I’m on the Sapsan, the fast train between St Petersburg and Moscow. Its awesome. Currently travelling at 209kph through the Russian countryside and building up speed still. Feels like crawling over Brent Cross flyover at 45 (which is actually 5mph faster than the speed limit there, as I know to my cost). The train takes 4 hours that ‘normal’, slow, shitty, smelly, smokey, Euro-type trains take 12 hours to do. Amazing. And so ‘easy’.

So I went to bed last night, all pretty well packed and ready for our early start today. And closed my eyes and…

Started the check-list. Which went like this:

6am Alarm goes off; 2 of them set, one must work. Check.
6.10, tea, shower, dress, finish packing. Check
6.55, hotel lobby, check out, get breakfast ‘take-away’ packs, order Uber. PANIC!!!! What if it doesn’t arrive on time, what if it doesn’t arrive at all (happened just 2 days ago), what if the traffic’s bad, what if… what if… what if… PANIC!!!!
7.30-ish (see above) arrive at Moscovsky station (St Petersburg). It’ll be big. PANIC!!! It might all be in Russian signage, PANIC!!!! There’ll be security! queues!! interrogations!!! torture!!!!! delays, PANIC!!!!!
745-(please God!!) find the platform, how big’s the station, is it signed in English, ticket check, passport check? unknown, unknown, unknown; PANIC!!!!!
8.08 train leaves. Check. As long as none of the above turns to the shit option. Unknown, unknown, unknown, the motherfucker of invention. Don’t sleep til all issues resolved, lie there sweating and palpitating like a fat bastard at a spin class instead. But how can you resolve issues that you can’t even imagine? OPEN EYES!!! Breathe, breathe, breaeaeaeathe…

Repeat until dawn.

Then of course it all goes rather well. And even though its all unknown to me, the Russians have been running trains for centuries so they’re pretty good (and as always, ruthlessly efficient) at it. And the train appears to have wifi (as does almost everywhere here, bless ’em) but that doesn’t seem to work. Ah, said the woman behind me, maybe its only free in First Class and not here in steerage with Leonardo di Caprio and a bunch of Irish Russian scallywags? And my first thought was: WHAT THE FUCK DID ‘WE’ HAVE A REVOLUTION FOR???? Shades of Marie Antoinette: The people have no wifi: let them eat 4G. Ok, wrong revolution but moral’s the same.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx