Numb fingers and love locks.

With only two weeks left in the motherland, I decided that it was time to be proactive and get onto doing the things I want to do before I leave. So yesterday, Kiara, Maria, Charlotte and I strolled down to the very same square by the river where the fireworks were held for День Города on our second weekend here - how very fitting it was. Grace had told us that people had been putting love locks (like the ones in Paris) on the railings by the river bank and we decided that it would be a nice way to commemorate our time here. So with padlock and permanent marker in hand, we braced the icy wind and headed to Адмиралтейская площадь (Admiralty Square). On the lock, we decided to write all of our names in Russian - Изобель (Isobel), Кьяра (Kiara), Шарлотта (Charlotte) and Мария (Maria), along with the date (30/11/13) and Voronezh. Due to the harsh weather conditions in Russia, I thought it would be a good idea to (very carefully) coat the writing on the lock in clear nail varnish to protect it, but my plan unfortunately backfired! No matter how carefully I dabbed the polish on, within a minute the colour from the pen would start to run. By the end, 'Maria', 'Kiara' and 'Isobel' were only just readable, but poor Charlotte's name was nothing but an inky smudge. Luckily we had taken photos of the names before hand so instead of getting upset, we decided that it was the thought that counted and went to go and attach it to the railings. There we met our second challenge. It turns out that Russian padlocks are just as inconvenient and annoying to use as everything else here. After about 10 minutes of struggling with numb red fingers, I finally got the lock attached and we all let out a sigh of relief. Then, we divided up the three keys and threw them into the river. By the time this was done, we were so cold (-4 plus wind!) that we decided that it was time to head back into town to enjoy an nice hot cup of coffee. I've been talking about doing this for a while so I'm glad that we finally got around to doing it. However, I'm slightly annoyed at myself for forgetting to take some pictures of other people's locks, but here is Grace's post about it so you can see some there. I did however get some other good photos, so here are some of the best from the day...