Friday, July 19, 2002 14:35
Location: The Estonian-Russian border
Weather: Slightly hazy, warm -- hot on the bus

We just left Russian and are parked while the Estonian border guards work through the stack of passports from our bus. Our three buses have been separated by the combined attentions of the Russians and Estonians -- the first bus probably has about 45 minutes lead on us at the moment, and the third is behind us somewhere.

On Tuesday night following the recording session we went back to the hotel, and made plans in the lobby to go downtown. Howard and Maggie were into joining us for some ethnic Russian or Caucasian cuisine, and their presence attracted a number of the rest of the choir who wanted to know where we were going and if they could come too. We eventually ended up with 17 who wanted to come, and having decided to go to the Cafe Adzhika, where I'd been on my own on Friday, we clearly needed to get a reservation. I managed to persuade one of the hotel reservations staffers to call for us and explain our needs, and within a few minutes we were set.

At 7 we started congregating to go downtown. As designated tour guide (my restaurant, my reservation, my guidebook) I sent an advance party of four to make sure our 7:30 reservation wasn't given up. Finally at 7:15 the last of the party assembled and we made our way. Getting 17 people, many of whom hadn't travelled on the subway to this point, to the right station and out successfully took some time. When we eventually got to the Adzhika our advance party had just realized they'd been standing right in front of the cafe, without realizing it, for five minutes. We followed them straight into the restaurant.

We had a wonderful feast: salads, a couple of vegetarian stews, cheese bread, the chicken with nut sauce, barbequed meat, stuffed vine leaves, and much more, all washed down with big glasses of beer. To finish up, we had coffee and a nut cake they quickly baked up for us. It was absolutely amazing, and ended up costing about $24 each, very reasonable indeed. Everybody was extremely happy and kindly toasted my success as tour guide.

On Wednesday morning we drove to Pushkin, about an hour from St. Petersburg, and toured the grounds of one of the grand summer palaces there, and we actually went through one of the other ones. They were incredibly large, with massive side pavilions, fine art galleries, and sumptuous furniture. But all of these riches had been restored by the Soviets after the war: the palaces suffered greatly from German bombing, as the photos they had on display showed.

Our performance on Wednesday evening was an unforgettable experience, sweating in our tuxedos with the pressure of the microphones on us. The first time through was a little rough, but Howard and the recording engineers had a couple of tricks up their sleeves: we performed encores of the fourth and fifth movements, providing them with an all-important backup recording of each for them. Once the performance was finally finished, though, the work wasn't done: movement six and part of seven needed to be redone as well!

After a lengthy delay, the theatre management agreed to turn the lights back on and the orchestra, most of whom were intercepted on the point of leaving for the subway, trickled back in and took their places. We struggled through another few takes, and finally the eagle ears of the audio engineers were satisfied that we'd done enough.

Back in the hotel, we congregated in the bar in the lobby for some well-earned beer.
posted by Tom at 2:55 PM | link |