I tell Sveta that I think things are in pretty good control now, so she can go
on to other business. I tell her that I am going to go down to the FORT
Internet café to check it out and send some messages. She says she sill
drive me there and go in with me until I feel comfortable and then she will
leave. We drive straight south on Fontanki and Sveta drives under an
archway on the east side (before we reach Nevsky) and into a courtyard.
We go into the FORT and the fees here are much less than the Grand
Europe at 50 Roubles (about $1.60) per hour for Internet access. There
are probably 60 or so computers here and about 50 of them are being
used for game playing and likely are not hooked to the Internet. After
paying 50 Roubles, I am handed a slip which says #3 VIP. Sveta talks to
the guy and he says that computer is around the corner and in the far
room. In this room (VIP room I assume) are 10 computers all hooked to
the Internet. The access and response time is very quick on these
computers. The one drawback of this place is that the computers
automatically shut down at the end of your paid time, even if you have not
been watching the time and are in the middle of a message. I found that
out the hard way. In contrast, the more expensive places at the hotels just
politely sit you down to work, and figure up your bill when you are done.
Choose your poison.
After I am signed on and call up my e-mail program, Sveta asks me if I feel
OK and if I think that I can find my way back to my apartment. Since I just
walk straight up Fontanki, I think I can make it. I get up and give her a kiss
on the cheek and she kisses me back on my cheek. I have both of her
phone numbers if I need anything.
I spend quite a bit of time on my e-mail as I have many messages from the
ladies I have been corresponding with. I send out several messages to
these ladies and many messages to friends back in USA. I remember this
time (but not always later) to pay at the front desk for another hour when
my first hour is about to expire.
It is now probably close to 7 PM and I am finally back inside the apartment.
I just realize that I have not eaten anything since the bag of pretzels on the
plane before noon. So I eat some of the peanut butter crackers I have
brought with me, one of the yogurts and sample some of the two vegetable
salads.
Now I start to make some phone calls to finalize some meeting times for
the days ahead. Earlier, with Sveta, I had placed a call to my first date,
Zoya, but her line had been busy. Now, I call Zoya first and I was able to
reach her this time. We agreed to meet at the Circus building across from
my apartment at 11 AM the next morning. (We had long ago agreed on
the date, but had not specified the place and exact time.) She mentioned
however, that she was not a morning person.
I also placed calls to several other ladies. I wanted to confirm meetings
that were already scheduled for the next 5 days or so, and to schedule
someone for the first Saturday which was only a few days away. I had
originally scheduled an Irina for Saturday, but she had continued to be
troublesome in her last few messages to me, so I wanted to find someone
else for Saturday.
This proved to be a very frustrating evening of phone calls. Absolutely no
one answered for the 9 -10 ladies that I tried to contact. I was thinking the
bottom was dropping out already. But later in the night, around 10 PM or
so, the ladies started answering their phones and things began falling in
place. I was able to reconfirm my dates for tomorrow (see Zoya above),
Sunday with Tatiana, Monday with Valeria, and Tuesday with Lora. And, I
was able to schedule Saturday with Lena. A very big disappointment was
that I was unable to make contact with the beautiful Erika who had been
scheduled for Friday. I waited as long as I could, but finally had to try for
others, and scheduled Alena for Friday.
During my calls, I also placed a call to a man who was my contact for some
business meetings that were on my schedule. Through networking, I had
located some conferences being sponsored by the American Chamber of
Commerce jointly with some Russian firms, universities, etc. I was to give
two short talks. These business meetings were valuable from two
standpoints. First, they allowed me to write off the plane fare portion of my
costs, and some of the housing and meal costs. And second, they
provided me with some ‘cover’ during my visits with the ladies. They knew
of my business meetings, but not their number or just when. But it always
gave me an excuse as to why I had to be somewhere at any give time, and
it explained to them why I knew my way around certain restaurants, etc.
Then I take two sleeping pills (Ambien) and go to bed; I sleep pretty well
for this my first night in the apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Notes for the Reports to follow:
1) I list many of the streets I traveled and restaurants, etc., on those
streets. For those planning a trip to SPb, I highly recommend getting a
map before you leave USA. I found a very good one at Barnes and Noble,
but it will undoubtedly be available elsewhere including Amazon dot com.
It was a very nice ‘plasticised’ folding map produced by Berndtson &
Berndtson with an ISBN number 3-928855-57-3.
2) My procedure with the ladies that I had meetings with, was to ask them
to wait for two days and then send me an e-mail message indicating if they
wanted to spend 4 more days with me later. This switched the burden to
them somewhat and insured I would not be chasing after those who did not
want to be chased. In previous e-mail, I had listed the dates of the three 4
day blocks and asked each lady to tell me the blocks that she could and
could not spend with me. Once they specified those block dates, I then
started scheduling the first day meetings. My intent was to schedule the
earliest one day meetings with those ladies who could later meet in the
earliest of the four day blocks, etc. This would allow time for them to think
about whether they actually wanted to meet with me later.
3) My question to them about the 4 day blocks also allowed me to start
‘weeding out’ some of the 50 ladies on my list. Asking them to choose a
four day block was a pretty big tipoff to them that somebody else would be
in another 4 day block. Their individual reactions allowed me to either
move them to the top of the list or move them to the bottom of the list. The
top of the list contained those who either (a) specified their choices with no
other comments or (b) made their choices with humorous comments
indicating they knew exactly what was going on and they accepted it as a
fact of life. These comments were of the type, “just don’t put me last on
the list,” “why can’t I take up all 3 of the blocks :-)),” “please enter my
candidacy,” etc. And the best, of course, were those who simply
responded, “I can meet with you during any of the three periods.”
Those who were moved to end of list gave responses like, “just how many
women are you meeting with,” “I don’t understand about the 3 blocks, what
will you be doing at other times,” “I don’t want to merely wait for my turn,”
“contact me via e-mail when you get here and we will make arrangements
then.” The crowning example was (written by an interpreter I was pretty
sure) “don’t be such a pain in the neck. Just call me when you get here.”
Others were moved to end of the list by their attempt to play the ‘who has
the most power game.’ For instance: refusal to give out their phone
number until I sent them an e-mail from SPb, wanting me to first call a
friend of theirs to set up a meeting, wanting me to give my phone number
in SPb so they could call me, etc. Note: I consistently used a number of
excuses to never give out my apartment phone number to any of the ladies
even after I was in SPb. The reasons are obvious: I didn’t want incoming
calls when another lady was in the apartment and I didn’t want to receive
calls from them when I knew that their greeting would be, “Hi this is Irina.”
Like I didn’t have 10 Irina’s on my list!!!!!
4) I was torn by how much detail to tell about my meetings with the
individual ladies. For my own memories, I recorded and typed much detail.
On the one hand it violates the rule of ‘don’t kiss and tell’ to report too
much, but on the other hand many guys who have never been would really
like to know what, in fact, is the situation there between man and woman. I
have chosen to report many details here, but this route necessitates that I
not give any information that could be used to identify the particular ladies.
This means that I will not tell the exact ages, heights and weights, I will not
tell the specific jobs they have, I will not show pictures, and I will not use
their actual first names. In some places, I use XXX to eliminate these
details.
5) Specifically about intimacy and sex. Here, I will use the procedure of
XXXing out the words that might just prove just a little too sickening to be
read by anyone, except those who were planning to view this as a
gynecology review session. If the readers want me to X out more, or stop
X ing out anything, post your comments and I will give it some thought for
the postings yet to come.
6) Even though I have insured that none of the ladies can ever be
identified, I also know that some will still find it within their power to be
greatly offended by what I am going to report for any of several reasons.
Therefore, let this serve as my notice to you. If you will be offended by
descriptions of personal and intimate situations, then simply do not read
any of my following trip reports. If you chose to read, then do not later
complain.
Rex
