Perm. Long before.

Anticipation. Internal tension and mechanical analysis of a huge amount of data that has nowhere to be applied yet....

Launching a virtual machine in one of the hemispheres. Trying out different options for adapting to an unfamiliar and unusual environment, overcoming the language barrier...

Line-by-line analysis of the forum, separating the wheat from the chaff...

But now everything is different. The point .BEFORE has been passed and the first step has been taken. A step towards summer, a step towards the most unusual pastime and an information avalanche through the prism of an unfamiliar country. Behind me is the search for money and the collection of the initial set of documents, behind me are the tossings of the soul (it exists) and black-and-white dreams.

Ahead is the assault on the session and finding myself, a test of independence, a step towards what in my understanding will become a bar, a transition to a more adult self.

Ahead is the most important thing - summer with a loved one. With a background of a different color.

January winter personal Rubicon covered in ice you can always walk back along your dreams, cover your ears with your palms and not let the glowing bubbles of your own desires, hitting the ice under your bare feet, into your eyes crisis

26 euros in hand, questionnaires in the backpack behind my back, documents pressed with the inside of the jacket to the body

I no longer have money for the second installment, I did not convert the amount into dollars when I had the price of the program in my hands

I have no acquaintances to borrow this money from

I have something to sell and I will gladly trade a spark of joy now for a fire of self-knowledge in the summer

I will achieve everything

I will be happy alone for myself for you for everything that leads me for the one who shines for me and holds my hand

It is unexpectedly cold and predictably wet outside.

The train will wind my anxiety onto its wheels in just half an hour.

My boots are getting wet, time is stretching like rubber, I don't know anyone, I walk back and forth in front of the station, looking for the same emphatically indifferent young people, secretly looking towards the scoreboard every two minutes.

There are many of us, we are all talkative and exaggeratedly loud, everyone at least casually says something in English, tensely watching the reaction of others.

We are human and it is easier for us when we know that someone knows the language worse than us.

For about two hours we pour out our anxiety, and either dissolve into calmness, or wind ourselves up, convincing ourselves of a complete inability to pronounce even a f*** and anti-understanding of the English language.

The light is flickering in the restroom, and so I almost press my face against the frosted mirror before taking out my lenses. The train starts moving and I hit it with my forehead, the mirror sparks, I stagger oh crap but manage to take off the biprisms and not bury my vision between the soles of my sneakers and the spat-upon floor.

02:02 on the clock

Hot air from the entire carriage gathered around my upper bunk. Hell yes, from the whole train, even your breath warms my neck and after two hours of turning around my axis and artistic rolling on the deserted mattress, I am covered with a wax crust of my own sweat.

04:37

My vision is lying in my palms again. I wait out another jerk of the train and hit my forehead against the mirror at the moment of stopping combo +5!!! this time it even gets bad for a while.

Wash up, brush my teeth and pack my things. Six and a half hours are gone hell knows where.

Four did not wait for the stop, boiled on the upper bunks. They are carried out in gray bags. That is, we all arrived and are standing, freezing.

We dive into the subway. Three break their necks on the escalator, two fall under the train, one of us is smeared by the doors and four more are trampled by the crowd.

In short, everyone trudged to the embassy and we are standing waiting.

It is cold exactly enough for seven of us to fall onto the asphalt and shatter like glass on the dirt-stained asphalt on the embassy porch.

Come on:) Everyone is let through and we, two by two, terribly frozen and barely thinking, go up to the American floor, leaving four comrades to the mercy of the furious guards.

The interview itself lasts exactly a minute and ends with either good summer for you or shots to the head from a made in USA SMG, after which the bodies are swept with mops to the stairs and pushed down, interfering with the next applicants for visa possession.

I hear my name, I approach the consular window. Ritual bow, exchange of blows, I tear out the visa permission with an uppercut and achieve my have a nice summer with one UNSR, everyone is sobbing, hugging me and dreaming of getting my autograph.

But seriously:

...it wasn't that cold...

...coffee at "Coffee Shop No. 7" doesn't cost 100r, but exactly 5.5r, because it tastes like Nescafe 3 in 1 green...

...The Perm center is good, we were very afraid and waited almost for an interrogation with partiality, so we were very well prepared and were thrilled with ourselves, sincerely rejoicing at every rainbow intonation in the consular voice...

...we got closer and on the way back we were already chatting like old acquaintances...

if you haven't traveled yet, find out how to say thumb, index, middle, ring and little finger in English, you need to know this:)