Some time during this past week, I realized that the nature of my trip to Russia requires me to be “obmanchivyy” (deceitful) – I have a secret. This goes completely against my interests.  What are those interests?  Well, I’ve placed myself on a path towards achieving complete freedom of verbal expression.  To be free, one [...]

Wow, ok, so it has been a month. My massive apologies to everyone. It was definitely a very odd month though –  starting out rolling along with a great deal of uneventfullness, but ending with a colossal collision into amazing adventure. Obviously, the main events were Moscow from March 24th to the 27th, and Rome [...]

The Leningrad blockade saw around one million deaths through shelling, starvation and disease at the hands of the Germans during World War II. The seige lasted almost three years and is often referred to as “The 900 days”. To draw a comparison, the United Kingdom and USA suffered combined losses of around 700,000 in the [...]

Here you can see it was starting to get colder. This is somewhere in between Novosbirsk and Irkutsk

Vicky here! We are writing this blog whilst on the train. A train journey that last for 3 days…Yes 3 WHOLE DAYS!!! Cabin Fever is setting in; the sweats, shivers and hallucinations. And its only been one night… So lets get away from our crazy cabin and go back to the serenity of our Lake [...]

Had a nice lazy day today, slept until noon, went for a walk with grandma and her cousin, at whose place we are staying. The apartment is very interesting – it’s located in an old building which was built before October Revolution of 1917. It was designed to house nobility, who preferred their ceilings as [...]

 (“In love”) Following a house party in Tomsk, small Nastia held my hand and wore my gigantic hooded fleece sweatshirt as she guided me through the streets to her home. The streets were full of gray darkness and refreshing, autumn windiness and four a.m. emptiness.  Nastia walked fast.  Her hands were small.  The sleeves of [...]

JUDY:  Some observations on Moscow and our experience here: Accommodations in Moscow are so expensive that multiple families may live in one apartment.  At the same time, everyone is very generous in helping each other out.  Olga had several possibilities of places for us to stay, some of which entailed friends or relatives giving over [...]

The noise of the train and in particular the door that was broken and thus rattled continuously kept me awake for most of the night, also due to the window that wasn’t properly sealed the temperature in the room had plummeted. It was so cold in fact that it hurt to breath, I put my [...]

Nach einer abendteuerlichen Minibusfahrt und einer anschliessend rassanten Taxifahrt von Listvyanka nach Irkutsk kamen wir, zu unserer Ueberraschung, heil in unserem Hotel an. Irkutsk gefaellt uns ausserordentlich gut. Die Stadt hat viel Gruenanlagen und schmucke alte Holzhaeuser. In der ganzen Stadt scheint eine Aufbruchstimmung zu herschen, ueberall wird renoviert und neu gebaut. Heute Abend gehts [...]