St Petersburg, Russia - Part 9

Tuesday was our second day of discussions and proceeded much the same as Monday had except that this time Cyrus hadn't overslept. We had more discussions and presentations and then they took us to a Georgian Restaurant for lunch. Earlier in our visit I had tried to get a bottle of Georgian red wine for dinner as it is apparently quite distinctive and worth trying. Georgian wine wasn't available however because of some trade disagreement (apparently about quality) between Russia and Georgia. It seems that during the Soviet days such things didn't occur because of all being part of the same union but now that national boundaries have been re-established old rivalries and mistrusts have started to reappear.

All of these problems, however, don't stop Russians from enjoying Georgian cuisine which seems to centre on lots of meat cooked in various ways and accompanied by different styles of bread. For lunch we enjoyed one of the Georgian favourite meat preparations which is effectively meat barbecued on 'swords'. Real swords aren't used now but the large skewers are made up to resemble swords. This was accompanied by a light bread and the whole meal was quite enjoyable.

Late afternoon as we were about to leave the office I took some photographs of the JT guys who had made our visit quite a productive one.

Cyrus, Dan, Sergey, August and Mike

For dinner on Tuesday night we decided to try to get into Yolki Palki again. This time we were successful although we had to wait 20 minutes for a table to become available, such is the popularity of the place. We had some traditional Russian fare, of which the most memorable was the piroshki (Russian pies) and a mandatory shot of vodka.

Back at the hotel we broached the bottle of champagne and demolished the cake for a late dessert. I had promised to play some harmonica for Sandra and Mike so did of (probably woeful) impromptu kletzmer style on a G-minor harp and a bit of bluesy stuff on an E harp.