Third parties may place cookies on this site. That is beyond our control. Please be advised.
-
Russia by train, air and bus, for two major cities.
See two sites:
1. Russia Road Ways. Moscow; and
2. Russia Road Ways St. Petersburg.
Overview.
Our years of improvised road trips through much of Europe did not provide enough confidence for me to drive where Cyrillic rules, and without much in the way of English backup. Dan and I, then, went by small tour -- Moscow and St. Petersburg -- to see what that might be like for future trips in really unknown places.
A tour for a starter where alphabet, language and even sounds are new, is highly recommended. How to drive amid all that, and be safe.
A return: My preference for any return, which is unlikely because of the distance and costly requirement of visa, is to go back to Moscow, and add Stalingrad; and not return to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg is, of course, spectacular with canals like Amsterdam or Venice, vast palaces, culture. But it all dates from the 1700's roughly, like our Philadelphia in terms of reference date,if not for palace extravaganzas. I would like to explore more grit, as in Moscow.
For a return to Russia, I would prefer do do it with Dan as independent travelers, through the auspices (required for the visa) of some group that provides that service of sponsorship, but not traveling on schedule with them. I felt safest, however, when there were three of us off on our own, so perhaps just the two of us is not sense.
We had expert and substantive guiding, however, and the lines to get into major places are huge. A tour group gets the job done with less waste of time. All a trade-off.
Even with a group, we are delighted to report that we found the unexpected. This little window view, complete with viewing glass, is above the hopper in a stall in a ladies' room -- where bird's nest and entertainment is provided. Russia, cheers!
0Add a comment
-
Getting the Idea Across Fast
With this online, we can translate the basics in a flash, go anywhere, and not reinvent the wheel each time. We are heading off to Barcelona, Pyrenees and South of France. French I know, enough. Spanish: need more help.
Conversation, getting and giving information, requires fast reference. Language glossaries in guide books are useless for day-to-day use, inconvenient, too too. Start with your own interests, write out what you think you will need, go to a translation thing online, and roll it out.
Each category -- cut to fit your wallet, sideways. When you need a category, slip it up so you can read it. Staple once at the top corner. This works well when crossing borders.
Here, I put the English last because usually the words are recognizable.
Habitaciones
Hola. Estamos contentos de estar aquÃ.
Por favor. Gracias. Disculpe.
Quisiera una habitación para mà y mi hijo adulto.
Queremos quedarnos por una noche.
Nos gustarÃa camas separadas.
¿Cuál es el costo?
¿Sirven el desayuno? ¿Cuánto?
¿Hay un cuarto de baño?
¿Cuándo es el registro de salida
¿Dónde puedo aparcar de forma segura¿Hay un albergue cercano
Si no tienen espacio, ¿podrÃa recomendar
donde podrÃamos ir
Gas, lo necesario, llegar
¿PodrÃa decirme dónde está la gasolinera más cercana es.
garaje
¿Hay un baño cercano
Comidas
Nos gustarÃa pollo, carne de res, carne de cerdo, huevos, emparedado
Stew, asados​​, sopas, mariscos, pan
¿Hay una especialidad local que pudimos probar
Vino, cerveza, refrescos, agua sin gas, agua con gas (!)
¿Qué harÃa usted pide aquÃ
pánico
No puedo encontrar mis gafas, pasaporte, billetera, ingenio
¿Se los dejo aquÃ
¿Puedo dejar mi correo electrónico (tener uno para este fin)
Por favor, hágamelo saber si aparecen
..............................................................
Rooms and Politeness
Hello. I am glad to be here.
Please. Thank you. Excuse me.
I would like a room for myself and my adult son.
We want to stay for one night.
We would like separate beds.
What is the cost?
Do you serve breakfast? How much?
Is there an en suite bathroom?
Is there a hostel nearby
If you have no room, could you recommend
where we might go
Gas, the Necessary, Directions
Could you tell me where the nearest gas station is.
Garage
Is there a bathroom nearby
Meals
We would like chicken, beef, pork, eggs, sandwich
Stew, roasted,soup, seafood, bread
Wine, beer, soda, water no gas, water with gas (!)
What would you order here
Panic
I cannot find my glasses, passport, wallet, wits
Did I leave them here
May I leave you my email (have one for this purpose)
Please let me know if they appear
0Add a comment
-
The Great Travel FocusThe Flaneur
How and Where the Most Important Experiences Happen.
Is that so?
Flan, the great key: Flan.
I flan, you flan, he-she-or-it flans,
We flan, you (pl) flan, they flan.
They what? They flan. FLAN. They peruse. Saunter. Whenever requirements and schedules loom, quashing the moment, go flan. Enrich thyself.
Say the flan starts, when it begins to rain during a planned route to The Required Cathedral. The Flan says: Wonderful What happens next.
Wonderful. An opportunity to flan elsewhere, than as planned.
Flan. Mimic, or be, the "disinterested, artistically inclined wanderer..." The flaneur. A flaneur is not someone who makes flans, although it could be. See those allusions and more at http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/08/12.html. The intentional lounge-about.
A flaneur, we now learn, is one who meanders, journeys without a map ordering destinations, as in Edmund White's Flaneur, A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, 2001, see http://www.edmundwhite.com/html/flaneur.htm. He lived in Paris for 16 years, doing as the word suggests: the stroll, the loaf, the idle, giving over to "the spectacle of the moment." English needs that word. Circumnavigation according to whim, as a respected activity. A noble art. Freedom from the ought. View through the eye of a poet, perhaps. If travel generates ideas, the travel was successful.
Beaudelaire: wrong to include isolation, or alienation as necessaries in the mix. See Wordoftheday above.
The text is part of a three-volume series, a Bloomsbury series called "The Writer and the City."0Add a comment
-
Boost Understanding. Start travel at home.
A. Travel: Give travel to Others.
B. Do It In Place for Yourself. Give travel to yourself, locally in unfamiliar neighborhoods.
What can you learn by going for coffee in another's neighborhood.
See How.
A. Travel as a GiftGive to the child, the grandchild, the graduate.Give the gift of independence, trying something out. Are all our fears necessary? Can we give the gift of the "flaneur" experience, the going abroad, or into unfamiliar territory, to see what it is like, to see that we have similarities as well as differences, bridge cultural, and economic gaps.
1. Travel. Give it.
Do you have a graduate. A child in need of a boost. The gift of non-tour travel is a gift of experiences, and independence, but not things. See http://www.accumulatingmoney.com/spend-your-money-on-doing-things-rather-than-owning-things/.
Are things that important to our children's future?
The idea is viral. See http://www.experientia.com/blog/americans-increasingly-elevating-experiences-over-things/ Experiences are of more value to our children, and ourselves, over things.
How to put a value on independence from imposed fear. Learn for yourself what is worth, and not worth, "fear". Modes of travel address that.
Give the gift of independence, says Leon Logothetis in the Los Angeles Times. Enable a child (that one is an adult) to go off somewhere and let what happens happen, see http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-gift-20101219,0,2204867.story/
2. If you merely give "independence," however, think many, you have no Thing to show for it. Life is things. What if we leave our children no "things".
Nuts.
If you give a child or grandchild something to put on a shelf, or have a financial advisor manage, the child has lost.
- No "thing". as a gift, is not "nothing."
Use the sport of Curling is a model.
The team requires some to start the rock in motion, and some other people to help sweep the path ahead.
Can your contribution to a young person, or anyone else, to travel, put you in the position of sweeper -- without which contribution the rock would stop.
See http://www.curlingbasics.com/; or http ://www.curlingrocks.net/ Watch it at http://ww.youtube.com/watch?v=dXeXNHRPMMI
B. Travel locally.
Don't stop with encouraging others to travel.
Do it for yourself.
Does travel on one's own, and its risks and challenges, produce more integrated information in the brain, as compared to, say a life of shopping and keeping up.
Does more integrated brain information "stay" longer, in times of mental deterioration. See Sizing Up Consciousness as Bits of Information, NYT 9/21/10, Science section, article by Carl Zimmer about Dr. Giulio Tononi's research.
3. Aging.
Can you assist your own caretaker in advance of the need? By what you do for your own brain and memories now? See http://www.seniorhomecareinformation.com/dementia/best-mind-stimulating-activities-for-those-with-dementia
4. If travel itself is not feasible, do it in place.
Take a bus or walk for a day in an unfamiliar ethnic area.
Stop. Get out. See a coffee shop. Go in. Don't be foolish, start with a reasonable comfort level, and research what kinds of signals and steps will tend to make you safe, see ://www.livestrong.com/article/14212-don-t-be-a-victim/ Simple steps about your car and being purposeful help empower, convey and bring about relaxed confidence.
- Go to an ethnic neighborhood. Independence Thwarts Fox. Would your world-view change, would you spend so much time listening to Fear and Dump Talk if you actually found you enjoyed yourself more by getting out.
- Would our democracy function, if people actually "traveled" to their own inner city or an ethnic enclave wherever; and had lunch there.
- Give yourself a task: paper, three lines, and you are to put on each line what someone there looked like (not necessarily a name) and where they were raised. That's all. That's a start in communication. Fox and other fixed worldview purveyors: opiners depend on dependent people. It would be out of business if their audience went abroad, no tours, no dogma on how to interpret everything, but found they could vet the world themselves.
- Go to a mosque, a synagogue, any other religious shrine or institutional place of worship.
- Independent assessment thwarts legislators projecting causes of problems on others. There is a mosque near you. There will be, we have found, people there to help you feel comfortable, and let you know the customs. If everybody went to one mosque, and one synagogue, and one or more other shrines and talked and asked questions, would negative stereotypes diminish even a little.
- For companionship, take, perhaps a still child-child, or a differ-abilities adult child.
- A person with Down Syndrome, for example, as we do.What abilities are there that just need a sweeper in front. What would happen to the Fear being spread about so freely these days if people challenged the idea that the world is to be feared. Travel where you are planted.
How about that. See http://www.npr.org/2010/12/17/132141793/living-without-fear.
Curling: An Olympic sport, see
For each one take one (as in a trip to a new place, even close to home), see each one teach one, Frank Laubach, theology perspective, at ://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=43; and literacy focus at ://www.hermes-press.com/laubach2.htm/
Does living in heightened awareness enhance consciousness? Travel, Curling, Aging and Actualizing. Choose Independence over Dependence. Boost your child. Travel in Place: Go Local To Start.0Add a comment
-
Traveler's Guide to The Axe.
Reduce the Bulk of the GuidebooksGuidebooks are heavy. Too heavy. Regional travel, going to multiple countries, adds to the carry-on. Solution: The Great Chop. The Axe. And plastic bags with zippers and rubber bands inside..
.
Axe, Aigen, near Rohrbach, Austria, Axe thrown by St. Stephen (not this one) to locate a church site
Step one. Cut up the books.
- Separate out the countries (as in Scandinavian guidebooks that cover Norway, Sweden and Finland); or, if you are going to Northern Germany and still have the book from going to Southern Germany, slice out the south and leave it home.
- Find your big serrated kitchen knife and saw those books right down the binding. Make piles. Denmark here, Sweden there, Northern Germany there.
- Go ahead. Saw-saw. Unnnh. Saw-saw. Unnnh. Saw-saw. Unnnh. Saw-saw = Ahhhh. Your lumbar region will be grateful you did.
Step two. Clip the book remains back together with a big metal office clip and a rubber band. Then bag them.
- To each country baggie, add the country maps.
- If you got an advance ferry reservation (some delays are not worth it), make a copy and put that in there, too.
- Have extra baggies so you can jam all the receipts in there also. Throw out no receipts. None.
0Add a comment
-
The Value of a Trip with a Child
Benefits of One Parent, One Child Travel
Consider it in the Entire Budget
Here: No Western White House saves taxpayers a bundle
How to justify the expense of taking one child on a trip. Isn't that a bit much? Not if you think about it, do more than react without careful thought. Consider the Spain Trip 2010. Sasha and Michelle. One on One, even with Friends. Looking at budgets, pro's and cons, as any family must. Conclusion: Well done. Cheer the timing, place, manner and means.
- Their family: Context: Michelle Obama is in Spain with Sasha. Some disapprove and say that is too much a luxury for a wife and one child. However, consider: This is a bargain vacation compared to a Western White House. And the elder daughter is already at sleep-away camp, and the President is busy. Put the trip in perspective, as you would with your own family. What other expenses can you forego, or have your foregone, in order to make this possible.
- For American taxpayers, it cost taxpayers $225,000 per trip to Crawford, and how many trips were there a year? See ://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/07/rs-_obama_spain.htm/
Think what we save because the Obama's do not compel us to support a Chicago White House. See ://www.westernwhitehouse.org/. "Armed to the teeth?" And $225,000 per trip - lovely Crawford TX? See ://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/07/rs-_obama_spain.html/
- Michelle and Sasha with friends, and the friends are all paying their own way, in Spain. Even with friends around, the focus for Michelle is on one child instead of two, and it is often appropriate to do things separately. Then do something next time with the other child. One parent, one child. Good idea. And an exciting location.
Going with one child, and not taking even the spouse, is a new idea for many. Try it. See ://www.takingthekids.com/Blogs/EileensBlog/The-Obamas-and-mother-daughter-trips.aspx/; and ://community.todaymoms.com/_news/2010/07/28/4770552-michelle-obama-is-right-take-kids-on-individual-vacations/
1. Time your trip when they are well mobile, and curious.
- Kids grow. Take them when they are ripest for the experience -before peer groups take over, and all that.
- Can you wait several years and still get the same trip? Not long. FN 1
- Spain's places and history and variety - wonderful. And its issues are our own - economics, the place for minority populations, multiple traditions, cultures. And the fun. Don Quixote and Carmen and Sultans and Basques and Pilgrimage sites. If you choose one country in Europe to see, see Spain . Hope you get to try the braised pigs' ears. A benefit of one parent one child travel is freedom in eating. Free to try without a predictable Ew-w-w-w-w-w from too many other people. Bring home some recipes.
Comparing alternate choices for spending:
Taxpayer Perspective on Costs: Prefer a Spain and other vacations vs. other presidents' duplicative and egotistical insanity of a second White HouseThis is not a new idea - just an under-covered one - see ://www.sodahead.com/united-states/bush-spends-millions-of-taxpayer-money-to-go-to-texa-camp-david-kennebuckport/blog-342631/ All that wiring.
- Why not recoup Crawford for use as the New Guantanamo? There are always ways.
- Critics of this trip? Maureen, you know nothing this time of what you speak. And that hair is so yesterday. That's a joke, Maureen. You look lovely, as do I.
- The best way to vet your own perspective, if it interests you to check things out, is by changing your looking post. And you as a parent may well be able to do it, too. Even if you are of moderate means. If you are wealthier, don't gripe when you choose to put your own priorities elsewhere than in being actually with a child on your own, say you choose a McHouse or a McCar. Michelle has the right idea.
- Foreign can be cheaper than at home, except for the airfare perhaps. Go by budget allocation, if you can. Of course, any trip is discretionary and other expenses may have to come first. But many parents who tut-tut at the cost of a president's family going to a foreign country could allocate their own budgets to have one parent take one child abroad. Go! Just to see it, and feel part of the bigger world, and have a ball. Just trade off the bigger car, the overnight camp, whatever - going to a foreign country is manageable, barely - depends on family priorities - with belt-tightening elsewhere.
- Give a child a sense of Freedom
- Freedom from other people's roles and their views of ours being imposed upon us.
- Freedom to take a child and relate on our own: even with a horde of photographers, there is alone time
- Could you do it? Michelle's idea may work for some. Just look at your choices, and see what choices you really have. FN 2
...........................
FN 1 In our family, we didn't think of trips like this until our son was grown. But our son has special needs, and going abroad with him is like going abroad with a far younger person than his years, every year. And is it fun?
Need you ask?
Are we jeopardizing our own financial future? Sure, if you think that "jeopardy" means not being able to maintain what we used to do without thinking when I was working. We just can't now, and so we don't. Some doing without is not jeopardy. We'll get along. Fine. Drive that car until it dies. Great. When jeopardy does knock, as with people who already are in real jeopardy, we will recompute.
Meanwhile, we favor every tax or other break possible for people in marginal or middle situations, a special tax deduction every time they do something directly with, or provide a talent or cultural enrichment for, their children. You figure out how to draft it. If you ain't marginal and are something at middle or a little over, don't complain, and pay up so others can keep their children above the margin. Their kids are our kids.
FN 2 You have choices in how to get somewhere, if you decide you can possibly go and be reasonably responsible on all fronts. The Misery Index is too high for so many that this idea of travel is not intended to diminish that, see ://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/08/05/10-worst-places-to-live/ So, if you can, and prioritize for it, go this way: Cheap. Economy, compact rental car, no reservations for hotels or ferries, stay where you find and that may be a pensione or small place. A big hotel is but not by choice. We stay there because it is 7PM and we are tired and this one is right by the big square, or the flight out is 6AM and we need to be near the airport. Eat street food at the vendor carts, or pub food (huge portions), or smaller bistros, sometimes places with tablecloths, but that is to do fancy for fun.0Add a comment
Add a comment