Skip to content

{ Author Archives }

Having just returned from Russia I recalled a really cool set of photos I saw on the web last year. They’re full colour photos taken by Tsar Nicholas II’s court photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii in 1907 – 1915. Quite spectacular. I tracked them down again in the Library of Congress’ web site, and here they […]

Thanks to Patrick, Molly and Paul I realized this evening that I’d skipped a day in my diary. I’d actually written it down, but forgot to copy it up to the Internet when I got to Helsinki. I’ve now posted it, but backdated it correctly to the right day. For your convenience, then, is the […]

I’m home!!!

Thursday, July 25, 2002 07:30 Location: SAS Lounge, Helsinki Airport Weather: Overcast Well, the trip’s basically over so I guess this will probably be my last post about it for a while. I’ve been negligent in writing even my paper copy of the journal the last couple of days, so I may have to gloss […]

Monday, July 22, 2002 Location: Brasserie restaurant, Ramada Hotel, Helsinki Weather: Cloudy & warm On Sunday morning we got up late and once again hit the breakfast buffet. I felt in no hurry to get out and see Tallinn, but packed up by suitcase and spent some more time on the hotel’s comupter and wrapping […]

[The missing post! Forgot to write this one up at the time…] 15:50 Location: Sun deck of the ferry m/s Romantika Weather: Overcast & cool Saturday morning we got up at 8 a.m. and went down for a wonderful breakfast buffet in the Hotel Viru’s restaurant. I delighted in a hardboiled egg and some tasty […]

Sunday, July 21, 2002 10:25 Location: Computer centre, Hotel Viru, Tallinn, Estonia Weather: Hazy and warm [Picking up from yesterday’s entry, I was in the process of describing Thursday. This is why I need to keep my diary more up to date.] We got back to the hotel right on time, but rather hot and […]

Saturday, July 20, 2002 9:14 Location: Lobby, Hotel Viru, Tallinn, Estonia Weather: Sunny & hot Falling behind in the diary is stressful: it feels like I have a terrible weight of recent wonderful experiences to commit to words before my sieve of a memory forgets all the details. Thursday I spent the whole day at […]

Friday, July 19, 2002 14:35 Location: The Estonian-Russian border Weather: Slightly hazy, warm — hot on the bus We just left Russian and are parked while the Estonian border guards work through the stack of passports from our bus. Our three buses have been separated by the combined attentions of the Russians and Estonians — […]

Wednesday, July 17, 2002 09:30 Location: On the bus Weather: Cooler, sunny again Oops. Missed two days of the old journal. Time to get cracking! Monday we trucked off to Novgorod for the day and for our first concert of the tour. It’s a three hour drive south of St. Petersburg, but it was a […]