  I briefly review the present status of bosonic strings and discretized random
surfaces in D>1 which seem to be in a polymer rather than stringy phase. As an
explicit example of what happens, I consider the Kazakov-Migdal model with a
logarithmic potential which is exactly solvable for any D (at large D for an
arbitrary potential). I discuss also the meander problem and report some new
results on its representation via matrix models and the relation to the
Kazakov-Migdal model. A supersymmetric matrix model is especially useful for
describing the principal meanders.
