A freak cooking accident - probably too much red wine in the bourguinon - resulted in a few cracked ribs. So. It’s been paracetamol rather than prose from me lately.
Obviously, any rib-crushing embraces with Soviet women have also been out of the question. Couldn’t even manage the typing position. But what better place to recuperate [...]

After a few problems connecting a Mac to the net in Russia, I was thinking of getting this tattooed on my forehead.
But now I learn that Wi-Fi is more common in Eastern Europe than I thought. I was told, ‘You really should get out more’.
What they probably meant was, I should eat out more. It [...]

I’m not talking Eurovision here, but Eurolines. As operated by the Lithuanian company, Kautra.
Boarding at Riga, our hostess announces the bus will stop every four hours. Well, that seems only humane. Riga to London is a long way. And I’d already bussed from St. Petersburg. But after 12 hours non-stop out of Kaunas, I [...]

Call me cheap but I always take the budget route to Russia.
Booked well in advance, an Easy Jet from Stanstead UK to Tallinn is around 30 pounds and the Eurolines bus to St Petersburg just 15 pounds. (270 Estonian Krone.)
Actually, there’s a Eurolines bus from Tallinn to almost any old Soviet outpost. Random riders [...]

October. There really couldn’t be a more appropriate time to visit a town as red as Novgorod.
Here in the main square, ‘October Man’ himself stands taller than any tree.

V.I. also features on the council offices. From his vantage point over the main entrance, he is able to monitor the orthodoxy of worker’s lunch breaks.

[...]

There is a small Korean colony in Novgorod.
Although the majority of Russia’s Korean immigrants have ghettoised Volgograd, a bunch of separatists moved north to Novgorod’s leafy ulitsas. Their second home is here at the Asia cafe, where you can discover the quintessence of Korean cuisine.
The decaying premises are called locally in Korean, ‘the house [...]

Friday came and went and so did the man from Novgorod Telekom - without hooking up my Mac to the net.
It seems that only one modem salesman has ever hit this town. That would have been the D-Link man, and D-Link can’t or won’t do Mac drivers.
Novgorod Telekom’s man used the ‘N’ word [...]

A huge Real Estate billboard greeted me as I pulled into Novgorod. It promises the all-Russian dream to a young couple - their very own pre-fab concrete Soviet home.

Yes, perhaps the girl in this advertisement does look a little naive - if not the recent recipient of a lobotomy. Nevertheless, I still contacted [...]

For the next few weeks I am visiting Novgorod Veliky, which is why I’ve been off-blog lately. 
 
The Great Wall Of Novgorod. It appears to keep out capitalists.
An on-line guide I came across said of Novgorod, ‘allow about two hours’. But they lied.
Novgorod is a time warp wonderland. It’s a place where young workers still dream of making home [...]

It isn’t easy to like Russians. Some days it seems like they are out to skim, scam, overcharge or shortchange you every time you sit down.
Of course, foreign tourists are ripped everywhere, but Russians just haven’t learned to do it sneakily or slimily, like their Western counterparts. They’re not even two-faced about being barefaced.
Andre [...]