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Two Weeks and Counting

Wind down time is here. I leave St. Petersburg tomorrow afternoon heading to Helsinki for a day and then to Tallinn. This is a bit of a new development. The plan was to get over to the Estonian capital first and then …
Let's Make Like Raskolnikov, or, Anybody Got an Axe?

It's another rainy day in Russia. And I'm going really slowly. I woke up this morning but it was difficult and I didn't really want to crawl out of bed but it did happen after about fifteen minutes of lying in bed aski…
Pictures...unposted

I have uploaded several pictures from Mongolia but because I don't have time to write my posts up about them, I haven't posted them in a proper way. However, you can still view them. Just click on PHOTOS on the link…
High School Reunions

And it seems that this summer would mark the tenth year of my graduation from the dark side of purgatory also known as high school. I really hated high school. Just didn't care for it too much. At least I've found mor…
Change is a Comin'

Chris is a friend of mine. Has been for a long while now. The other day, he sent me a reply to an email, which, in part, concerned a statement of mine about not coming back to the States - a long-standing fantasy of mi…
White Nights

It was the name of a movie from the late 80s with Gregory Hines and Mikhail Barishnikov. A jetliner has serious mechanical failures and makes an emergency landing in Russia, Barishnikov's homeland and he is forcefully r…
You know, I thought this was a joke but it ended up being listed on my tracker. Hicksville New York United States
When I was traveling on the Trans-Siberian, I was thinking what it would be like to be locked up for several days with people I know. Who would be fun to hang out with the entire time? who would be annoying? who would g…
What's there left to say?

About a week or so ago, I sent out a mass email to three groups of people: one to family, another to friends, and the last to people I have met on this trip. My friends and family have, for the most part, written me b…
I'm at the Travelers' Guesthouse in Moscow. The music in the reception where I'm typing up this piece is playing. Some techno fills the room and I'm checking out the newly updated profiles on that damnable server kno…
The Trouble with Time Zones

As I have been on the exact other side of time for what seems a much more protracted amount of time than I can even imagine at the moment, I have realized that I'm only seven, maybe eight hours ahead of Home. The usua…
Capital City

I've finally made it. Moscow. I'm back on the Continent and it shows and screams Europe (even if it is Russian Europe), from the top of every cupola and brick to the couples in the metro snuggling up to one another. …
Headed back to the Continent

In another series of steps back to reality, I'm heading out of Irkutsk, my window to Continental Europe, this afternoon on a 76 hour train ride to Moscow. No stops, no chances for meanderings in Western Siberia. And …
Back to Irkutsk...

Just a quick line to let you all know that I've made it back from an incredible five days along the most beautiful lake in the world, Baikal.
Going Home

The end wasn't officially in sight until yesterday but now it is. I bought my tickets home. The trip ends at 12.10 PM on July 13th. Sort of puts a perspective on things.
The Devil Did It To Me...again.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that I ended up spending all of yesterday feeling like I was going to die in some hostel bed in some unholy Russian backwater. The first train ride, the one from Ulaanbaatar to Ulan …
Still in Ulan Ude

I went and bought my ticket yesterday at the train station, not a short walk and not easy with all the smog in the air so I decided to sit down in a coffeehouse and relax the last hour before I had to pack off back to th…
I'm in Ulan Ude, Russia
Leaving Mongolia

I'll spare the long-winded details but I'm leaving UB today. The post office is closed, I have a lot of things I'm now going to have to carry around. It's sunny out. A far cry from all the rainy weather over the pas…