A Countess

You know how normally dreams have some basis in events or activities of recent vintage, or some tie to what's going on in life? Not this one!

I don't remember the beginning too well, except that we were in a large, fancy older-but-nice hotel lobby. It was huge, and then there was an elevator up to one of the floors. In fact, there is something vaguely hospital-like about the lobby and elevator situation: on the floor where I ended up there was a large reception area with big windows and the rooms were to the left behind double doors. In fact, after passing through those double doors there was another large space--cafe? sitting area? coffee bar? and THEN the corridor to the rooms. And that corridor was not a straight shot. It went a ways, turned right, then left right away, and then...whatever. Like a Very Large house had been broken up to become a hotel. Which, in fact, turned out to be the case.

I met the Countess (!) whose home this was. She had also owned the land around the bay outside and the church on the other side. Turns out this place was in a Siberian city in a country that had left Russian federation up near the area where the continent reaches toward Alaska (the whole continent was, however, flipped so that on a map this country was to the upper left of the continent.  And very oddly, it was near Irkutsk, which is in the lower center of Siberia. Anyway, the fog off the bay was quite similar to the fog over the Angara River, so maybe that was why they were "near."

OK, anyway, we were outside in cold pouring rain with friends and their kids and then Sparky and I took a walk along the quay which had several large tankers (liners?) including one that was being christened. It was an American ship, so they were playing our national anthem to which I was singing along. That embarrassed Sparky, of course. There was a small car driving along the quay painted in American flag design except that the roof was the British flag. Then we happened upon a trail of overlarge felted top hats with the same design (American flag, British on top); I picked one up and put it on and it was way huge.

And then Beast woke me up.

I have no idea where all of this came from. It was certainly realistic though, or it seemed so at the time.