August 8. Pushkin and the Vegetarian in the box.

Happy birthday Caspar! Saint Petersburg is very pretty. Today, we visit a flea market with many interesting things on display. I remember a Russian magazine with Madonna the popsinger on its cover, lots of old clothes, binoculars, children's toys, old photo cameras, fur coats, vantage prams, records, engine parts. I socially walk on but feel the urge to write and do so in a Russian buffet restaurant.

Then the afternoon comes and we go to Pushkin. Such a wonderful park they have built, the tsars. Tourists flock here to see the world famous amber room, taking their photographs in traditional costumes and stroll on the pretty lanes. We walk around and enjoy the park a lot. We are saturated with all those architectural highlights when we take the slow train back to the city.

Black box vegetarianism. I only care about input and output. If I put in a black box one not suicidal strict vegetarian, one living pig, one dead pig, a sack of potatoes and enough utensils to cook it, and I wait long enough, what will be in the box when I open it is two dead pigs and a frenzied non suicidal scrict vegetarian with maggots nestling in his hair. He has eaten the potatoes, the living pig has starved to death and the dead pig has begun to rot. If I would have put a not so strict vegetarian in there, the contents of the box after the experiment would have been a perfectly healthy living vegetarian and a living pig. To translate this to the real world: we have to intelligently interpret where the walls of the black boxes are.

Oh old and mighty Chickadee

America, thou art a recipe

Take a loaf of constitution

toss in the federalist papers

stir it for one century

then add Lincoln's Gettysburg address

stir it for one more century

subsequently add the words of Martin Luther King

the sermon after Rosa Park claimed that bus seat in Montgomery

and season it with the most vehement speeches of Malcolm X

pour some shots of John Fidgerald Kennedy's inaugural address

now shake it and serve with a handgranate and an assault rifle.

August 7. A Neva ending boatride.

Today we take a beautiful boatride. This is not supposed to be a touristic site but the boatride through the canals of St. Petersburg, passing all the beautiful facades and museums, the rattling Russian voice - don't forget to bring your Russian friends! - explains about the house where Pushkin lived, the tsar's palaces, the area where Dostojewski strolled as he pondered about his great novels, and it concludes the trip going out on the Neva, breeze in your hair. This, the Hermitage, the Dostojewski house, the Kunstkammer, a stroll over the Nevsky, make a great stay in St. Petersburg. Order your personal ticket at... etcetera. It is good for the soul too. It is really a very nice place to be, as a modern city (some might concern her a bit too expensive) St. Petersburg is a blend of haste and calmness, of frantic activity and relaxation. There are so many corners to discover, so many anecdotes if you are in love with Russian literature, and so many smiles - you will be willing to go back to her. Just one small thing. Please don't call her "Peter".

It can suddenly end. There will be a next sentence one day, a last utterance we need a last breath for, perhaps it will be an arbitrary and banal remark, or a careful recapitulation of our life's thinking. That one last sentence, what if we miss it? What if we prepare ourselves for it, as good as we can, I suppose that will always be imperfect but that is another story, we prepare ourselves for it as we see the day approaching and then it turns out we have been mistaken. It is not our last breath. Of course it catches us by surprise anyway, no matter in which direction we run. Our vanity has been boundless, we tried to prepare for this? Didn't we know there will be a breath after the last one, a breath we don't even get to breathe? I think we should just be less concerned with that. That said, our words will still in the end sum up to some "total", a body of text that will be interpreted depending on our level of fame. And there will be a last sentence, it will be turned and twisted and molded into whichever shape they want; we can't do anything about that so we shouldn't care. And yet... we might have the chance to play a little joke on our receptors. Something better than hey I own Asklepios a cock.

August 6. St. Petersburg, Parks, Pancakes.

Bryndis comes, the interesting girl from Iceland. Together we explore this amazing city some more, walk through her parks, feel happy as we breathe the atmosphere of this masterpiece of architecture. It is almost unimaginable that this place has been a swamp only three centuries ago. At home I make pancakes, just to do something about my mission of Pancakes around the Globe, the one aspect of Dutch cuisine I take pride in, and that is usually welcomed in the continents I try it out.

A handy thought experiment if you feel you are not in the center of the universe. It goes as follows: construct an adjective which superior version applies to your location as well as to a series of growing sets to which such an adjective can be found, that are all containing each other, and eventually being the universe thus concluding a trace. I write this in Helsinki and my trace is "the largest city in the coldest nation within the strongest economic block". From now on, you are always in the "place to be".

August 5.

And so I arrive in Saint Petersburg. The trainride was nice as always. I have been listening to audiobooks and sleeping a little bit. At the station, Olga, my couchsurfing host is waiting for me. I am so grateful to her! We take a metro to Olga's place. Later we walk around her city. Pretty. I remember the famous Hare on the small island, the Cathedral, the impressive Peter the Great buildings constructed by a host of European architect he ordered in from Germany and Italy as you probably know. Just imagine what would happen of Petersburg's actual most famous son, Vladimir Putin, would order all European architects of democracy to advise him in the Kreml. Not of course, to teach him how to construct the most astounding facades, but how to become a real democrat himself. This city is so inviting to those kind of musings, so free and frivolous in a positive sense.

In the evening I cook some chicken-vegatable stew and Olga likes it. Very naturally, I become a traveling cook. Everything is possible.
Sleeping goes very well that night.

Working days until Moscow.

The next couple of days are not so interesting for the reader, I guess. I just wrote and wrote. In the morning at the kitchen table, in the afternoon in a cafe, and the last day in a huge bookstore. That is a nice story though. Max helped me to buy a train ticket to Moscow online. The train left late at night, and I had to spend my last day in St Petersburg waiting.

But just as if some angels from a Hermitage canvas had followed me, there was a 24 hour bookstore at the other side of the street, with a cloakroom, with good coffee, and with a live music act. This was a promotion concert and an interview with a electric violin player, who really got some tough electronic beats from a drum computer and he let his fiddle howl through my reading of Hemingway. Not exactly my pair of shoes, but I enjoyed the experience. My writings grew a few pages that night, and I was content when I fell asleep on the night-train to Moscow.


One more thing. On that train I met a group of football supporters, who were on their way back from St Petersburg where they were at a game between Juventus Torino and Zenith St. Petersburg. They were supporters of Juventus, and members of its Russian fanclub. O how they loved Italy and the handsome football players. I sent an old Laura Pausini song, la solitudine, via bluetooth to a mobile phone.

St Petersburg #3. Hermitage.

I was in to some culture, and the next day I found some time to realize an old dream of mine: Visiting the Hermitage museum. It is located in seven huge buildings, and its collection is just huge. I concentrated on impressionist paintings, with the side-effect that I didn't feel like an absolute novice in artibus, because I knew a few works and yelled "Ah! So here you are!" to some of them. Here is a list of the works I liked most. Wonder what they look like? Google them...

Gijsbrecht Lijtens - Winter landscape
Frans Snijders - Fish market
Rinaldo Rinaldi - Taloni
Tizian - portrait Paul III
Louis le Lain - Milkmaid's family
Rouault - tete de jesus Christ
Picasso - trois femmes (1908)
Gauguin - femmes au bord de la mer
Gauguin - ou vas-tu?
Renoir - L'enfant au fouet
Georges Michel - landscape with mill
Hippolyte de la Roche - Portrait of Henrietta Sontag
Matisse - dance! (my favorite)

After a visit that turned into a bit of a rush near closing time, I headed back through very dirty streets. Yesterday's snow had turned into a grey ugly mash that entered my shoes. But it was okay. I wrote some six hours, and slept very late.

St Petersburg #2. Rock hard.

The next day I rolled in the snow. Why and how remains a little secret here. It caused me to be too late for the Hermitage, and I spent the afternoon writing in a cafe: business as usual. In the evening I met Marikka, the blond one, who took me to a concert of Igor, the bass guitarist. It must have been a immensely popular club, judging by the dragging and pulling outside the door. People were so eager to get in. Marikka's name was on a list, and I got in as a friend. So here I was the second day in this Russian metropole, where I used a few more annoying seconds to read the cyrillic signs, and I already was a vip in a concert. And the concert was great. Igor superstar! Thank you, guys!

The concert really rocked, and we danced the night away.

St. Petersburg #1.

So I arrived in Saint Petersburg in the morning, in a huge train station, and I called Katja, the girl whom I had contacted on the couchsurfing network. It was quite easy to find my way around the city, since there are only four subway lines, neatly intertwined around four large ploshads (squares). So I took the metro, and was amazed by the deep tunnels. Later I was told that it was constructed by the military to endure a nuclear attack, and several stations had large metal doors and bunkers.

I got a warm welcome by Katja's boyfriend Max, a very kind cinematographer and we had some sweet Georgian wine in the living room. Georgian wine, you say? Well, you cannot buy it in a Russian supermarket these days, for obvious reasons. But Max brought it from Latvia. I rested a little from my long trainride, which had been tiring despite of the long hours lying down on the bunk bed.

At night we went to a small bar that was founded by a German girl called Anke, and combined a bar with a laundry saloon, thus providing enjoyable waiting hours to its customers. It was a brilliant idea, and the bar was still vibrant, but the band that played could not really excite us. A common guitar riff accompanied by a man in a scream-mask drumming on plastic containers.

In the next bar the music was much better. It was Russian dub, and I saw musicians who could not have been more authentic. A man with long blond hair and large sunglasses swung his head, a cunning keyboarder and a very manly guitarist just gave the atmosphere that extra something. It sounded very cool. I was hungry and had some Russian fishsoup. The blond girl next to me told me she liked me, and, well, after the concert we went to her friend's house, who was a bass guitarist and a lead singer in a band. More on that later. The night was not very young anymore, and we stayed together, listening to Nirvana and the Beatles.

A 27 Hour Trainride.

In the morning, Alyona brought me to the station with the tram, where a woman sold the tickets on board. The train was already there, but I had to wait to get in. My passport was doublechecked and I entered a clean new waggon (you might be less lucky if you try to take a train in Russia) where a comfortable bunk bed, linen, a pillow, a blanket and free hot water from a fascinating machine were available on the long long ride.

And long it was. Fortunately, I shared my compartment with two nice Russian women and Michael, a bald ship engineer with a nice moustache who had seen the world, or at least an array of harbours on all of its continents. It was interesting talking to him, although - his English was just slightly better than my Russian. But we had time! O yes, we had time. And using our meager shared vocubulary, hand and feet gesturing being of some help, we spoke about traveling, about Russian literature (admittedly, we only did some name-dropping), and then I asked him how he felt about Obama.
"Well, I very glad", he said. "And do you know "Voyna i mir" (War and Peace)? Yes, yes. "Bush - voyna; Obama - mir. We were fond of that association and laughed, catching the attention of the woman sleeping below me on the bunk bed. "What are you talking about?" she asked in Russian. "Politics!" I think that is a funny situation: give two men a few words and they already start talking politics. Yes, it felt great, and I wrote a few pages while Michael read some Rasputin. When the bumping of the train got nasty, I stopped writing and went to bed.