The birds

Found in Saint Petersburg

I bought a pile of these photos from a grey-haired lady who had a lot of different photos and items spread on a blanket in the muddy ground of the marketplace/fleamarket. My ten-word Russian vocabulary combined with my nervousness and a lack of writing equipment resulted in a lot of swinging of arms and hands and shaking of the heads when we negotiated the price - or she tried to communicate it to me. I suppose she came to take my stupidity as bargaining and in the end refused most of the money I handed to her, laughed at me and (I think so) wished a good day as I thanked and apologized in some muddle of english-finnish-russian-sign language-mostly-gibberish.

There's a certain freedom in travelling to places where you can't speak the language. It sort of renders you invisible, like you were watching a film. St. Peter as a city has various other qualities that contribute to the impression, with it's endless layers of time all seeming to exist simultaneously so that you sort of keep slipping between them.