My final photo outing with the two Russian photographers involved a lot of walking along the railroad tracks and a little bit of a run-in with the Russian police (during which I kept my trap shut and blended in with the actual Russians while hoping my panic didn't show on my face). However, I think the damage was done; I'd proven myself to not be enough of a badass to hang out with these folks, and I never heard from them again.












Pack of strays.












Man. This trip was right through the asshole of St. Petersburg. I found a crumpled up license plate that I dragged back to my place and tried to hide from my host mom in my room. She found it and, recognizing she didn't have the authority to make me get rid of it, at least made me scrub it down (and then scrub down the bathtub), telling me it was covered in diseases.

Some B&W tidbits from a year ago in St. Petersburg.

Okay so there's this Russian holiday, Maslenitsa, that I heard translated into English, awfully, as "Pancake Week." I guess I don't know very much about it. From what I gather it stems from some kind of pagan times, and has to do with the harvest? Well maybe not the harvest per say, because it's in March, but back from when agriculture played a central role in people's lives. It's a celebration of the death of winter and the arrival of spring, I believe. And they burn straw people. And it's realized in modern times by eating Russian crepes for a week and going out to a snowy park on Sunday, where things are bought, sold, and burned (some things).






There were a couple of foods that the American study abroaders basically all universally went crazy for, and pishki were one. They are deep-fried, powdered-sugared pastries. Like donuts, but turned up to 11. Fluffy and airy and served basically fresh from the hot oil, pausing only long enough to get sprinkled with sugar, they pit your craving for terribly delicious food against your desire to not scald your tongue.




They are different in Moscow, where they have a different name and I think are of the creme-filled variety.




St. Pete already has a weird smattering of massive and undercrowded shopping malls in the thick of its sprawl, far from the city center. Being the better part of an hour's ride away on the Metro, they already feel strange and isolated. This one felt even more so given that a shed right next to its towering glass windows was on fire and solicited only bemused looks from Russians, who then turned their backs on the black billows and went about their days.

Guys I am still trying to figure out how people with jobs and commutes accomplish anything else in life. Here are some photos from I don't even know when. Last March, maybe. In Russia.













This was a lake.