Another year, not enough travel! I’d hit the road all the time if my checkbook would let me. But I am grateful for all of the places I have been so far and to have goals about where I want to go in the future. For the present, I am grateful to be able to…
Category: Russia
Traveling to Remember
Sitting at an outdoor café three blocks from the Rome Termini one morning 24 years ago waiting for my friend Julie to arrive, I had no appreciation of the folly of our planning. In the days before cell phones, all I knew for sure was that Julie was scheduled to arrive from the United States…
Watch the Latest Anna Karenina for the Mood, Not the Views
The 2012 version of Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law as Anna and Karenin, features plenty of Russian darkness and bad behavior but not as many images of Russia as I would have liked. For those planning to visit Russia, the film is still worth a watch; what it lacks in actual Russian…
What I Learned at Doctor Zhivago’s Revolution
It took me a half a dozen tries to get all the way through the three-hour-long 1965 film Doctor Zhivago, a love story set amid the backdrop of the Russian revolution but filmed elsewhere. Starring Omar Sharif as a doctor-poet, and Julie Christie as an unconvincing 17-year-old raped by her mother’s love interest, a member…
Our Perestroika
What’s engaging about the 2010 documentary, My Perestroika, and that was largely absent from my own visit to Russia isn’t so much the views of Moscow but the captured moments of real Russians, those not selling anything to tourists or trying to be pleasing in the hope of gaining a tip. The film follows a…
Roads through Russia
The story in the film Roads to Koktebel, that of a widower trekking to the Black Sea with his young son in the hope of starting a new life, seems emblematic of the Russian experience. The characters are resolute, obdurate. Their terrain is vast and harsh, but they’ve found a way to adapt, to make…
Bosco Cafe: Chewing It Up in Red Square
The Bashful Adventurer dines in Red Square at Bosco Cafe.
The Kremlin: Napoleon Was Here
I’m not sure what I expected to see within the walls of the Kremlin, the centuries-old fortress that is the seat of the Russian government. That old cannons from Russia’s own War of 1812 were there surprised me as these belonged to Napoleon, who, with his army, took up residency, however brief. I was surprised…
Russia, Contrariwise
Five months back from Russia, I am still challenged to write about my trip, still trying to even begin understanding this vast country. Russia seems to me to be a nation of contradictions, the brute of a country cousin to its sophisticated European neighbors, a country full of capitalists despite its century of communism, a…
Standing in the Tracks of Chariots and on the Paths of Heroes
For me, there’s no greater experiential learning than walking back through time via travel. The chariot tracks in the streets of Pompeii made life in the first century that much more real to me. Seeing row after row of crosses in the Normandy American Cemetery in France made the sacrifices of those soldiers that much…