I'm bringing blogging back

Lessons learned this summer:
1. I am awesome.
2. Russians are inhospitable but their cops are smarmily sexy.
3. My teeth are so white that Europeans find it distracting.
4. Mallory Bey can speak French?
5. Hitchhiking is cost-effective, fun and stupid.
6. Serbian drugs take five hours to kick in.
7. Don't get into cars with Mystics.
8. I like Dubstep. A lot.
9. I like medical students. Aspiring dentists are even sexier than Russian Militsia.
10. I am awesome.

No cops

So I am leaving Russia tomorrow and I didnt have a run-in with the cops. Laurence, my roommate got to hang with cops AND go to the hospital. I suck and am unexciting but will be making it up to myself soon...

Instead, I've been hanging out in hippie hell where no one uses utensils to eat their soy products and they moan meditatively and periodically throughout whatever it is they are doing... fucking, facebooking, peeling potatoes... I kid you not, dear readers, there are sporadic moaners in this buddha-blessed soviet housing unit and to cope I stuff bright orange sponges into my aural cavities. There are severe reprocussions to this act of resistance: ear wax build-up.

I'm going to give Soviet speed another try, and maybe if I'm short on cash and my fingerpaintings dont sell, I'll sell some of those to yound and umpressionable american tourists, of which there are so many EVERYWHERE I just don't know if I can resist the temptation.

Adventures in over-the-counter drugland

Vice magazine told me that Phenotropil was the cleanest speed the author had ever had. So, on Saturday evening I promptly sauntered over to the Apteka (Pharmacy) to see what the commotion was all about.

I care not to go in to extreme detail as I am technically not allowed to use the computer here chez my Soviet Hazaika (hostess), but I am pretty sure it was shit. I was unimpressed and awake all night, lost in the abyss of drunken St. Petersburg as Militsia told me on various occasions that the street I wished to pass along was 'zatkrit' (closed).

We are to try a higher dosage at a later date, and I shall not leave you in the dark.

With love and disappointments,

JACQ

Ew I fell in to a Soviet train toilet

Location: somewhere in between St. Petersburg and Moscow where the women haven't any teeth and the Kazakhs beside me don't dig footwear.

Behold: the Soviet Train. Everything is yellowed to the point where you are unsure if anything was every really white at all. The windows are like the lenses of pedophile glasses so everything is shit-tinted (as opposed to rose-tinted). The bench seats are made of burgundy vinyl and allergy-triggering roll-out mats are provided for a comfortable slumber in which you are to dream of hammers, sickles and food stamps.

I sit in this train, gazing out the window at dacha after dacha, careful not to direct my gaze in front of me where, on the left is a very fat man whose gut rests on his thighs. To his right, a small Asian boy sits quietly. They both sit silently and tinker away on their Blackberries for about four hours. The Kazakhs play cards and stare at my tits. I watch the fat man roll out his bed-mat on the lower bunk as the Asian man climbs spryly above the snoring oaf. I daydream, wishing it was Mister Gutface who had to climb up there to give his thighs a rest and transfer the pressure onto his chest. But alas, we are in Russia and not America.

I sketch some Sudokus and keep my Quebecois counterpart, Simon, awake for as long as possible. We eat Halva (THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD) and talk loudly and in English. We figure that our CCCP shirts make us fit in a little more, so our indecipherable and mysetrious Canadian accents won't give us away as tourists worth robbing.

Somewhere in between all of this, I stumble to the bathroom. First I must inform you that, in all toilets in Russia, there aren't any toilet seats. You hover or squat and at the same time pray to Stalin that you don't get hepatitis from this one. I have developed a method of holding on to the door handle of the stall and leaning back; it takes a lot of the pressure off of the quads. This time, however, I was pulling a little too hard, perhaps. So, in my golden shower of delight that I was granting to this steel bowl, I was holding on to the handle of the door and suddenly the door gave way and the bowl welcomed me with its hepatitis-infested gorge.

I am supposed to get the test results back from the pharmacy tomorrow, where I will subsequently try to ask for a moderately-sezed perscription of legal amphetamines for the final days of my love affair with Vladimir Putin.

Faith in humanity: Restored

After my fruitless venture to the Russian Consulate, I reported to my Professor who is overseeing my upcoming eastern hullabaloo that is called 'language camp.' Defeated and ill, I had given up on trying to retrieve my passport and wished him via gmail to have a wonderful weekend.

AND YET-

I get a phone call on Saturday. It is Professor's assistant, reporting to me that, in his hands he holds my beloved passport. Professor had personally trundled over to the consulate and "begged" (as his assistant informed me) for them to let him have it so the poor girl (me) could go and see her father (Kaptain Kim).

Professor did not have to do that. (I should have just paid the additional $150 to get it processed more quickly)

After all, there are individuals on the McGill payroll who are not disinterested and ignorant robots, but kind Russian scholars with warm hearts and communist bartering skills!

In Russia there ain't no love, baby

Today, with my adorable babushka kerchief, pearly white and innocent smile, I went to the Consulate of the Russian Federation and thought I could con them into accelerating my visa papers. My California girl Kat came along because she's wonderful and really into interior decorating and I thought she might like to see the consulate.

Usually, I can talk my way out of anything.

But, in this country, this is not the case.

I walk in to the wood-paneled room adorned with Soviet propaganda, and all 15 people in there are speaking Russian ochen bistra (that means 'very fast'). I take a number, and we sit down, trying to take the situation very seriously.

In the office, there are two small windows, about 2'x3.5'. One is called "1" and the other is appropriately called "2." Everyone in the room had the same 3-4 papers in their hand, a passport and a solemn [Russian] expression. I realize this is not the place I should try to sweet talk my way into getting my passport back sooner (I am supposed to travel to AMERICA in a few days), so I go to the security desk to see what's going on.

JACQ: "Excuse me"

A man (let's call him ANGRY RUSSIAN) motions to press the white intercom button. I see it, I press it.

JACQ: "Excuse me, can I ask you something?"

ANGRY RUSSIAN: "GARBLAHSK OHMBER"

I think I missed what he said.

JACQ: "May I ask you a question?"

In the most Russian and incomprehensible accent I have ever heard, he points and says "Go to nahmber wan." (Go to number 1.)

JACQ: "No, I have anoth-"

ANGRY RUSSIAN continues to point to "Number 1"

I sit back down. I realize this is not going to work. Sometimes, my Crest commercial smile and doe eyes can't get me everything I want. Kat and I return to the car, I change the oil for the first time in my life (I mean, at least I accomplished something), and we go home.

I don't even think Kat liked the decorating inside.

Today was a hard day.