Monday, July 15, 2002 07:41
Location: Hotel Pulkovskaya
Weather: Hot, some high thin cloud

A fabulous busy day yesterday. We had a late start, but got to the Hermitage at 10:40 for a brief and somewhat frustrating guided tour. Absolutely impossible to get a good feel for the place in an hour and a half anyway, but being herded through by a tour guide didn't help. I'm going to go back on Thursday for a proper visit.

After a reather bad cafeteria lunch, we drove to our second rehearsal with the orchestra in the same hot stuffy rehearsal hall. They showed some improvement, but not much. Howard blew his top at the horns for consistently playing too loud, and announced to the choir that the Glen Buhr piece was cancelled.

Following our return to the hotel I met up with Michael, Virginia and Marge in the lobby to try and go see the Kirov Ballet. We metro'd down to Nevsky, but I'd got my ballet halls confused -- St. Petersburg has at least two -- so we had to pile in a cab to get over to the Mariinsky Theatre by 6:30. We started by lining up for tickets, but a young Russian with excellent English ended up selling us 3rd row orchestra ("par terre") seats for US$50 each (regular price > $100) and sneaked us in past the "face check". There's a dual pricing system in effect: Russians, and foreigners working or studying in Russia, pay only $23 for those seats.

Though we were nervous about being caught by the vigilant baboushkas, we made it in ok and enjoyed a fabulous set of three one-act ballets: "Chopiniana", "Apollo" and "Death and the Young Man". While the first was a very classical ballet with a large corps and just a couple of solo dancers (set to music by Chopin) the other two were much more powerful and gripping, both with a much smaller ensemble. Apollo danced with three muses (poetry, drama and music), while in the final ballet a young man danced with Death in the form of a beautiful but cold maiden, dressed in yellow with long black gloves, who ultimately led him to a scaffold and beyond to a nightmare underworld (Paris under a blood red sky). It was a fabulous show in a wonderful theatre.

When we got out of the ballet at 10:45 it was still incredibly bright outside. We were pumped from seeing such a great show, so we walked over to Cafe Idiot, just a few blocks away, for a late meal. We -- and especially I -- had quite a lot to drink. I ordered borscht, and the "small gentleman's kit" (a plate of herring, beets, gherkins, and small mushrooms) and a large mug of beer, but the kit also came with 100mL of vodka, rather too much. (Incidentally, the "large gentleman's kit" comes with a full litre of vodka -- and a taxi home. Really.) I shared some vodka with Virginia and Michael (Marge wasn't drinking) and drank the rest. Fortunately there was plenty of food to go with it.

We emerged into the twilight of 12:15, with only a quarter hour before the last subway train and no taxis in sight. We set off at a quick pace but it still took 20 minutes to get back to Nevsky Prospekt. By the time we arrived, the gates to the metro were closed and padlocked. What to do?

Lonely Planet to the rescue. Following their suggestion, we gamely stuck out our arms, palms down, to the passing traffic. Within seconds a Lada pulled up. I opened the passenger door and said "Moskovskaya Metro" to the driver, to indicate our destination, and flashed a 500 ruble bill to fix a price. He was pretty happy with that -- 500 R is about twice the going rate for that distance, according to LP -- so we piled in. As the map reader and best speaker of Russian, I got shotgun & the others crammed in the back.

We hurtled home through the nighttime streets, stopping once or twice to confirm we'd successfully communicated where we were going. I was initially thrown off by not reading my own map too carefully, but the driver had it right. Making more than a couple dangerous turns and merges into moving traffic, and at one point running a red light, he had us back to the metro station in about 40 minutes. A 10 minute walk from there, and our unforgettable night was over.
posted by Tom at 8:10 AM | link |