Story #1. Saint Petersburg. Part 1. "Но только в двух городах я дома, пока я гость..." More than ten years have been passed since I visited Saint Petersburg last time, and I still associate it with a very gloomy and dark place, crowded with cold and haughty people for whom even "an entrance" is supposed to be called "парадная." A one who understands Russian well enough and ever lived in Saint Petersburg would certainly appreciate a supercilious, and at the same time, amusing irony concealed in this naming. When I was booking a night train, I thought the only wish that will occur to me as I arrive there is to drink a pint of vodka, smoke out a cigarette pack in a row and jump down from the highest bridge right to the Neva river. A stupid thought though, assuming that that bridge is not even within a walking distance from the Moscow railway station. I hope I completely confused everyone and should explain here that "Moscow" is a name of Saint Petersburg central station. We do have the Leningrad railway station in Moscow. Leningrad is the old name of Saint Petersburg just in case. But in order to don't make a mess with all these names, they print it as "Octyabrskiy" on tickets. So, if you purchase a ticket from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, you will get one from "Octyabrskiy" to "Moscow" and depart from "Leningradskiy." A piece of cake. I proceed into a car and found it overcrowded with Chinese. "Fine!" - I thought - "I'll try to borrow some good tea at least!". But it turned out that my room was occupied by Russians. One of them was a beekeeper who lived in a small village deep in Vladimir region. He also played folk music and learned an old Russian alphabet which looks like Chinese characters to me. He also was an expert on pre-Christian Slavs religions and suspiciously knew a lot about our ancient pagan traditions and practices. I decided to ask Chinese to borrow me some vodka instead of tea. The idea was if I drink enough those guy probably won't like to cut away and eat my liver tonight. My other companion was a girl of about my age traveling to Saint Petersburg for a project with Ermitage. "We are producing lights for museums and sell it all over the world. But Ermitage is supposed to get very special ones", - she explained. I don't know who was the third, but he was traveling across the world just like me. And he just figured out he forgot all his money. "Nevermind," told he, shrugging, - "I've been through worse." To be continued...