Sarasota: Guia de viagem, preços e alojamento gratuito · 2026

ASAnastasia Sakharovawww.belka-vl · 31 de jan. de 2015Ler

Two and a half months, 5 states. But Florida, why are you so beautiful? We used to look at such pictures on the internet, save them to our phones, and set them as wallpapers, but now our own photos are more beautiful than those pictures. I would like to start by saying goodbye to North Carolina, the city of Durham. It was a busy day at work, lots of customers, tables, and mixed-up orders. We were all on edge, serving plates of sandwiches with that 'suitcase-ready' mood. I only remember everyone suddenly starting to clap and looking at us with smiles. Mary, Edward, the waiters, the dishwasher, the cooks—everyone was applauding. And then, a cake with 'we miss you all' written on it in Russian! Apparently, we did touch Mary and Edward's hearts with our Russian mentality when we sat in their kitchen until late at night, helping them look for housing in Sochi and telling them how to cook borscht. That’s when the emotions poured out. And the tears. I only remember a blur of black uniforms hugging each other. Mary hugged me, and then my work uniform was soaked in her tears. Two months ago, brick buildings didn't seem cozy enough to house a cafe, an office, or even an apartment. I remember when we first started looking for housing, we were offered a rental apartment with an exposed brick wall inside. We were horrified, and the realtor clicked her tongue at our ignorance. We couldn't recognize the trendiest decor element. Here, we have no unfinished business or unkept promises left. We handed out notebooks, keychains, and magnets to everyone, and wrote farewell notes. And the waiters, along with Mary and Edward, gave us a card with signatures and well-wishes. However, Russians sign farewell cards with more soul. We really do have more soul, friends. I love packing suitcases! A perfectionist syndrome wakes up in me: I need to take everything out of every drawer, shelf, and cosmetic bag, get rid of unnecessary things, clear out the fridge, and arrange everything so there's enough space in the suitcase. And the next day we got on the train, and the city lost us. I don't know if they miss us there. I know that after we left, everything went haywire. Some quit, others were fired. Our restaurant didn't have the best fate. But we had nothing to do with it. Goodbye, Cuban Revolution! Thank you for everything. A scorching, fiery city 30 km from our Sarasota. Bags cutting into our shoulders, feet blistered. But we arrived for a vacation, to the ocean! Somehow it doesn't matter anymore... Everything fades into the background when there is an ocean. We leave many, many bad memories in it. In Sarasota, Yulia helped us. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't have had such a wonderful trip. I hope we didn't cause her too much trouble. We head straight to our new home. Sleep deprivation, hypothermia from the air conditioning, then heatstroke from the 40-degree sun—it all crashes down on us, and we collapse onto the beds, exhausted. And in the evening, we went to scout the apartment and the house. There was a huge kitchen with a dining table, white leather sofas, and a TV. Besides that, the house had a pool, billiards, a reading room, a gym... On every door in the house, there were various funny welcome souvenirs hanging. Everything is just like in GTA Miami. (By the way, it's a 3-hour drive to Miami). Again, smooth lawns, even smoother than in Durham, clean paths where you can walk in white socks or even... lie down. You can't swim in the canal, so we look at the water, dreaming of tomorrow's meeting with the ocean. It never snows in Sarasota. Summer all year round. In my opinion, monotony is boring; you get used to it quickly. If you don't know how to appreciate it, then it's pointless. Then it's better to have 5 months of winter, like we do, and the long-awaited spring and summer. Earned by long frosts and short daylight hours. The average age here is 55. These are retired people with deep pockets; young people are rarer. The city is not criminal, it's

ASAnastasia Sakharovawww.belka-vl · 31 de jan. de 2015Ler

I wanted to talk about freedom in the "Land of the Free." Apparently, Americans are great dreamers to place such a ghostly word next to the name of their country. Freedom is temporary and constantly changing. It is the most reliable thing in the world, and at the same time, you can never rely on it. It turns into dependency too easily if you want too much from it. By the way, it doesn't exist. And since that's the case, all that's left is to pretend it does... It lives very close to your imagination. I keep my freedom only for myself. It's when you don't need anyone and yet you need everyone. I want to scatter my things on the sand, smear myself with oil that is almost boiling from the sun in a plastic bottle. Tiny grains of sand stick to the bottom, my fingers slip, and so the spray nozzle won't press down. While I stand, my feet sink into the sand, and I feel as if I'm standing on a bonfire. Running my fingers through my salty hair, I regret that, like many others, I don't like it when salt sticks to my body—I want to find fresh water as soon as possible. In the mornings, my hair and skin take on a golden-bronze hue; in the evening, crimson highlights lie on them like a blush. I dream of these sunsets with clearly defined lines, as if drawn with a graphite pencil, or others—blurred by rain and storm clouds. I still dream of them. As soon as the sun leaves the beach, we leave it too. The first meeting with the ocean was the most memorable. It seemed to have donned its best colors and forced everything around it to dress up too. The sky and the sand—an absolute intertwining of opposites. It was impossible to keep track of the changing weather. But we were happy with any weather. Julia prepared a surprise for us—a trip on her yacht to the yacht club, where we had lunch with her whole family. Julia herself lives in the city of Venice. It is called Venice because all the houses stand by the water, and yachts are moored to them. Whether once a week or once a month, in Sarasota you can see lines of cars flocking to Fruitville Road. People walk along the wide avenues, squinting from the sun every other step. They sort through glossy fruits and vegetables with hands wet from the heat, and the sellers tie tight knots on plastic bags and wish everyone a good day. Florists handle the stems with the faces of surgeons. I liked this one the most. She trimmed the stems of her flowers as if she were performing an operation. Sometimes I thought she was wearing gloves. I think everyone around was smiling, but she wasn't. If you didn't know what was happening here, you might think there was a dog show nearby. The dogs were one better-fed and better-groomed than the other. To appease customers, sellers pour water into bowls for their pets, and they lick them up with large pink tongues. I'm not very good with dog breeds, but this huge black cloud won me over. Can anyone tell me what breed it is? Smiling vendors under tents lay out jewelry made of glass and leather. A van with painted lemons pulls up to the farthest part of the street. Seeing me with a camera, a man in a yellow t-shirt calls me over and gives me some lemonade to try. Honestly, drinking such lemonade had always been my childhood dream! Moreover, it exceeded all my expectations. I really wanted to try other flavors and buy a whole glass, but the girls had already run ahead, so I had to catch up with them. Waves gently covered the shore, licking it further and further toward the city. The tide was just beginning. But we only guessed about it because a tropical downpour was mercilessly pounding on roofs, asphalt, and leaves. It turned umbrellas inside out. It penetrated inside clothes, under dresses and raincoats. It changed direction, quieted down, sped up, as if joking, slapping the asphalt and calming down... This tropical rain has a capricious, strange character. In Sarasota, rain rarely ruins anyone's plans, if only because it ends as suddenly as it begins. It's better to wait un

ASAnastasia Sakharovawww.belka-vl · 31 de jan. de 2015Ler

Everything is happening very fast for us. Time is the same, but it doesn't want to reckon with anyone. We only managed to count to three: one-July, two-August, three-September... It's like opening a cherished door, not having time to see what's behind it, and slamming it shut immediately. Our vessel of life is bubbling, exploding, spraying juice, and overflowing. Inside, everything is turning over, being remade, twisting, and flying apart. But on the outside, it seems like nothing, a calm. This is only for us, what is happening inside. Because no one else can understand it. Having visited different corners of the globe, unfortunately, I won't be able to write a single line about many of them because I won't remember anything. Sooner or later, one has to say goodbye to memories. I write only because I don't want to get lost or confused later. Not to photograph or not to write down means to lose the connection with the past. I cling to my memories with claws, tightly, dead-set, so that they don't give me peace later. Circumstances were such that initially we were supposed to go to a more northern city, Providence, near Boston. We dreamed about it all year, made plans, looked for places, scheduled evenings and weekends. We truly fell in love with it. But three days before departure, we were redirected to Durham. It was inferior to Boston and Providence in everything - there were no large famous cities, skyscrapers, national parks, or amusement parks nearby, and besides, it is much smaller and more boring. We were going there without knowing what to expect, but there was no choice anymore. So, having spent half of June, July, and August here, we thought all this time that we were living in the most boring and unknown city in the world. No one would dare argue with the fact that it is boring. But then, sitting one evening in front of the TV in Sarasota, we were extremely lucky in finding a movie - painfully familiar landscapes of the Lucky Strike tobacco factory and the Durham baseball field flashed on the screen. Once upon a time, our city's baseball team secured victory so often that this story was taken as the script for a movie starring Susan Sarandon. It was considered the best sports film adaptation. Then, seeing this movie, we almost choked - living here for three months and not even knowing that Durham is so famous. But in general, it would hardly have changed anything. I am often asked a question (quite reasonable, though not accurate), what I like or dislike most about America. Like a big and good book, you can't say that you just like it or dislike it; that's not enough. America is a glorious country, with its own flaws and vices. In my stories, I can boldly speak out about Russia or America without mincing words. And what is the point of dodging and avoiding what everyone already knows? I can imagine the sincere shock of an American who was not lucky enough to come to Russia without preparatory courses or at least stories about the Russian mentality. What do they even know about Russians? Associations are roughly like this - "vodka", "cold". That's what the average American thinks, as shown by the frequent surprise of our foreign friends when we told them about Russia. It's funny and brings to mind thoughts of ignorance. We don't live behind such an iron curtain. Russians know everything about the American way of life; they read articles about them, create communities, don't miss a single American movie, buy notebooks, pads, keychains, and posters with the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers, t-shirts with the American flag, and borrow more and more words from English, while Americans don't even know that they are a role model, and the only thing they remember about Russia is still that it's cold there. And they only borrowed "babushka" and "sputnik". You'll be lucky if you talk to an American and they don't ask you if you still live in the USSR. In this country, everyone is for themselves. People make friends more easily