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Jonathan Campion Joined: June 22nd 2005
Logged in: April 14th 2011
Logged in: April 14th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Vulitsya Volodimirs'ka.
Some pictures I took this winter, sharing a flat with Nastya... ... read more
New Year's Eve on Khreshchatik.
Some pictures I took this winter, sharing a flat with Nastya... ... read more
Zoloti Vorota, or "Golden Gates", metro station.
Some pictures I took this winter, sharing a flat with Nastya... ... read more
Yaroslav Val's, the oldest part of Kyiv
Some pictures I took this winter, sharing a flat with Nastya... ... read more
The village of Poshekhon'e, in Rybynskaya oblast'.
Some, but by no means all, of my favourite days of the last nine months: YAROSLAVL, 2nd September 2005 to 7th January 2006: - My very first impressions of Russia. - A school day. Everything apart from me falling asleep on the Yartek sofa! - What a school day would have been like if I was born here. - The middle day of a first, unforgettable trip to Tatarstan. - A cold afternoon in an historic town. - The 25th Yartek play. - Reading week in the big city. (Day one of four.) - Ice-hockey, up close and personal. - The world's coldest and snowiest playground. - ... do as the Yartechniki do. - Not a turkey in sight. - A stroll around my future home, in a snow blizzard. dia... read more
James Joyce.
All that I have to do today is say goodbye. There is a train to Moscow at 10 this evening where I will stay with Helen for a day, buy some books, take a last look at Russia and get on another train to Lugansk in the east of Ukraine. I'll spend two days there with Ana, who I'm really looking forward to seeing again, then we'll go to her village, Popasnaya, for two weeks. Hopefully there will be one of Mrs. Kovalchuk's apple cakes waiting for me when I get there! It will be a chance to relax and let what has happened this year sink in. On the 3rd of June I'll find a town in the middle of the country to spend three days on my own there, before meeting up with Helen ... read more
Obshezhitie.
This morning in Lyudmila Giorgevna's lesson we gave our presentations of the essays we had written. Afterwards there was a leaving get-together in one of the classrooms, where myself Tamzin and Michael had a last chat with our teachers. Aleksandr Ivanovich, Zhanna, Elena, Lyudmila Giorgevna and Dimitrii Sergeevich the director drank coffee and ate biscuits with us and asked us about our plans for the summer. The sparkle in their eyes when I told them I was going to Kiev made me even more excited. Everyone, as ever, praised Michael for how well he spoke, told Tamzin how well she had done. And forgave me for not being a good student. They gave us each a certificate and a Tv.G.U key-ring and wished us luck for the future. Just as in Yaroslavl it was nice to ... read more
An attractive church in Tver.
I've been thinking about which parts of Russian life I haven't mentioned at least once in my diary. The first thing I thought of was the word 'бывает'. It roughly means "it happens" - what Russians say when something isn't done properly but no-one has the motivation to put it right. If a waitress makes you repeat an order three times then forgets it altogether, then бывает. If the woman in the post office refuses to give you an envelope - "there are none of them" - even though you can see some on her desk, then бывает. Russians are more easy going when things don't go their way and I amire them for it. The Finns and myself are learning, it's certainly a part of our sense of humour now. So at 8 o'clock this ... read more
Ploschad' Sovetskaya.
I took my last saturday morning trip to the market today. It was busy as usual and the stalls had even spread onto the grass next to the road, as there wasn't enough space for everyone to take a place on the side of the street. I wanted to buy a lot, souvenirs so to speak and things that you could only find in a Russian 'rynok'. I chose two corduroy flat caps for 650 roubles; as always they looked better on the rack than on my head but they remind me so much of the Russian people that I couldn't just walk past them. It was t-shirt weather today but there wouldn't be another chance to buy real winter clothes. The grey one would go with my overcoat, the light brown one with my woolly ... read more
