Gosh the Scandinavians do know how to do things right. I’m 7 hours into a 29-&-a-half hour ferry trip between Helsinki, Finland, & Stockholm, Sweden. I’m not sure if I’m still in the Gulf of Finland or if I’ve entered the Baltic Sea. Not that...
Not to rip on the place but grab a coffee or vodka-swigging Finn off the streets of Helsinki, Finland (if you can find one), and if he or she is being honest they’d have to admit that there’s not a whole lot to see or do in their comatosed capital city. Make no...
It doesn’t take long to realise that Saint Petersburg is a Russian anomaly – visually very different from any other Russian city. Whereas most of the rest of them are full of dull, unimaginative, boxy, typically-Soviet structures, Saint Petersburg, the...
Moscow, the 860-year-old capital of Russia, the world’s largest country, needs little introduction. An iconic global city & the throbbing nerve centre of the uncomprehendingly vast Russian universe, it’s chock full of top-tier sights. From the historic...
My next Russian port of call on this my second east to west Trans-Siberian odyssey after Nizhny Novgorod (& before Moscow) is the town of Vladimir, one of many cities situated in Russia’s most historic Golden Ring region, the ancient birthplace of the mighty...
I spent two days on a Russian train, covering some 3,200 kilometres & crossing from Siberia (& Asia) into European Russia in the process, to get here to Nizhny Novgorod, a major transport & industrial centre & my first stop in European Russia on this,...
A 2-Day Trans-Siberian Diary Recapping A Trip On The Trans-Siberian Railway Russian third class, or platzkart, en route from Irkutsk to Tomsk, Siberian Russia. November 10, 2012 ; It’s approaching noon on November 12 & I’m 40 minutes out of Tomsk. I’m...
November 10, 2012, was one of those memorably forgettable travel days. Coming off a 28-hour train trip, I found Tomsk not to be the most welcoming of places to be at 2:00 a.m. One of many closed Siberian cities during the Cold War years, Tomsk felt very closed to me...
I’m riding the rails today. The Trans-Siberian rails. I’m en route to Tomsk, my next stop in Russia (still in Siberia), one time zone & approximately 1,700 kilometres west of Irkutsk on this, my second Trans-Siberian odyssey. I’ve been, and will...
There’s plenty of snow here in the village of Listvyanka on the shores of Lake Baikal, Siberian Russia. And it’s still coming down. Is it ever. It has been like this since I stepped off the bus from Irkutsk earlier this afternoon so I don’t know when...
