Update 12 May 2014: It is now possible to subscribe to the blog – to get a weekly digest by email.
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 … Continue reading
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. … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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! … Continue reading
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).
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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! … Continue reading
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 ( – = … Continue reading
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, … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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. … Continue reading
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. … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
The Russian баня (banya) is like a sauna but you get to hit each other with birch branches. It can be over 80ºC hot on the top but the lower you get the colder it is. We went to a баня in a local family’s house. They were selling smoked … Continue reading
The Baikal Lake is enormous. It contains 1/5th of all liquid fresh water on the planet and is more than 1500m deep. It is a geological rift valley, where the Earth crust is pulling apart, and it is still widening with a centimeter or so per year. It is also … Continue reading
Night train into Sibiria. A romantic train ride over the mountains in northern Mongolia and onto the Sibirian lowlands. We set off in the evening and spent almost 36 hours on the road. However, at least six hours was waiting time at the border crossing. First three hours at the … Continue reading
The Takhi horse, often called Przewalski after the first European to document this animal, is the original horse – like the wolf is the original dog. Over 5000 years ago people in Central Asia tamed the Takhi and over the generations it was transformed into the horse as we know … Continue reading
Mongolia is huge. Similar to the size of West Europe, and the population is only three million people (of which most live in Ulaan Baatar). I think that the main reason for the low population density is the difficulty in growing food. Large parts of the country is desert or … Continue reading