On day 328, we do the latter. We're in front of the Kazan Cathedral, a typical Sunday, working our away around the bus shelters and pedestrians. Busses pull up, unload, reload and leave. I find the quickest way through the crowd and stop to wait for Pierre on the other side.
I'm used to killing time waiting for Pierre - we spend a lot of time waiting and getting just the right shot - so at first I'm not surprised when he doesn't appear at first. I wait 10 seconds, 20 seconds, let my mind wander and then find I've been waiting a lot longer than usual. I flicker through my file-o-fax of reactions: irritated (what could possibly be so interesting to photograph?), curious (could it really be that good?), confused (is he waiting for me further ahead?)... Eventually, Pierre strides out of the crowd and for a split second it's hard to read his face: it's a cross between teenage-temper-tantrum and the expression on my brothers' toddler faces in our family's beloved we-just-kicked-our-favourite-ball-into-the-ocean photo.
He flashes the empty bag on his hip toward me. "They got the camera."
The pickpockets are long gone, but we walk around to see if there's anything we can do. Every fifth person in St. Petersburg seems to wear a uniform - soldiers, sailors, police officers - and the meanings of these uniforms are a mystery to us. We have no idea who to talk to on the street.
We speak to a couple of men in uniform that seem to be responsible for the Kazan Cathedral. Pierre explains the situation: 3 guys in black jackets (at least 2 in front, 1 to his right) stop walking in front of Pierre in the crowd, which blocks him from going forward (guys in black jackets), left (bus stop booth) or left (guy in black jacket).
At first it seems like an 'oops, pardon me' sort of situation but after a few seconds he starts to get suspicious, then the camera bag jostles...and when he reaches back the bag is already empty. It takes only a few seconds but the camera is nowhere in sight, probably already passed off to someone else like a sneak pass in football. Pierre looks at the thugs, the thugs look back, no one's holding anything and there's no one to get mad at. Players in the scene include “innocent bystander” who tells Pierre in English that the thief ran the other way down the street. Moments later, everyone's dispersed onto buses and into crowds and it's over.
The guys in uniform listen to our story, but they can't help us - it's not the type of thing they're responsible for, it seems. We hurry here and there, hoping we'll see someone that Pierre recognizes, or see our camera. We ask people directions to the nearest police station. A couple of non-uniformed employees come out from behind the counter and talk to us in the lobby. Can you tell us what happened? Did you see the men? Do you have insurance? They write us a letter that we could give to an insurance company if we had insurance on our camera. They see this almost every day.
Losing the camera is not our biggest problem - our problem is that we haven't backed up the pictures since leaving Huizhou. We've just lost Beijing and all of Russia, which works out to several hundred photos and approximately 2 months of our trip. We have a grip on reality - we realize we haven't lost a person or each other, and we're both safe and healthy.
Still, it blows.
We feel pretty stupid. This pretty stupid feeling lasts for quite a while and shows no sign of stopping once we get home. It's pretty constant the first night, only slightly less so the next few days and still kicks us in the ass every so often a months later. We feel stupid... for not having backed up the pictures...for losing the camera on a day when we didn't use it...for having extra water in our bags that we didn't drink which kept us from storing it in the pack like we often do at the end of a day... And so on.
On top of that, we think of specific pictures that we'll never see again. This happens every few minutes in the beginning : "Remember the one of the guard in front of the Forbidden Palace?" "Remember the mountain valley in Arshan?" We cringe again, and feel stupid.
After the 5th or 6th time this happens, I decide we need to be more proactive - we sit down and spend an hour or so writing down every photo that we can remember and that we're really sad to lose. We think of a picture, feel bad about it, then think of a new one and feel bad about it too. The mosaics in the cathedral, the Lenin head in Ulan Ude...Not a fun way to spend our time but we get most of the feeling sorry for ourselves out of the way, and are then able to simply deal with feeling stupid and angry. Plus, that way we have a list of pictures to retake someday when we come back.
We put up a poster near the place the camera was swiped - all we want is our memory card back:
We only have a few days to re-take photos of St.Petersburg. Pierre takes out our little point-and-shoot Canon Powershot to get a few photos of our apartment building...
...the view from the kitchen (the Neva river is just behind this white building)...
...as well as our cozy, furnished, and usually messy bedroom...
...and the kitchen:
He gets a few photos of the pillars of the Kazan Cathedral...
...the Church of the Spilled Blood where Pierre had originally gotten gorgeous pictures of the interior's floor-to-cathedral-ceiling mosaics.
Damn.
He reshoots the exterior of the Isaac Cathedral...
...various street scenes...
... and tries a few shots of the canals that carve rings through the interior of the city:
He even gets a little of his sense of humour back.
For me, most of the sting fades over the next few weeks - it still bothers Pierre months later, usually when we see a picture of a landmark in Beijing or Russia.
He looks, assesses and humphs. "Ours was better."
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