Best Eastern Belogorye Belgorod

Well, I'm wrapping up my trip here in Kharkov. This is a long post that correspondes with the pictures. I've just been procrastinating a lot with my blog updates, so I'm doing a lot of it here. There is a lot more to tell though than this one blog post!

Had a nice trip learned a lot about myself, women, and poker. This is mostly online poker as I've played more on this vacation than any time in my life. Poker has been up and down for me as usual, but I managed to make a little ...

Night Train to Simferopol

October 27, 2009

The night train left at 9:32 p.m. from Kharkov to Simferopol. I had a first class compartment to myself in car 11. There were 26 cars on the train so it was a long train. The car conductor came to visit me shortly after I had settled into my compartment but I could not understand what she was saying so gave her my tickets ...

... I’m not going to see it. It’s still another hour before we can go to the train station so he asks if I want to use the internet at his office. So I end up sitting in a Ukrainian travel office for over an hour on the internet.

When it is time, Vlad takes me back to the train station and we wait for my train to arrive. Then we have to wait for the car conductor to open the door on my car. When she does ...

... The car starts and there is no shooting fuel out of any of the three junctions. He stops the engine and gets back under the car to tie the fuel line to the undercarriage so that it won’t drag on the ground or road and break again. In a few minutes he is up and putting everything away and sorting out the borrowed screwdrivers and knife to give back to the boys who have been standing in the shadows the entire time ...

... anywhere for this encounter. Finally under the weight of the collective disapproval of the Chumacks and Cossacks the guilty party would step forward and be taken away by the Cossacks and the rest of the Chumacks could go on their way.

The guilty Chumack then gave the correct number of bags of salt and fish and one would think that would be the end of it but as a punishment, the Cossacks would remove the ...

... roads with plenty of potholes, and swerving around traffic and geese and dogs and screeching to a halt when he’s passed the gate or entrance.

At the end, I am again in the back seat because I don’t want to see what’s coming as we race back into town (again top speed about 60 mph) and I just hang onto the chicken strap and keep my eyes closed and chant a mantra that I will make it ok. I did.

... to request to the authorities to increase the number of playgrounds.

Of course, in the nest is eggs. Each growing his own grain of kindness. One for love, second for happiness, third for purity.

Every day has different entertainment. Today, flying over the square on the balloon.

During the festival will be held: Day of dance, Day of song, Day of thought, Speech day, Day of the theater, Day of ...

I wake up very early in the morning and cannot get back to sleep. The anxiety of the crossing in to Russia today keeps my mind racing. It was okay the last time three years ago with Sandy, Rob and Shel though our exit was coloured by a scam we fell foul of which left a bit of a bad taste. But on my own. That's different. I exit the Ukraine in 30 minutes. It might have been longer when a Customs official indicates he wants ...

Having received a gold medal on Olympiad in Zheleznovodsk, I have arrived to Belgorod with the big hopes and self-confidence. However all was not too easily as last time. The Competition appeared much more strongly, and tasks were more complex and difficult than earlier. After practical ...

Belgorod is the city where Lucy grew up. We went to visit her family over the holidays. While there were visited a country house where we had shashlik (basically, it's shish kabob) We visited a church that had been rebuilt but the original tunnels under ground were still there. The tunnels are hundreds of years old and Monks used to live there. The tunnels were created to protect religious types from the ...