It’s raining, cool, and predicted to be this way for the next five days. I’m good to go with my rain boots, my umbrella, and Uber app. A nice American woman at the hotel sprained her ankle on day one of her trip and is on crutches. She’s says the emergency care here is great. Hope I never find out first-hand.
I trod on holy ground today; the Dostoyevsky Museum. A room devoted to the anniversary of the publication of Crime and Punishment was particularly well done, the walls papered with facsimiles of his manuscript pages, drawings of fictional characters and photos of their historical counterparts, and photos of the intellectual miscreants he consorted with.
Those bad boys got him jailed, condemned, driven to execution, and reprieved at the last moment by the Tsar. He was sentenced to hard labor (one of his many personal experiences with crime and punishment) and there are images representing his view of the road on the way to his mock execution. Also, photos of men in chains.
Prisoners in work camps.
And naughty ladies. Represent ladies.
There were screens mounted on the walls with multiple (muted) versions of the film adaptations playing, a series of projected images of churches that he attended or that featured in various stories, and many photographs of the great man himself. I liked one set apart, near a window and beside a candle. He worked through the night in the summer of 1865, writing The Gambler by day and Crime and Punishment at night. “Projected under the title The Drunkards, it was to deal “with the present question of drunkness … [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances, etc., etc.””
If he didn’t meet his deadline, he’d lose the rights to all his work. He had 30 days.
On the silver lining side, he was so buried under deadlines and desperate that he hired an stenographer, Anna Snitkina, to try the method of dictation, and proposed to her a month later She was 20, he was 45.
The happy couple. 
The family’s living quarters seemed both sterile and oppressive, but his plain, sturdy desk gave me shivers. I took a photo from the window. 
Delete the cars and modern signage, and the view may not have changed that much since he stared out of it. There was something about descending the gouged and pitted stone stairs just as he must have done, that seemed more evocative than the sparse, carefully arranged room vignettes.
I bought some souvenir pens and pencils, and a mug with a quote from Notes from the Underground in Cyrillic. “I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
I went to the food market afterwards. I didn’t feel up to haggling with glowering men, so I passed the produce by.
Descending from the sublime to the international shrine of consumerism, I Ubered to the Galeria, a giant shopping mall. I trudged to the top floor, in search of a pedestrian piece of luggage I could use to bring home non-fragile items, clearing my small case for mugs and a ceramic bowl. I have a two suitcase allowance on my flight home, might as well use it.
I ate something for lunch that was on my list of Russian foods to try – a blini from Teremok, the MacDs of Russia. I ordered by pointing to what looked like ham and cheese. The guy on the register was patient and kind. It was 149 rubles, so $2.25. Watching them make it was a mistake – pour a ladle of pancake batter on the griddle and fill it with stuff squirted out of plastic bags. Ew. It was edible, but not good. Flabby pancake/crepe with gummy filling. I ate it anyway. It just made me love my regular Fruk joint more.
Found a small red duffle bag to carry my loot home. I went for red because, Russia. Just doing my part to support St Petersburg.
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