"How can there be so many personalities?
So many lifeless empty hands, so many hearts in great demand?" ~ Azure Ray
Our day in Izhevsk was pretty bumpin'. I hadn't been to that city before and I liked it a lot. Sean, Jack and I went for a walk before bus call and saw a couple sweet cathedrals. The first looked like a ginger bread cathedral and the second was simply bright yellow and Russian-looking.
Every day we arrive at the venue at around 4pm, and because the show isn't until 7pm, we generally have a couple hours to kill. So after dropping our bags at the venue, the three of us plus Nicole decided to have dinner at a sushi place we'd passed earlier (quite the commodity in Russia, and a nice change from big bons and fast food). The place ended up being quite swanky, which was hilarious given that we were in jeans and there on a whim, but we decided to eat there anyway. We had to ring a bell to get in, an institution I assumed was there to keep the rif raf out. We checked our coats, ordered, and waited about 45 minutes for our food (not too shabs for Russia). The sushi came out on a boat. With masts and sails. Amazing. Best meal I've had in Russia, especially since sushi is the food item I miss most on tour.
After the show, a bunch of us stopped at a late-night cafe we'd seen earlier, another commodity I generally miss on tour. We had thick hot chocolate with ice cream in it (stange but delicious) and a really good chat. It was quite the refreshing change from tour as usual.
The next day we had no show but a 13 hour bus journey. We spent several hours of the journey playing some pretty intense games of charades. So much fun. Later in the day, a bunch of people played the new tour game "Deaf Karoke," which involves one person choosing a song for another person on an ipod. That person then puts the earphones in and pillows on top of them so that he/she can't hear anything but the song. Then he/she has to sing the song for everyone else as it plays on the ipod. Sounds weird but it's hilarious because the person can't hear him/herself and usually doesn't know all the words.
Later on everyone got tanked and screamed to crappy music. I had nothing to say anyway so I got into my fave bus posish (on my back on the seat, head towards the aisle, legs bent against the wall) put Rilo Kiley on in my earphones, pretended to be invisible, got happy and smiled myself to sleep.
When we arrived at our hotel in Nizhny Novgorod, some peole went to the bar. I was all peopled out so I went to bed. In the morning, most of us went to scope out the city and found that it was cathedral-land. Seeing as Russian Cathedrals are basically the best things there are to see in Russia, I was pretty stoked on this. We saw a nice big yellow one and then crossed the river and saw a green-domed cathedral and a black-domed one, walked through the city center which reminded me of Scandinavia, met a cute stray dog who answered to "Jack," sought out the kremlin, saw some tanks from WWII and another cathedral inside, wandered around trying to find the way out of the kremlin, escaped down a steep hill, saw two more cathedrals, one of which was my favorite in the city as it was extremely colorful and appeared to be made of candy, and practically ran back to the hotel to make it in time for bus call.
Last night after the show we celebrated Eamon and Maciek's bithdays in the hotel, and had the hardest time finding a venue for the event. We couldn't party in any of the rooms because security had yelled at us for noise before we even started. The lobby had no seats. So we went up to the empty breakfast room on the third floor, which we were told closed at 2am. At the time it was shortly after midnight. Maciek and Greg showed up with congac, wine and snacks, which I thought was the most adorable thing ever. Those boys wouldn't let a single person's glass go empty the entire night. At 1am the hotel staff told us that the room was closed despite the fact that they'd told us 2am before, and we ended up paying them off to keep it open until 2:30. The Russians can really be assholes sometimes. When they kicked us out at 230, they directed us to another bar on the eigth floor, the staff of which we ended up having to pay off again to let us stay there until 5am. Ugh. I had a lot of fun anyway.
Today we've been driving since noon, and it's now 9:30pm. I think we should be in Saratov in an hour or so. Earlier in the evening the view outside was gloriously gloomy, so we watched "The Haunting in Connecticuit." At the moment I'm hungry and going crazy because people won't stop screaming. And deaf from trying to block them out with my headphones. Whoo!
I forgot to tell you about our drive from Ekaterinburg and how it started in the glowing purple dawn with a light snowfall and how all the houses along the way seemed to be sleeping. And I forgot to tell you that the Russians are surprisingly diligent about stopping at crosswalks. And about how they're obsessed with dill and put it on everything.
I think it's interesting how day-to-day my tour life is. No one ever knows what's going on until the last minute so it's nearly impossible to look ahead any further than a day or two. It's no longer about what's going on this week but more about what the hell time is bus call tomorrow and how long will the journey be and do we have a show. It's all quite relaxing.
Our day in Izhevsk was pretty bumpin'. I hadn't been to that city before and I liked it a lot. Sean, Jack and I went for a walk before bus call and saw a couple sweet cathedrals. The first looked like a ginger bread cathedral and the second was simply bright yellow and Russian-looking.
Every day we arrive at the venue at around 4pm, and because the show isn't until 7pm, we generally have a couple hours to kill. So after dropping our bags at the venue, the three of us plus Nicole decided to have dinner at a sushi place we'd passed earlier (quite the commodity in Russia, and a nice change from big bons and fast food). The place ended up being quite swanky, which was hilarious given that we were in jeans and there on a whim, but we decided to eat there anyway. We had to ring a bell to get in, an institution I assumed was there to keep the rif raf out. We checked our coats, ordered, and waited about 45 minutes for our food (not too shabs for Russia). The sushi came out on a boat. With masts and sails. Amazing. Best meal I've had in Russia, especially since sushi is the food item I miss most on tour.
After the show, a bunch of us stopped at a late-night cafe we'd seen earlier, another commodity I generally miss on tour. We had thick hot chocolate with ice cream in it (stange but delicious) and a really good chat. It was quite the refreshing change from tour as usual.
The next day we had no show but a 13 hour bus journey. We spent several hours of the journey playing some pretty intense games of charades. So much fun. Later in the day, a bunch of people played the new tour game "Deaf Karoke," which involves one person choosing a song for another person on an ipod. That person then puts the earphones in and pillows on top of them so that he/she can't hear anything but the song. Then he/she has to sing the song for everyone else as it plays on the ipod. Sounds weird but it's hilarious because the person can't hear him/herself and usually doesn't know all the words.
Later on everyone got tanked and screamed to crappy music. I had nothing to say anyway so I got into my fave bus posish (on my back on the seat, head towards the aisle, legs bent against the wall) put Rilo Kiley on in my earphones, pretended to be invisible, got happy and smiled myself to sleep.
When we arrived at our hotel in Nizhny Novgorod, some peole went to the bar. I was all peopled out so I went to bed. In the morning, most of us went to scope out the city and found that it was cathedral-land. Seeing as Russian Cathedrals are basically the best things there are to see in Russia, I was pretty stoked on this. We saw a nice big yellow one and then crossed the river and saw a green-domed cathedral and a black-domed one, walked through the city center which reminded me of Scandinavia, met a cute stray dog who answered to "Jack," sought out the kremlin, saw some tanks from WWII and another cathedral inside, wandered around trying to find the way out of the kremlin, escaped down a steep hill, saw two more cathedrals, one of which was my favorite in the city as it was extremely colorful and appeared to be made of candy, and practically ran back to the hotel to make it in time for bus call.
Last night after the show we celebrated Eamon and Maciek's bithdays in the hotel, and had the hardest time finding a venue for the event. We couldn't party in any of the rooms because security had yelled at us for noise before we even started. The lobby had no seats. So we went up to the empty breakfast room on the third floor, which we were told closed at 2am. At the time it was shortly after midnight. Maciek and Greg showed up with congac, wine and snacks, which I thought was the most adorable thing ever. Those boys wouldn't let a single person's glass go empty the entire night. At 1am the hotel staff told us that the room was closed despite the fact that they'd told us 2am before, and we ended up paying them off to keep it open until 2:30. The Russians can really be assholes sometimes. When they kicked us out at 230, they directed us to another bar on the eigth floor, the staff of which we ended up having to pay off again to let us stay there until 5am. Ugh. I had a lot of fun anyway.
Today we've been driving since noon, and it's now 9:30pm. I think we should be in Saratov in an hour or so. Earlier in the evening the view outside was gloriously gloomy, so we watched "The Haunting in Connecticuit." At the moment I'm hungry and going crazy because people won't stop screaming. And deaf from trying to block them out with my headphones. Whoo!
I forgot to tell you about our drive from Ekaterinburg and how it started in the glowing purple dawn with a light snowfall and how all the houses along the way seemed to be sleeping. And I forgot to tell you that the Russians are surprisingly diligent about stopping at crosswalks. And about how they're obsessed with dill and put it on everything.
I think it's interesting how day-to-day my tour life is. No one ever knows what's going on until the last minute so it's nearly impossible to look ahead any further than a day or two. It's no longer about what's going on this week but more about what the hell time is bus call tomorrow and how long will the journey be and do we have a show. It's all quite relaxing.