A bit more

This is Marina's eye. It's healed, and become...psychotic!

This is a cool Icon. To provide a bit more actual, non-pictoral explanation, this is from the Hermitage, where we were today. The lines were as to be expected. The Hermitage is the commie textbook example of why the revolution was justified, with all the proceeds from centuries of exploitation of a huge empire all stacked up in one gaudy pile. (Marina interjecting: take note, oh worthy reader, that this is just Az's high-horsed opinion. In reality, this was the Winter Palace of Russia's great rulers like Catherine and Peter the Greatz! The idea is that this serves as the focal point of all of the country's riches. It's currently one of the four major museums of Europe!)
Here's us in front of the Gulf of Finland. MArina made me put this on, because she thinks we're (read "she's"), cute. ===(++++> Y'arr

Not to tourists who may have been thinking about it: don't rub the grass!
Here's basically the only store we neeed in Russia. It has video games, fresh beer, 50 cent packs of cigarettes, porn, these truly excellent shwarmas, roast chicken, and it's open 24 hours a day! It is truly and actually one store, called 'Boiled Water', with the subtitle 'here live disks!' and 'we opened!', and what's more, it's only a block from our apartment!

More

I absolutely have no idea what this is about. It was on the computer at the internet club

Welcome to the Saint Petersburg metro. Please keep your hands and feet pointed up and down, respectively, otherwise there will be no room on the metro.
Yet more Metro rioting.
This is the grave of Kuidzhi, a famous painter of the late 19th and early 20....it really doesn't matter. It's a cool grave, tho.

Here's me, showin' mad disrespek to the monuments of petropolis.

Drive with caution: watery death awaits!

Russia has its own traffic hazards to consider...
This is the town of Peterhoff, without the baroque fountainwork.

Same cathedral as we took the other picture from.

I really don't remember taking this, but this is a slightly (read 'uproariously') intoxicated Marina dancing on the naberezhnoj of the fontanka.

Ledz go drrrunking!

So these are basically the more touristy pictures that some of y'all have been wanting. As a caveat, we've been engaging in that second most ancient of Russian pastimes, so...spelling might be a prublem. This here is Lenin's car, in a bix. It's muddy and covered in footprints.

These two are the old angel of the Peter and Paul fortress, which is in the museum at the base, and then the modern angel in its natural habitat. It's taller than it looks, like 128 meters, Marina says.
Here's Peter as seen from Saint Isaac's cathedral. These fountains were put in for the G8 conference last Summer.
More of the same. Pictures cost 25 rubles, the sign says, but I think only the Japanese pay.

More

NO TIME FOR COMMENTS!

Look at the bigger version. This is the Gulf of Finland.

Here's what the crows look like here. Kinda...piebald.

Russian Navy

Well, these guns illustrate quite eloquently Russia's attitude towards the west, pointed as they are towards Finland. The words on the wall read: To the heroic effort of the crew of the Red Flagged Baltic Armada in the Great Patriotic War from 1941-1945. See Marina for scale.

This is just this cool oldschool soviet submarine that is collecting rust near a so-called 'museum' that smells and looks like a toilet in a National Park.
More submarine. It would be a cool desktop.

Yes, this is really how they decided to paint this historical ship that actually races in the European Tall Ships races. It's called the Shtandart, (German for Standard, for all the braindead in the audience), and was built in the time of Peter the Great, at the beginning of the 1700s.

Us...we?

See, the reason why we don't have any pictures together is that we just have the two of us to take pictures...this is Russia, you can't just go handing strangers your camera and asking them to take a picture for you. Anyway, this is Marina, gettin' her drunk on.

So this is all on the Gulf of Finland. I think I'll put more pictures of the Submarine that Marina is dancing with on in a sec. And here's my Russian gettup. Issue is, they say I look like a sketchy cutpurse who's theived his way from Kazakhstan and is looking to make it rich in Peter. The cops ask "Where did you steal this American Passport?" Perfect! The exact impression I was looking to create! Oh, and I wear pointy black leather shoes now. Rock, rock on.

This is a sort of wierd looking Marina on a wreath commemorating the killing of some Finns or something. Actually, the survival of the German blockade, but it works out to the same thing.

Our apartment

Well, this is our apartment. Isn't that romantic?


but just in case you thought that our apartment was for soft-core wimps who listen to emo and write love poems in poor english, you'll be set straight right away by the following....declaration?
This isn't that great a picture, but it sort of shows what was wrong with marina's eye. If you click on the image, you get the full size version, for all the sickos in the audience.

Well, here's our actual room. Those roses in the window? Yup, they're fake. We're classy like that.

Petersburg - homefull!

No pictures again...forgot to bring the camera cord with us, but we've discovered a great internet cafe - ZEBRA! from where to keep contact with the world.

After a couple of days of bumbing around, we decided to head to the Vaux Hall (vokzal = train station) in search of some babushka that would let us rent her apartment for a couple of days. It's a wierd system: for some reason, it's an accepted fact that the only people you can rent an apartment from are babushki, and thus we were on the hunt for old women. Thing is, the economic conditions have changed, and thus, it's not actual babushki who have spare rooms. Thus, the babushki are actually agents, taking a 15 percent commission. We found out later that the militsia (may their name be eternally cursed), have decided to demand 150 ruble daily bribes from these babushki. We found a stealth babushka, however, whose hair wasn't all the way grey and had thus avoided paying the bribes thus far. It was a little cheaper, but not much, it still costs 800 rubles a day, so like $32. So we have a room in an apartment now, with this closet Finnish landlord who doesn't live there. The wierd thing is that it's totally unclear who else lives in the apartment, especially since we keep very....odd hours. They busted into our room at the crack of dawn (a figure of speech, it's always light out) and took a power converter, I have no idea why...but otherwise, it's almost like having our own apartment. We're not registered yet, because the system is asinine, so it turns out there's a $40 bribe to pay every time you get stopped by the cops. It happens constantly to a lot of the other ex-pats, but my Russian's pretty convincing, and I only wear Russian clothes, so I don't stand out like they do. So far, no problems. However, the flip side is that my getup now consists of an addidas track suit, foam sandals, tight tee shirts, and pointy leather shoes. Rock, rock on. There will be some pictures later.

Petersburg

No pictures this time. So we arrived in Petersburg homeless, and homeless we still are. To compensate, we've been living at parties (see the hitchhiker's guide for further details). Petersburg is Russia's own little piece of Europe, with a shoe shop every 20 meters, and not a toilet in sight. And you would not believe how fashionable KFC is here. The bathroom only has black lights! This city is like something from a movie about sex traffiking, mostly because it's been the inspiration for many such movies. Taxi drivers here are utterly suicidal, you see a major car accident every couple of minutes. I don't know where the replacement cars are coming from. We're off to look for an apartment.

Russian Signs

Literally, the first one means 'evil dog'. These are just some Russian signs. There will be more later, of the ads.
'I am against the destruction of the village of Pavshino'
'While you are still young and have a lot of strength and energy, go serve under a contract for the border patroll organs of the Russian FSB!" It'll be like summer camp, only for 10 years!
Old men and lap dances only.

I can just see a Russian explaining to the militsia that they were sounding out the sign when they hit the bar..

Russian Healthcare

Mom, I know the Jugoslav hospitals were shit, but if you can believe it, the ex-Soviet ones are even worse. Here are some sample pictures. Mind you, all of the inmates (patients) were extatic to be in 'the best hospital in Moscow'. If you break your leg, it's really a better idea to hobble over the border to Finland. Marina's dad broke his leg a month ago, nothing too major, but he's been in the hospital a month, and expects to be there a month more. That, of course, is nothing compared to the patient who broke his leg last January and just decided that he liked the hospital so much he was going to move in. So far, no-one has stopped him. This first picture is the only light fixture in the six bed, 12 foot by 15 foot room where Marina's dad, Sergei, and this hospital-settler live in.