The first thing I notice when I get up, is that it is a lot warmer here in the Ukraine than it is in Russia; the second is that gets light much earlier here. It only starts to get light at eight-thirty in Saint Petersburg and at eight o' clock in Moscow; in Zaporizhzhya (11° closer to the equator than Saint Petersburg) it gets light at six o' clock.
Vanamali Prabhu arrives from Moscow later in the morning. Why didn't he come with us yesterday?
In the afternoon, at four o' clock, we have a public program in a rented hall in the Regional Office of Statistics (I kid thee not!) in downtown Zaporizhzhya. A small, dour audience asks a smattering of questions about Sai Baba and Christianity. I feel like the Walrus: "The time has come to talk... of cabbages and kings... and whether pigs have wings."
Things pick up towards the end of the meeting, though, when somebody asks why evil exists in the world and somebody else asks about evolution, so the afternoon is not a complete washout.
Many devotees accompany us back to the apartment where we are staying that evening to informally ask questions about Krishna consciousness in general and about the practical application of the Krishna conscious philosophy in particular.
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