Sadko Hotel Veliky Novgorod

... that is familiar. Simply to be able to ask for things that I want or need without taking a lot of time to think about it beforehand will be wonderful. I know this contradicts what I said about how nice it is to have a mental challenge but I mean both. I am going to both enjoy having a break from the mental exercise and I will miss it at the same time.


Thats all for now folks! I'll be back soon with one or two more updates before I'm on my way.

Only a week and a half left in St. Petersburg and I am filled with a strange feeling of excitement to finally be home and panic that I haven't see all the Petersburg museums on my list! Thursday I finally got to the Nabokov museum here. Nabokov is a well-known Russian-American writer most famous ...

... German, and Russian) really comes through in his novels. The museum consists of a small section of Nabokov's childhood home. The house itself is immense and in one of the nicest neighborhoods in St. Petersburg. To say that he grew up in a privileged family would be an understatement.

Friday, I spent a large part of the day with Caroline trying desperately to figure out how to buy a Elektrichka ticket (regional train) to ...

Novgorod is a very old town; which actually performed a roll as a capital before Russia "really" existed. The buildings here are very old, some dating from the 8th Century. One of the churches here feels like a smaller version of the Church of the Spilt Blood - only done with Fresco's rather than mosaics, and much much older! Shellie and I had the opportunity to walk through the town ...

Although I have called this entry the Tran siberian Railway, technically Im not going the full length of it as Im cutting off before Vladivostok at Ulan Ude then heading South through Mongolia, across the Gobi desert and down to Bejing. So this is just the first leg of a 7,621 km (4,735 mile) train journey. (or it would more really as I started on the train from Kuopio in Finland) The first day wasnt to bad but the second, the smell did really start ...

... place with nothing to see. Oh and another great quote from the professor, "Come to Russia is like a breath of fresh air." In response to all those...ya know...capitalist places and such. We had to try really hard not to laugh at him on that one, since most of our first impression was a strong desire to not breathe in at all because of the pollution. Oh well... One more thing I should note. Novgorod was, in ...

... the night and spend all of today looking around. Novgorod got pretty thoroughly bashed up by the Nazis in World War II, in their usual respect for all things Slavic. Surprisingly, the Soviets did a pretty good job piecing the kremlin and most of the town's historic churches and monasteries together, rather than starting anew. The rest of the city, though, is nothing to write home about. Bland Soviet construction and drab pseudo-classical facades predominate even ...

... behind counters and you had to ask for everything, and pay for every food type (i.e. dairy, bread, fish, meat, alcohol) at a separate counter, by a separate lady. It was a unique experience, but very time consuming. I couldn't imagine trying to buy food for an entire family at this store! Also, the people that were behind the counters didn't seem to want to help us foreigners, and almost seemed put off if any of us wanted more than one of anything. It seemed like a ...

... to Denmark with us. 5 of us with luggage on this long voyage is going to be a real adventure. I wonder if any of us will like one another when the trip is over. We drove about 3/4ths of the way to St Peterburg and stopped in Novograd. IT is very old founded in 9th cenuury and is older than Moscow or St Petersburg. . We stayed at an old hotel that is being renovated and 5 of us ...

We went to see Swan Lake at the ballet, it was really interesting :(, but we had to see it in Russia, They sold vodka in the intermissions which was nice, we then burned the night but it had been a long few weeks so it was probably better. Next day we checked out some musuems, Peter and Pauls cathedral and ofcourse the palaces. They were insane, gold everywhere, rembrandt paintings, it was ...