from russia with love

this is the final day in saint petersburg. tonight we take an overnight bus back to helsinki for a day, and then back to dear, dear new york city. this morning after breakfast we said goodbye to masha and her mom, which was very hard. they gave us a russian skirt and scarf by which to remember them. today we are catching up on all the last minute sights we have not yet seen in this beautiful city of too many things to be seen. yesterday we wandered around the ruins in the gardens of pushkin palace, deciding for money's sake not to enter the magnificent palace itself (one sees enough of decandent interiors in the hermitage to last a long time). i found it slightly more charming with its crumbling buildings and wide expanses of long, slightly unkempt grass under big black trees than the manicured lawns of peterhoff (though they had their neglected areas as well), particularly so because we were exploring them with masha. the previous night, we met up woth some of her friends and walked around in the rain along the river for a long time. finally we ended up at the apartment of one of them and had opened many bottles of wine and made a huge feast of mostly sausages and other meats and passed the time into the wee hours with a guitar and a mouth harp and a violin and many russian songs, the most memorable involving a horse who carries the singer's lover away. we were able to crawl out the window onto the scaffolding surrounding the building and get a magnificent view of the city, then we all went to bed on various beds and couches and patches of floor. i am in a post office at the moment and have to run to go do many things. let us hope that i have no issues crossing the border, as the bus may cross into finland after midnight and my visa is good only through the 30th. weeee!