Bubbles on the Town Hall Square

:)

Viva la Vita

These photos of elderly tourists were taken on a Saturday morning, on the Town Hall Square. It's high tide and the streets are crowded, and the most part of the people visiting the Old Town are elderly American, British and German travellers. 

As a tour guide, I work with such groups every summer, and have an ambiguous feeling about them.

Firstly,  some of them are clearly too old to travel so far. I've had people with walking sticks, people in wheelchairs, even a person with a portable dropper. Also, almost in every group there is a person with heart problems or breathing, or walking difficulties, and a friend of mine once had to work with an elderly man with amnesia! A question I will probably never get an answer to is - why, WHY do people who can't walk properly choose a three-hour walking tour in a town with cobble streets, and in summer at that, when the temperature reaches up to 30C? 

Naturally, everybody in the group is supportive and understanding with such persons, but we have a timetable to stick to, and a guide simply cannot make 30 people wait for 10 minutes for one person to catch up with the group. Those who work in tourism say that they take art least one corpse off a cruise boat in every harbour. Sometimes people die right during the walking tour. 

Is it really worth the effort?

Secondly, despite all my grumbling, I admire these people greatly. An image of a retired person having fun and travelling round the world AFTER he or she has turned 60 or even 70 is completely alien to the post-Soviet culture in which I grew up. Here, most retired people simply can't afford travelling, and even when they can, the thought rarely crosses their mind. In Soviet (and the stereotype is alive still), once you retire your only entertainment is TV, gossip, and bringing up your grandchildren. And then you die. Finita. 

When I see the western elderly people, the old ladies with haircuts, manicure, earrings and scarves, the gentlemen with photo cameras, buying amber, drinking coffee in street cafes, choosing souvenirs, laughing and so clearly enjoying themselves, my heart almost bursts with pity for our grannies and grandpas, most of whom see nothing of old age but its misery, its poverty and bereavement. 

Here, old people are not used to enjoying themselves, nor are they supposed to. It's a horror of a life, really, when the culture denies old age any fun, or even dignity. A common phrase you may hear from an elderly person is: "I don't need it any more", the "it" being fancy dress, or interesting kind of food, or travel, or anything in that line. It's like after certain age you're not allowed to live any more. You don't wear bright new things. You don't travel. You don't try new food. You don't buy anything new and expensive (even if you can afford it). 

People who are used to thinking like that spend the final 20-30 (more even) years of their lives being old, shabby and discontent. It's the Soviet heritage, when a life is only valuable when it can be used for labour, for production, and actually living is a capitalistic heresy, it is indecent and makes you unworthy of the community you live in. Such a person would at best be considered extravagant. I hate it with every fibre of my soul. When I hear the "What-do-I-need-it-for" phrase from my Mom, who's not even close to sixty, I feel a surge of desperation, and get so angry - how dares she deny herself the beauty of life? How dare she think herself so valueless?

I love working with these people, however grumpy and uneasy to handle they may be, and I greatly admire the system, the society which made it possible for the elderly to keep their dignity, and remain human beings to the last. 

My Scraps

Here are the pages from my scrapbook. Iäve sketched these today, as we were sitting in a cafe on the Town Hall Square. 

I could have spent the whole day like that, basking in the sun, watching the bright crowds pass by.
The season has begun, and most people you met in the Old Town are tourists: German, Japanese, Spanish, Scandinavian... I love pretending to be a tourist myself; it liberates in a way, like you are suddenly permitted to stare, to take pictures, to admire the once familiar places anew. a native isn't expected to act like that, to wonder, but a tourist certainly can :) 

Playing Spies

We've been doing a lot of spying lately, Maestro and I. 

We choose a table in a cafe on one of the busiest streets of Old Town and spend a couple of hours over our coffee, me - sketching, him - taking pictures of the passers-by. 

Here are some...

Lovely color :)

Couldn't take our eyes off that gorgeous hair.

 More is coming soon :)

Butter in the Sun

Every morning I come into the kitchen and smile at those buttercups unfolding layers of transparent petals, with sun pouring all over them and spilling on the floor and the kitchen table. 

In the Spring's Train

Well, it's really a bit late for the spring pictures (though it's only since yesterday that we've been having proper May weather, with temperature above 10C). This picture has been finished a couple of weeks ago, but I got round to posting it only today... Better late than never :)

It's called "In the Spring's Train", and interprets, quite literally, the change of seasons. 

I have not the slightest idea how the dogs got there :)

Sort of "Jane Morris" face; my osession with Pre-Raphaelites begins to show :)

The Night before Beltane

These are the photos of churches which maestro took yesterday, on the narrow brink between sunset and night.

Have a beautiful Belthane! :)

Luminous

These are the things I can't get my eye off - embroidered lampshades. 

So refined and luxurious... words are not enough to describe them.

So just watch - 

Many more beautiful lampshades (and not only that) can be found in Marinni's journal - http://marinni.livejournal.com/724956.html#cutid1