ohb

Anapa-it's no Trabolgan

I was the girl from that shampoo ad, remember the one where she washes her hair in a fountain and then marches up to a posh hotel and saunters in. Five days on the train from Irkutsk and my hair was like cardboard, particularly as it's got really long and I now wear it up a lot, with the wooden thing my mom bought me in Taltsee, but I digress. Our train arrived into Anapa at 2.45 in the morning, on the train I had toyed with the idea of waiting it out till morning to get a bus into the city, usually Russian train stations are particularly scummy places, think Cork bus station multiplied by a million. I couldn't believe it when I arrived into Anapa, shining, clean station, more like an airport than a train station, much more modern than their international airport in Moscow, easy to tell where the Mafia spend their holidays. It's hard to describe, when you're alone how much satisfaction and hope you get from the little things. So I tried to nap in one of those wire mesh benches that are completely non functional and yet still populate airports and train stations everywhere, you know the ones with the arm
rest just a little too close to your side, I mean Derek Davis would've been standing. After much manoeuvring and shifting, I decided that bag would be all right, there was an old couple and their incredibly bored grandson beside me and went outside for a cigarette. This taxi driver started talking to me, he wasn't one of my usual weirdoes, but it did have a very strange t-shirt. I thought at first it was just an unfortunate fashion choice on his behalf but since then, I have seen half the men in the Crimea sporting them. They are almost perfect squares, looking a bit like a t-shirt that has been cut short and are the kind of shirts that make muscular men look even more so, and people who aren't as toned, just look really fat. His had a stupid picture of some cartoon character behind bars and the words jail plastered across the back, I hope no one is wearing them at home, cause I would just have to leave again immediately. He told me I could rest in his car if I wanted to, needless to say I declined, and he insisted that I shouldn't be afraid of him and that he was just trying to help, so I left him to 'help' someone else.
So the morning came eventually, I had found a wide window sill in the upstairs part and was half snoozing, when the security guard was like 'on your bike' or words to that effect, in Russian obviously, I got the message. The toilets were the only reminder that I was still in Russia, I managed to put up with the stench long enough to wash my hair in the sink and even brush it, to looks of disgust from a few Russian 'ladies'. With my bags in the luggage room I got a bus into the city to try and organise getting out of there as soon as possible with the hope of getting somewhere closer to Audrey. Nothing could've prepared me for the town, it was so pretty, not at all Russian, like a little French town with beautiful buildings, the thing that I found the most strange however was all the people walking around in bikinis. I've never been to a resort, unless you count Majorca when I was four, but all I remember from that was helping mom push Niamh in the buggy up this monstrous hill and Nana giving out to Darren for cheating at cards. People of all shapes and sizes wearing little or nothing and nobody batting an eyelid, for any of my male readers, you really need to move East, for your viewing pleasure.
And so this is what prompted me to but a bikini, the bottom of which I will never don, its shorts for me forever but I wore the top in Odessa, the power of the mob. This is perhaps as far as it goes for now, i'm going to burn this onto cd and go downstairs and post it as I can't find any wi-fi here, none of the above is what I really intended to write, don't lose heart, next time will be more interesting, I hope.

posted by orlagh @ 11:56 pm