Short Week before Petersburg

This week 9/14 – 9/18 was shortened to 9/17 because Thursday night we boarded a train to St. Petersburg. Not much happened this week except for Austin’s Birthday in which we went to FAQ Cafe, pronounced like F*ck, and the Russians ordered a few dozen bottles of champagne, chacha, and vodka. Adeel and I got a burrito and Mors juice (a super good berry a little bigger than a blueberry and purple, tasting like a blueberry mixed with raspberry. It’s basically my favorite juice now). Then we slipped out and got McFlurry’s at the McDonalds nearby. My first McFlurry ever. And the first time I’ve eaten anything from McDonalds since middle school. It was good though. But no more.

Anyway, back to Monday. It has been 2 weeks since I got here and I still haven’t found the Puma store. But that changed today. I jumped on the metro to Sportivnaya Station where there was a Puma store and checked it out. They didn’t have anything I wanted and the styles were a little different but it was nice to know where the store was. More fun was the cool alley I walked through to get to the store and the school next to it:

That alley was the highlight of my day. Anyway, moving on through the week we began to notice that a Rolls Royce kept appearing in the same spot parked on the street a halfblock away from our school:

Thursday night came fast and I had to rush home from my 8pm piano lesson which began late and ended at 930 for an 1130 departure. Dinner was waiting so I scarfed down some food, showered, shaved, and over-packed for St. Petersburg. We walked out in the rain to the metro close to us, transferred once and arrived at the train station a little early for our 1am departure. The train reminded me of the Polar Express, even though it had nothing in common except being a train. There were four bunks to an open ‘room.’ Two top, two bottom. I grabbed a top with Chris; Adeel and Jordan took the bottom:

Then I wrote for a little and read about Roland, Eddie, and Susannah. Then I caught some shut-eye. And was woken up a few times during the night to a Russian lady yelling something through an intercom at a station we passed through, or screeching of the train as we slowed through some stations. But keeping the window open for the wind was definitely worth it. It was soothing to fall asleep to the sound of the train. Petersburg tomorrow!