ГОРМОСТ

That is, "GorMost". "Gor" for gorodskoj, adjectival form of gorod, meaning city, and "Most" for, well, most, meaning bridge. GorMost = City Bridge Service. John and I had risked leaving our heavy winter greys in Tallinn, but were surprised to be the only ones wearing bright, colourful -- and, purely by accident, both orange -- coats in Russia. That is, with the exception of the city maintenance crews. Each in turn, my Russian pals cheekily pointed out the amusing resemblance, likening the pair of us to the road repair service, the GorMost bridge crews and the mostly wizened, yet day-glo security-vested, street sweepers. Here I am posing with my workaday brethren on the bridge linking Vasilevsky and Petrogradsky Islands. (The pilons coordinate perfectly to boot!).

I'd forgotten how dirty things like bright orange coats can get, especially in gritty-grimy St. Petersburg. Every metropolitan foray adds to your wardrobe, whether soot, car exhaust (belched by any or all of the older makes of Moskvich, Lada, Kamaz, Zhiguli, Volga, etc.), cigarette scum, sticky public transport residue or an allover spritz of eau de fried meat. My city slicker was slick with city in no time, though there was no time to leech out the filth due to no substitute outerwear for the interim. And Russia was lousy with washing machines this time around.

Suffering From Periodical Cosmopolitanism

In April-May, Russia's newspaper and print kiosks started selling the 13th anniversary issue of Russian Cosmo. The Cyrillic in the red balloon on the cover crows "Cosmo is 13 Years Old"! Apparently, covermodel "Tori Praver" is but 21 -- a year younger than I was when I purchased the inaugural issue of the mag's Russian incarnation in May 1994 -- thirteen, count 'em, thirteen years ago! I still have my 13-year-old copy (front cover: Cindy Crawford). Gasp. Thirteen years since I'd first stepped foot on the then-browbeaten soil of Ma Rus'. When I was a student at the Centre for Russian Language and Culture of St. Petersburg State University (at the Smol'nyj Institute), mes dormmates canadiennes and I were tickled to have witnessed that instance of print culture globalization, more specifically, the girly-magazination of the former Soviet U.

Some aspects have changed -- the 2007 cover speaks to realities facing "new" (think "monied", not necessarily "contemporary") Russian women. There's a section devoted to cars (women drivers, let alone car-owners, were pretty much unheard of in 1994), as well as a "Cosmo-Eksperiment" that dares readers to try and survive a spell without one's mobile, TV or Internet. Several sample squirts of free products are stashed between the pages, creams from Lancome, Garnier and Nivea ("Good-Bye, Cellulite," transliterated directly from English into Russian [Gud-Baj, Tsellulit]). The biggest change is in form, not format; page dimensions have shrunk to approximately 7" x 8", meaning the glossy's grown widthwise, stacking up nearly a full inch of Cosmopolitan (and local) content and requisite ads. In fact, the majority of the magazines marketed to women, home hobbyists, cooks and teens are now such physically-reduced specimens, mini-mags, both in Russia and across the Baltic countries. The new proportions make even Cosmo seem more "literary," sizing up more like an academic journal, despite the too-puckered lips, the touched-up pics and the tired sex tips. Easier to fit in one's glove-box or slide/hide under one's keyboard, in any case. Suggested retail price: 65 roubles.

Cover Features from 1994:
Sex or Chocolate: There's a time for everything!
Don't Let Jealousy Dominate Your Life
TEST: How well do you know each other?
They're 30 years old, independent and self-confident... Do they really need husbands?
Cosmopolitan in Russia! An internationally-renowned magazine - published in Russia for the first time!

Cover Features from 2007:
Sex-games for the bold and not-so bold
Cosmo-Experiment: One week sans Mobile Phone, TV and Internet
Free Spaces: Where to Go, Besides the Garage, to Meet a Real Man
A Woman's Education: Real Stories of Lesbian Love
Counting Costs: The Price of Your Job
New! "Gas Pump" Car Column, page 128

Shawn

I made another montage, entitled "Shawn" and featuring same.
Electroacoustic composer-musician Shawn also hails from Canada (Edmonton), and has been living in Tallinn on and off for several years. He's been teaching sound at the Arts Academy and also at the Baltic Film & Media School -- it was he who tipped off John about the teaching position there.
So many thanks to Shawn for that tip, which led to this trip!

Head aega, Eestimaa

We saved another trip to Kalma sauna for our last day in Tallinn. We opted for 90 minutes instead of our usual 60 -- we didn't want to rush, nor did we want to anxiously keep our eyes on the clock for the duration our final, celebratory skin-sloughage and salt-flushery (the one snarky reprimand we'd received for steaming 3 minutes overtime a couple of months earlier was fontrum enough). Back home, we tidied up and did the bulk of our packing. There wasn't much new stuff to bring home (not surprising, for such reluctant shoppers as we), though the oddball, oddshaped souvenirs (lamp, telephone, clocks, tin box, tin purse,) required some careful placement, as did the 4.7 (cumulative) litres of various boozes we'd selected to export from the Baltics.

Then it was off to Cafe Pushkin for a plate of their delicious salmon pel'meni and a final mayo-laden, boiled egg, prune, walnut and smoked chicken-filled "salad". We crossed over to Texas Honky-Tonk, an unfortunately-themed resto-bar (lexical proof I'm back in Quebec) in the Old Town, where we raised several pints and shared stories and many laughs with some students and staff from the Baltic Film & Media School. We took our leave at closing time, which the Honky Tonk invariably announces by playing the American national anthem. John, Shawn and I continued our last night's nostalgia tour by descending into Levist Valjas, a notoriously divey open-til-morning joint around the corner -- truly a dank, dripping dungeon of a bar. I botched my last attempt at ordering a "Tõmmu Hiid" in passable Estonian, John deviously nabbed a few more snaps of passed-out, head-on-table patrons, then we piled out into the late-night dusk just as the place was becoming completely overrun by revelers from bars that stay open later than they seem to do in Texas.

White nights season had definitely started to creep in -- though we were tired, we thought it appropriate to say "head aega" (good-bye) to the almost-bright night and to Estonia from the Stroomi Rand -- the stretch of beach not far from our digs on Ristiku street in Pelguranna. We headed back to the neighbourhood, cleared our fridge of whatever remained of beach-worthy reinforcements (beer and... cheese), and started off beachbound at about 3:30 -- the photos above are from about an hour later. Back home by 5-5:30, we caught a few mid-morning Zzzs, just enough to recharge for final prep and exit. Bags were packed, borscht slurped, cupboards emptied, garbage thrown, floors swept, fridge unplugged. Urmas, our friendly landlord, came by to collect the final communal payment, and we were off in a taxi towards the harbor, soon to board Viking Line's "Rosella" afternoon ferry to Helsinki.