These dudes are from the Pallada at the Tall Ships festival in Tacoma way way back in July. The Pallada is a teaching ship that does not carry weapons (unless you count the plumes of cigarette smoke) and isn't even military. They just love the uniform, however, in other countries and so they keep them, with their epaulets and braid and whatnot.
The sailors of the Cuauhtemoc and I could speak in Spanish and I got a couple free posters as well as an illuminating conversation about how they'd been away from Acapulco for a ghastly amount of time and continental civilization for even longer (previous two ports of call were in Alaska and Honolulu, which is unaffordable to regular American sailors, much less Mexican sailors, and they'd been at sea forever. A friend of mine who was a docent and did a little translation told me the sailors asked him where to get typical American food and where to find girls in Tacoma).
From the Russians, though, I left only footprints and took only photos of these strangely peaches-and-cream-skinned chain smokers. All we could say to each other were nonsense phrases like "Da Svidanya," "Perestroika," "Michael Jackson," and "Smoke! Smoke! Ha ha ha ha! Smoke? Nyet? (shrug)"
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