July 9, 2013 Initially I, of course, had great plans for a comprehensive Balkan trip, including the best places (mostly Unesco World Heritage Sites) in Serbia, Macedonia, Kotor, and Albania. The trip gradually boiled down to Serbia (Exit Festival in Novi Sad) and Kotor, with possible excursions to Dubrovnik in Croatia and Shkoder in Albania. Unlike the previous year, we’d not take the exhausting bus from Beograd to Montenegrin coast along the serpentine, but simply fly from Beograd to Kotor and back. Our (my and Vasily’s) second trip to Serbia and Montenegro was arranged somewhere in the end of March or beginning of April; we bought air tickets for a modest price and waited patiently. Alexey (my schoolmate) decided to join us later and would only stay with us in Serbia. This time we stayed one ... read more

We took an early bus to Geneva, and it was mutually agreed that Luda would stay in Geneva and I’d go to Lausanne where my total stay was a little bit longer than one and a half hour, or two hours at best. I was rather exhausted by this time and did not want more sights, but simply get home and rest a bit. The price of the train ticket was crazy, but it can be afforded once in a year. The bus to Minsk would depart at 16.00 from Geneva Gare Routiere. Luda constantly repeated how much she liked Chamonix and the Evian Water! I am just now thinking that, if there were a couple of thousand spare Euros in my pocket, I’d still be there, climb Mont-Blanc (say, from June 15 to June 19), ... read more

I had bought a ticket to Amiens in advance. I wanted to go there to see the Amiens Cathedral, listed among UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I had early departure (and cheap ticket) in the morning, but managed to have breakfast (it was scheduled at 7-30, I went there at some 7-20 or so); there was no milk and I had to wait about five minutes. The train to Amiens took an hour and twenty minutes and there were no cancellations or late departures as compared to Rouen. I walked without a map, saw an unusually tall and narrow building in front of the gare – it is called Tour Perret, a 27-storey residential skyscraper. I was looking for signs of the cathedral, and soon its arches showed up. The cathedral is the tallest of the classic ... read more

I bought train tickets to Rouen for us in advance, but Luda was unable to accompany me because of sickness, and it was such a happy coincidence, as we'll shortly see. This time Luda made for me some sandwiches, which we found to be an excellent way of sustenance, tasty, cheap, and fast. The train was due to depart at 10.40 or so, but when I came to Gare St. Lazare and observed the information display, a feeling crept all over me that something went wrong, because there were captions “retard indefinit” – we can translate the second word, and deduce the meaning of the first one, ‘delayed indefinitely’: meaning that train would not depart for an unknown amount of time, maybe an hour, maybe two, maybe three… There were public address notifications delivered in French ... read more

The word ‘encore’ in English is defined as ‘a demand by an audience for an additional performance…’, while in French it means ‘more’, 'again’. Paris seems in demand for a billion additional performances. We decided to revisit Paris in 2013 for more Roland Garros games (I managed to secure only the women’s and men’s Finals pack for 200 Euros), while also planning to go to Chamonix (again! – referring to self, I wanted to show the magic place to Luda) and Nice, but the latter was discarded due to lack of time and funds. The preparation for the trip included buying a lot of train, bus, and plane tickets and booking accommodation in Paris (a hostel) and Chamonix (a three-star hotel, because I did not want any neighbours’ noise there). I also obtained a French Schengen ... read more