Sunday, August 29, 2004

Vladimir and Volleyball

St Petersburg

The pretentious theme of the trip continued yesterday with a visit to the Nabokov museum at the dirty sod's old house. Besides being a pervert he also had a strange obsession with chess and butterflies. No sign of either at St Isaac's Cathedral which we headed to next, yet another fantastically opulent 19th century monument to the wealth of imperial Russia. The interior is dramatic and incredibly gaudy and there's a fine view from the colonnade across to the equally sumptuous Winter Palace. No wonder the peasants got pissed off.

We found a quiet, trendy sort of bar and stayed there far too long. Lots of locals got far too excited about the women's volleyball and drank plenty well into the night. They seem to be good drunks though the Russians, at one point a bunch of them got up and started singing the national anthem which is the same as the old Soviet one. It was so patriotic I half expected to find some tanks rolling down the street when we left the bar, but thankfully it was all quiet.

Getting the train to Moscow tonight. We've got tickets for a fourth class coach. Yes, that's fourth (count 'em) class. Who knows what state we'll be in by the time we get there but it should be fine as long as we're not sharing with farm animals.

2 Comments:

At 30 August 2004 at 09:06, Anonymous Anonymous said...

How dare you mock Nabakov? He is, without doubt, the finest writer of all time (even better than Lee Stott). Granted, his subject matter is sometimes a touch risque, but to hell with it. I think you should spend more time discussing cultural figures that you actually know something about, i.e. Michael Flatley or Paul Gadd. Perhaps even Barry George.

 
At 30 August 2004 at 13:06, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The name's Bond - Basildon Bond. Licensed to kill and drive heavy goods vehicles. The work I do is so secret, even my inside leg measurement is ex-directory. We all have code names, working our way backwards through the alphabet. My boss is P. Before that he was Q. So after Q-ing for a while, he finally got to P.

 

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