Hermitage Round 2 down Nevsky Prospekt

Hermitage floor

Last Friday was the first Friday that we haven’t had Russian language classes.  So what did we do?  We each did our own thing.  I went to the Hermitage.  I got there at like 3:30pm and then left when it closed at 6pm.  I enjoyed myself a lot.  The part that I enjoyed the most was in conjunction with something that Sydney has said.  She said that people should enjoy their music as they walk around.  I was listening to Natasha Bedingfield and Neon Trees while I was in the Hermitage and I was feeling the music.  So I danced around in the Hermitage.  There weren’t very many people in the rooms that I was when I would dance.  I started being a sneaky dancer just doing a move or two and then stopping.  But then I listened to the music more and looked less at the people around me. (There weren’t very many anyways.)  I have now been in the Hermitage for about 5 hours.  I still have more to see!

After I left the Hermitage I decided that I would just walk down Nevsky Prospekt because it is the biggest street in St Petersburg and it has a lot to offer.  Can I say that it didn’t disappoint.  I have three stories:

I walking down the street and then I thought that the lady on the street ahead of me was a hooker.  Why?  She was sending a lot of signs.  She was wearing a skirt with black tights.   The also had her coat unzipped.  Something that tipped me off that she was a hooker was that she was standing in the road itself trying to flag down cars.  Then whenever a taxi or a bus would drive by she would drop her hand and motion for them to move along.    Then the thing that made say, “That is a hooker.” Was that I did see a car stop.  He rolled down his window.  There was a short dialogue/conversation.  Then the car drove away and the lady was still there.  The car got 10 feet away and the lady flipped the car off.  Must have been a bad offer.

Second story.  I was just walking by and there are a lot of stores and there is some good window shopping.  For this particle window it was advertising Techno Gym: The Wellness Company.  They had a girl exercising  in the window.  She was walking on a treadmill listening to her ipod and was super excited.  I walked by and she smiled and waved at me.  Then as I was walking by there was another person coming from the other direction and she pulled out a camera to take a picture.  The exercising girl posed for the camera and so I decided that I wanted a picture also.  I was thinking “work it girl!”.

Third Story.  It starts to get dark kind of early.  It was getting dark during the last story.  By now it is dark.  There is no more sun.  It was definitely night.  As I was walking I saw a couple cars stopped with their hazards lights on.  I was walking on the left side of the street so the closest cars were coming at me.  When I got closer to the cars I noticed that there was a group of like 4 Africans in a circle.  Now I don’t know what sort of business they were doing but I don’t know that it was legal.  The reason I saw that is because I totally saw a gun in one of the hands.  That was enough for me to not pay any attention to myself and keep walking forward just like the flow of the crowd.  That is the first non-cop that I have seen that has had a gun. 

Theater

Canal