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OVER THE ATLANTIC — It’s over! And I can’t quite believe it. I’ve ridden a Mongolian horse, seen Lake Baikal, toured the Hermitage, discovered Georgian food, admired Lenin’s corpse, and much much more. Over a little less than 3 weeks, we spent 158 hours on the train, and covered about 6,000 miles (some of it [...]
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MOSCOW — It’s our last day in Russia, meaning that this three-week-long journey of daily posting is coming to an end. (But not yet — come back tomorrow for one last round-up!) So rather than telling you what we did today*, I’ll share a few final thoughts and observations from our brief stay in the [...]
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MOSCOW — They say that in Russia, all trains lead to Moscow. In Moscow, all roads lead to Red Square. The huge cobblestoned square is the heart of the city, and many of Moscow’s most famous sites are concentrated around the square. Today, we managed to visit most of them. Here’s my quick-and-dirty guide: The [...]
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MOSCOW — Before I came to Russia, my knowledge of Russian church architecture was limited to St. Basil’s Cathedral. I half-expected the insides of Russian churches to resemble the Candyland-fantasy exterior of Russia’s most famous church. In St. Petersburg, the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, which marks the spot where Alexander II was [...]
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ST. PETERSBURG — On our second day in St. Petersburg, we headed for the State Hermitage Museum, Russia’s most important museum dedicated to non-Russian art. In size and scope, the Hermitage rivals the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Louvre. On top of that, the gallery is housed in the czars’ former Winter Palace, which [...]
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ST. PETERSBURG — We’ve been making pretty good progress on our checklist of Russian foods to try: blini, pelmeni, borscht and vareniki have all been crossed. Tonight we ventured south — culinarily speaking — to Georgia, the former Soviet Republic in the Caucasus. We were following a lead from the New York Times to Khinkalnaya-Khachapurnaya, [...]
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NIZHNY NOVGOROD — Way before this trip began, when I put together 10 Steps to Planning A Trans-Siberian Trip, the next-to-last step was “Learn Cyrillic.” All the guidebooks recommended it, since picking up the alphabet allows you to pronounce place names and signs, even if you don’t speak Russian. Now that I’ve been in Russia [...]
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THE BORDER BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE — Today is our last full day on the train — hurrah! — and since I’ve already told you about what we do and what we eat onboard, I thought today I’d tackle the question of what the digs are like. For all of our train rides within Russia, [...]
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YEKATERINBURG — I went through my “kings and queens” phase when I was 12 or 13. I was mainly interested in the English royals, and I read everything I could, from popular history to historical fiction. Along the way, I was also fascinated by the tragic story of the last czar of Russia and his [...]
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SIBERIA — As you cross time zones and borders on the Trans-Mongolian, the days blur together and it is easy to forget where you are, exactly. One way to remind yourself is to visit the dining car, which changes at every border. You eat in a Chinese dining car while in China, a Mongolian car [...]
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Travel stories and advice from an independent traveler and expat in China. Full bio
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