2008
We’re doing it. Yesterday we went out and got tickets to Berlin for April 30th. We leave on the 9:15 pm train and arrive in Berlin 24 hours later. So, yeah, we’d decided to leave later in the summer. Getting questioned by the FSB, the main Russian intelligence agency, for 2 hours with no translator or recourse or anyone knowing where I was… well, it rather muted any lingering desire to stay in Russia. It was a very cultural experience, […]
Been having a stressful week… got stopped by the FSB (the Federal Security Bureau, loosely translated, and successor to the KGB) and questioned for 2 hours yesterday because I stopped to take a photo of a cute dog and it turned out I was right next to some “secret office”. Bother. It was scary, but they were pretty professional overall and it was just some elderly former KGB guy who kept me from leaving within 10 minutes of getting pulled […]
Ah, Moscow: the never-ending greyness, the lousy weather, the winter depression, the bad air… I doctored up this photo in honor of all that. (Sorry about the lack of posts recently, by the way; there’s a bad flu going around and I ended up sick in bed for 8 days straight.) Anyway, this photo. I shot it two years ago as a standard color image, in RAW format of course, and then started playing with it. The light scattering of […]
Found this at http://www.lokis-laughter.com/ The River One day, three men were hiking and unexpectedly came upon a large, raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do so. The first man prayed to Woden, saying, “Please Woden, give me the strength to cross this river.” Poof! Woden gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours, after almost drowning […]
Having at least a basic proficiency in some foreign languages is essential to traveling well and understanding the places you visit or live in. Though traditionally taught in a classroom setting, the modern traveler has some very interesting new resources for solo study of a foreign language, including two new web sites demonstrating some very innovative teaching methods.
I just got pulled as an editor’s pick on Blogged.com! This is pretty much the first site review I’ve gotten so I’m very pleased.
Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, is one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a thin ribbon of a park following Minnehaha Creek down a narrow river gorge. Paths run from the Falls until the creeks slows and broadens, and floods into the Mississippi. In a deep spring flood, much of the park may be under water; in an August drought, the shore can gain 25 feet of beach, as this photo shows.
Happy Women’s Day! Awesomest holiday ever. Tony gave me a bottle of the incredibly high quality, $120-a-bottle absinthe we’ve been ogling for two years at Azbuka Vkusa, and I finally got out to a public banya (steam baths) with my excellent girlfriend Marina. Good but strange experience. Got beaten with oak twigs in what’s got to be a pagan-remnant-ritual/ massage while in the sauna. Jumped in a tub of ice water afterward. Drank lots of tea and ate very good […]
Small gallery of heavily reprocessed photography, conveying extra stylization, of images shot in Russia. This picture is of a group of aging Communists gathered outside Red Square who I happened across while walking to an exhibit at the Menage. They were almost entirely pensioners.
I’m working to get a bit more traffic coming to this site by submitting it to various blog directories. I’ve now got listings on Technorati and BlogCatalog.