Achievement unlocked: "from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok"

Back in my school days, I first heard the word “enclave” during a geography lesson. It immediately clicked with me. There was something deliciously sophisticated about it — all proper and fancy-like. Even though it simply described a territory (or a piece of one) completely surrounded by another country’s land.

But it wasn’t until I started reading up on Kaliningrad and its surrounding region that I learned there's actually a difference between an enclave and a semi-enclave. Turns out, a semi-enclave has access to the sea.

And that's not even the whole story! Apparently, there’s also something called an exclave — both full and semi- varieties. That’s the term for a non-sovereign region separated from its motherland and surrounded by more than one foreign country.
The difference between an enclave and an exclave, basically, boils down to perspective.
Take the Kaliningrad region, for example. From the point of view of Poland and Lithuania, it’s an enclave — foreign land locked between them. But for Russia, it’s an exclave. If you really want to nerd out properly (and with soul), you could even say that for European countries it’s a semi-enclave (thanks to the Baltic Sea access), and for Mother Russia — a semi-exclave.

As you might have already guessed, this time we decided to visit the westernmost point of our God-preserved homeland — Kaliningrad. Our little gang had grown to a mighty three, because Anya (Nastya’s younger sister) felt a burning need to prove to herself — and the world — that a cold kitchen chef fears no cold Baltic waves. Plus, let’s be honest, she just really needed a vacation.

Technically speaking, you can get to former Königsberg by land — trains run there with a decently hopeful regularity. If we hadn’t woken up just a few weeks before the trip, we might have even snagged a couple of train tickets. But by the time we got our act together, everything had long since been sold out. Which left exactly one option: the plane.

Sure, we could’ve tried for a Schengen visa, made our way to Minsk, then to Grodno, and from there sneak across Lithuanian or Polish territory like nervous little deer, clutching our imaginary marzipan museum tickets and trying to explain to the border guards that we were just slightly lost.

But we wanted to squeeze the whole trip into one neat week and be back home in one piece.
We weren’t exactly aiming to end up a month later somewhere in the suburbs of Antwerp, wearing tattered ponchos, dragging around a domesticated gibbon and a half-empty pack of Finnish "COLT" cigarettes — sighing wearily at every "What happened?!" and staring into the distance with haunted eyes, whispering, “It’s a long story...”

We made it there without any adventures, although the flight path involved a generous loop over neutral waters. After almost three hours in the air, we landed at a neat little airport with a parking lot two-thirds full of cars bearing European Union plates. According to the driver taking us into town, this was how Germans liked to entertain themselves: they’d drive over, marvel at the ridiculously cheap parking fees, ditch their cars for a few weeks, and hop on a plane to go touring around Russia. Then they’d come back, giggle at the prices all over again, and steer their way back to Berlin. Given the difference in living standards and exchange rates, who could blame them for living it up a little?

We made it pretty quickly to a cozy two-room apartment right in the heart of Kaliningrad.
The owner greeted us, gave us a somewhat flamboyant tour of the place, threw in a handful of rather ambiguous jokes for good measure, and finally left us to settle in. After a quick suitcase debriefing, we located the nearest grocery store and decided to at least get a little taste of the city on our way there. It just so happened that our apartment was right next to a sprawling park.
We decided to save exploring it for a time when we weren’t dragging ourselves around like sleep-deprived zombies.

As we made our way to the store, eyes darting around and cursing the brutal temperature drop between day and evening, we stumbled upon an odd concrete squiggle. Turns out, it was none other than a monument to Soviet-Polish friendship. Yeah... not exactly the kind of thing you’re likely to see popping up again anytime soon.

Classy marzipan warfare

But enough melancholy — here’s a more amusing local tidbit for you: house numbering.

All my life I’d lived with a fairly simple, utilitarian system. You have a building. It has entrances. You count them left to right. End of story.

But Kaliningrad decided to spice things up. Here, a building with, say, four entrances doesn’t have a single number. No, no, no. Each entrance is its own house. So, while I would expect it to be something like "20 Olsztyn Street, 2nd entrance," in Kaliningrad the building as a whole is just some anonymous gray mass on the map, and the entrances are individually numbered: house 20, house 21, house 22, and house 23. Probably makes life easier for taxi drivers — no need to hunt around for the right entrance.

Another highlight of that evening was my tragic encounter with local beer. Given Kaliningrad’s proximity to Germany, Belgium, and the Czech Republic — and the quick-thinking of local entrepreneurs — the stores are packed with European beers. Feeling quite full of myself, I solemnly picked out a couple of German brews for the evening.

Only to pop one open at home and realize that Germany had most definitely not brought its A-game to Kaliningrad. The beer was completely flat and soulless — like drinking slightly bitter water. In despair, I summoned Nastya and Anya to taste-test and offer their verdicts. The girls agreed: the beer was total garbage.

Betrayed in my best hopes, like a wounded two-decker battleship in a beer-themed version of Battleship, I lunged desperately for the second can.

Alas.

If I’d been merely “wounded” a minute ago, now I was most definitely “sunk.”

To get a bulk introduction to pretty much all the interesting spots, we decided to sign up for a city sightseeing tour. The guide came highly recommended by some acquaintances. They claimed that after one of her tours, people reached a Buddhist level of enlightenment, cried from emotional overload, and desperately wanted to move to Kaliningrad.

I didn’t catch the name of this fountain of wisdom. Let’s just call her Elena. We whipped through the city’s major landmarks like a tornado. We heard tales of ancient curses from local druids. We snacked our way through the Marzipan Museum. We paid solemn respects at the grave of Immanuel Kant. And we wrapped it all up with a river cruise, accompanied by a pre-recorded — but impressively informative — narration.

Speaking of narration — our imaginary Elena had a lot to say. It wasn’t boring at all: she spoke with a clear, well-trained voice. At some point, though, I started picking up on an amusing little quirk in her speech. Or, more precisely, in her choice of words. Passive voice had some particular appeal to her, it seemed.

Instead of saying “the city had many canals dug,” she’d say, “the city was thoroughly canalized.”
Instead of “Kant’s Island took significant damage during the bombing,” it became “the island was substantially ruinized.” And it went on like that.

As a linguist, I found this approach absolutely charming. Soon I was spinning my own word inventions in my head: in the mornings, I must be properly caffeinized, by midday — thoroughly lunchified, and by evening — blissfully wifekissed. Also, from now on, instead of whining “I'm dead tired,” I’ll just declare in Aesopian style, “I am ruinized.”

I’ve noticed this before when traveling — feasting on spiritual and intellectual treats tends to spark a brutal appetite for more earthly meals. To make sure the digestion of new knowledge went hand-in-hand with the digestion of local delicacies, we parked ourselves in a fish bistro right at the heart of the Fishing Village — a historical, ethnographic, and artisan-trade complex supposedly mimicking the pre-war East Prussian look of Königsberg. Or at least that’s what the guidebook claims. In reality, it’s a cluster of cute houses with a pretty view slightly dampened by Moscow-level café and restaurant prices.

Already on the ride from the airport, our driver had been singing the praises of a dish called “stroganina of pelamid.” With a name that exotic, at first, I only understood the preposition "of" out of the three words. Then my brain started slowly downloading the missing data. Somewhere from the depths of memory floated fragments about stroganina — thin slices or shavings of frozen fish, much beloved by Yakuts and Eskimos.

A few delicate follow-up questions revealed that pelamid was a relative of mackerel. The driver, practically drooling onto the dashboard, explained that the ultimate move was to dunk a slice into a good sauce, pop it into your mouth — and boom: ecstatic waves of divine flavor would lift you up, and life would never be the same again.

In reality, though, the much-hyped pelamid turned out to be pure disappointment. Sure, if you drowned the poor slice in sauce, topped it with a ring of onion, and slapped it on a chunk of dark bread, it was edible. Sometimes even tasty. But if you dared to taste the fish on its own, it was like chewing on a bland, rubbery strip with the faintest whisper of fishy protein.

To shake off the culinary heartbreak, we wandered off to explore Kant’s Island. An absolutely gorgeous spot. Everything was lush and green; tourist boats glided along the nearby canal; and the cathedral, with its gothic curves, was a pure magnet for the eyes. On the grassy lawns, people picnicked, read books, or napped in the sunshine. Modest souvenir stalls stood in polite rows nearby. The girls made a beeline for them and immediately launched into shopping mode.

It’s worth noting that Kaliningrad is absolutely teeming with at least two things: amber and marzipan. Trying to walk down a street without encountering a dazzling variety of both is downright impossible. But at this particular spot, there was a pleasant twist — displays of gold, silver, and platinum jewelry. Naturally, all featuring inclusions of amber.

I gave the stalls a quick once-over, grabbed a small pin shaped like a dashing knight, and was as happy as a clam. Meanwhile, Nastya and Anya slipped into a trance at the sheer expanse of sparkly possibilities, blissfully trying on every imaginable bracelet, earring, and necklace.

At one point, one sister turned to the other with a hypnotized look and whispered,
“What do you like?”
To which the other groaned in despair,
“E-ve-ry-thiiiiiing!”

This was met with a gleeful chuckle from the saleslady, who was working the floor like a true predator. She didn’t give the victims a second to regroup, bombarding them with choice after choice, set after set, her eyes burning with a barely concealed thirst for profit.

Somehow — by what can only be described as a miracle — the girls managed not to leave the entire travel budget behind. But their wallets definitely took a significant bloodletting.

 

Drunk on shopping spree

At the time, I had no idea, but the next day was about to serve me the most agonizing experience of the entire trip. Somehow — and to this day I have no clue how — I agreed to a pure, uncut act of madness. Nastya, while poking around on a certain social network, found a cycling route from Svetlogorsk to Zelenogradsk (technically, you could do it the other way too).

On paper, it sounded perfect: rent bikes in Svetlogorsk, pedal leisurely along scenic paths, make picturesque photo stops, roll into Zelenogradsk, return the bikes, grab some lunch, stroll around the town a bit, and then take the commuter train back to Kaliningrad.

Lovely, right?
Right.

It was only when we were actually renting the bikes that I, heart sinking, noticed a tiny little detail: the route was 27 kilometers long.
TWENTY-SEVEN!
That’s like 2,700,000 centimeters!

A bit of context: I’m not a fan of bicycles. At all. Which is strange, considering my childhood was packed with bike rides. I flew over handlebars, snapped a bike clean in half, and once even got my foot jammed in the rear wheel — and yet none of that managed to kill my love for cycling. Time, however, succeeded where trauma had failed.

At some point, Nastya’s friends had loaned us their bikes for a nostalgic ride around town — you know, for the sake of shaking off the dust from the riding skills. Except the only thing that got shaken up was me. After a short while, I realized with crystal clarity that bicycles and I were officially done. Forever.

Anyway, back to Svetlogorsk. Now that you know my special relationship with bikes, you can probably picture the raw terror splashing in my eyes as we set off.

For the first few kilometers, I actually managed to keep a decent pace and even enjoy the scenery. But after roughly 10 kilometers, my backside started questioning whether I was in possession of a functioning brain. With each turn of the pedals, sitting down became less of a choice and more of an act of self-sabotage.

At one point, the trail led us through a grove that opened onto a beach. With joyful shrieks, we parked the bikes and ran to greet the Baltic Sea. I was especially ecstatic — not because of the sea, but because my rear end had finally stopped screaming bloody murder.

As it turned out, the sea wasn’t exactly thrilled to see us. We were welcomed by an icy wind blowing at approximately "go the hell home" meters per second. The water was so refreshingly cold that describing its temperature without swearing was physically impossible. And this was supposedly peak season. I don’t even want to imagine off-season — swimming in full-body wetsuits like surfers in Teriberka?

Faking warmth the best we can

We hopped back on the bikes.
My butt howled.

I was already close to renouncing the heliocentric model of the universe and cursing John Kemp Starley — the man credited with inventing the modern bicycle in the 19th century — to eternal damnation. If it had started raining, at least it would’ve hidden my tears. But no, the sun blazed away, cynically, and there was nothing left to do but soldier on.

It’s one thing to push through with your last ounce of strength. But what about when even that’s gone?

It wasn’t like the bike was the problem — the saddle height was fine; the seat was relatively cushy... But about 5 kilometers from the finish line, I simply dismounted and stood there, reevaluating all of my life choices.

Anya, blessed with the resilience of youth, cheerfully zoomed ahead. Nastya, honoring those fateful wedding vows about "in sorrow and in joy," turned back to find me, cheering me on with a backward countdown of the remaining distance once I finally managed to drag myself back onto the bike. On one hand, it was reassuring to know exactly how much longer the suffering would last. Assuming, of course, that I didn’t stroke out before getting there.

But on the other hand, when you’re moving way past your moral-psychological reserves and into some kind of post-human endurance realm, distances tend to feel... different. You think you’ve just covered two, maybe even three kilometers —only to hear your wife encouragingly inform you that you’ve managed a whole 100 meters.

From the back you can't see it but I'm screaming

Around the 25th kilometer of my personal purgatory, Nastya’s shout yanked me out of my trance: we had just passed a bike rental station identical to the one where we started in Svetlogorsk. My brain, already preparing for death, dismissed it as a hallucination.
My suffering was eternal.
There would be no end.
Initially, I even kept pedaling forward, because after all —
“A samurai has no final destination, only the eternal wandering.”

Luckily, my survival instincts finally kicked in. I pried myself off the hated bicycle and, on legs made of overcooked spaghetti, limped toward a roadside café. Apparently, my body, in its extreme distress, had reverted to basic animal needs: shelter and food.

While my butt whimpered through its second birthday, I mechanically chewed on whatever they brought me. It took a while for my brain to process that what was on my plate was eel.

The eel — a local delicacy in Kaliningrad and the surrounding region, rivaling only the frozen pelamid sashimi. To be fair, it was tastier than its icy relatives, but nowhere near worthy of cries of "Hosanna!"

After such a "heroic dash to the East," we had neither the strength nor the desire to properly explore Zelenogradsk. We wandered the winding streets for a bit, promised ourselves we’d come back some other time, and hopped onto the commuter train back to Kaliningrad. In my case —
to lick my wounds. Though, frankly, that would have been anatomically impossible.

Not every day calls for wearing yourself down to the bone. Sometimes you need to hit the brakes a little — lest you sandpaper your legs down to the knees. And what could be better for soothing a thoroughly ruinized body than a slow, leisurely stroll through various museums and zoos?

The Museum of the World Ocean, besides its rather pompous name, boasted a gigantic model of the Earth, visible from afar. My excitement, however, quickly gave way to bitter disappointment when we discovered that this marvel was still very much under construction. For now, tourists and locals alike had to make do with a rather modest building containing a handful of aquariums. There was, to be fair, a small interactive exhibit thrown in, where you could learn about the birth of seafaring, observe how oil forms under seabeds, and wiggle the manipulators on the Mir-1 bathyscaphe — the very one James Cameron used to dive down to the wreck of the Titanic.

A curious fact about Kaliningrad’s aquarium: somewhere around 2014, a blacktip reef shark lived there for a couple of years. She would sedately cruise around her enclosure, pondering sharky thoughts. Meanwhile, the visiting public acted like a band of cavemen — thumping on the glass, pulling faces, and loudly asking why she had eaten Tamayo Perry. Sure, he only had a minor role in Pirates of the Caribbean, but come on — show a little respect for the actors.

All this harassment eventually led to the shark having a full-blown nervous breakdown, followed by a drawn-out depression. Seeing her spiral into decadence, the aquarium management restricted access to her tank and started feeding her tasty antidepressants. The shark seemed to be on the mend… until she suddenly began thrashing around in panic, her chest wracked with pain. Not long after, she gave up the ghost and floated off to the great big ocean of fat mollusks and unspooked surfers. The aquarium folks, mopping their tears, solemnly declared that they would never again house sharks for the public’s entertainment. Honestly, a very sound decision, if you ask me.

Having paid our respects to the aquatic folk, we decided to visit their land-dwelling cousins as well. The zoo promised a vast territory and the lure of exotic creatures. I wouldn’t say the experience was a total letdown. The giraffe was grazing way off in the distance. The elephant cow had hidden herself deep in her enclosure. The hippos were dozing apathetically by their pool. As for the lions, tigers, and wolves — they were suspiciously absent. Maybe they were off at an emergency meeting or something. Their enclosures, while neat and tidy, stood sadly empty.

Favourite hippo's phrase: "Let sh*t hit the fan!"

Among the few creatures who were around to charm us, first place definitely went to the sea lion. He was playing with a ball, doing tricks, and waggling his whiskers in the most endearing way — though clearly motivated by greed, as zoo staff were discreetly rewarding him with fish behind the scenes. The porcupine and the anteater were pure comedy gold, their very existence a tribute to nature’s endless sense of humor. Watching them, I couldn’t help marveling: nature really does come up with the most absurd shapes and designs.

And then, of course, there was the king of memes and plush toys — the capybara. She lounged grandly in her pen, chewing on something with intense focus, like a true capybaroness.

The bears, on the other hand, got themselves properly riled up by the crowd. They came right up to the edge of their moat-surrounded enclosure and started waving their paws frantically, as if urging parents to ignore all the warning signs and dangle their children just a little closer.

Right near the exit, we got stuck watching a gang of chubby raccoons tumbling over each other. The little guys were deeply absorbed in their mischief, occasionally shooting us sidelong glances as if to say, "Real classy tourists would’ve brought snacks, just so you know."

All in all, it turned out to be a good day. Everything exactly as one particular Russian rapper once decreed — chill, relaxed, unbothered. Though Anya did grumble a bit, claiming that clocking up these ungodly thousands of steps was an outright insult to her concept of a proper holiday.

For our second trip to Zelenogradsk, we wisely chose the suburban train. Now that’s what I call traveling in style. You sit back in an air-conditioned carriage. You SIT on an ACTUAL COMFORTABLE SURFACE. And in less than an hour, you’re already rolling into a little seaside town.

Zelenogradsk had me at hello, if only because it’s a city ruled by cats. Plump, lazy cats are practically everywhere — strutting down the streets like they own the place, napping in flowerbeds, or casually hopping onto the chair next to you at a café to beg for a nibble or two. The last time I’d seen such an unapologetically cat-centric worldview was on the streets of Istanbul.

But the locals of Zelenogradsk didn’t stop at simply tolerating their furry overlords — they went all in. They set up several monuments and art installations in honor of the feline kind, opened a museum dedicated to all the world’s cats, and even built a few multi-story cat condos, complete with plexiglass walls to protect the whiskered gangsters from any unwelcome disturbances. Basically, a high-end residential complex — part of the "affordable housing" program, but exclusively for cats.

With all that going on, it’s hardly surprising that scattered around town you’ll find vending machines stocked with cat food — ready for anyone who feels like treating a particularly charming fluffy face.

Zelenogradsk isn’t just a resort town because of its self-propelled, furry purring machines — it’s also blessed with beaches washed by the Baltic. By the sea, mind you, not beer with the same name. Although, granted, that detail might disappoint certain holidaymakers. But judging by the infernal screeches of “To the sea! To the seeeea!!” that rang out beyond the windows of the suburban train at nearly every stop between Kaliningrad and our destination, plenty of people were absolutely thrilled by the idea of splashing around in regular old seawater instead of foamy lager.

The three of us didn’t exactly sprint towards the shore like crazed lemmings, ripping off clothes on the move. We were methodical and thoughtful about choosing our beach. Which, as it turned out, was our fatal flaw.

Zelenogradsk’s beach scene did us dirty. Here’s what happened: when we finally made it to the shoreline, we were greeted by an army of massive boulders crowding right up to the water’s edge. All that was left for the sunbathers was a thin, pitiful strip of sand, jam-packed with people clinging desperately to whatever scraps of space nature had allowed. So, we set off along the coast in search of something a little more promising.

Eventually, we stumbled onto a much wider sandy spit. Not quite the Curonian Spit, of course, but wide enough that you could actually spread out a beach blanket without lying directly on top of someone else. And the fact that there were hundreds of people sunning themselves on the sand but only two brave souls in the water? Didn’t even register as a red flag — it just made us more excited. How naïve we were.

Sure, the water was... how to put this delicately... refreshing. Coupled with a strong gusty wind, it wasn’t hard to imagine yourself as a stranded baby mammoth, drifting across an ice floe in search of your long-lost herd. But that was only half the trouble. The seabed — starting with a deceptively sandy entrance — quickly turned into a nightmare of slippery rocks, driftwood, and other unpleasantly squishy things whose origins you were better off not pondering too deeply.
I’d read somewhere that the Baltic Sea is relatively shallow. Maybe that’s true in general — it definitely was at this particular beach.

There I was, wading knee-deep in the icy water, stubbornly trying to make my way further out.
The waves kept playfully knocking me off balance, so I hunched over, arms flailing wildly in an effort to stay upright. It wasn’t the most dignified sight. My posture didn’t exactly scream "idiot" — but it didn’t exactly deny it either. My expression was a mix of grim determination and deep self-pity.

Years ago, I’d grumbled about the pebble-strewn beaches of Kemer, cursing whoever had made such a poor "design choice." Oh, how young and foolish I was! That Turkish beach was a silky-smooth autobahn compared to the sadistic hellscape under my feet now.

At some point, I gave up on this extravagant idea of "swimming" and started making my slow, tragic way back toward the shore. Big mistake. Turns out the sea had been lying in wait.
Just as I was hesitating about where to put my foot to avoid a major injury, a particularly cheeky wave sneaked up from behind. With a whistling whoosh, it flattened me and dragged me a good few meters along the rocky bottom.

The last time I’d felt this helpless in the water was back in 2008, when a buddy from Kazan and I decided to swim during a storm off the shores of Chesapeake Bay. That time, a wave had slammed into us with enough force to launch my cursing friend Fyodor straight into my back. We tumbled together underwater like laundry in a washing machine before getting unceremoniously spat back onto the beach. The worst part then had been shaking sand out of every crack and crevice in our bodies for days.

Instead of fixing the wall just write: "This is an antique crack". Problem solved

The Baltic, though, proved to be a far crueler mistress. By the time I managed to stagger upright again, my right hand was covered in cuts, and my foot was sporting several fresh scratches from close encounters with underwater rocks.
Meanwhile, Anya and Nastya had made it out of the water completely unscathed. Apparently, the local Cthulhu had found my blood sacrifice sufficient.

The irony of it all? Those rocky beaches we had passed up earlier actually had much better water entrances and solid, safe ground underfoot — perfectly decent spots to swim without risking a limb. Nastya eventually decided to go for a dip there, although not before dispatching her younger sister on a reconnaissance mission first.

Anya grumbled about being used as a human guinea pig and muttered about the illegality of sibling exploitation, but dutifully returned with the intel: swimming conditions were totally fine.
My wife tried to lure me back into the water too, but I pleaded my war wounds and declared, with maximum drama, that I had paid in blood for our bathing experience that day. Besides, after crawling crablike over all those rocks, I was already tired and starving.

We spent the remaining time in Kaliningrad in a fairly relaxed way: strolling along already familiar routes, picking up a few more souvenirs, and wrapping up the trip in our minds. The girls followed my lead and started buying badges from every place they visited too, so now their backpacks were adorned with shiny little souvenirs from the westernmost point of Russia.

Already at the airport, standing in the middle of the duty-free zone, Anya gave a mischievous smile and said she had some fresh content for my future story. She had lost her passport. It turned out to be a close cousin of the honey from the Winnie the Pooh cartoons — the kind where “if it exists, then it’s immediately gone.” Without waiting for me to cycle through all the shades of human emotion, the sisters went off to look for it. While I was mentally calculating the cost of renting an apartment in Kaliningrad and figuring out how to explain to my boss that I'd now be working not just remotely, but extremely remotely, the passport was found. Anya had simply left it in the tray where you pile your stuff during the security check. We decided to eat our stress away with marzipan bars — which, by the end of the trip, we had all developed a mild addiction to. And for the remaining hour before the flight, I must have asked Anya about 900 times if she still had her passport.

Later, in Moscow, sitting through the night at the train station waiting for our ride home, Nastya also decided to spice up my travel story with a touch of adventure. We were lounging on the benches, half-dozing or scrolling through our phones, when suddenly my wife sat bolt upright and cried out: "Imagine if we’re at the wrong station!"

Here should follow a scene full of panic and frantic packing. Then — a wild dash through the streets of nighttime Moscow, racing against the clock. Ideally, we would’ve arrived at the station just as the train was pulling out — running alongside the moving train with our suitcases, while a desperate train attendant waved at us and cheered us on. I would leap into the carriage, yank Nastya in after me. Anya, lagging behind, would cry out, “I can’t make it! Leave me behind!” And then we’d lean half out of the train, grab her suitcase she’s desperately swinging, and haul her inside. After which, we’d sleep through the whole journey to Lipetsk, recovering both morally and physically.

Of all the above, only the sleeping till Lipetsk part actually happened. Because, when it comes to traveling, I’m a seasoned paranoiac and over-planner. At the moment of Nastya’s exclamation, there were still a good 2–3 hours left before the train’s departure. We calmly ordered a taxi, made it to the right station, and found our platform. We even had time to scarf down some very mediocre shawarma.

As for my future domestic travel plans — I have plenty. I've only been to Vladivostok once, and that was for work, so I never got the chance to properly wander around that fiercely unique city.
If Nastya is willing to brave another long-haul flight with me, I might finally get my photo from Russky Island. Maybe we’ll take Anya along again too.

Provided she doesn’t lose her passport this time.