Scott's update

4:00 p.m. Thursday here. Megan and I are in the "Cafe Max" Internet cafe on Nevsky Prospect (the main thoroughfare in the city). It's upstairs, clean, and spacious, with a view out tall windows down on the busy activity below. We just had a wonderful lunch at Kazhan, a restaurant specializing in Georgian food. We had two appetizers: a bean salad and cabbage and eggplant stuffed with nut paste, followed by a "cheese pie," a wonderful warm pastry filled with cheese and potatoes, and finally dolmas and grilled garlic chicken. Ooff! Georgian food is fabulous.

This morning we went to the Russian Museum and saw some of our 19th and 20th century favorite Russian paintings by Serov, Roerich, Petrov-Vodkin. We also saw an exhibit by Filonov, a very striking but overlooked avant-garde artist of the early 20th century. His paintings were never exhibited until the 1980s because the Soviets tended to censor anything that was too modernist -- anything that drew attention to its own artifice or was abstract. They preferred realism for political reasons. Filonov was certainly no realist, with his wild and disturbing depictions of man's dark interiors.

Yesterday we walked up Nevsky from the Youth Hostel, got tickets for a couple shows (ballet and music), had bliny (crepes) at a coffee house, and passed through Gostiny Dvor (an upscale shopping center dating fromt the 18th century and Catherine the Great -- the first indoor mall!) on our way back to Megan's apartment. We made it just in time, as a big rain storm barreled in. We rested and puttered around her place while it poured out. In the evening, after the rain abated, we ventured out to an unusual bar I had read about, just a block away, called "Money Honey." If you can believe this, it specializes in rockabilly music -- every night of the week at least two bands play music until the wee hours of the morning. In his Russian accent, the lead singer belted out Elvis, Johnny Cash, and other classic country and rockabilly stuff. He even held his guitar high and slightly tilted downwards, like Elvis, and was accompanied by a guy with a telecaster in heavy reverb, an upright bassist, and a drummer. They even dressed the part, with hair slicked back with Brillcream. Hilarious, but they actually sounded great. The Russian bar-goers put down their giant glasses of pivo to dance, as did we after mustering our courage. The bar was decked out in paraphanelia of the American south and west: confederate flags, cow skulls, photos of Elvis, images of Harley Davidsons and bald eagles. Fun times! It's funny what other cultures respond to from the U.S., creating whole subcultures such as this one around rockabilly in St. Petersburg. We both loved it and are determined to return at least once more before I leave.

Switching cultural gears, tonight we'll go see a performance mixing Russian classical--ballet and opera numbers--with Russian folk (such as Cossack) music and dancing in the Capella, a beautiful old hall. Tomorrow we may go to a museum about a poet, such as Pushkin or Ahkmatova (in the place where they lived).

It has been pleasantly mild here (in the 70's); I guess I timed it just right again. I am wishing I had my guitar here, though I wouldn't have wanted to check it on the plane and I don't know if I would have been allowed to carry it on with my shoulder bag as well.

Hope all is well out in the real West, where nobody wears brillcream anymore.