13 July

(written 8 August)

I last left you, gentle reader, somewhere in the Baltic between Tallinn and Saint Petersburg. This episode will be composed along the lapping shore of Lago Maggiore. I exaggerate; I am really 2 km from said lapping shore. Actually, I am in the Locarno Youth Hostel, vaguely responsible for 25 American college students. Two little girls are on the lawn below, counting how many consecutive passes they can make with a – with one of those things you hit with a skinny racquet and it’s shaped like a cone with a rubber tip and fake feathers. Badminton?

Anyway, I digress. Get used to it. To catch you up I need to go back about three weeks. When one travels, as I have remarked often before, time somehow seems to slow. It seemed much longer than three weeks ago. I think this conflation of time and space in the form of travel is related to the Aboriginal concept of Songlines but don’t press me for elaboration on that connection. I sing in the car.

St. Petersburg was hot. Unfortunately that’s the first and last thing anyone can say about it. There are one trick ponies, there are single-issue voters. Our sojourn in St. Petersrburg was a one-adjective stay. It reached 40 degrees. That’s over 100 Fahrenheit. It usually only shoots up to about 22-24 in the summer. That fact, combined with a shitty economy, means, you guessed it: no air conditioning. Plus, this is no airy fairy loosey goosey California dry heat. This is the real McCoyshavic.

Regardless, we had a great couple days in St. Petersburg. The first day featured the fore-referenced S- trip to Peterhof, Peter the Great’s palace. We shoved all my mother’s charges into steamy busses and sat in traffic. St. Petersburg is much like how I left it in 1990, but with some selective polishing. The tourist areas are spruced up but the vast majority of the city is soot-covered grey Leninist apartment buildings. I appreciate Lenin’s attempt to provide adequate housing for all people, but the aesthetic consequences are appalling. Ironically, the tourist attractions are all vestiges of everything pre- and un-Communist: churches and palaces. It didn’t seem like anyone had dolled up a grey block building for clumsy octogenarian American tourists to sample the spectular wonders of the proletariat.

Peterhof is a big palace with lots of gold shit and paintings in it. It’s nice. I recommend it. You have to put hospital slippers over your shoes so as to not mar the ornate wood floors. Our guide had given us all short-range radios, but, as I was in charge of our busload, I had to walk in back and make sure no one got left behind. Not only did I fall often out of range, I was constantly holding back the onrushing tide of a massive Korean tourist group. They could have kicked our group’s ass and I think they might have wanted to.

Nevertheless, we escaped the amber mirrors and Dutch porcelain ovens of the stuffy halls out into the stifling sunshine where we had a few minutes to admire the fountains, which, supposedly, somehow run on gravity. And I am talking about the type that squirt up in the air. I got too ambitious and went all the way to the Baltic shore and had to sweat profusely to get back to the bus.

Ingrid joined our bus for the return and got enmeshed in a conversation with our biggest complainer. I fell asleep in the muggy heat and traffic stench.

About 45 minutes after we got back to the ship, we were due on another bus to take us back into town. Not only were we aware of this, we had made all 63 charges aware of this. We had some minor Lido lunch artifacts with us, but I wanted more so I tried to dart back aboard. Unfortunately, as I was immigrating back on to the ship, and I do mean waiting in line to be examined by a customs official, I remembered that Ingrid had my ticket to the next trip and she was lounging back in the waiting room, legally in Russia. Although only having one shore excursion under my belt, I correctly surmised that without this ticket, I would not get a landing card nor bus ticket back on the Eurodamm. I asked the stiff customs officer (I guess since she’s Russian that’s redundant to anyone who remembers Elton John’s Nikita video from 1986) if I need another landing card to re-enter Russia in 30 minutes. Of course I did and she wanted the one I had with me. Thinking quickly, I said I wanted to not immigrate but to remain in Russia. I was tempted to use the word “defect” but this tough chick had no sense of humor. She told me I had to now embark on the ship. I knew this would mean missing the next shore excursion so I grabbed my passport out of her hand and pushed back against the line. The Americans in line, being proponents of vast personal space, let me through despite the customs officer’s protestations. But I dodged away quickly and was free! Back in the USSR! Well, the waiting room anyway. I quietly and humbly finished my pesto wrap from lunch.

For the evening they bussed us to a big theater in the middle of town. The newcomers from the ship on the bus were clean and fresh smelling in the evening musty air while Ingrid and I stank like we had just crossed the Sahara. It was fun. The 15-20 busses from the 5-7 cruise ships pulled up to the theater and channeled us in like cattle. An accordion player pandered to the audience by playing “America the Beautiful” and “The Saints Go Marching In.” I don’t think his ploy worked.

We sat in the auditorium for about an hour before the performance started. As the wooden seats filled up, the air got warmer and thicker, eventually disappearing altogether. The thermodynamics were well suited to St. Petersburg 360 days of the year, just not that night. I eventually passed out – during the slow number right after the Cossack dancing.

The show was actually quite good. They sang and danced and played “folk” music. It might have been from the Hit Parade for all I know, but it sounded authentic to me. I’m sure the Viking-Pilgrim lady was convinced anyway. The costumes were resplendid in millions of colors and the songs were catchy and fun. I fell asleep during the ballads. They were great but I had run out of oxygen and needed something kinetic to keep me alive.

Perhaps not so obviously, the great convenience, indeed, the principle behind cruise ships, is that my same bed was waiting for me that night. The same bed that greeted me after the Warnemünde victory evening and where I slept after exploring Tallinn. Everything was where I left it, save slight alterations made by Ron and Yus, the stateroom stewards. They might have added a piece of chocolate and twisted a towel into a peacock or monkey for some aesthetic frivolity.