys have probably already read the usual complaints about media coverage and forced turnout in the nyt/bbc/economist. It’s interesting to note that this time around the most important thing for the Kremlin was overall voter turnout. Throughout Petersburg and Moscow individual candidate ads are pretty much nonexistent (excepting the massive billboard I mentioned last time, of course) but the city was plastered with exhortations to go out to vote, same goes for TV and radio advertisements. In Moscow especially the star-power strategy used by United Russia in November was replaced by an official billboard campaign featuring all sorts of well known faces explaining that they were going to vote “for the future of Russia.” That this bears similarity to most of United Russia’s slogans and shows a further conflation of party and power is besides the point; due to cynical attitudes toward this election, even from Kremlin supporters, most people don’t see the point in voting, a situation that jeopardizes the legitimacy of Medvedev’s victory, 70% land side or not.

As for the man himself, we’ll see, I guess. I think he’s a little taller and a little stockier (apparently he’s a weight lifter) and I think some ten years younger than Putin, he hasn’t worked in the KGB or FSB, and he likes Rock Music. As to this latter, I’m a bit skeptical considering that his favorite band is Deep Purple. And considering my principle associations with “smoke on the water” are land rover-driving tools from high school, I doubt he’ll be make too many steps away from Putin’s program. Especially with the latter as Prime Minister.

In other news my weekend in Moscow was mostly uneventful and minimally expensive. Highlights were my first experience in a United States Embassy (sort of a bizzaro food-courted, wood paneled world after being in Russia for 6 months), dropping by the Bulgakov Museum (some kind of high pitched woman was singing there accompanied by bells and rainsticks… no comment), and talking with a girl at the hostel who was shocked, shocked that I didn’t know anything about the Lindy Hop. The low point: they stole my mp3 player at the train station while I was trying to buy a newspaper. Jokes on them though, that thing was pretty much completely busted anyways.