Where you will find my (documented) thoughts, worries, concerns, and issues
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I rarely remember my dreams. I have to wake up in the middle of them to remember what they were about, and quite often I’m so tired that by the time I can get my mental faculties together to try and remember the dream, I …
Not quite two years ago, I had the pleasure of riding trains from St. Petersburg, Russia all the way to Hong Kong. Quite the experience, let me tell you. One part of it was riding the Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Things seen along the way.] As we’ve moved along over this journey, I’ve taken pictures of things for posting to the blog. Some of them didn’t make it, for one reason or …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: More Russian train stuff.] Okay, quick update…So Continuously Welded Rail (CWR) doesn’t exist coast-to-coast. After we left Ekaterinburg, we went to jointed rail. …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Crossing the Russia - Mongolia border by train.] We knew this was going to be rough. We knew this was going to be long. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be, but …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Da svidanya Rossiya.] Well, we’ve reached the end of our time here in Russia. Tomorrow morning, early, we’re off to Mongolia. And a 10+ hour border-crossing, so we’re …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: The last Russian stop.] We’re in Ulan Ude now, having arrived a bit later last night than scheduled. (Mind you, it took a half hour to walk from the train to the hotel.) …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Listvyanka and Lake Baikal.] The cold seems to be slowly moving away. It hit me a little harder than it did Amy, so while she dealt mostly with the sniffles, I’ve been …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Alive in Irkutsk.] You know that feeling you get, when you’re finding yourself walking down a street in a dream, and you’re not sure if you know where you are, but you …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Cough.] I’m sick. I caught Amy’s cold. I hate being sick. The only thing worse than being sick is being sick on a train. It ruins the experience. Blech. Sniff
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Amy, communications superstar!.] So, sitting in the only internet connection in all of Krasnoyarsk (or seemingly so), Amy dove into one of the sites she used extensively …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: A little story about Ekaterinburg.] Ekaterinburg (Soviet name, a much harsher “Sverdlovsk”) is a wonderful little place to spend an afternoon. Assuming you …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: A (hopefully) brief stop in Krasnoyarsk.] Krasnoyarsk. I think it’s Russian for “ass end of the country”. There ain’t much here. This is the most utilitarian …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: The internyet.] Okay, just a general bitch about Russia. Where the hell are all the internet cafes?? Our guides are out of date — we accept that. But do we have to …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: The language barrier.] Okay, we finally hit the wall. It took us a while. Kazan is far enough away from Moscow that you’ll be hard-pressed to find much English. The most …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Russian trains.] A few of you are probably wondering about the Russian train system. (Okay, I imagine not really wondering about the system, but about why I haven’t …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Half-way, sorta.] We’re now halfway home. Sort of. Ekaterinburg is roughly halfway around the world from Calgary. (It’s also in Asia — we crossed the Europe/Asia divide …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Kazan kicked butt.] Okay, a HUGE thumbs up to Kazan. Wow. Such an amazing little city. I’m sure Kazan itself is quite large, but the “main” area is …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Finding the Academy of Geology Hotel.] When the Lonely Planet books fall a little short…So here’s the description of the Academy of Geology Hotel here in …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: One step closer to home; hanging out in Kazan.] We arrived in Kazan early this morning. I awoke with the sunrise, watching it through the train’s window. It’s already …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: The last Moscow post.] We’ve wandered a lot through Moscow, and I never did get around to talking about it due to all the bitching I was doing. So… We took Train …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Kazan, take me away!.] I wholeheartedly agree with Amy. Moscow is dismal. Even when it’s sunny, it’s dismal. There is just no joy or life in this city. I don’t know if …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Any idea how hard it is to find the internet in Moscow?.] Hard. Really hard. Amy and I got here yesterday morning, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find an …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Football and music.] Turns out that our excursion to Tinkoff to discuss politics turned into a football lesson. (That’s “football” as in how the rest of the …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: St. Petersburg in the rain.] It was a rainy day when my brother Raoul… no, wait, sorry — that’s a Pizzaville ad. But it was a rainy day here (the rain only …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Hermitage, Railway Museums, and Palaces, oh my!.] Oy. The last 36-ish hours have been a whirlwind of activity. Hit the Hermitage, as you already know, and then hit it up …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Pickpockets suck!.] I’ve had two separate and unique run-ins with pickpockets. The first was at the Edgefest concert in Vancouver back in “99. I think we were …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: 16 years ago....] I had a phone chat with Alex this morning (it hasn’t been a week, and I miss her sorely; the next six weeks almost seem unfathomable), and she let me …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Visiting the Hermitage.] The Hermitage is if not the largest art museum in the world, definitely in the top five. The place is MASSIVE. It makes the British Museum seem …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Things have changed.] Taking the bus out to the Metro yesterday was a bit of an eyeopener. Things have really changed here in St. Petersburg in the last 16 years. New …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: Back in the USSR ... sorta.] Flew in Miami Beach BOAC, Didn’t get to sleep last night. All the way a paper bag was on my knee, Man, I had a dreadful flight. I’m back in …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: On the way to Russia.] Why is it that British buildings are so freaking hot? My bag finally appeared at the hotel last night. Clean underwear is a good thing, indeed. …
Observer’s Log: Traveldate 890711.18 Day 12 If you’re wondering what happened to Day 11, it was spent trying to figure what the hell happened to this journal. Two nights ago, I gave the journal to Greg the Wonder Dummy …
Observer’s Log: Traveldate 890709.20 Day 10 Today, almost everyone (except Jason ) was in higher spirits. Jason felt as if he were dead and spent the entire day in bed. Lisa and Greg disappeared for the whole day, which …
Observer’s Log: Traveldate 890708.16 Day 9 Today, we had a very wet tour of Sochi. This city of 130,000+ has only been here for about 150 years and does not have any significant history except for its Sanatoria, which …
Observer’s Log: Traveldate 890707.10 Day 8 Today, almost all of us “men” leave for Sochi, about 4 hours before any of the girls. Most of us are just laying around while the girls are at the beach (some have …
Observer’s Log: Traveldate 890703.12 Day 4 We are about to leave the Zagorsk religious complex for a restaurant (I hope!) and then back to Moscow to GUM and then dinner (fish guaranteed) and then to the train. No-one …
The next thing I heard was the beeping from my alarm clock. It has one of those annoying electric beeps that grates on your nerves after a beep or two. The clock was on Jason’s side of the table that rested between our …
Day 2 began pretty much the way Day 1 ended — at 35,000 feet. The only thing that really marked the passage of a day was a change in the clocks. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t clear when the day actually started. You …