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Last leg to Soest – 12001 km
We took the train from Trollhättan to Göteborg to Malmö and stayed overnight with our good friends Carl and Frida. The next day we went to Copenhagen, to see “Borgen” – Christiansborg – that is the physical center of political power in Denmark. The night train to Utrecht would have been perfect, with a luxurious […]
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chinese kids
Today we are going to vissit some chinese kids in Trollhättan. Strange that there even are chinees kids this much away from china, and especialy thatwe speek better chinese than them, but they are still fun to pláy with. We played with them one time before.
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Stugan Källarvinden – our cottage in the woods
We rent a small house in the forest near Alingsås, half an hour train ride from Göteborg. (Link to Google Map) It is part of an old village, with lots of new houses, and it is a ten minute walk to the train station. It is a five minute walk down to the lake Mjörn. […]
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Stockholm to Göteborg – 10925 km
Stockholm Central Station was full of passengers who could not take their trains, due to a fire in an electric power station. Our train was one of the few that could ride away that day – very lucky!
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Stockholm
We are now in Stockholm. We were just in the boat, our boat is from the Tallink company. We liked it in our boat (I think).
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Tallinn to Stockholm – 10456 km
We arrived in Stockholm safe and sound. The ferry ride was smooth as silk. The breakfast buffet was good as milk. 🙂 It was fantastic to be back in Sweden! The boat is called Tallink. The Carrot Man!
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Bungee jumping, with a trampoline
In Tallinn my brother and I went bungee jumping with a trampoline (we don`t know the real name but that is how we call it). I came as high as the metal things holding the ropes (that means having the rope straight (it was just like this ( – = rope, ( = left post, […]
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Tallinn – City of Knights
The valliant knights of the Teutonic Order were in charge in Reval (as the town was called in those days) for hundreds of years throughout the middle ages. The city flourished as part of the Hansa and the whole city center is a gem of Unesco world heritage quality. Today, the knights are brave, but […]
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St. Petersburg to Tallinn – 10106 km
The bus from St. Petersburg to Tallinn was a 7 hour pleasure ride. The bus was called “LUX express” and had free coffee, hot chocolate and wifi (which didn’t always work 🙁 ). We had to wait first XV minutes to go through the passport control, then at least one hour at the customs because […]
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Colours make us happy / Kleuren maken ons blij (met Heppie)
Good morning! Goedemorgen! When we arrived in Irkutsk, the first big city in Siberia, the Russian Federation, these flags where hanging in the street. Toen we in Irkutsk aankwamen, hingen deze kleurige vlaggetjes op straat. Both in Mongolia (especially inside the Gers, the nomadic tents, and in the clothing) and in the Russian […]
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Laser-beam
Before we came to St. Petersburg we watched a movie about St. Petersburg. In the movie we saw a laser-beam in-front of the main church, but when we came there for real there was no laser-beam 🙁 . (Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEooD5xiLMo, at 4:27 to 4:43, approx.) Does anybody know why?????? If you do, […]
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Morozhenoye – our favourite word in Russian
Almost as special as vodka is the Russian ice-cream – morozhenoye. Not only is it enjoyed in the middle of the winter, but it is distributed and enjoyed everywhere. On every train platform we stopped at, in every park, there was a babushka selling ice cream. Some good, some excellent. (And some molten and falling […]
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Hang – a mesmerizing music instrument
Today in a park in St. Petersburg, we heard for the first time ever the musical instrument Hang. It was very beautifully played by Sergei K. and we got a copy of his first CD. It is a very interesting instrument, developed just in the last fifteen years in Switzerland. If you know someone who […]
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Train to St.Petersburg – 9743 km
The train to St. Petersburg signals that we come to a part of the world where there is serious money. This ultramodern Siemens train zooms along beautiful tracks all the 700km to St.Petersburg in just a few hours. Here it is called Sapsan, but it is more or less the same as the German ICE-3 […]
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Marx, Engels and Lenin – the Soviet holy trinity
The Soviet holy trinity is still present in the cityscape of every Russian city we visit. Both in statue form and in road names. Most of Lenin, quite a few Marx and some Engels here and there. In the 90’s, in the Yeltsin times, there was a lot of shame for the Soviet […]
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The Church in Russia
The Church in Russia is coming back with a vengeance. After 70 years of oppression during the Soviet times, the Russian Orthodox Church is back in full force. Everyone we have met so far say that he/she believes, and some are regulars on the service. Some observers abroad who are worried about the strong ties […]
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Moscow, Goran’s old neighbourhood
We had a whole day of walking around the neighbourhood where I used to live in the boom years of 1996-97. It was before the stock crash of 1998 and the private economy was booming. The government was short on cash, but business were thriving and growing like crazy. Now the whole town has risen […]
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Train to Moscow (4 nights) – 9093 km
The train ride from Irkutsk to Moscow (more than 5000 km) was the longest leg on our journey. Four nights and three days in the train across the Siberian plains, the Ural mountains and the Volga-land to the capital. We had sun and rain and more sunshine, as the forests and villages swooshed by. Our […]
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Irkutsk – Walking around Town
Irkutsk is a pleasant town, especially in the center. Very walkable and plenty of cafés, beautiful old wooden houses and renovated 19’th century classical buildings. It was founded in the 1700s, when Russia expanded eastwards at an amazing pace, conquering kingdoms and khan-doms. During the 1800s, it was filled up through deportation. Hundreds of thousands […]