25-II-1978.
Flip to Lenjingrad. The hotel here is named same as the city, built by Finns, with their furniture. The armchairs don't look much, except they're kind of cornerless, one curvy surface on a single leg, as if cut out of an egshell, rather shallow but fitting perfectly. I could sit in one of those for days.
The trading went far better here. Made friends with Irina, the concierge of the floor, and she came to our room a few times, sometimes buying stuff, sometimes just to talk. I confused her endlessly with asking "by what regulation?" whenever she said "regular" (praviljno), which is russian shorthand for "yes". She didn't even understand the question until I pointed out the word she said. She was cute, though, but actually neither Slave nor I were really interested, and she was on duty.
This time we went one morning with the group, to some temple, forgot the name, B something, but it's huge and the architecture is quite interesting. Inside there was sort of enough light, but not quite. I leaned backwards to shoot this, and Slave was my third leg of the tripod, lens fully open, exposure 1/15. Just right. And the wide angle lens just covered enough.
The colors here are almost right, the good old ORWO and their lab in Skoplje did tit right. The malachite columns impressed me, don't know why, but that's somehow the best green I've ever seen, at least in a building. For this, his shoulder was the tripod, but there's still a bit of a blur when you look closer.
Then we went to Ermitaž. Backdoor, as usual, they know us yugos, if we're forced to wait more than 20 minutes, we'll spread in all directions, get cabs and go somewhere else. We all made a bunch of shots in there - I got two negatives from other girls to develop afterwards. But then there was the express shooter who'd just make prints and bring them to our hotel the next day, so fine, we all lined up. And now looking at the scans of those group shots, I see we're not complete - couple of girls are missing - and I recognized Mima, Borko and Momir. The group was big enough for me to forget they were there...
Then there was a curious moment when the fotographer asked „kto staršij?“ - who's oldest/eldest/boss/supreme. We just looked among ourselves, somewhat confused, and said „we didn't choose anyone, why do you need one?“. True children of self-management socialism, we didn't even think a group like this would need anyone in command. We had our guide, but he was just a technical assistant, making sure that nobody gets lost, we all get rooms, meals, transportation, what we paid for. Okay, one of the girls liked him a lot, so there was maybe some more - but even so, even more so, he was out of the picture most of the time and appeared only when we'd go somewhere, or arrive at the next hotel.
So the shooter guy said „well, who will distribute the photos and gather the money?“. Ah, that. Okay, Slave and I volunteered. And he did appear in the morning to deliver the photos, and after lunch to get paid.
We actually sold all we had, and lived in the style of drunken barons these days. We took a cab to just go out and see the Finnish bay. What we saw with the group was just a peek through a corner of a parking somewhere, not quite enough for what we wanted, so we took a cabbie and he took us out of town. The view of frozen sea is incredible. And you can walk on it, though we didn't really dare.
Mentions: Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Merima Tabarski (Mima), Momir Hadžipopov, Radovan Tomić (Slave), yugo, in serbian