I am not feeling very well today. I think all the jet-lag I have ever been supposed to feel yet luckily avoided is catching up with me. It's not only tiredness, it's also hot flashes, and in general, I feel blah. The Russian try to cure everything with food and alcohol. If you don't get better right away, repeat, repeat, repeat… until you get back to your 100%. My prescription medicine tonight is 8-year old cognac (it's not as good as the one my age, but it's still very smooth and tasty) and an apple-glazed goose (hunted by one of my friend's friend earlier that morning). I don't believe in the prescription at first and – skeptically – sip my cognac waiting for the goose to come out of the oven and my taxi to pick me up in an hour. My friend observes my skepticism with sadness and accuses me of drinking too slowly, without putting my soul into it, forgetting my Russian roots in other words. I get jokingly insulted and start following his prescription to a T. Surprisingly, in only 15-20 minutes and only 100-150 grams of cognac later, I feel much-much better. So much better in fact that I cancel my taxi and stay with my friends and the goose refilling my prescription until I absolutely have to run "for the bridges" (a Saint-Petersburg thing, all our bridges are drawn from 2.30AM till 5AM during the navigation season, so if you lose track of time, there's a fat chance you will need to sleep in a taxi before a drawn bridge – in reality, nothing is that dramatic anymore, because they built this one bridge a few years ago that doesn't draw during the night, so you can cross to the other side any time, but depending on where you are in the city it may be super inconvenient to take it and actually easier to sleep in a taxi).
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