St PetersburgMapAugust 27–28, 2005 I decided to scrimp on the “Red Arrow”, the overnight sleeper train that connects Moscow and St Petersburg. I drove to the Smart auto show opening instead. The numbers show the amount I contributed to the traffic policemen support fund. |
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My outbound journey is in blue (724km, 7 hours). The road is shoddy almost all of the way. At one point there’s a short stretch built by aliens: an ideal black surface without any road markings. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out who built the rest of the roads. The red line shows my return trip (1026km, 11 hours). The road is tolerable. There are hardly any cars, which is great. The FM radio signal disappeared around the lower 500 roubles mark. I could only get two Latvian stations. Later on I had to switch to AM altogether and listen to some guy read out the bible for about two hours. What was the point of trudging back home in such a roundabout way, you may ask? Because when I left St Petersburg the only well-known major toponym that appeared on the road sign was Pskov. On the bright side, I broke my previous record for the longest distance travelled by car in a single day (1019 km, Montpellier to Lyon via Turin). |
