- After Vladimir says goodbye to his fencing pop, he figures out which car he'll be taking to the city: the Benz (yes, a Benz!) or the Wolseley limo (a British-made car company of the time).
- Vladimir prefers the newer limo to the older Benz, and when the driver is waiting for him in the limo, he feels as if he's starting the day off right.
- Later, during World War Two, the limo would be taken apart and hidden by a driver of the Nabokovs', in order to save it from confiscation.
- Nabokov notes: even though the winters were much more harsh in St. Petersburg, than, say, Boston, drivers never had as much trouble there as they do in Boston, now. (He's calling us wimps, with a wink!)
- The drive from the town house to the school never takes more than 15 minutes, and each day they pass a park square where the trees have held the ear and finger of a terrorist planting a bomb, and children were once shot down from those same branches.
- Many parks, Nabokov notes, had gory associations like these.