[August, 2004]

Already in Helsinki, as I step onto the train that in about eight hours will reach Saint Petersburg, I can sense Russia. Feel her. Russia is in the brown cloth on the seats, in the green, thick curtains hanging in front of dusty windows, in the once upon a time shiny samovar with boiling water in the front part of the wagon, in the uniforms worn by women forcing a smile to greet the new passengers with. It is as if they are thinking, just like I would have had this not before when I had never ever been even east of Finland, “well, this is after all Europe, that’s what they expect here – a smile as a way of giving good service…” Russia is in the smell inside the wagon, everywhere this certain deep, strong smell of old times mixed with new changes lingers. Had I not been completely new, fresh and as much a stranger to this country as she was to me, then I would have been able to tell that this smell was a mix of sweet tea without milk, someone’s cologne bought on sale, someone else’s expensive French perfume also bought on sale, the sugary, dense sweat from inside a coat that should have been washed last season, freshly baked pirogues with mashed potatoes and melted butter and a hint of bitterness from a recently opened vodka bottle. But as I step onto the train that will take me to Russia for the first time, I do not know anything of everything I will come to know about this country. I hand my passport to the young lady in a blue, mundane uniform, and as she looks up from the document to check my resemblance with the eighteen year old me on the picture, I smile. She smiles back at me. I make my way to the coupe with all of my bags – it is my first time moving to a foreign country and I have two huge bags with everything including eight pairs of heels – until I can finally sit down on my seat and gaze at the railroad station on the other side of the window. The train starts to move, slowly, little by little, taking us first through the Finish capitol, then through all of its suburbs, until we finally arrive in the countryside. Here everything is green, trees, fields, it is still summer, and I remember everything, every little thing that I see outside of the window I feel that I must memorize. And I try even harder to memorize every building, every little house, every train station, every single view, after we cross the border into Russia. Of course the border control had to pick both of my bags for their routine check, but it doesn’t matter, nothing else matters now, soon we will arrive, soon we will be there, let them roam around in my stuff, after all they’ll only find high heels and grammar books in there anyway…

As night falls, after we’ve passed Vyborg, I walk out to stand in the corridor outside of the coupe, tired of keeping up a conversation with my fellow passengers, instead I wrap myself in the gleaming lights in the dark outside, pressing my face hard against the cold glass. Every light in every window means a life. Every life means a person. Every person means dreams, plans, past, future, present, every person connects to another, and every light is replaced by yet another light as the train rushes ahead and… And I arrive in Saint Petersburg to find a sleeping city, it is after midnight and already Wednesday, and here is everything asleep, the streets are empty, only once in a while the occasional car passes me by, and mostly it is a taxi. I breathe in. The smell is there again. I breathe out. I’m here. And soon there will be a light also in my room, in the dormitory on Kazanskaya Street…