some спб activities
1750 myself and Josh in same room as me go to lurk by sign in hostel for Petrograd Pub Crawl
1800 Pub Crawl changed to local area one as there is much metro congestion
1810 Group has grown to 9: peter the guide, 4 aussie girls, josh[US], brian[US], alan[IE], me.
Pub 1. attempt to make this a 'cultural experience' by getting brief talk from peter about this history of the arts centre that it is located in. Then drink. Violate golden rule of pub crawl (more than one beer in same place). Wipe out small change of bar by using 500RUR note to buy two pints at 60RUR each. But now I'm set for the next day or so with small denomination notes (something like gresham's law makes people not want to accept 500RUR or larger notes...). This is the only bar that i know the name of - Fish Fabrique).
Pub 2. In the basement of a building. 50RUR for beer. Sat at long table and noisily talked to each other. Others made plans at this point to meet at Quo Vadis the next day to hang out in the evening again (time of which is approaching as I write -- wonder if anyone will remember/bother to turn up?). Exchange some phone numbers to facilitate this (hurrah for GSM roaming) - Alan and Australian Girl 1.
Pub 3. In this one, which is new and therefore empty, everyone takes loads of pictures of each other and plays with each other's digital cameras. Josh's screen is broken, so I put his CF in mine so people can look at his pictures. Australian girl 2 loses her camera, but does not realise until later. Australian girl 3 becomes ensnared in some SMS conversation with distant lands. Australian girl 4 curls up on couch.
Kebab shop. mmmmm. Australian Girl 2 gets really annoyed that camera is lost. I eat meat.
Pub 4. Much more crowded. We end up split into two groups, with people drifting between the two. Group A sits on three couches inside round a table. Group B sits on chairs outside in the street. Alan Josh Peter go home.
Walk from Pub 4 back to Nevsky prospect, where the girls will turn left and Brian and I will turn right.
Brian and I turn right.
After a few minutes, a police van, like a little VW camper, pulls up obviously next to us... I tell Brian to keep walking and ignore them... they chase after and grab onto Brian (who looks slightly more foreign than I, perhaps?)... demand passport and visas... I have mine, Brian has left his in the hostel. Oh dear. The policeman inspecting mine keeps looking through, but doesn't seem to care that key documents and stamps are missing from it (they are elsewhere). Also he does not seem to notice the wads of large denomination bills in the passport holder. When he sees my passport is UK, he says "Manchester United!". I seize on this, replying "da da Manchester United" (ginger danny would be pleased)
The policemen pat us down, and one takes my wallet to rummage through. He does not notice the wads of large denomination bills in the zip pocket in back of wallet, finding only the small denomination bills which appear to not interest him. The search (at least for me) turns into something of a show and tell - for every object i remove from jacket or trouser pockets, they say out loud the name of it "camera" "telefon" "memorystick".
I write down their badge numbers in my notebook.
They decide that Brian must be arrested for walking round without a passport and lock him into a cage in the back of the little police van. They tell me I should go back to the hostel. (all this talking is in a mix of Russian and English, they have only a few works of english, i have only a few words of russian). I insist that I must stay with Brian as we are droogs (god bless kubrick). They say that is no good. I do not leave and they do not either.
Eventually I decide that I will contact American Authorities for him, back at the hostel, and so insist that i must talk to Brian (cut off from the world in his little cage) and start to write down his details.
At this point, the police appear to get fed up, take my note book, surprisingly gently and carefully tear out the page that i had written their numbers on, unlock the cage, tell us to take a taxi back to the hostel rather than walking and drive off.
I stand in the road and wave my arm as instructed in Lonely Planet. A black car stops and rides us back for 100RUR (too tired to haggle over price after this), and shortly we are back in hostel, at 0200h, retelling the story.
Hopefully this will not happen every time I go out drinking here.
1800 Pub Crawl changed to local area one as there is much metro congestion
1810 Group has grown to 9: peter the guide, 4 aussie girls, josh[US], brian[US], alan[IE], me.
Pub 1. attempt to make this a 'cultural experience' by getting brief talk from peter about this history of the arts centre that it is located in. Then drink. Violate golden rule of pub crawl (more than one beer in same place). Wipe out small change of bar by using 500RUR note to buy two pints at 60RUR each. But now I'm set for the next day or so with small denomination notes (something like gresham's law makes people not want to accept 500RUR or larger notes...). This is the only bar that i know the name of - Fish Fabrique).
Pub 2. In the basement of a building. 50RUR for beer. Sat at long table and noisily talked to each other. Others made plans at this point to meet at Quo Vadis the next day to hang out in the evening again (time of which is approaching as I write -- wonder if anyone will remember/bother to turn up?). Exchange some phone numbers to facilitate this (hurrah for GSM roaming) - Alan and Australian Girl 1.
Pub 3. In this one, which is new and therefore empty, everyone takes loads of pictures of each other and plays with each other's digital cameras. Josh's screen is broken, so I put his CF in mine so people can look at his pictures. Australian girl 2 loses her camera, but does not realise until later. Australian girl 3 becomes ensnared in some SMS conversation with distant lands. Australian girl 4 curls up on couch.
Kebab shop. mmmmm. Australian Girl 2 gets really annoyed that camera is lost. I eat meat.
Pub 4. Much more crowded. We end up split into two groups, with people drifting between the two. Group A sits on three couches inside round a table. Group B sits on chairs outside in the street. Alan Josh Peter go home.
Walk from Pub 4 back to Nevsky prospect, where the girls will turn left and Brian and I will turn right.
Brian and I turn right.
After a few minutes, a police van, like a little VW camper, pulls up obviously next to us... I tell Brian to keep walking and ignore them... they chase after and grab onto Brian (who looks slightly more foreign than I, perhaps?)... demand passport and visas... I have mine, Brian has left his in the hostel. Oh dear. The policeman inspecting mine keeps looking through, but doesn't seem to care that key documents and stamps are missing from it (they are elsewhere). Also he does not seem to notice the wads of large denomination bills in the passport holder. When he sees my passport is UK, he says "Manchester United!". I seize on this, replying "da da Manchester United" (ginger danny would be pleased)
The policemen pat us down, and one takes my wallet to rummage through. He does not notice the wads of large denomination bills in the zip pocket in back of wallet, finding only the small denomination bills which appear to not interest him. The search (at least for me) turns into something of a show and tell - for every object i remove from jacket or trouser pockets, they say out loud the name of it "camera" "telefon" "memorystick".
I write down their badge numbers in my notebook.
They decide that Brian must be arrested for walking round without a passport and lock him into a cage in the back of the little police van. They tell me I should go back to the hostel. (all this talking is in a mix of Russian and English, they have only a few works of english, i have only a few words of russian). I insist that I must stay with Brian as we are droogs (god bless kubrick). They say that is no good. I do not leave and they do not either.
Eventually I decide that I will contact American Authorities for him, back at the hostel, and so insist that i must talk to Brian (cut off from the world in his little cage) and start to write down his details.
At this point, the police appear to get fed up, take my note book, surprisingly gently and carefully tear out the page that i had written their numbers on, unlock the cage, tell us to take a taxi back to the hostel rather than walking and drive off.
I stand in the road and wave my arm as instructed in Lonely Planet. A black car stops and rides us back for 100RUR (too tired to haggle over price after this), and shortly we are back in hostel, at 0200h, retelling the story.
Hopefully this will not happen every time I go out drinking here.
posted by Ben Clifford at 13:15 GMT
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