Stroking a bat and shaking hands with a bear – Theo’s blog It’s not surprising that when we first arrived, without a hitch, in Southern Russia, we wondered for a moment if we were in some kind of artificial “Truman Show” set designed to enchant and deceive gullible western visitors with its loveliness. But it […]
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Brief encounters in Georgia – Theo’s blog I’m writing this in the little apartment we’ve rented in Atyrau for our first night in Kazakhstan, reflecting how nice it is to have a space of our own (even if the intermittent water from the kitchen tap is a toxic brownish yellow, unsafe to drink). But I
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The Tale of Kaz & Stan – by Rosa After the rough night on a sleeper train crossing the border between Russia and Kazakhstan (where it seemed like there was no end to the intimidating border guards who needed to check our passports or our phones), we arrived in Atyrau at 5:45am, sufficiently exhausted. And,
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From Russia, with love (…and if I’m honest a little bit of fear!) Halfway through the train journey that took us out of Russia and into Kazakhstan, I had to delete this post. At that point Theo had been being interrogated for nearly an hour by Russian security forces. Theo spoke quickly and
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Being Here Now – Theo I haven’t been travelling as lightly as I’d like. Our rucksacks seem pretty sorted, and I’m proud of us for that, but I’ve still been bringing a load of expectations and assumptions with me over each border we’ve crossed, and I hope I’m beginning to shed some of that as
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We made it into Russia! I am sitting outside a hotel (that isn’t ours) using their Wi-Fi…so I will keep this brief. More to follow soon of our Russian adventure, the rescuing of bats, and ‘The Prisoner of Astrakhan’…
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Keep your fingers crossed! Today we are heading to Russia. I vacillate (..don’t you think the word ‘vacillate’ sounds a little Russian, like a combination of Vladikavkaz (where we are going) and Vladivostok (where we are not going) …anyway, I vacillate between thinking crossing the border will be a formality, an easy trip, bored border guards
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Inset Day Tomorrow So, my body knows I should be gearing up for the start of term, and I did a solid eight hours of it last night, while I slept! Even when I woke up for a wee I still went back to work. The level of detail was classic, I spent most of
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Tbilisi Georgia is not how I thought it would be. I had visions of Tbilisi being a quaint market garden town/small city (perhaps a little like Wells) with cobbled streets and a picturesque river running through it. I was hoping to go on little trips to the mountains to see beautiful scenery and maybe hear
Profanities and Prayers I am struggling to find the words to describe yesterday… I used up all my best ones on the day before…so Mrs Speechless of Somerset is going to have to dig deep! Let’s start with the good news…the one excellent thing that came out of our need to find another hotel yesterday, was
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