Рет қаралды 20,609
Translation by @Moscow_calling:
Calm patch amidst wild stormy week. It's great when your job presents an opportunity to rest from weekends. Thank you all very much for congratulations and wishes! I saw everything! I wasn`t planning big celebrations. Nothing more ambitious than to meet friends over a slice of pizza and to prepare for the Reptilium (big biannual exhibition for terrariumists and sympathizers in which Nika and Yoll religiously take part) without haste. But it didn't work out like that. First, Artyom decided to go to Karelia for the weekend. I was supposed to be at work, slightly green with envy. But my boss heard about the trip I was going to miss and ordered me to go and watch the last of autumn. On Saturday morning I found myself in St. Petersburg, threw my backpack into Artyom`s pickup truck and set off to Karelia, looking through the car window at trees and mossy stones. And in the evening - voila! Stormy rivers, houses on stones, skerries of Ladoga, a white-tailed eagle with a fish at sunset and "oh, everything is getting dark, no time left for the waterfall, so what, we will go in the morning and now let`s go look for an aurora!" We counted all bumps and holes in the forest, scared away all bears and still didn`t find any auroras, but had a good look at stars. I was thinking about cool and funny sounding names of local villages. Uuksu - some bird should be called that. Or Iyyoki after the river. One hell of a name, what. We woke up in the morning, ate semolina without lumps, bought hats in the form of clearly stoned purple-orange-green fishes knitted by sister of our host, went to the river named Uksunjoki (now I have quite a stock of potential bird`s names), came back to take a picture of some poisonous mushrooms, rushed to waterfalls. The waterfalls are great - they are made of water and fall. Wet, beautiful, cola colored. The name is Yukankoski, they are part of Kulismayoksi River. Name the cat that way and summon some Karelian demon while calling your cat home for dinner. And then. We had. To hurry. To St. Petersburg for a yacht ride to the bay of Neva to watch the last sunset in this almost past year of mine! Anna kept the sun for us as long as she could, while we were in a traffic jam! And we made it in time! Well, Artyom made it and I was sitting next to him. We arrived 8 minutes before sunset and helped Sun to set successfully! And then we sailed off. Guys let me steer the yacht and cursed themselves for this when I put the steering wheel on wrong position, but if you won`t make a good selfie, no one will! By midnight we broke into Ksenia`s place and showered her little otter with caresses until it started to bite. Artyom had almost passed out, but after notification about aurora being shown on Ladoga he was up and running again. Anyways it was Ksenia who drove us to the spot. At 1 am they congratulated me with the whole Big Dipper and real Aurora. The best fireworks ever! First Polar Lights in my life! We returned at 3 am. And at 4 pm we already were at Dima`s little airfield having barbecue and talking to Evgeny and Marina Ribaltovskiye, who spent all summer in self-isolation. Next morning I rushed back to Moscow to visit my sister for my nephew`s fourth birthday. After that I quietly melted on a bench in a cafe in the company of stoned zoologists, veterinarians and Polina. Dear God, save all these wonderful people who are making my life so bright and fulfilling.