This was long ago now, but the months leading up to my leaving the United States for Russia were both rushed and sufficiently long. I took a liking, I cleaned out my years of classwork, I left a liking, I made new friends, I saw old friends, I bought a cable release for my camera, I took another liking, I last-minute found a place to store my crap, and I made a final wandering around my college town before dragging my suitcase to the bus to the airport.

A year and a half ago, my favorite ladies came to visit me in St. Petersburg.








We stayed in this apartment overlooking a crowded and noisy intersection near a Metro stop.






I think such a busy location in a predominantly Caucasian (not white-Caucasian, Caucasus-Caucasian) area of the city ended up a bit unfortunate, as we had a late-night run-in with the police in the stairwell of the building. They were there with the (rather weird) rationale of checking the legality of the building's residents before the G20 summit scheduled in St. Petersburg months later. Going through Airbnb had not left us with the proper documents to be staying were we were, but after they saw the American passports and I wasted an hour or so of their time with my shitty Russian speech they let us be (though not before making sure I knew that my Russian was not up to snuff). At least we came away with a good story to tell.














What a babe.









Nine days is really not enough time to see all the parks, palaces, churches, theaters and museums in and around St. Pete, but we gave it a pretty good go.
















I'd often see these paper lanterns lit and released into the sky for celebrations of one kind or anther. Some lanterns would work better than others. The ones these people had didn't work out so well; most didn't get more than seven or eight feet off the ground, and the one that did get farther and higher ended up dropping, flaming, into traffic a hundred yards away.






I'd say that, despite the police and the noisy apartment and the colder-than-it-should've-been-weather, it was a pretty good time. I hope my favorite ladies agree.

Bye, dacha.








Kippered little fishes and dense bread. Hell yeah.














I used to catch little frogs from down in this barrel when I was a kid. I guess I fell in once because my grandma said she walked over and looked down into the barrel and I was staring up at her from the bottom.