Moscow!

My busy schedule doesn't leave me with much free time, so I'm determined to make good use of the bit that I do have. On the first weekend after my arrival in Russia, I did an excellent job of doing so (if I may say so myself); I managed to get myself to Moscow and back in a total of thirty-nine and a half hours (without missing any of my classes)!

On Saturday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. (just two hours after my ballet class ended), I was sitting on a Moscow-bound Sapsan high-speed train as it departed from Moskovsky Station in Saint Petersburg. I was feeling adventurous (and also just hoping that everything worked out all right, having done all of the ticket booking and buying myself...). (My train is the one on the right side of the platform).

Here's a closer picture of the outside of the train. (Сапсан is how Sapsan is spelled in Cyrillic letters).

It took four hours, traveling at speeds that were sometimes over 200 kilometers per hour, to get to Moscow. I didn't mind spending four hours on this train, as it was clean and comfortable.

I spent the entire train ride looking out the window, watching the changing countryside that we passed through as we traveled to Moscow. (For more photos from the train ride, click here).

I counted down the time remaining until my arrival in Moscow until finally... I arrived! This was my first view of the city after I got off the train.

Because my cell phone stopped working temporarily (due to the fact that I had used up all of the money on my account and it took me a bit to find one of the machines, sort of like a reverse-ATM, that I could use to add more), it took a while to find the friends who were meeting me at the train station, but everything worked out eventually.

The next twenty-seven hours contained no official sightseeing, just people-seeing! I was very excited to come and visit one of my dear friends, Olya, who was part of the family that hosted me during my previous stay in Moscow (in the summer of 2011), and meet her husband and new baby. I also got to see some of the friends that I met this summer while I was dancing in New York.

Far too soon, it was Sunday evening and time for me to head home. I returned to Leningradsky Station to catch my train home.

In order to maximize the amount of time that I got to spend in Moscow, I had booked a ticket back to Saint Petersburg on an overnight train (so that I could leave late in the evening on Sunday and arrive on Monday morning rather than leaving early enough on Sunday afternoon to arrive in Saint Petersburg on Sunday evening).

Here's what the inside of this train looked like.

I am definitely putting this train ride on my (hypothetical) list of rather adventurous things that I have done while in Russia. I am going to be very honest and say that I was definitely out of my comfort zone as I climbed into my assigned bunk, preparing to try and get a bit of sleep while sharing a train compartment with three people that I hadn't previously met.

Here's the compartment. My bunk was the one on the bottom on the right. (When I took the photo, I hadn't yet fully folded it out from the wall).

I curled up and let the rocking of the train lull me to sleep. When I woke up nearly eight hours later, the train was about a half an hour away from Moskovsky Station in Saint Petersburg. When we arrived, I gathered up my things, exited onto the platform, and walked my still-somewhat-exhausted self back to the Vaganova Academy.

In just a few hours, after a quick shower, a short nap, and some caffeine, I was in my normal Monday morning ballet class.      :)