Feeling the heat in Saint Pete...
So we all made it to St. Petersburg alright, the night train we took was well cool, 3rd class sleeper was much more comfortable than it sounds! After we got away from the station and to a local flat ( I guess we could call it a 'safe house' if we were melodramtic!!!) we heard 6 russian people off our train who took a different exit out of the station got arrested. Most activists were using the tactic of dressing 'normal' (whatever that is) and pretending to be alone, which had its limitations. Perhaps if the six had been with us wouldn't have been arrested.. then again... Apparantly the police on the train had a list of 30 russian activsts they wanted to pick up.
We went to the stadium which is the venue for the Russian Social Forum; its shit. There's police everywhere and journalists outnumber activists. As we left through the park that surrounds the stadium we saw a fight! Lots of rollerbladers were sliding up and down the path and one clipped this huge guy dressed in leather, the rollerbladered appeared to apologise but the guy was having none of it and had grabbed his neck. After a bit of shouting in russian, they were taking their tops off and the rollerblader took his skates off and they had a duel! It was totally one sided,;the rollerblader was clearly a trained kickboxer, which took the guy in leathers quite by surprise, as he got a swift kick to the side of the jugular and hit the floor like a sack of shit! it was like somthing out of a Jackie Chan movie!!
Thankfully we met a really cool guy via some of the Front Aids activists who let us stay with him. We don't really want to go back to the stadium!
Anyways we were able to have an anarchist meet up elsewhere which went the way of all meetings out here (long and confusing!). As it overran the time we had booked the room, we had an ill advised meeting in the park outside, soon enough small groups of young men in sports clothes were taking an interest and it was time for us to split...sharpish!
It's really light here, midnight feels like late afternoon, it's only dusky for a few hours before sunrise again, apparantly in June there's no darkness at all!
Will hopefully post again later today, gotta go now. Lots to get done!!
So we all made it to St. Petersburg alright, the night train we took was well cool, 3rd class sleeper was much more comfortable than it sounds! After we got away from the station and to a local flat ( I guess we could call it a 'safe house' if we were melodramtic!!!) we heard 6 russian people off our train who took a different exit out of the station got arrested. Most activists were using the tactic of dressing 'normal' (whatever that is) and pretending to be alone, which had its limitations. Perhaps if the six had been with us wouldn't have been arrested.. then again... Apparantly the police on the train had a list of 30 russian activsts they wanted to pick up.
We went to the stadium which is the venue for the Russian Social Forum; its shit. There's police everywhere and journalists outnumber activists. As we left through the park that surrounds the stadium we saw a fight! Lots of rollerbladers were sliding up and down the path and one clipped this huge guy dressed in leather, the rollerbladered appeared to apologise but the guy was having none of it and had grabbed his neck. After a bit of shouting in russian, they were taking their tops off and the rollerblader took his skates off and they had a duel! It was totally one sided,;the rollerblader was clearly a trained kickboxer, which took the guy in leathers quite by surprise, as he got a swift kick to the side of the jugular and hit the floor like a sack of shit! it was like somthing out of a Jackie Chan movie!!
Thankfully we met a really cool guy via some of the Front Aids activists who let us stay with him. We don't really want to go back to the stadium!
Anyways we were able to have an anarchist meet up elsewhere which went the way of all meetings out here (long and confusing!). As it overran the time we had booked the room, we had an ill advised meeting in the park outside, soon enough small groups of young men in sports clothes were taking an interest and it was time for us to split...sharpish!
It's really light here, midnight feels like late afternoon, it's only dusky for a few hours before sunrise again, apparantly in June there's no darkness at all!
Will hopefully post again later today, gotta go now. Lots to get done!!
posted by Welsh Anarchos at 12:42 PM
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