Volga River Cruise, Part III: “To Health and To Victory”

The next morning at breakfast, as I walked over to the buffet, Jon stopped me and asked “tee zhiva?” which means, “You’re alive?” I didn’t understand him at first, but then I realized he was making a joke about me being drunk last night (which I actually hadn’t been). It was official, the wall was down. Jon was a human. As I ate breakfast with Allie, Kat’s friend from American University, who I can’t say enough good things about, and Kat, an old German man who somewhat resembled Sigmund Freud in a rugby shirt, walked by, waving to us an wishing us “guten appetite.” Julia had said he’d met her and Annabel in the hallway before breakfast and in his broken English had asked “Do you want some meat?” Julia guessed he’d been trying to say “do you want to meet,” but it freaked them out all the same and they hauled ass to the dining room. After breakfast, we left the boat to see Samara.

In Samara, we had the worst tour guide known to man. She was a pretty woman, but chose to tell us about sights after we passed them or point things out that we couldn’t see from the bus. We drove past this sick monument with about 9 people depicted on it, one on a horse, a couple crouching with guns, others carrying wounded. Julia and I were practically drooling to get off the bus and reenact it. Of course, the bus didn’t stop there, nor did it stop at Stalin’s bunker, where the other tour group got to go into and see his meeting room, where he would have lived and slept, and they even got to use his telephone. Our tour guide did point out however, all the shops in town where you could buy baby clothes, if you lived there, and where people went to school. The only place we stopped was by this giant silver monument of a man holding a v symbol which kind of reminded me of a giant Chrysler hood ornament. On our way to see a Russian Orthodox church, we passed by this graffiti in English on the sidewalk that read “Beer Sex Drugly Cats.” I’m not quite sure what drugly cats are, but I’m sure they’re fascinating. Paige had Erika, Daniel, me and Emma, act out the beer, sex, drugs, and cats respectively. Erika just looked drunk, Daniel looked like he was having sex with the sidewalk or at least attempting to, I used my scarf (which I brought in case of Russian Orthodox churches, thank you very much) as a tourniquet and pretended to be doing heroin and Emma game herself ears and whiskers. Hopefully I’ll steal the picture from Paige. It’s pretty great. After we took the picture, on the way to the church, Jon came up to me and with a completely straight face said, “I spoke with the RD from St. Petersburg and his students are saying you’re pretty wild.” Paige and Emma looked worried, but I just went “Har, har Jon,” because I had figured out this was his joking style. Although it did make me quickly recap what I had done the previous night before coming to the conclusion that yes, it was just a joke. After our brief church visit, our tour guide dropped us off in the main city area and gave us an hour to shop. Paige, Erika, Kat, Julia, Emma, Katie and I saw these signs for a market place sketchily located down an alley, but once we followed the arrows to a two story building and inside were a ton of venders, selling clothing and toys and all sorts of things. Julia bought an epic belt that had non-sensical phrases on it like “lets make love ruby Tuesday” and “find touch seashore” and “stronu man date booooga.” It was the best 8 dollars spent on the entire trip. Then Kat discovered the scrunchie jackpot. We all bought the tackiest scrunchie we could find to wear for the scavenger hunt that night. Two nights back, over drinks, Paige had suggested we have a treasure hunt on the boat to entertain ourselves. I asked her if by treasure hunt she meant scavenger hunt, and thus the idea was born. I’d been collecting ideas of funny things to do over the past day and a half, thinking it would just be the Moscow girls participating, maybe the Moscow boys at most, having no idea how big it would become later. So after seeing most of Samara, I can say the best thing the city has going for it was the graffiti.

When we got back on the boat, we resumed our rigorous schedule of sunning ourselves on the deck. While everyone was getting toasty, I went around and asked various St. Petersburg and Vladimir students what I could include about them to make the scavenger hunt funny and relevant for their groups. I got some quirks for a couple of kids and also got some good information about the RDs. Then I went over to sit with Allie and Kat at one of the tables to get more information on the Vladimir group. While I was interrogating poor Allie, the old German man from breakfast came over to our table and handed Allie his business card. He pointed out that he had written down his email on the card. I read the card. Apparently his name was Gunter Sievert and he was an architect. Then he talked to Allie in his broken English about emailing her parents and she replied to him in German (which she picked up while studying in Argentina, she’s amazing). Then Gunter told us he was going to “make a photo of us” and whips out his digital camera and saying “chis” (cheese), takes a picture of Kat, Allie and I. After looking at it and proclaiming “it is goodt,” he walks away to go talk to another old man on the other side of the deck. I was about to burst with laughter, but Allie said “wait for it, wait for it,” until he had gotten out of earshot. “What the hell just happened,” I asked her, out of breath from laughing. “Oh, you mean Gunter?” She asked. “By the way, it just makes it so much better that I know his name now. Well, yesterday I saw he was wearing a Nebraska University t-shirt, I know exactly where and in what store they sell them, and I figured what are the chances a foreign tourist has been to where some of my family lives, so I went up to talk to him. Apparently he hasn’t been there, but a lot of his family lives there. He told me all about how they moved there in the late 1800s and how he really wants to go visit soon. So he got all of my information so could meet up sometime in Nebraska. I mean, I told him I won’t be back there until at least August of 2009, and I’m pretty sure we’re not going to meet up before he dies, but I really want to go to Munich and thought I could stay with his family there when I go. So yeah, now he has my home address, my mother’s and father’s cell phone numbers and emails. Which is pretty safe.” And that is Allie for you. Amazing.

Soon it was time for lecture again, but this time I had something to keep my occupied. Paige and Allison agreed to help me hand copy my scavenger hunt list, seeing as how we needed about 7 copies and were stuck on a boat. I assigned completely arbitrary point values to the tasks, trying to vaguely keep in mind how difficult they would be to actually do. Those I assigned 500 points I thought would be impossible (I was later proved wrong). I kept ripping sheets from my lame little Russian graph paper notebook out and we undertook the project while Alexander Ivanovich rambled on about the various areas of the Volga and its natural resources. At one point Jon gave me a funny look, as if he couldn’t figure out why I was so vehemently taking notes to this obviously mind-numbing lecture. We continued copying the lists on deck, with Jon and Alexander Ivanovich clearly getting suspicious and asking what we were doing, to which I sketchily replied “neecheevo” (nothing). With a small break for dance class again, to learn the Vienna Waltz with Jan, we finished up the lists in time for dinner. Here is the final list, with added explanations to help explain why I chose certain tasks and help with inside jokes:

Rules

Photo documentation needed
Takes place from 9:30 to 11:30 pm
If a task involves a person, they can’t know it’s for the scavenger hunt.
If you combine any of the tasks, you get double points.
The winner gets glory and an $8 bottle of champagne.

The List

1. Get a photo with all of the RDs. (10 points) Bonus: +20 points for every article of the RDs’ clothing you are wearing.

2. Get a fish ball (aka last night’s dinner) (50 points) (Explantion: The night before, we had these crazy nasty meat ball things made of fish for dinner. Carlos always asked for seconds of dinner, but even he didn’t want more fish balls)

3. Get a picture with the woman who plays the keyboard in the bar (25 points) (Explanation: Every night this woman played terrible songs on her keyboard. I’m pretty sure she’s the wife of the male keyboard player. No one would listen to her and she would just say “spaceebo, spaceebo” at the end of each song to an empty room.)

4. Ask Cain (St. Petersburg) to dance (100 points) (Explanation: Cain is the scary psycho killer ballet dancer who helped out with dance class. Enough said.)

5. Feed Jon (RD, Moscow) (50 points) (Explanation: Due to his lack of enthusiasm when I offered him a cookie, I figured he might not accept food from students)

6. Get a photo touching Matt’s (Moscow) hair. He can’t know you are doing it (100 points) (Explanation: Nathan, the RD from St. Pete really inspired me on this one. Plus it’s just so fun to touch Matt’s hair.)

7. Find out the cost of a sauna (10 points) (Explanation: Paige came up with this one)

8. Get a fantastic orgasm (200 points) (Explanation: All I have to say is, Thank you Julia. We purposely left the wording ambiguous because I’m pretty sure all the people who were going to participate didn’t know it was a drink at the bar)

9.Smoke a pipe (500 points) (Explanation: It’s not the smoking so much that was a challenge, but rather that I only saw one pipe on the whole ship, and an old Danish man was smoking it)

10. Take a photo of the geography teacher (Moscow) and Galina Mikhailevna (Moscow) sharing an intimate moment (200 points) (Explanation: Both of our teachers from Moscow acted on the surface like they hated each other, because Alexander drinks like a fish and Galina hates drinkers, but we totally caught them shopping together in the grocery store in Kazan and Alexander would take pictures of Galina when she wasn’t looking. They’re actually in love. They just don’t know it yet.)

11. Ask 5 men you don’t know “boxers or briefs” and write down names and preferences (200 points)

12. Buy Tom (RD, Vladimir) an ice cream (100 points) (Explanation: Apparently Tom is addicted to ice cream, and the real challenge here was to find out where or if they sold ice cream on the boat).

13. Construct a human pyramid on the deck (25 points)

14. Get a picture with all of the Vladimir kids (25 points) (Explanation: There are only 8 of them, but this turned out to be harder than expected because they all played on different teams during the hunt).

15. Get a life jacket lesson from a deckhand (100 points) (Explanation: Our first day on the bat, we had a boat safety lesson in Russian (how safe!) with the Cruise Director. One poor Russian deckhand looked so pained as he was demonstrating how to use the lifejackets properly, I thought it needed to be recreated).

16. Talk to Ben Roberts (Moscow) about Germany or Mark Twain. (100 points) Bonus: +50 points if both in the same conversation (Explanation: Little Ben is in my small group for classes and probably every other word out of his mouth is about Germany or Mark Twain. Big Ben will always look at me and roll his eyes when it happens).

17. Take a whiskey shot with the geography teacher (Moscow) (500 points) (Explanation: Jon is always telling us how Alexander Ivanovich is a whiskey aficionado and Little Ben, who had to share a room with him, said that he brought 3 giant Nestea bottles with him on the cruise, and they weren’t filled with iced tea…)

18. Do a cartwheel in the hall (10 points)

19. Get Nathan (RD, St. Petersburg) to convert you to Mormonism (500 points) (Explanation: The St. Pete kids told me that Nathan originally came to Russia to ‘convert souls’ to Mormonism, but he subsequently lost his faith, smokes 3 packs a day and takes shots with students.)

20. Ask Cain (St. Peterburg) about self-defense (200 points) (Explanation: Creeper McCreeperson is also a self-proclaimed Martial Arts expert who does not hesitate to use his skills on foes).

21. Find a cork screw (50 points) (Explanation: This was out of pure necessity. We had a bottle of wine we couldn’t open for three days).

22. Eat “lowshad” (horse) with the geography teacher (500 points) (Explanation: Matt, Mikel, and Big Ben had been telling us that the night before Alexander Ivanovich told them to come into his room and he gave them horse jerky to try. I was so jealous).

23. Take a photo with a frisbee (25 points) (Explanation: The St. Pete kids told me that they had a couple of guy Ultimate players who played with a St. Pete team and brought frisbees with them everywhere they went.)

24. Get Dennis (St. Petersburg) to go off on a 5 minute rant (Hint: talk about breaking a 1000 ruble bill or about Russia’s inefficiency as a country) (100 points) (Explanation: Dennis was a cute boy from St. Pete who ruined everything when he opened his mouth. He was one of those people who just sound so stupid when they talk, you think your own IQ must have dropped a couple of points for having listened to them).

25. Find out the name of Bekah’s (Vladimir) guitar (50 points) (Explanation: She carries it around everywhere with her. It’s name is Sascha, FYI)

26. Get Carlos (Moscow) to swear (200 points) (Explanation: I was told Carlos did not swear due to his religion. This turned out to be false. Damn it.)

27. Get “Big Ben” Beresford (Moscow) to sign a piece of paper with one of his old man sayings on it. I.e. – a kettle of fish, horses for courses (200 points) (Explanation: Big Ben is always saying he is so much older than us ( a whole 4 or 5 years), but he really does act like an old man in the sense that he uses all these phrases and expressions that no one under the age of 75 has heard of. We started calling him “grandpa” and asking him to “tell us stories about the war.” He actually went along with it, by saying starting off his stories with ‘well kids, back in my day…”).

28. Find out who Magnus is and find out what his name is in Danish (200 points) (Explanation: Magnus was the youngest of the 45 Danes on the boat. He was late 20s and Allie befriended him one night and got her drinks paid for by him).

29. Find out how many rooms are in the boat (25 points)

30. Get Matt from Mississippi (St. Petersburg) to sign a Disney song (100 points) (Explanation: This kid, two nights before, had sung both the male and female parts to A Whole New World out on the deck. Not flamboyant at all. )

31. Get into a conversation with Charles (Vladimir) about Russian politics (200 points) (Explanation: I had met Charles during orientation in DC and thought he was the most obnoxious person ever. After sitting at his table for dinner the night before, I discovered he was quite entertaining, if you didn’t take anything he said seriously. He went off on a 10 minute diatribe on what he would do if he ruled Russia. Hint: It would be a dictatorship and corporal punishment would not only be allowed but encouraged).

32. Get into the engine room (500 points).

33. Take a Titantic-esque picture on one of the decks (10 points)

34. Take a shot with Nathan (RD, St. Petersburg) (100 points)

35. Take a photo with the cruise director (50 points)

36. Fit your entire team into a cabin room bathroom (100 points)

37. Make Alec (St. Petersburg) play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the guitar (100 points) (Explanation: One our first night on the boat, he broke out his guitar for a Nirvana-inspired sing along.)

38. Ask Katya (St. Petersburg) why she came to Russia. She must answer: to meet Russian men and/or Sergei (200 points) (Explanation: The St. Pete kids gave this one girl a hard time because she already had a Russian boyfriend. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of jealous)

39. Get Allie Bartle (Vladimir) to dance (100 points) (Explanation: She hadn’t really danced yet in Russia and she has some of the most fabulous white girl dance moves EVER.)

40. Do the worm on the dance floor in the bar (50 points)

41. Make an announcement over the microphone system at the bar (500 points).

42. Find one of the ship’s Danish tourists (100 points) (Explanation: We’d been told there were 45 Danes on the boat with us but hadn’t actually met any yet).

43. Get a cigarette from one of the Russian deckhands (200 points) (Explanation: The night before the sketchy deckhands had come up on the deck with us while we were drinking and smoked in a corner while some of the St. Pete girls flirted with them).

44. “Make a photo” with Gunter Sievert, everyone’s favorite German tourist (500 points)(Explanation: Why should we be the only ones with the pleasure of knowing Gunter?)

45. Have Annabel (Moscow) rap to you (500 points). (Explanation: Annabel is the tiniest white girl you have ever seen. And she can do anything. She’s basically a superhero).

46. Get your drinks paid for by a non-ACTR person (200 points) (Explanation: This was inspired by Paige and Erika getting their wine paid for by two old American men at the bar the night before)

47. Ask Pete Austin (St. Petersburg) about hammers, Bruce Springstein, or the weaponization of space (200 points) (Explanation: This is what the St. Pete kids said this boy talked about all the time. I don’t know. I don’t ask questions, I just write.)

48. Wear a scrunchie from a Russian (200 points). (Explanation: The reason there’s only 48 tasks and not 50 is that I got to the end of the sheet of paper at number 48 and said, eff that, and cut the last two off. You can do that when you’re the creator of the game.)


At dinner that night, I told everyone at my table about the scavenger hunt and tried to make sure they would do it, when Rhiannon, another Moscow student, came over and said “You’re doing the scavenger hunt, right? You better! It’s going to be great!” Rhiannon is 26 and applying to grad school, so I really didn’t think she’d be into something so childish, but she went around to every single table at dinner to advertise for the scavenger hunt. I don’t know why, but I can’t thank her enough. Everyone was to meet on the deck at 9:30. We pre-gamed in my room for a little bit while Paige corn-rowed Kat’s hair, and then we hung out in Mikel’s room. When 9:30 rolled around, the girls and I headed up to the deck. I was really nervous that no one would come and it would just be us 5 doing crazy stuff around the boat, but when I got up to the deck, there were SO many people there. Maybe 25 or 30 people. Somehow Jon and the geography teacher, Alexander Ivanovich, had heard about the scavenger hunt too, and were asking if they could play. I handed up all the lists to each group (I think there were 6 or 7 groups of six people) and told everyone to let the games begin.

Before I could even look at the list, Allie had gone into the bar, where the older passengers were having some sort of seminar, and pulled Gunter out, telling him we needed to “make a photo.” Of course, he looked confused but super psyched. We got a group photo with Gunter and already had 500 points. Before he could make his way back into the bar, I think another group figured out who he was and asked him for a picture, too. Basically Gunter was a rock star for two hours that night, and he completely ate it up. I remember at the end of the night, seeing him talking to someone on the deck at 11:30, which is WAY past his bedtime. I also saw one of the other groups taking a picture with some strange old foreigner, and then only after words asking him his last name. It turns out they had the wrong Gunter. Who would have guessed there would be more than one?

After our Gunter picture, team Scrunchie, which consisted of me, Kat, Paige, Rhiannon, Allison, and this random boy from St. Pete, Matt, who liked singing Disney songs, we decided to go in for the kill. Going for double points, Allison bought a fantastic orgasm from the bar and we decided to “feed it” to Jon. In typical Jon fashion, he sniffed it first, because we are not trustworthy especially when bearing gifts, and then he took a sip. Later that night he would go on to give sips of it to various people, saying “I just shared my fantastic orgasm with you.” Next Team Scrunchie decided to move to the 3rd floor to get out of the crowd of scavengers and get some more of the tasks done. However, on the way down the stairs, an elderly couple stopped us and asked if we were doing a test, as we all had papers in our hands and we running around. I told them we were playing a game, and they asked what kind and we explained. I could hear in the background another group of students asking some other old people if they knew who Gunter was, which made me happy. The old couple told us the game sounded like fun and were about to go on their way, when I suddenly thought of something. “Hey, where are you from?” “Oh, we are from Denmark.” “Yessssss.” We had our Danish tourists. Before we took our picture, Rhiannon asked them to teach us something in Danish, so they taught us how to say hello, how are you. We were terrible at it, and the old woman clearly let us know that, but they were happy to take a picture with us and be involved in the game. When we finally made it down to the third floor, Rhiannon did a cartwheel in the hall, and Matt from Mississippi apparently was one of the St. Pete Frisbee boys, so he went back to his room and got his Frisbee for us. Paige did a handstand while holding the Frisbee in her mouth. We didn’t get double points for that, it was just fun. Next, we squished all of us in a cabin room bathroom (which was fun). Then Kat spied some deck hands through the glass door marked “Crew Only.” They were smoking out on the side deck, so we nominated Kat and Paige to talk to them for a cigarette. Paige knocked on the door and they motioned that Kat and Paige could come outside with them. Of course, when they asked for a cigarette, the deckhands didn’t have any, so one of the boys had to go back to his room t get them. Kat felt bad about that, because she didn’t really want the cigarette, it was only for the game, so when he came back with it, Kat and Paige felt obligated to smoke with the deckhands. It took forever and while there were doing that, Rhiannon went to go check on the fish ball situation, which apparently was that they didn’t have any left and why the heck do we want them? I’m still not sure who Rhiannon asked, possibly a waiter, but props to her. Then Rhiannon, Allison, Matt, and I decided to stake out the sauna because four of the St. Pete boys were in there, and we needed them for four of the tasks. When they still hadn’t come out after 15 minutes, we gave up, not wanting to waste our scavenging time waiting on half-naked boys. Kat and Paige still hadn’t returned, so I went opened the crew only door and said “You don’t need to seduce them, just get a cigarette.” Kat and Paige told me to come outside because they were trying to explain to the deckhands what was going on. I don’t know if it was the beer I’d had or the adrenaline from the hunt, but I took it upon myself to tell the guys in Russian all about the game and then explained it to them. Kat added they should play, but they said they had to work later. I then told them that if anyone asked them for a cigarette, to say no. They smiled and agreed. All is fair in love and Scavenger hunts.

Finally finishing their cigarettes, Kat and Paige came back in the hall, just as another group was carrying around a bright orange life jacket, presumably coming from their safety lesson. Everyone was really into the hunt and being super competitive, it was great. Suddenly, I saw Aleksander Ivanovich rushing by with a serious look on his face, and for a second I thought he was really offended by the scavenger hunt, the task abut he and Galine immediately coming to mind. I had a momentary mental justification that if I got in trouble or even thrown out of the program for the hunt, then at least I’d go out for doing something really awesome. But my fears were for naught, for a few seconds later, Julia, Mikel, Annabel, Matt, and David (another one of the teams) came rushing by with huge grins on their faces. They were having shots with Aleksander Ivanovich. Not fair. My group followed them to his room on the ship, where he promptly shut the door in our faces as the other group was passing around shot glasses. We heard laughing from the room and finally they came out with even bigger grins on their faces. We made Rhiannon talk to our geography teacher, because her Russian was the best, and ask if we could do shots next. He decided to give our group a hard time and acted like he didn’t know what we were talking about. Rhiannon’s strategy was to then pretend like we didn’t know anything about it either and that we didn’t even know what whiskey was. Aleksander Ivanovich totally came out of left field and told Rhiannon she was a terrible dancer, and that watching her dance with Big Ben at dance class had made him laugh. She was a little offended (she was actually one of the better ones, I thought). Then out of nowhere, Jon speedily walked by with his camera and said “I’m not playing, but I’m on your side,” and took a picture as he went by. After some more verbal sparring with Aleksander, he finally let us in his room. He gave us each a metal shot glass that he had a stack of, and took down his prized bottle of Jameson whiskey and poured us each half a shot. Apparently he didn’t let any of the girls from the other groups drink, but seeing as how we were all girls (having lost Matt from Mississippi somewhere in the shuffle), he didn’t seem t have a problem with it. It was hard to get him to let us take his picture with the shot, but we finally did. He made a toast, in Russian, “To Health and To Victory” and then we downed out shots, the whiskey burning as it went down. Kat told me the next day, that in he slightly intoxicated state, she thought he had said “To Health and to Obed” (instead of Pobeda aka Victory), with “obed” meaning lunch. She didn’t understand why we were toasting to lunch, but just thought, ok, to lunch then, bottoms up. That was probably the best part of the scavenger hunt, drinking with our professor. Only in Russia could a middle-aged male teacher bring 5 girls into his boat cabin to drink hard alcohol. And that’s pretty fantastic.

After the shots, we went to the boat’s second bar to find Julia and Annabel talking to the bartender and waitress abut something. The rest of their group was sitting at the tables, so taking a break, my group joined them, waiting to see what happened next. Julia later told me that she explained to the waitress that she needed to microphone for a silly game they were playing, and the waitress replied that it wasn’t silly if we were all running around the boat with huge smiles on our faces. Julia and Annabel got the microphone, which ended up not working, but undeterred, Annabel said into the microphone in Russian, “Hello everyone. Thank you for this opportunity on this beautiful boat. Thank you and goodnight.” And then she bowed. They were racking up the points. On our way out of the bar, we saw Big Ben in the hall and asked him to sign one of his phrases. Allison wrote down “That’s another kettle of fish,” and Ben took the paper, just looked down and it and frowned, making a tsk tsk sound. He said, “If you’re going to quote me, make sure you do it right,” and crossed out what she had written and wrote, “that’s a whole NOTHER kettle of fish.” He then signed it and drew a maple leaf next to it, saying “If it doesn’t have the maple leaf, it’s not authentic.” Big Ben is the best fake Canadian ever. Apparently for every group he wrote down a different saying, each one as corny as the last. After hitting up Ben for his autograph, we attempted to finish a couple of tasks back on the deck, including meeting Magnus, getting Little Ben to talk about Germany, trying to get Carlos to swear, and talking to Charles about politics. While this went on, one of the other groups brought Tom an ice cream, to which he replied, laughing, “No more ice cream. Tell the other groups, no more!” Apparently it was his third sundae of the night. We then saw through the glass door that Allie was in the bar, so we went in and began to dance with her, to accomplish one of the tasks. Before we knew it, we inadvertently started a dance party, and all of the Moscow kids and assorted Vladimir and St. Pete kids joined, twirling and twisting and having more fun than one would think you could have dancing to muzak from a crappy keyboard. At one point, Gunter made a guest appearance, popping in by the door and kind of bopping up and down before leaving again. Between songs, I somehow mustered up the courage to ask the keyboardist in Russian if I could use the microphone for a second (busting out my uzpolzobat verb, mind you. Tricky), and he just handed it over. We had Matt from Mississippi sing “A Whole New World” in Russian on the mic, for double points, and then finished up the dance party. Before we knew it, it was 11:30 and all the groups had made their way to the bar. I thought everyone would be cool with saying they had a good time with the hunt and that was that, but every group wanted me to say who won. Not exactly in the best state to add, Allison took half the lists and together we totaled up all the points. It was so incredibly funny to see all of Jan’s pictures proving he had done the tasks, reading on another group’s list that they asked boxers or briefs to the old German tourists (including Gunter. He wears boxers, FYI. Although I really doubt if he understood the question). Another group made it into the boiler room. It was crazy. And then a really pretty, polite girl from St. Petersburg, Julianna, gave me her list, and I began to tally her points. Her group had done EVERYTHING and for double points. Nathan, the RD, who had been MIA the whole time, they had managed to find and had him convert them to Mormonism WHILE taking a shot with him. They got a cork screw FROM the boiler room. They got their drinks paid for BY a Danish tourist. They found the sauna boys. They got Annabel to rap, having paid her with a vodka shot. They even smoked a pipe. While every other team had between 3000 and 5000 points, they ended up with 9000 points and I immediately declared them the winners. They seemed really happy and Julianna told me how much fun she had doing it. A lot of people came up to me and told me they had a good time. And so many people were involved – the dance teacher was on a team, the Russians who came with us were on several different teams, the old tourists enjoyed talking with us and being a part of the game, all the teams were a mix of the three city groups, the staff of the boat thought it was funny and by the end, Aleksander Ivanovich must have been feeling no pain, seeing as how, according to the lists, he did a shot with every single team. I went to bed that night happy, exhausted, still a little drunk from the whiskey shot, and in disbelief that I somehow organized such a ridiculous and successful event that involved an entire cruise boat.