Random Photo: “Yakutsk”
If Yakutsk, Russia, ever gets a pro basketball team, can I suggest the name Yakutsk Cats?
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Robert’s Greatest Hits
Category Archives: Russia
Interview: Ian Frazier on Siberia
Ian Frazier spent about 17 years researching and writing ‘Travels in Siberia,’ about the same time Axl Rose took for ‘Chinese Democracy’ – but with better results. Frazier’s fascination for the forlorn and mythic, plus his humor, has always appealed to me. When I started as a Lonely Planet author, I picked put two destinations atop my author wish-list: the US Great Plains … Read on
How to Fly Right
A few years ago, on a flight from Magadan to Vladivostok, Russia, a couple thin, well-dressed Russians in suits looked across the aisle to me, one shook a vodka bottle and asked ‘you drink with us’ — no question mark intended. After a few shots on the flight, we landed and I watched the two exit first and proceed to immigration, where they … Read on
Tribute: Ronnie James Dio on Travel
SIBERIAN INTERVIEW, 2005During my first crossing of Siberia, in 2005, I was smitten by the kindness of Russians on trains, the beauty of Lake Baikal and Kamchatka and — even more so — the flood of ‘Dio’ posters plastered on street signs in places like Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk. It left me to wonder, maybe heavy metal didn’t die when Kurt Cobain donned his … Read on
Non-Virtual Trans-Siberian
Did you hear you can ‘ride’ the Trans-Siberian Railway on Google? Last year a team spent 30 days on the six-day ride from Moscow to Vladivostok to roll a camera, during daylight, at a (sometimes maddening 25-degree angle) out the north-side window. Seven time zones worth. I wrote on Lonely Plant that it missed the real highlight: what happens on the train. But … Read on
Chekhov Was Here
Ah, the “following the footsteps of” article. I’m guilty. Last year, while updating Lonely Planet’s Trans-Siberian Railway, I retraced parts of the most punk-rock trips of all time (and wrote about it for World Hum): Anton Chekhov’s trip across Russia in 1890 to spend a summer living in a penal colony. It was pretty courageous. Going a year before the train construction began, … Read on
