In 2023, I added a new credit card to my wallet: the American Express Platinum.
Places That Changed Us: St. Petersburg
08.01.2025 - 10:36 / matadornetwork.com
This is part of the “Places That Changed Us” series, a compilation of 20 trips that have had a lasting impact on the Matador Network team. To see the other 19 places, click here.
I have no recollection of how myself and two other barely-20-year-old French university students chose St. Petersburg, Russia, as our travel destination one summer. But the next thing I knew, Dorian, Pierre-Yves, and I were sitting around Dorian’s parents’ kitchen table carefully filling out visa applications. We opted to travel from Paris to St. Petersburg by train, stay two weeks exploring the city, and then do the same trip in reverse. Because we had a very limited budget, we rode in a rustic three-person sleeper cabin both ways and stayed in a three-person youth hostel room during our time in St. Petersburg. But what could have been an uncomfortable, friendship-breaking experience turned out to be what bound us to each other for life.
Every time we see each other, we can’t help but talk about this trip, the laughs we had, the silly and dangerous things we did — and the little arguments we fought, too. For Dorian and I, it’s also what started our love of traveling, especially by train. (Pierre-Yves became a pilot, so maybe the train journey wasn’t such a revelation to him.) For years afterward, we talked about taking the Trans-Siberian rail all the way from Moscow to UlaanBaatar, Mongolia, but life, work, and romantic relationships got in the way of that. That said, we’re still young (not even 40 yet!) so there’s plenty of time for another rail adventure.
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