My Trip Back to the Ostensible Homelands, Latvia (where I'd only been in stories) and Russia: A work in progress

0:00:15 --We received our first zapreshenia ("forbidden") 15 seconds after setting foot in the airport. There was a woman who looked like Paris Hilton holding a sign for Mr. Smith. She was quite impressive, as the man manning the check-in counter at the gate recognized too, and he took a picture of her, she posed. Charles wanted a picture too, he pulled out his camera and attempted a covert shot, but the same man of the counter saw and wagged his finger at him. First forbidden warning: accomplished.

0:01:00--As we turned the corner a few corridors down from our gate, a balcony looked over a throng of people, vaguely organized into three parts, or lines, five people wide and about 40 people long. I wagged my vestiginous tale bone in excitement, our first unbelievable line, and not more than 1 minute after leaving the plane. St. Petersburg was already more than I could have hoped for.