Back to Moscow by overnight train

Okay, so now I'm gonna tell part of the story out of order. The last topic I wrote about was Moscow. We left MCPKBA, as it's written in Cyrillic, on Sunday for an eight-hour train trip to St. Petersburg. Great time all around. Shall be detailed more at a later time. Last night we headed back from St. Petersburg to Moscow on another eight-hour trip, this one rolling out of St. Petersburg at half past ten.

It was still sunny, natch, as we made our way through the suburbs and then out very quickly into woods. So many trees. It was an evening of great fun as hung out in the bar car, Annette, Amanda, and I, with an expressive husband and his wife (they're big on PDAs here), four young soldiers (all 21 or 22), a photographer/surfer who looked like Sting, a recently-graduated university student who kept trying to woo Annette, a former career military guy with whom I discussed world events for a long time, and a pair of cute Russian girls in their early twenties. Everyone but me enjoyed quite a bit of vodka and beer as the wheels rolled down the tracks, and none of us made it back to our sleeping compartments until h alf past three, by which time the lady in charge of keeping order in the bar car had shooshed our group a plethora of times.

These overnight trains: we've got second-class tickets, which means you are four in a room, in four bunks, the bottom two of which serve as seats during the non-sleeping portion of the trip. There's a long hallway on one side of the train car which is exactly one Ben wide, meaning I can just make it down said hallway as I scurry about on the train. The doorways at the end of each car are, alas, 0.9 Bens wide, which makes negotiating them a bit more of a breath-holdintg experience.

Amanda and Annette were in the compartment next to mine; I was in with a Russian guy, his wife, and their adorable seven-year-old son. When I came sneaking back into the compartment at half past two, I did my best not to wake them, but I can't vouch for any snoring that may have eminated from my general direction after I fell asleep, which was instantly.

Morning came quick, with blaring Russian pop music at six in the morning. The train pulled into the station a few minutes early, at a smidge before 6:30, and we all walked along the long platform towards the entrance for Varalovsky Station. That is where the three of us have en sitting for the past 3.5 hours, me trying to clean the fuzzy cobwebs from my tired head, Amanda and Annette doing the same but also dealing with the aftereffects of the vodka, still quite feelable four hours later.

So we're here until one. I dozed off a few sentences ago. I can't wait for it to be 1 p.m. so we can get on the next train (58 hours to Novisibirisk!) and go to sleep! Talk to ya soon...