Wandering through Russia as if through someone else's house.

"Day two is the worst. It was the same in the train: on the second day, I stamped my feet impatiently. Then, from the third day on, it gets better. You get used to the slowness, to the monotonous landscape, to a life made up of short sleep-eat-wait cycles having absolutely nothing to do with the usual timing of a day."

Advertisements for linoleum as if it were some precious stone, and entire cities - built on gold mines - left abandoned. There is no such thing as Russian chaos. Just "Europe" stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and no longer merely to the ghostly Oural Mountains.