Die Reise nach Petuschki

Auf dem Buchcover steht gross "Die hochprozentigste Sauftour der Weltliteratur". Genau das ist es. Wir begleiten den Protagonisten Wenedikt auf seiner Zugreise von Moskau nach Petuschki. Mit dabei: viel Alkohol und die stetige Sorge, wie er zu seinem nächsten Drink kommt. Zu Beginn fand ich es amüsant, dann beschämend und schlussendlich traurig. Intellektuelles Trinken halt.

The book is a tragic-comic account of the narrator's (fictional?) trip from Moscow to Petuschki. The first half of the book isoften very funny. The narrator's biggest worry is how to get his next drink - in fact, I don't think I've ever read a book in which anyone ever had that many drinks. And the characters drink everything: they even mix their own cocktails adding for example petrol or nail polish! The book also talks a lot about the drinking habits of several authors (mainly Russian ones). It also describes what the characters do when they are drunk, for example declare war on Norway and other strange things. In the second half - when the narrator and his fellow travellers are already very drunk - the characters started to philosophize a bit too much in my opinion (something I also don't like about drunk people in real life). At one point the narrator is so drunk that he doesn't know if it's night or day or if he's going from Moscow to Petuschki or vice versa. This second part spoiled my reading experience a bit. The first part of the book I'd have rated 4 stars but the second part (unfortunately) pulled the rating down to 3 stars.