So a Russian tall ship came to town. It was crewed by about 160 young Russian guys along with four Russian ladies....and we thought Alaska had interesting gender ratios. The majority of the crew couldn't speak much English which made for all kinds of fun charades as John and I wandered around the boat. Despite the many "crew only" signs, one of the crew supervisors took us below deck. (I have to admit, it looked virtually identical to the coach class quarters of a cruise ship.)
Although the ship itself was beautiful, I found the smoking and computer/cell phone usage of the young Russkies to be the most interesting part of our adventure. When I saw their outstretched arms holding nondescript laptops out the porthole windows, it felt like old English fiction come to life. Instead of prisoners reaching from below ground for food, they sought out electronic waves of home.
They stood in small blue uniformed huddles smoking one cigarette after another as if in a race. I kept waiting for the director of a Hollywood movie to call her American actors back to the set. Off to the port side, a handful fished with line that looked like it had been confiscated from the ocean. With a cigarette dangling from their lips, they pulled the line up the 50 or so feet along the ship's keel and deposited some of the oddest sea-life I've ever seen into metal buckets.
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