This blog started as a week-by-week look at our lives in 2010 (hence the address) in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Now, with the closing of my other blog, from-russia, I've decided to extend this blog to cover 2011 as well (despite the address--which really bugs me now that it's inaccurate).

Sunday, May 2, 2010

week seventeen




The soldier-boys (and the grown men, too, I suppose) have been practicing in Palace Square for Victory Day. This is so Russia to me--need to cordon off something? Use people! People seem to be as expendable today as they were when the serfs were around. (I think #4 was texting as I photographed.)

Further down the street you might be able to see more groups of soldiers assembling to march into the Square.

I find the practices amusing. The different groups must be meant to march in at specific times, perform their maneuvers in front of the important invited guests (not me), and then assemble elsewhere. But when they are practicing...oi. It's a MESS! I've never been in a dance number where so many people were, quite literally, marching to their own beats. It's cacophonous!

They do this every year with no variation...and there can't be that many new soldiers. So why is it such a mess? Will it be a mess on the day? Who knows? Not me, clearly, as I'm not invited.

1 comment:

  1. You made me laugh out loud. I was JUST reading an e-mail from the lady who is coordinating our "Cultural Night" at school. I am leading an art activity, but prior to that, on the other side of the gym is the music performance. SO, she suggested that all of us "mother helpers" watch the music, but do it standing in a line across a certain space where kids could theoretically pass through into the art area before they were supposed to. So, I'll be standing on alert - expendable, too, I think. In her first e-mail it sounded like she was asking ME to do it due to my "authority" over the children....then in the next one I realize - no; I'm just one of the bodies.

    I don't think I've ever seen soldiers appear un-practiced; that ought to be very odd!

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