Have you heard?

Gloomy? No.
Bleak? Nope.
Frozen underwear? Not even close.

You may have guessed it by now, but I took an impromptu trip up to St Petersburg. It kind of rocked my socks off, which, now that I think about it, makes absolutely no sense. Are we talking about rocking as in swaying back and forth? How would that cause a removal of socks? Maybe that's the point because the rocking was so fierce that the socks flew off. I guess it would make sense then. But I don't think it's possible. So what are they saying on the streets? Well... lots of things. While they were definitely happier than in the movie, there were certainly just as many characters.

I was walking along one of the many bridges and saw a man standing shirtless on the railing. He waited until a tour boat was floating past and then jumped into the water alongside them.

Later I was going down the sidewalk when I saw a man (holding a bottle of some choice beverage...) on the perpendicular street talking to himself. No. Wait. He wasn't talking to himself. He was talking to the pigeons. He saw me watching, chuckled and said something after me. I'm pretty sure it was something about the pigeons being thirsty.

After that I saw two women in a row talking to themselves on the metro escalator (which I timed many times and have concluded that if you stand for the entirety of the ride you will waste between 2 and 3 minutes of your life).

Speaking of escalators, there was a mother-daughter pair who stepped on kind of bracing themselves as if they were surfing. They seemed to have never been on one before.

Then there was the man wearing red warm-up pants, a red hoodie and blue pinstripe cap and strutting with more swag than I've ever witnessed in my entire life. Seriously. Arms a-swinging.

And the man who rode through the park wearing motorcycle gear and helmet yet riding a bicycle. There was music being emitted from his person. I suspect it was the backpack.

Basically St. P is a bundle of laughs. The people are very happy and friendly and made me feel like a horrible person for automatically giving my well-refined Moscow scowl. And yes, I did sing a line of this song walking down the street. What? I couldn't not.

I'm not sayin'; I'm just sayin'.