Living in Prague and traveling in Europe have gotten me “addicted” to the coffee and sitting-down culture. I developed a new habit to find small cosy cafés to work or socialize with others.
I’m sure there are many of us who prefer to work in a more unstructured environment different from our everyday’s cubicle station. This goes especially for creative people who need a sanctuary, a nurturing place to boost their creativity, not merely a place to work.
Job burnout is a serious issue. Even the Pope, a man who’s supposed to work until death, retired. This reminds me to excuse myself from work to send a few postcards from the Vatican.
Feeling religious much? I came to Vatican during Christmas thinking it would be a wonderfully spiritual experience witnessing the most important Christian event at one the most holy sites of Christendom. This is the home of the man who rules over Roman Catholics all around the world.
Everybody said that I was traveling the world. I think not. Traveling the world, to me, is bumping from one place to another, crossing continents and visiting at many countries as possible, many of which were randomly selected.
I’m not traveling the world as I am going home, a long way home in deed. The 1st home means where I came from before, and where my parents lived. The last home is where I live now. And if it worked out and I crossed to Vietnam from China, the title would be “Home, Home and Home.” It takes so long because I wanted go overland as much as possible. If I had more time, instead of flying in and out of Australia, I would to do it by ships.
When I thought of Siberia, I remembered concentration camps, snowy winters and lots of unhappy Russians. Never once I imagined sandy beaches, scorching summers, and a load of happy tourists at Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world.
I usually preferred a more authentic, off-tourist destination. However, I can’t recommend enough the tourist-trap Olkhon Island, the largest island in the middle of Baikal, a popular base for travelers to get lost in the tranquility and wide-open space.
(See this post for tips on planning, traveling and transportation cost from Moscow to Beijing.)
There are many more popular stop-overs along the routes not only what listed below, for example, Novgorod, Omsk, Tyumen, etc. I stopped at fewer places because I preferred to stay longer at one place, and I became lazy to haul my heavy bags on and off the train.
The trains, the people and the stops.
Traveling on the Trans-Siberian trains through the longest rail track in the world is an experience of a lifetime. Everybody has heard of the word Siberia, but only some have an idea where it is, and only a few want to get there.
Siberia is more of a concept than a place, unless you live there. Some might imagine danger when they think of Siberia. After all, Siberia is a former hang-out for exiles and convicts, an ice-cold place in a remote part of communist Russia full of Russian mafias.
Landlocked between the largest and most populated countries in the world, Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west lies Mongolia, an intriguing place where past and present seem to co-exist. While Ulan Bator is as modern as a capital can be, half an hour drive away from it, I feel as if I have entered a different era. Dominating the vast, empty landscape where I am the only thing separating the earth and the sky are nomads on horseback herding livestocks or working around their gers, a form of portable housing in Mongolia.
“Them, Us and Skitskoj (A Dialogue in the Editing Room)/ Oni, my a Skitskoj (Dialog ve st?ižn?)”, a Czech documentary about Old Believers living on the island of Skitskoj, an inaccessible taiga in the North of Russia, got me completely hooked.Skitskoj is isolated from the outside world by three rivers, the Pichora, Tsilma, and Pizhma. To get to the village, at one point, the film crew had to use a rudimentary hand-pulled cable ferry system. These Old Believers followed strict religious rituals to the point of obsession. Because of their extreme isolation, they distrusted outsiders.
“Here looking at you kid,” said Humphrey Bogart to Ingrid Bergman in what was considered an all-time famous quote in the Hollywood classic “Casablanca.”
Ulan-Ude was no romantic Casablanca where Bogart’s character had a toast with his flame Bergman before letting her run off with her husband. Instead, it was a gray, noisy, crowded, ugly city in Siberia, and yet I felt the same effect seeing Lenin’s penchant eyes looking over the city, looking at me.
Siberia at last. Traveling to Siberia has occupied my mind in the last few years, but the name itself has struck a strange note ever since I was a child who was in awe of its vast snowy landscape and lonely Russian soldiers, peasants and convicts. At time, Siberia seemed forbidden and far away and being there was unthinkable, hence it took some time to comprehend that I would soon come to a part of my dream.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
