getting in with the in-crowd

Feeling v. pleased with myself for managing to blag into the biennale opening. Just marched up to security and said the artist Susan Hiller had invited me. This was - in its way - a complete truth. At the end of her talk, I asked the artist if she could tell my where her work was being exhibited.  This is because there is absolutely no information on the biennale website about things like that (no programme of events either; its all a guessing game, to the extent that on opening night the whole of the ArtPlay area was full of very posh, very lost, looking people asking plaintive directions.)

To which she replied (and I quote) 'you should come to the opening, it's tonight.' So I did. And before I knew it the nice woman organiser was apologising for the lack of me having an actual ticket, and shepherding us to the front of the queue.

border guards day

So, each sector of the army has its own celebratory day every year - well the Day of the Border Guards was this week (starting quite politely in this photo) but has extended over the weekend into a city full of young men in states of considerable drunkenness, offering many types of manly displays, excessive humour, more drinking and lots of laying about in a stupor.  If you want to see how things go, check out these photos.

And I don't know why it reminded me, but the Aeroexpress train has been running a brilliant ad recently, from a website called - subtly - get-hard.ru.

cheesy celebrations time

Left everyone at work watching the Royal Wedding and have come home to pack, as I am going to the US tomorrow. Which means I will miss both May Day and Victory Day. I really enjoyed the latter last year - endless novelty - but now realise that all the posters and street decorations are basically wheeled out the same each year (something that may be obvious to everyone else since it is what we all do at Christmas, Easter etc.)

Anyway, if you want to know more about Victory Day before 9th May, you can see all 1 hour and 30 minutes of lat year's parade, filmed by Russia Today. And check out Little Bone's post about getting caught up in the rehearsals for this year's extravaganza.

Cosmonauts day - missed it

Yuri Gagarin's first flight into space still has a fantastic resonance - I found myself looking at endless news footage on YouTube from April 1961; lots of early colour footage, space machines riveted together out of bent sheets of metal; and big telephones.  Then saw this, about the Kremlins celebration gala last week. And so wish I could have been there.