Listen folks,

I know I reneged on a promise, as I wasn't able to continue my story the last days. I have even worse information for you. I will not be able to finish my Russia story due to a lack of time. The reason is that I am flying back to Germany on Saturday to meet my girlfriend and family, do a marketing seminar and some job interviews for my internship next semester. I hope that I will have time to keep you up to date but it will be difficult.

By the way, if one of you is staying in Hannover, Hamburg or Bremen at the moment and has a 1,84m x 0,9m space for sleeping available, it would be very nice to hear from you.

Thanks and take care,
Fabian

Russian Standard - Part 3

as I already have told you about the empress, there is no need to do it again. Instead, I will continue with my experiences in Russia. So much new events happen in my life right now so I have to hurry up a little to bring this story to an end...

Russia is a poor country. For instance a lot of girls even cannot afford clothes. They spend the nights in discos and pubs dancing to get warm. Obviously I wasn't allowed to document this fact with pictures, but I guess most of you naughty little beggars know where to get nude pictures anyway...

But Russia is not only poor in the material sense. It is also poor when it comes to "love". (I don't really know what my intention with this sentence is, but I thought it sounded very profound). Almost as profound as the sentence on a wall in St. Petersburg. This, indeed, is profound to the max!This brings us directly to another picture. From left to right: Vladimir, Isabella, Alexander (almost hidden behind Isabella's face), Svetlana, Igor and Valeria.
Now that you have looked at the picture I can tell you the stories of these guys.

Vladimir:
Vladimir's dream is to become a lawyer. Till now he failed in job interviews everytime because he always refused to take of his stupid looking cap. It is part of his philosophy, to "wear white, seem bright". He is single, but his picture on www.flirt-alarm.ru is in the top 30, so his chances are not that bad.

Isabella and Alexander (Bride and Fiancé):
They met each other when Alexander was driving through downtown at night in order to make love for a small amount of money. At this time Isabella just walked down the street in order to find a pub, but she was lost. When she saw Alexander's car, she stopped him in order to ask for the way (Alex was driving really slow to check out the other girls at the street). Alex thought she was the person he wanted and asked her how much he would have to pay to buy a place in her heart (this was a secret code among suitors and hoares who always had to be careful of undercover cops). Obviously, she didn't know this secret code and fell in love immediately. However, Isabella does not really understand why she is not allowed to tell this romantic story to Alex's friends...

Svetlana:
Svetlana knows the secret code...

Igor:
Igor is Vladimir's brother. He is jealous of his brother, because he not even made it into the top 200 on www.flirt-alarm.ru. As a revenge he put some clue in Vladimir's cap. This event took place about 3 months ago. Vladimir hasn't noticed it yet...

Valeria:
Valeria is in love with Vladimir, but she is afraid to tell him. She is seldom at home, as she always travels to different places with internet access to vote for Vladimir on www.flirt-alarm.com. (you cannot do this from the same computer). From Vladimir's 600 votes she has given him 530. This is her way to show him her love...

As you can see a very interesting constellation.

See you soon,
Fabian

Russian Standard - Part two (24 people left),

after sleeping, eating breakfast and going to toilet we did a guided tour to get to know the city of St.Petersburg. With almost 5 million inhabitants St. Petersburg is Russia's second biggest city. The history is really fascinating as in almost every building someone was murdered. But why not...
To summarize the city in a few words we could say that St.Petersburg is awesome. Awesome to the max! Even though it was minus 10 degrees, Russian girls are dressed up with a mini skirt. In fact, shogo (my japanese friend) and me even saw a woman with a miniskirt and no underwear (although we were immediately closing our eyes when we discovered it). Cultural Russian experience.

By the way I remember a joke about St. Petersburg: "Is it true that the cosmonaut Juri Gagarin has won a mercedes in Moscow?" "Kind of, but in fact it wasn't the cosmonaut Juri Gagarin but a carpenter instead, and his name wasn't Juri Gagarin but Boris Iwankowitch. Also, it didn't take place in Moscow, but in St.Petersburg and it wasn't a mercedes but a bike and he didn't win the bike but it was stolen." Hahaha.

Also, since Russia was a communist country, you can find statues almost everywhere (actually there should be a picture of a statue here, but I am to lazy to upload it). We were really lucky this day because we were able to witness a real execution in the middle of St. Petersburg. A great experience, even though the two participants were members of our group. They were chosen randomly just to demonstrate the power of the police.

After this demonstration we finished our guided tour and visited the world famous "Hermitage" Museum. At the entrance I was asked for my name. As usual I answered:
"I am the man with no name, McFabulous". We could enter for free...
A young woman offered us a private tour even including "some real emotions" but we refused. The Hermitage Museum not only contains over 3 million art pieces, it also employs about 1000 people since there is one guard (sleeping) in almost every room. After so much art and information we tried to lose our memory in a pub in the evening.

Next time I will tell you about the empress who promised to wear a different dress everyday. When she died 15.000 dresses were found in her wardrobe. Ts, ts, ts.

See you,
Fabian