Having learnt just enough Russian to recognise the word gorod (town, city) in the name Veliky Novgorod, the town four hours south of St. Petersburg (by train) we'd be stopping in overnight on our way to Moscow, I wondered what the nov- prefix meant. Indeed, what did Veliky mean? Eoin and the dragon Well, turns… Continue reading Our, and Russia’s, first Kremlin
In the Hermitage and at the ballet in Russia’s city of culture
Back home in Brisbane after our European summer break, we watched a movie one cold winter's evening called Russian Ark. It's set in the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, somewhere we'd visited on the Russian leg of our trip, and it's unusual for having been shot in one ninety-six-minute-long continuous take. In… Continue reading In the Hermitage and at the ballet in Russia’s city of culture
Back in Zak
Denmark was three different places in three nights. Russia was six in fourteen. A lot of Lego and Museums of Great Revolutionary Wars. In Russia, furthermore, there were also side trips to Veliky-Novgorod (south of St. Petersburg, on the way to Moscow) and Smolensk (west of Moscow, on the way to Belorussia, not that we… Continue reading Back in Zak
A tour of Leningrad – I mean St. Petersburg
We'd lined up a tour guide for our first full day in Russia. Igor came and met us outside our hostel/hotel. He was a serious, middle-aged, academic type, and spent a long time untangling four sets of headphones he said he wanted us to use while he talked into a microphone as we walked the… Continue reading A tour of Leningrad – I mean St. Petersburg
A train to St. Petersburg
As Paul Theroux has said on many an occasion, train travel is the real travel. We couldn't agree more. After our two days in Finland we did what the UK hasn't managed to do in three and a half years and caught a fast train out of the EU. From Helsinki Central Station, with its… Continue reading A train to St. Petersburg
Copenhagen and Helsinki
After getting the morning train from Roskilde, Denmark, we managed to grab an hour in Copenhagen before our flight to Helsinki. Another smash and grab, like our lunchtime in Hamburg, only this time the weather smiled on our travels. Copenhagen streetscape Not quite believing our luck with the weather after the last few days we… Continue reading Copenhagen and Helsinki
Into Scandinavia
After a week in Ireland, the road was calling again. Up at 3:45am, Tina and I rounded up our sleepy troops and we all kissed Mum goodbye, not knowing how many years it'd be till we see her again. We shoved the boys and the suitcases into the taxi as it idled in the cold,… Continue reading Into Scandinavia
A flying visit to an unseasonally cold Dublin
Tina at the Sally Gap Flicking through an old Bank of Ireland calendar for ideas a few months prior to our trip, I got to May and saw a photograph of Lough Tay, called ‘the Guinness Lake’ in the calendar, at the Sally Gap in Wicklow, only to realise, with some surprise, I’d never been… Continue reading A flying visit to an unseasonally cold Dublin
Getting ready for Europe
First of all, our big news is that we're flying to Europe on the 31st of May. We'll be in Ireland for about a week, then Denmark for a few days, where we'll be just in time to see the fullsize Lego Technic Bugatti Chironat at Lego House. After the Viking Museum in Roskilde we… Continue reading Getting ready for Europe
A Fish called Stargazer
A blissful three whole days of no driving whatsoever under any circumstances was our reward for the arduous - by our standards, anyway - road trip from Brisbane to Sydney we'd just done. We were staying in Kingsgrove, inland of Botany Bay, on the edge of Wolli Creek; not that we were ever aware of… Continue reading A Fish called Stargazer
