Evening walk along the quay that I had hoped would be my dawn run, until a bit of an injury intervened. Not catastrophic, but the sort of thing that if not given time to heal, might have persisted for some time, so I just focused on the desk time. It's a remarkable city, definitely one of the places in the region I would seek out if I jumped over here for something more than a peregrination. Perhaps a year sometime to do some proper writing (Master & Margarita again). A book-lined apartment in an old concrete building somewhere. The politics and religion would be the difficult bit, but it's hardly an issue in daily life, more of a gestalt thing.
The general outline of the visit was a month of theatregoing in the center of things, followed by a fortnight at the desk in the periphery. Admittedly about a third of the theatregoing/concertgoing ($5/$6 tickets, for the most part) was lost to the political unrest, but the balance sufficed.
My second visit to this place. The danger of the second visit is a bit like trying to repeat a moment in a play that worked rather well the night before. Unconsciously, all of your energies go to placing yourself in that position, around these certain things that you remember as meaningful, in an attempt to conjure the initial magic of it. Then you slowly realize what you're doing, and begin again to look at the things around you as if for the first time, remembering their originary force when you first encountered them.
Looking forward to the third time already. I'm told that it's the charm.