Freak Show

---

Well I drank away the cold. Or, as a Russian would put it ‘I lost my problems in vodka’, an excellent solution! Firmin, my neighbour, came round and we had a few bevies and watched some English TV which I brought with me on my laptop. Excellent cure.

Today we had a test (no, I wasn’t hung-over) and I think I did OK. After school we took a mashrutka to Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in Piter. I was in the money seat on the mashrutka which is the seat behind the driver. Whoever sits here has to collect the money from the passengers and pay the driver. I’ve managed to avoid that seat until now, but it went perfectly smoothly! Blonde Tatiana, our media teacher, was on the mashrutka and seemed very impressed! I didn’t notice it was her when she got on and paid me and it was only after that I saw who it was! We ate at Sbarro, an Italian place where you can get a slice of (very good) pizza, soup and a big drink for 99 roubles (1 pound 98). We met two of the other students there: Val, a nice lady from Okehampton of all places, and Charlotte. They had just visited the British Council and signed up. Apparently it was like a breath of fresh air - friendly service and today’s guardian.

After lunch we wandered down Nevsky Prospekt and over the bridge to Kunst Kammer, which seems to have got a name amongst the students as ‘the Freak Show’. Well, I have to say that it lived up to its name… Peter the Great offered cash for freaks to put in his museum and it makes for quite odd viewing. Most of the ‘freak’ exhibition consisted of preserved foetuses - Siamese twins of all shapes and lots of baby heads all preserved in formaldehyde. Once you get over the initial weiredness it is a really interesting and thought provoking exhibition. Its original role was to show the public that ‘monsters’ are not caused by demons or the ‘evil eye’ but for rational reasons. I found it provoked thoughts of what a human actually is. When you see a lifeless baby’s body all deformed because of some freak of meiosis/mitosis (can’t remember which) you wander just what it is that makes you what you are. Just some DNA based chemical reaction that can and does go wrong sometimes. Weird exhibition.

We walked to a café near Vasilievskiy Ostrov metro station and watched the huge crowd of people trying to get in the doors of the station. We talked of home and came to the conclusion that a nicely decorated modern bar is not as good as a good old fashioned grimy boozer. We soon too had to join the crowd and spent a good ten minutes just trying to get into the station! This town has people moving around on the public transport on a scale London Underground would just collapse under. Laura and I had to change at Gostiny Dvor for Nevsky and just moving around the stations was a complete nightmare, let alone the insane crush in the train itself. Note to self: No metro between 6 and 7 unless unavoidable.

I’m headed off out to a bar with everyone this evening, so I’m going to have to spruce myself up!

---