when I was a fake Russian

I'm approaching the door of the famous Mariinsky ballet house in St. Petersburg, Russia, trying not to sweat.

My friend, fluent in Russian, managed to pass herself off as a local when she bought our tickets, thus avoiding the substantial tourist surcharge. But we still have to make it past the ticket inspector at the door. We tried to dress as the Russian ladies: expensive-looking clothes, lots of make-up.

The heavy-built, frowning matrona at the door looks at our tickets, looks at us. The frown deepens. She lets out a stream of Russian and shoos us off. "She made us," my friend whispers. "She says we have to buy the tickets for non-Russians."

We decide to try another door and carefully choose a busier one, where a thick stream of people are rushing past a harassed-looking, younger inspector. Success! He barely glances at our tickets and not at all at our faces, just waves us through.

We know so woefully little about ballet, we really should be ashamed of ourselves. My friend tries to pronounce the title of it, printed in Cyrillic letters on our tickets: "Zhisel?" We don't know much more about it afterwards than before.

But at the Mariinsky Theatre, Giselle is fantastic even to the pathetically ignorant.