some days you go to class. some days you go to work. some days you just chill out at home. and, some days you ride around in the back of a mercedes benz through a russian city with a madman. my day happen to be the latter of these. for our final day in Leningrad, me and moshe decided to tour it up - in style. cause, you know, we haven't been really too classy at all up to this point, with all the meetings in suits (hoodies), expensive restaurants, and personal tour guides and such - not classy at all. so, we got a driver for the day. a particularly squatty looking fellow with a sort of general scowl about him. not an angry scowl, it was just the shape of his face. actually, i can directly put his image into your head. ok. close your eyes. did you? you did. oh really? well then how are you reading these questions, you filthly liar.....
.........imagine the hobbit from the very beginning of fellowship of the ring. the one that is sweeping in front of his house when gandalf rides into the shire on a wagon. you know the one i'm talking about. now, put a high-end thrift shop suit (if there is such a thing) on him. of course, it doesn't match, but you know at one point, there was a horrible brown-gold plaid shirt that went with that tie. finally, make him about 1.2m and top it off with a gray derby cap.
and, homeboy was rocking a benz..........ballin'! cars are really weird around here. there are a fair number of volvos and benzs and i even saw a porsche today. but then are there a million crappy asian cars/vans/trucks that look like they could've just as easily been on a street in 1970s south vietnam -- yesterday. anywho, homeboy was killin' it. pulling u-turns. cutting in front of 4 lanes of traffic. making turns and backing up with no regard for pedestrians at all. there had to be at least 6 times today where i was immensely afraid for my life or that of a stranger. i suppose the point is that no one died. but, i wouldn't be particularly surprised if we were to have a conversation along the lines of:
me: "homeboy, what's the word on the street?"
homeboy: "chillin'."
me: "how you rockin' today?"
homeboy: "you know me."
me: "yea, i do. you killed some bitches, didn't you?"
homeboy: "they got in my way."
me: "i heard that. and i know you tryin' to get a hit of this chronic"
homeboy: "hell yeah i'm tryin' to hit."
.......crafty hobbits.
we went to the summer palace of the Romanovs. it's a little outside of St. Petersburg. it was kinda crazy cause the public isn't normally allowed in on mondays, but we had the hook up and got a private tour. it's was pretty nuts. the grand hall had the most intense (re)verb rocking ever. the room is 1000m^2 and about 8-10m high. you could clap and it had the nastiest effect on it. basically, it would be the most ballin' place to setup a recording studio ever.
so we walked around the palace and the surrounding gardens for a while. at one point, i mentioned that this would be a great place for a summer retreat because the gardens were flat and divided up into sections about the size of a football field and lined with trees. does anyone else realize how perfect that is for sports? flat. big. and bordered. perfect. clearly, moshe and our guide didn't appreciate this attribute of the grounds as they both laughed at me profusely for proposing that you could get a nasty game of kickball going on here. it's been so long since i've played kickball. i think the problem is that wiffle ball is so much better. and, anytime you could play one, you could be playing the other as well. they require roughly the same supplies (sans the difference in balls.......hah, balls.....). but that's fine cause i like wiffle ball way better even if i am the lesser measel. speaking of, i was able to find an ovenchkin jersey from when he played on the russian national team for tyler. nice.
after the palace, we just kinda rode around the city for a while looking at different things. the nice part of the afternoon was that Milana met up with us for the last couple hours. now, i'm usually a modest person, but i'm pretty certain Milana is into me. she wasn't suppose to come with us today and we already had a guide, so she just came for the hell of it (aka to hang out with me). i mean, i can't blame her. plus, she kept smiling at me and whenever we were walking anywhere, she would hang back to talk to me and let the other girl walk with Moshe. unfortunately, it's just not meant to be considering we don't live in the same hemisphere.
anyways, we came back, ate another overpriced dinner, got some souvenirs for the family, and now i'm just about to go to sleep so i can wake up at 0315 GMT+03 to catch the plane back. i know you are probably overcome with joy at the prospect of my return. just two more days my friends........
stats and such:
time:
26.11.2007
St. Petersburg - 2103 GMT+03
Frankfurt - 1903 GMT+01
Philadelphia - 1303 GMT-05
start time - 1430 GMT-05 21.11.2007
time elapsed - 118h 33m
Current Song:
"Apologize" - Timbaland feat. One Republic
Dear Milana,
First, I just wanna say that we've had some good, no.....some great times together. You showed me around Leningrad. I made you laugh. You got me away from the russian police. I told you about Ska. But, girl, i just can't go on like this anymore. it's tearin' up my heart when i'm with you, and when we are apart, i feel it too. i'm an engineer, you're a humanities major. it's just not in the cards. but, i want to apologize for the pain i might have put you through.
Yours Always,
Ryan
p.s. this song was playing in the WaWa while I was picking up a 1.0L vanilla coke for 28 rubles!
p.p.s. when most people add secondary and tetriary post scripts, they usually mistakenly abbreviate it p.s.s. and p.s.s.s. clearly, they don't realize that p.s. stands for post script. the correct extension is to keep adding Ps so that it becomes the post post script instead of the post script script. that just doesn't make any sense at all.
p.p.p.s. i think someday we'll get back together maybe.
p.p.p.p.s. i think someday things'll be much better baby.
points - the world:
making me do the touristy thing and shop in a store labeled "Souvenir" = 1
points - ryan:
surviving that crafty hobbit = 1
score:
the world - 6
ryan - 8
"we can beat this thing!" - ryan, in max's basement
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