Russia

“It snowed yesterday, when we got there. The smell of cold air and car exhaust, hands freezing, the face. The canals are covered in grey ice, tiny traces where the ducks have been. Sometimes the water shows, black and filled with empty bottles. Only Neva is totally free of ice.
In the restaurants we get warm again, the soup that lies to rest in the stomach and spreads until even the eyes feel like warm glass.
My feet are hurting again, I noticed already when I got up. Numb and tender, like two blue half moons.
I cut my hair with a nail scissor in the hotel bathroom.“

We went to the Heremitage, the Nabokov museum and the Dostojevskij-museum. St. Petersburg was really beautiful. When Benedicte’s studying there this autumn I’ll definitely visit her.



Dostojevskij’s house.


We got arrested in Moscow, it happened something like this:
We were quite near Kremlin and ran over a road. Three or four policemen with fur hats started towards us with their arms crossed.
”It is against law. Give passports.”
We didn’t want to give the Russian police our passports, so we gave them copies, and that was ok. Afterwards we were accompanied across the Red Square to the nearest police station. They wanted us to pay 3000 roubles.
We asked if this wasn’t a bit much for crossing the road.
They agreed that this was perhaps a bit much.
“So is it possible to get a family discount?” my dad asked.
And yes, that was possible. So they took the correction fluid out from the drawer in the table and said the half was ok.

Afterwards I found a huge bookstore, because I had already finished Grammar of Love – Bunin and The Stranger – Camus, on the train to Moscow, and I badly needed something for the next train ride.