I was in Russia for long enough that when study abroad students I'd met my first term there returned the next year for a new program I was still around.

Have I talked yet about my disposable camera? Towards the end of my time in Russia my camera situation was growing a bit sad. I'd broken the 50mm lens for my SLR and only had a long and wide lens left. That and my Rollei point and shoot had seized up and refused photography. So, at the suggestion of my lovely friend Laura during my UK trip I supplemented with plastic disposable cameras.



One of these was the sort of pink and heart-covered thing used to obviously market something towards little girls, and I remember when I took it in to get developed, back in St. Pete. The place was in sort of a basement in a courtyard behind a sometimes-locked gate. Most of the clerks behind the counter ranged from grudgingly barely willing to help me to bored and ambivalent (with the exception of one guy, cute in that arty-hipster unconventionally attractive way, who seemed amused instead of annoyed at my American accent and who would try out his English on me with a word here and there). Anyway, the point is that the people here liked to act like they hated their lives, and especially their foreign customers. However, there was the day I brought in the pink plastic camera and handed it to the man behind the counter.
"Do you develop things like this?"
He looked at it for a split second before turning and passing it to a guy behind him who seemed very much to be the person who dealt hands-on with the developing stuff. "Do we develop these?"
And the grouchy, preoccupied-looking Russian man-who-did-developing, as he held the pink plastic little-girl camera in his hands, actually smiled. Very briefly, but it did not escape me. He answered that they did and then passed the camera back to the counter guy, who stuffed it into one of those universal paper envelopes used by film processing places. And then I probably got back some very grainy scans of shots from Edinburgh.




Though I found some places in the city that sold disposable cameras and so was able to continue using them until I got back to the states and fixed my Rollei, I didn't run across any more of the pretty pink heart variety, sadly.

Seeing as how I left St. Petersburg over a year ago, it's about time to start saying goodbye, eh?





What the fuck happened to this trashcan?








My favorite Nikitushka.