Tuvan cowboys and bachelor pads

I’m sitting at a low makeshift kitchen table, made of a slab faux-cherrywood countertop balanced on a cardboard speaker box. It’s the only clean surface in the apartment. Balanced against the wall beside me stands a mountain bike. The Kruschev-era, meal-colored wallpaper is peeling in places, revealing cheap plaster underneath. It’s hard to tell what [...]

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Mojo: from bad to good

Greetings from the local radio station in Tuva.
Krasnoyarsk, my first stop in eastern Siberia, killed any mojo I had built up in Tomsk. After arriving on the train on Sunday at 11 am I spent the entire day looking for a room – all the inexpensive places were full. I even took a bus ride [...]

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Kyzyl foh shizzle

It was 6:45 am, Eastern Siberian Time. I was in a minivan with nine laughing Mongolian-looking young men who I had just met at the train station. As we rattled along the road out of Abakan, our chain-smoking driver pulled out wrap-around shades to block the sun that had squeezed its way through the thick [...]

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Sleepy in Tomsk

It’s rather ironic, how exhausted I seem to be after these long overnight/multi-night train rides. Having spent three days doing basically nothing, all I could manage today was to go on a halfhearted wander through town and then to take a nap. The good news, for me, is that the energetic 22-year-olds I met on [...]

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Welcome to Siberia

I just arrived in Tomsk, a university town just off the Trans-Siberian railway line. After a one wet, cold night in Yekaterinburg (aka Sverdlovsk) between trains, Tomsk is sunny but markedly colder than the other side of the Urals.
The train has been interesting so far. I’ve spent days in silent reading, with all my compartment-mates [...]

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Kazan, Kazan.

Kazan, Kazan. I’m not sure about this place. I came here because it’s the capital of Tartarstan, one of many semi-autonomous republics of the new Russia. Its history is complicated – I’ve read about it a few times, and I’m still confused. The originals, I think, are Bulgars (kin in name, at least, to modern [...]

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Read the NY Times….

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/travel/17journeys.html?_r=1&ref=travel
They cut a bunch (notably my LSD reference) but still….cool to see the story out there! I guess it’ll be in the Sunday Travel section, too.
In other brief news, I’m taking the train from Kazan to Tomsk tonight, via Уekaterinburg. I arrive in Tomsk Tues am. I’ll try to post details from an internet cafe [...]

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Moscow…..a haze

[I just added links to this post, but then had the effing internet run out on me mid-post. so the whole effing things was lost. so now I'm reposting sans links. I'm annoyed.]
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I’m sitting in a student cafeteria in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Tartarstan Republic and the so-called Istanbul of Russia. I arrived [...]

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Moscow

Yes, I know I haven’t posted in a while. But I’ve been busy!
I’m sitting here in the hanging out room of the Home from Home hostel in Moscow. The gargantuan “maid” is sitting in her usual spot, watching the Eurovision competition, being broadcast live from right here in Moscow. So you’ll forgive me if I [...]

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Staraya Russa

ed note: I wrote this a day ago, in SR. I’m actually in Moscow now – just arrived by overnight train. I couldn’t post this from SR because the internet cafe there was disgusting and I didn’t want to spend any time there. and no wifi. anyway…here it is. more about Moscow when I’ve got [...]

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