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| What can possibly go wrong? |
In general, I've tried (unsuccessfully) to get used to a slightly slower rate of progress here. I mean, it's not like rural Wales or Jamaica or some such; things happen at a perfectly modern pace. It's just that it doesn't quite tally with the average Englishman's standard operating speed of "Frenzied Agitation". Things like beating your fist on your head in frustration, trying to seize control of the bus, bellowing "What the hell's going on down there?" in the supermarket queue and attempting to prize open a lift's doors before it's reached the required floor achieve nothing, I've learned, other than to baffle the locals and amuse or sometimes annoy Mari.
I'm told I need to come to terms with a gentler pace if I'm going to enjoy the experience of travelling and we've tried to ease into that pace with some rural living. We went on a fishing trip last week, which ended in a 0-0 draw - neither of us were hurt, but nor were any fish. This was disappointing after the amount of time we'd spent trooping around the fishing shops of Tartu asking gruff Estonian men to remind us how to use the rod. My favourite was the bloke who was so drunk he couldn't rightly stand up at 11am. I could tell he was slurring his words, even in a language I don't understand, and he would only address himself to me, in spite of our repeatedly telling him Mari was the only one of us who had any chance of deciphering his drivel. He told us the best place to catch anything was along the bottom of the river - possibly he finds that to be the case because he often happens to be lying face-down there.
Anyway, it wasn't a success. We eventually found somebody who seemed to know what he was talking about - he showed us a picture of himself in a local fishing magazine holding up what looked to me like an underwater lion - and he fitted us up with some kit aimed at catching such beasts. Don't worry about worms, he said, you'll only catch tiddlers with them. Well, we didn't catch anything, but we didn't fall in, and that's given us enough encouragement to take the rod to Russia with us. I looking forward to posting a picture of me hoisting some Siberian cousin of the Loch Ness monster from the sacred waters of Lake Baikal while a group of astonished Buryat shaman give thanks to lake's ancient spirits for their generosity and plentifulness.
Our second rural venture took us the beautiful countryside home of Mari's aunty in. Lovely place, I've been there once before and met the family. This time the bus got us there at the characteristic sepia-tinged pace and the aunty came out to greet us on the doorstep, giving Mari a big hug before slapping me smartly across the face without a word of warning. I like to think there was some sort of insect there, though Mari says she couldn't see anything. Anyway we had a lovely weekend with the family, lots more of the cakes with pork on them, and a walk through the woods to the restored site of a pagan holy place, used by the locals centuries or maybe millenia before the sobering influence of Christianity came to Estonia with the conquerors. Even today, it's expected that visitors to the site will honour the pagan traditions, not break a leaf or a stalk of grass, and tie a coloured string around the trees in honour of the woodland spirits. This country does give the occasional impression that just around the corner some hairy-footed local is dancing in a goat's head; and I don't just mean the drunks outside the shopping centre. But the most populous residents of the valley now are mosquitos, who feasted on my blood - more good preparation, I'm told, for St Petersburg.
St Petersburg. I'm sitting here, writing, and I still can't quite believe I'm going there tonight. Russia, and St Petersburg in particular, has always seemed to me to exist behind some impossible, uncrossable barrier: not the Iron Curtain or anything so political, something more rooted in my own perceptions, a barrier between East and West, old and new, of two worlds existing alongside but independent of each other. It's because most of what I think I know about the place is based on works of 19th century literature and I don't necessarily consider it as a real, functioning place, more some sort of Narnia. My packing reflects a muddled confusion of out-of-date ideals and some thoroughly modern prejudices: a nice hat, some bottles of hard liquor for bribing police officers, a chess set, secure money belt...
So I feel a combination of excitement, trepidation and detachment; disbelief that this will actually happen. When we get there - assuming the visas that Urmas eventually procured are real documents that can get us across the border - I expect I'll be disappointed to find a real, functioning, modern city, of suburbs, shopkeepers, pickpockets, tourists, workers, toilets, transport and over-priced accomodation; rather than a fairy-tale citadel where my favourite literary characters endlessly play out there familiar romances and tragedies. At least I'll realise the city as a real place, though, where my heroes went before me, and where life goes on today for millions.
Assuming, that is, that we get there. Assuming - which I still don't believe - that we're allowed in. It still just doesn't seem real, even now, with a few hours to go, it all seems impossibly far off. But maybe that's just because we're travelling there by Estonian bus.
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