A sturdy 42 degrees 27.10.13

The latter half of this week saw the Winter Olympic flame come to the ole might capital of Karelia. Needless to say we had anticipated this great event on our FB page weeks ago and had our plan all lined up. It was hitting the square in front of the theatre at 6pm. Needless to say, we got there early and eager. Needless to say, it arrived in a flash of light at 7:50. It was minus 3.2 degrees so we were all standing still almost crying, but not quite. Why? Because any tears would have frozen is why? Toes were getting frostbite all around and the question of why we didn’t have more clothes considering it’d been snowing the day before was pondered and cryed over. A futile exercise of course.

Sochi car I need in my life

Coca Cola were there as usual, providing the usual in-your-face advertising. I actually mean in-your-face unfortunately. I ventured up in a very curteous and tentative manner to the van to grab a couple of the souvenirial flags and cans they were handing out. I found myself pressed against the van with no way to get out, arm in the air to grab a flag that wasn’t coming my way. The lady in my section decided to give out cans so I grabbed them and dropped them onto the heads of the kids standing next to me in the hope that she’d get the hint and start with the flags again. It was a solid 4-6 minutes until Amy managed to drag me out. I was impressed by her level of agression. Although, she is taller than me. I’ll put down her ability to not get squashed against a coca-cola van down to height. The guy on stage wouldn’t go 15 minutes without mentioning them, but on the plus side they had these cool plastic light-up bottles that change shades of red. The queue was about 200m long, but me and Emma just sneaked into the front claiming our need for красивый кока кола свет. Unfortunately the security guard spoke English so I said we were French and thankfully he walked away before we had to deal with that issue. Turns out there’s not much of a mob mentality here. Back home if you try and skip a queue people spit in your face en masse.

This is where I was squashed against unable to get a free flag

Me, Emma and our freebies; mocking the queue behind us wanting cool glowy bottles

A few of us had gone home, sick of waiting. But for those that perservered there was a massive flash of light as someone legged it down the designated area with the flame and onto the stage and then a herd of Russians chasing them to the stage. We legged it in the opposite direction after the necessary photos had been taken. I didn’t fancy being squashed by ravaging Russians any more. It was quite a traumatic evening for that. We were guided to the exit by female policemen in heels. Even though there were still remnents of snow, they were in heels. Definitely need to commit some crimes when the women polie force are around, there’s no way they could chase me in those. #crime #sillyRussia

Russki policcemen protecting the van of merch

That orange thing is the actual flame shooting by

We went to the theatre tonight to see the Russki Nutcracker. I’m not much of a ballety person so I hadn’t seen it before and had no idea what to expect. The theatre is pretty small inside so you get a great view no matter where you are. A very sweaty view as they kept it at about 42 degrees inside. We were on the 2^nd tier, front row and it was just oh so joyous. Basically Christmas fever was all around with cute children who had either the same really bad haircut, or the same really badly cut wig and girls flundering about in colourful tutus. There was one scene were 6 people dressed as rats came and attacked some poor girl until she died. The price (in very tight white lycra) woke here again and managed to fend off the 6 rats until the king rat, dressed in red velvelt, came and started on the prince. Mare. What's not a mare is how cultured I feel right now.