“...For a thousand years I have not looked into this Birzhevoy Lane - a mixture of warehouse backyards with modest classicism. In place of the barn, which was always in need of mysterious tidying and calendering maids, something fashionable is being built, a cross between a chest and an aquarium, but Slavka and Zhenka appeared before me as if they were alive. We walk from the hostel to all the Twelve Colleges and, having exchanged a wink with Slava at the corner of Sredny and Tuchkov, contrary to the evidence, we assure Zhenya, who is indignantly snorting saliva through a broken front tooth, that the detour along the Makarov embankment is shorter than the one along Birzhevoy...”