juvira internet cafe, prague, czech republic, 1:30pm

The next installment of my friend Sam's travelogue arrived and I enjoyed it just as much as the 1st, so thought I'd pass it on again. If anything he's getting more verbose so I've taken the liberty of cutting out a few sentences here and there, to try to keep it to a readable length (yes, it was even longer!) - hope he doesn't disapprove. I suppose this is the definition of lazy blog-keeping...
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Dear readers,

That last email was a bit crap wasn't it? (though comparisons to nineteenth century literature are always appreciated) Big on impressions, small on detail. I was exhausted after writing the first few hundred words and I did you all a disservice by signing off before giving you a richer description of Berlin. However, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed writing it so I've decided to write down my thoughts as they occur rather than try to recall when I have the luxury of reflection. I might enter them as they appear in my notebook or edit them into some kind of composition.

First thoughts

The cold air carries the glow from the street lamps off into the night sky. The whole train station is illuminated by white light...
Enter the Metro via the longest, steepest escalator I've ever seen. Already feeling anxious, the correlation to the descent into Hades is obvious...
All the signs are in Cyrillic- the backwards looking Russian alphabet where Ps are Rs and Ns are Ps. every word looks like anagrams of Depeche Mode...
Beginning to recognize the names of train stations, or solving the mystery of a word by playing Wheel of Fortune with the letters i already know...
People look "dodgy". Poor. Glum...

Feels very much like Shanghai. Has that same post-communist atmosphere. Everything looks the same. Everyone dresses similarly. Conservatively. Cheaply. The streets are unclean. No one dresses flamboyantly, or even stylishly. It's all very tacky. No one seems to have the financial, social freedom to express themselves. It looks like they're all working so hard just to get by. Here the people just seem so run down. Well the majority do. The rest are working just as hard so they can spend it. The disparity between the very rich and the very poor in Moscow is astounding.

Had organized a place to stay via Couchsurfing. Made it to the local metro station but got hopelessly lost after this. Decided to stay awake until we registered our visas. According the rough guide it is now the responsibility of the police to do this. The police we asked either ignored us, or told us forcibly to go away. With the aid of a very kind muscovite eventually found a visa registry office. Spent two hours in a queue waiting to be processed. Joined what we thought was the end of the queue but it didn't seem to earn that status until people started coming into the office and demanding to be served before others whom were already waiting. Presumably this was because they had been there earlier and reserved a place, then left to run some other errands. There was much disagreement over whether or not this was acceptable. Two foreigners waiting patiently in line with ten kilo backpacks seemed to become the supporting evidence for those who thought it wasn't. Imagine the sugar lines, indeed. Eventually served only to be told that they won't do it. We would have to go to the business listed on the visa invitation to have them register it. We hadn't slept in over thirty hours. Agreed to take a taxi. Mute driver turns out to be very helpful. Goes out of his way to take us all the way to the front door and then only charges us $15. Travel agency confirms that they sent us the invitations but they can't process it either. We will have to go to a youth hostel. They arranged the reservations and an English speaking taxi to take us there. English speaking taxi is a brand new Lexus. Costs us almost $40 to go back across town to the traveller's guest house- the tenth floor of a dilapidated Russian council flat. The guest house charges us another $40 for one night's accommodation and visa processing. Jess goes straight to sleep. I stay awake until nightfall wondering what the hell I'm doing here.

Incredible how big a part a home plays in your psychological well being. Yesterday lying on a lumpy bed, aghast at the thought of staying in Moscow for any longer than two days, now in the apartment of out original host, our packs of our backs for the first time in two days, Moscow seems ok. The city looks ready to discover. The girlfriend of our host puts on a spread of salad, stuffed and pickled vegetables, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, the first proper meal I've eaten since leaving home. Today is a public holiday. The public holiday used to be on the Monday. It was the day of accord and yeah whatever...., the anniversary of the revolution's birth. But now the holiday had been changed to the Friday and removed of its communist significance. No one we ask seems to know why.

Moscow not the gulag I might have you imaging. It's really a hyper consumerist theme park where all the remaining soviet monuments, and I'm sure that most of them have remained, have all the cultural significance of Mickey Mouse. No disrespect to Walt Disney. Designer labels abound in the heart of Moscow. Advertisements, unbelievably raunchy advertisements, are plastered all over the glorious metro stations which otherwise resemble the courts of King Louis xiv. Banners are strung up above the streets one after another, like waves coming into shore. The young, over-sexed Gucci-clad girl and her fatigues wearing 'private security' boyfriend are the perfect image of the new Russia. As far as the old ones go, Red Square is impressive. Not as ominous as I imagined. Though the basilica of St. Peter comes close to perfection in its confectionery castle splendour.

Most days temperature between 6-10 degrees. Not really feeling the cold. Apparently it should be snowing by now but they had an odd autumn.

Spent the last three days in a torpor. The initial relief of moving in with Tor and Marscha resided. We stayed with them for the duration of the long weekend but they spent most of it locked away in their room. Their offer to show us around never eventuated. They share their flat with two other people, but at different times housed up to eight guests during our stay. We would wake at eleven, leave by twelve. By now the metro doesn't pose a problem but even with the address of the restaurant we get horribly lost as soon as we go above ground. It takes us on average two to three hours to find what we are looking for. The streets literally have no names here. Not even in Cyrillic it seems. They are advertised in both languages from a distance - Pavletskaya St. 50m----> - but they are so often confused or contradictory. At the restaurants all the menus are in Cyrillic. It's difficult to know what you're ordering and how much it will cost. We only frequent the cheapest of establishments but even they share a system whereby you have the food you point to, served up from the buffet, weighed on scales and then charged according to the mass of your meal. In some places the plates are as big as dog's bowls so you always feel you're being ripped off. It always costs more than you hoped. It seems impossible to eat in a restaurant for less than $10 a head. That's not a lot but in Berlin we would spend half that and it would be guaranteed to taste twice as good. The absurd thing is that you can step out into the street and buy the same beer you bought inside for a third of the price- another thing Moscow has in common with Shanghai. By the third day we have taken to buying a baguette, a block of cheese, a slab of salami and premixed gin and tonic at the local store and spending the afternoon enjoying our own company in a park near the Kremlin. My flaneurs desire to explore this city has faded away. Every sight seeing prospect promises to be a frustrating experience. I no longer have any desire to try.

Moved in with another Couchsurfer. A twenty three year old architect named Nadi. We all spend the first night together in a very satisfying conversation. I want to know if she feels safe in this city where everyone looks pissed off, the police carry machine guns and the department stores all have walk through metal detectors at the entrance. "People are scared so they act scary" she says. "The generation in power now were all adolescents, young adults when the Soviet Union fell. They were deprived of educations. Many turned to crime and became very successful at it. Business was conducted with stand over tactics. The police were mercenaries. Everything became about money and so today everyone moves to Moscow to try and make money. They all work hard so they can make money and they're all scared that someone will come and take it away from them again. That's why it's a shitty city. No one wants you to talk to them. Everyone wants their own freedom. In communist times you were supposed to go outside, you were supposed to communicate, you were supposed to be at one with everyone. Now people just want to be alone. Everyone's arrrghhhhh! That's why they look pissed off". She was so reluctant to discuss these issues or to answer questions about Perestroika, Yeltsin, Putin but I was so grateful for her opinion. Some vindication of my initial thoughts.

Second night in St. Petersburg.

I have the urge to write. I'm such a moody writer and it wasn't until the gorgeousness I just witnessed that I felt the need to pick up the pen again. Parted ways with Jess after dinner. Couldn't bear to spend another night in someone's apartment listening to bleak music and drinking red wine. From where I was on the main street, an alley elbowed out and took me to the Church of Spilled Blood, another gingerbread castle perhaps even more impressive than the one in Red Square and branching out in every direction- canals and cobble stone streets. It's old Europe just behind the glitter strip. If this is an indication of what to expect in Italy, I can't wait to get there. I follow my eyes through these streets. There across the river Neva is the fortress of Peter and Paul. Just like on my map. So this building behind me must be the Hermitage and that's the Admiralty so the dome next to it is St. Isaac's. See these town squares. Look at the lights. This city is the grandest I've seen yet. Sorry to be hyperbolic but Moscow was a toilet compared to this. On first impressions you might say that St. Petersburg is to Moscow what Melbourne is to Sydney. Younger, more cultured, so proudly European.

Our time in Moscow evidently didn't get any better. Even with the sympathy gifted us by Nadi, it was no easier to get through the day there. She took us to a cafe called faq (pronounced, well you can use your imagination). Laid out like a bunker in a side street under the red stars of the Kremlin, connected by corridors you have to crouch down to pass through. The decor was different in every room, a decaying library, a cyber punk nest. The food was divine and the prices reasonable although the servings were small. We ended eating nearly every meal here for the last four days of our stay. We very rarely left our seats. The only other thing that made Moscow bearable was an excursion to a performance of Swan Lake by the Bolshoi ballet. Not at the Bolshoi unfortunately. That's closed for renovations, but we did see the principle company perform and it was an unforgettable experience. Inventive set designs, extraordinary choreography, an excellent setting for listening to Tchaikovsky. It was a little disillusioning to find ourselves in a crowd consisting mainly of American students and Chinese business men, but it really is something that every foreigner should see. I really enjoyed the physicality of it all. The scuffle of the shoes on stage. The pounding of the dancer's chests. I didn't follow the story and I tended to watch the supporting cast more than the leads at times. Your mind does tend to wander too but in the pleasing, inspired sort of way. I don't think I'll be seeing another one in Russia though. I'll save the rest of the money in my cultural budget for a trip to the Hermitage. Tomorrow perhaps if I can keep myself off the streets. It's such a pleasure to just walk around after spending so much time seeking refuge in Moscow. Next stop will be Prague at this stage. Trains to Eastern Europe only come and go into Moscow so a short flight might be needed.

Sitting in the doorway between two the two rooms of Darscha bar waiting for my host Darya. Have an hour and a half to kill, will try to do it with words. Yesterday there was talk of a day being spent walking in the Pushkin gardens and visiting a palace. Sounded nice. The invitation came from friends of Darya's but they cancelled early in the morning due to poor weather. Continued the tradition of sleeping in till midday. We seem to spend twelve hours on our feet and twelve on our backs. Darya piped up around one with another suggestion; a trip to the markets. Special markets run by the homeless and alcoholics apparently. Blue noses she called them because, well its pretty self explanatory. Jess seemed enthusiastic at first but later declined to go. Said she was sick. Might be but she has been acting strangely. Something not lost on Darya who does not like, or react well to, Jess's sarcasm and misanthropy. So we two took the train further into the northern (are they always poorer?) suburbs. Upon exiting the metro we were met with a typical Sunday market. Temporary stalls selling fruits, clothes, pirated DVDs, soviet memorabilia. We passed this by and crossed over to the wrong side of the tracks. Here was a one kilometre stretch of, on this occasion, mud, populated on both sides by babushkas and factory workers; their tarps laid out, junk for sale. Machine parts, cutlery, toys, pornography, soviet memorabilia. Though the latter in this place had the appearance of authenticity. Maybe they were selling granddad's medals. Others were off-loading Russian coins dating back to the eighteenth century. I was quite taken with all this history and when I turned my back Darya bought me an old coin commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of Lenin's birth. I'm quite indifferent to this sort of communist fetishism but I appreciated the thought immensely.

Left after an hour of wading till our boots were brown, to join other friends of Darya's for afternoon tea. Ended up at the Shingle Inn of St Petersburg. The staff exit the kitchen with bread boards bearing piping hot pastries and dispense them right onto the mahogany counter top. You file past and take your pick. Seems you could have your choice of any fish from the gulf of Finland cooked in one of these pies. Purchased one sweet and one savoury with a latte for less than $7 and savoured them in the company of some very lively young Russians. Everything about Petersburg seems so much more light-hearted than Moscow. Taking a post-dining walk I spotted a poster that warranted a double take. In Cyrillic I thought it read Jane Birkin. I asked if I was right and I was (it reminds me of learning hiragana on the yamamote line in Tokyo). She was playing this Saturday and Darya was already going. A fan obviously. We are bonding very well. After farewelling the last friend decided to see Last Days, the new-ish film by Gus van Sant but we missed the last session. Headed instead to her favourite bar; a wonderfully seedy little place with chequered floors and paisley wallpaper. The second room, the one I'm currently half-in, half-out contains a foosball table around which there is some very serious competition. These guys have their own shirts printed. Spent hours discussing the usual with this 27 year old philosophy graduate, call centre operator and globetrotter. She has been extremely hospitable to date. She has a friend that works at the Hermitage who might be able to sneak me in for a private tour.

....An aside. The jukebox here in Darscha just strung together the velvet underground and the Rolling Stones and the punters are breaking out in dance wherever they can find space.

Today.

First stop ticket office. Jane Birkin seats secured. Jess is coming after I described Jane as the French Marianne faithful. I took jess to the Australian embassy I'd discovered on one of my walks. They'll let here take her uni interviews via the phone there. Then off to Czech air, then Pulkovo. I'm flying to Prague on Sunday. Jess probably won't be joining me. We plan to do Italy together in a few weeks but before then I'd rather see Prague, Vienna, Krakow? Budapest? and she Istanbul, Croatia, Romania. Took in Last Days together afterwards. Is it possible to like a film you didn't enjoy watching? Or rather, is it possible to ignore your gut reaction to a film in favour of a more analytical response? I was left feeling so tired and weary by this one. Speechless like I was after watching the same director's elephant last year but I wonder if that's an unavoidable result of watching a junk-sick musician stumble around his estate before committing suicide for ninety minutes. Otherwise he just uses the same formal techniques he did in the previous film but unlike elephant, where the same incident viewed from a number of perspectives deepened the tragedy by implicating more victims in the shootings, in the context of this film, the repetition of minutiae just seemed so pointless. I'm always uncomfortable with accusations of pretentiousness and exploitation so I won't make them myself, but I hope Gus limits his young-men-surrendering-to-death series of films to a trilogy.

Which brings me up to date here in Darscha, waiting for Darya. In an unexpected, unwelcome and unbearably eerie turn of events Darya came to the club shortly after only to whisk me outside. Something awful had happened she said, and we had to leave. Jess appeared. Darya explained that a friend of hers, a student, musician, activist, a food-not-bombs sort of kid, had been murdered in the streets the previous night. A gang of fascists approached him and another guy outside a bookstore and stabbed him in the neck five times. She was taking us to another bar were all of his friends were in mourning. I've been known to deride people for wearing all black all the time and listening to depressing music, but then and there it seemed more than appropriate for once. The sadness in the room was palpable. A group of maybe thirty friends were siting, drinking, huddled and crying. A dj was playing every sad song he owned. The walls were covered in photos of the deceased. During a run of particularly miserable Morrissey hits I started to cry. Far too much exposure to dead boys for one evening. If I had read about this in the Moscow times it would have been just another piece of vitriol saved from that city but in St. Petersburg it seems so unlikely, so cruel. Is all Russia really as bad as I think it is?

The days after this saw a marked change in dynamics. Something changed in the somewhat tense relationship between Jess, Darya and I. Jess and I became closer again, perhaps because we were both starting to be irritated by Darya suddenly (in my experience, maybe jess felt it from the start) playing coy all the time. She became very irritating to be around. Maybe she sensed this because without telling us she moved out for a few nights leaving Jess and I in her apartment. We didn't really see her again until last night at Jane Birkin. It was a good show. She doesn't own the greatest voice in music, but she was very charming in between songs, and besides you can't really spoil Serge Gainsbourg songs.

Earlier in the week Darya told us we could spend one hour or one week in the hermitage depending on what you wanted to see. Jess and I left ourselves three hours on our last afternoon. It really is an extraordinary building, filled with an unbelievable amount of treasures, but it was almost tedious given the mood we were in. I enjoyed a large collection of Matisse's but we were out of there almost as fast as the characters race through the louvre in 'bande a part'. So much missed but Jane was worth it. Caught the first Sunday train to the airport and made it with half an hour to spare. Two hours and no sleep later here I am in Prague. Alone and feeling very uneasy about it. I hope it's only travelling blues. Again I could go on, but I refuse to pay these people for anymore than three hours. I just know I've left things out. Like, remind me to tell you about going to the opera at the Mariinsky theatre next time, ok? k.

Miss you all,
sam