Greetings! It's been a very long time since I last posted here. Had you forgotten you were a subscriber? I hope the past months have treated you well. I'll be brief. I've set up a new blog, and one intended to be in regular use. This travel blog was intended to serve a particular purpose, i.e. to chronicle the trip Lauren and I took last summer, and it served this purpose very well. When I set this up I didn't imagine I'd ever have the desire or energy to maintain a blog regularly. Now I feel differently. Basically I've noticed I [View Full Entry]

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Having never kept a blog before, when I started this one I wasn't sure how it would go. I've never really been comfortable with the concept of sharing day-to-day personal reflections on the LiveJournal model - what would I say? Would I keep up with it? Despite a couple of big gaps I'm happy to say it has been kept up, and in the end has been a good way for me to process and digest the trip. I've been so thankful for everyone's messages and comments, thank you. A journey like this one is certainly one to be shared with [View Full Entry]

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There's a lot of evidence to suggest that I don't understand the concept of blogging. Aren't blogs supposed to be a regular thing, the blogger posting weekly or even daily during the some event or trip so others can share the experience? It's been more than a month since my last post - in fact there's been nothing since I got on the train... I apologize. As things turned out, it was harder than I'd expected to find internet cafes along the way, and all those I did find lacked the Java plug-in I need to post pictures to the travel [View Full Entry]

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Tallinn The border crossing from Russia into Estonia was easier than I'd expected, though overnight bus rides as a rule cause me pain. I can never get to sleep. Following a night of on-and-off dozing we arrived in Tallinn a little before sunrise. Being from Schenectady, I'm used to scary, abandoned-looking bus stations, but the one in Tallinn was still impressive. It was locked, of course, and it would be 90 mins before it opened. Sitting alone with my 35lb bag didn't feel safe ... but neither did walking. I was a bit stuck. I resolved to make for the old [View Full Entry]

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We moved quickly on to St Petersburg (henceforth SP) after only a few days in Moscow, but at this point my mind was turning to things to come. Estonia and Lithuania and maybe Poland, Germany, and (all this within 5 days, mind you) onward to Brussels and my new Leuven digs by 1 September. I'm ambitious. As it turned out my SP visit would be extended a bit, and these post-Russia travel abbreviated. More on that in my next post. For now, SP. For Lauren and me, the place was a breath of fresh air. Moscow had been too glamorous, too [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in the main Moscow station on 22 August in the late afternoon. Our Aeroflot companion had gotten off a few hours before, giving way to a friendly young fellow from Lebanon, on his way home from several weeks of business east of Moscow. His business: installing some high-tech machinery in Russian factories. He apparently visits Russia four times annually to oversee these installations. His opinion of Russia and its people wasn't very high - too much drunkenness, too little discipline. His opinion in any case. He'd be glad to be in his own bed that night ... so would [View Full Entry]

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By the time we boarded the train we were ready for it. We'd been in Mongolia for 10 days and were ready to move again. Regrets: that we didn't take a bike tour around UB, and missed a trip to the Gobi desert. C'est la vie! Next time. In any event, we climbed aboard the train under cover of darkness with great excitement and anticipation. This is what we'd come for. We traveled for two nights from UB to Irkutsk, just west of Lake Baikal in far eastern Russia. The first morning came quickly - by 5am we were at the [View Full Entry]

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I wrote this text more than a month ago, just after returning to Ulan Bator and visiting Happiness Land. The post is in two parts - make sure not to skip the photos of Happiness Land, they're surreal! GER CAMP On Sunday 8/10 we met our tour guide, checked out a Soviet-Mongolian monument overlooking Ulaanbataar (UB), then headed out to a ger camp about an hour to the east. What is a ger camp? The ger is a traditional Mongolia nomadic dwelling, about to be taken apart and transported to a new location ... in a day! Called a yurt elsewhere, [View Full Entry]

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I've never traveled in a country like Mongolia, it's the most unlike the US of any place I've been. The attached photos are from around Ulaanbaatar, the capital, and from an important monastery in the city. Internet time is short, so I won't make much comment here other than what I've said in the captions. One note: we went to an 'Irish Pub' last night with a few lovely kids from Nottingham, UK. The pub ... well, there was no Irish music, no Guiness, only table service, and the place was decorated with pictures of the Coliseum and ... the Tower [View Full Entry]

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A few words on the DMZ. We took the tour on Tuesday with about 70 other people, the lot of us packed into two buses at 7:30am and drove north. Our tour guide was likable and charismatic, though unfortunately his accent in English was so thick that we couldn't understand more than 15% of what he said. Lauren and I both knew some broad strokes about the Korean war / armistice, etc. I at least have learned a number of things: - Many in the younger generation wish the north had won the war ... at least that way the country [View Full Entry]

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