October was blessed with a visit to the mom af Anastasia, who lives in Saint-Petersburg.
But we would not be us if we haven't used this opportunity to improve our dance and get new dance experience!
At the beginning we spend 3 days in Saint-Petersburg. The weather was luckily on our side, showing the temperature of 17 grad at the day time. Right after we left the temperature dropped down to -4, what is more convenient for the region. We visited the magnificent sightseeings of Saint-Petersburg and ballet "Don Quixote" in Tzar's Mariinski Theater, getting some insights about spins, dance posture, enjoying the wonderful music in the most beautiful theater of the world. One of the brightest impressions of the evening gave the prices in the bar. We brought 1 liter Martini bottle from Duty Free Shop for 8.5 euro as a present to Anastasia's mom. What could we say about seeing the price of ca. 6 euro for 50ml Martini at the buffet! The price formation in Russia is truely unpredictable. On the other hand, we got a wonderful opportunity to train at the Arena Dance Club, the dance studio of Evgeni Smagin and Polina Kazachenko. The fee for a couple was less then a price for 100ml of Martini Bianco.
After that, we aimed to Moscow, where we intended to dance the Russian sister of GOC: ROC. One of the 5 biggest dance competitions in WDSF Federation, Russian Open Championship, qualified as GrandSlam was held on the weekend from the 25th till the 27th of October. The competiton took place in the newly opened Winer-Usmanova Palace, built in order to honor the success of Russian gymnasts. Amazing acustics and very modern equipment impressed us a lot, although the fact of using only Russian language made it a bit difficult to orientate ourselves. It was a crush-test of our new Rumba, which we danced there for the first time in a competition speed. At the end we even got 6 crosses from the judges, what made us feel quite satisfied.
After a tournament we had 2 relaxing days visiting Red Square, Kreml and other Moscow sightseeings. Very modern and impressive city, it changes very quickly keeping up to the development pace of European capitals.
At the end one should say, there was something, that definitly stole our heart. It was a honey cake, gentle, melting on the tounger and temptating the nose. Who knows, probably one day we will taste it again!