Made In Russia From Girders

St Petersburg

Travelled like a king on the train up from Vilnius. Much more plush than the previous night's sleeper - as the former USSR whizzed by outside I reclined on my ample bunk reading a Graham Greene novel, and a Lithuanian attendant brought me a cup of tea. Fleetingly it felt like the imperialist days of the British Empire had never finished.

Talking of imperialism there's plenty of the Russian variety in evidence round here. It's grand, opulent and, I imagine, hedonistic. Plenty of time to find out once Rowan gets here tomorrow. In the meantime, I was delighted to find Irn Bru on sale here. Not just in the odd shop either, you can get it on every street corner. I'd always treated those reports of "Irn Bru is popular in Russia" as complete rubbish, but it really is true. It seems to be as big here as it is in, say, the south of England. Hearing that familiar fizz and smelling that familiar smell when I opened a bottle just now has put a ridiculous grin on my face. Promenading along Nevsky Prospekt swigging from a bottle of Bru is just the thing to put me in a fine mood for the rest of the day. I'm sure it's what the Romanovs would have done if they were around today.

I've now lost two hours in two days. Careless you might think, and certainly the time on the bottom of these posts is beginning to bear no resemblance to the actual time where I am, but I think I'll leave it as it is.