Home Sweet Home

So, here I am, back at home...

I think it's quite needless to say that everything still feels a bit weird around here. Even though my day actually was pretty much the standard day I spend while I'm here with my family: I got up for lunch even though my alarm clock was set for 10 a.m. (I didn't realize just how beat I was after those 3 days in Moscow) and spent most of my waking hours in front of the notebook, only really being interupted by reading the newspaper, having coffee with my mother and picking up my brother from the city.

But other than that I still have a hard time grasping where the hell I am. Didn't I wake up in Moscow only yesterday? Didn't we have lunch in that Azerbaijanian restaurant only yesterday? Wasn't I in St. Basil's on Red Square only yesterday? Did I really ride a camel in the Gobi? Did I really spend time wandering around Tianamen Square being completely fascinated by its size? Or was it all just a dream???

Browsing through my photos and listening to that Russian CD it's of course obvious that everything did indeed happen. But it's still odd. After all the Gobi Desert is about as far away from here as possible (with the notable exception of the North- and Southpole that is;-). Yesterday morning I was still in Moscow, on the road, travelling. Today I'm back home, wandering through my memories of that outstanding trip, thinking of all the things we experienced: the amount of crappy instant noodles that we ate, my messed up feet on Lake Baikal, the cool Belgium couple with whom travelled in the Gobi, the Vodka drinking with our driver there, the children we meet in the first Mongolian city we set foot in, ... and so much more.

It will really take some time for me to thoroughly realize just what I saw these past few weeks. In the meantime my life around here will definitly keep me busy as I'll be heading to Vienna on Friday, with university starting on Monday and lots of other things to be done, articles to be written, projects to be finished, hardware to be reviewed, friends to meet and drink a beer with, e-mails to read and reply to, photos to sort through, etc.

But for now and most of this evening I'll go back and re-visit China, Mongolia and Russia. :-)

TransSib, Moscow, Amy... I miss you already!

Here we go, the last message I'm posting before we start our journey home... It's utterly absurd to think that I'll be back in Austria in a couple of hours, after all at this moment I'm still in freakin' Moscow, ain't I?

Anyway, we had an absolutely great time here and yesterday, last night and today turned out to be a pretty perfect ending for a great journey. Spent lots of time walking through the streets of Moscow and looking at sights, buildings, etc. In the evening we went out to a club called "Tabula Rasa" to see a line-up of young Russian rock-bands. Was a great idea to go there, cool location, (mostly) good music and nice people. Of course we ended up chatting and having a good time with the band we spent the most time bitching about, thanks to lovely and cute girl called Amy. We all managed to have a pretty good conversation, even though we had to work through an odd initial situation thanks to the omni-present language barrier (we don't speak Russian, and she was sorry for not being able to speak better English;-)

Well, gotta run... I guess some of you, at least the folks living in Austria, will hear more details about this story (and so many more stories) soon while drinking a beer or something!

TransSib, Moscow, Amy... I miss you already!

Off to the Kremlin...

So, it's again a bit before 8 a.m. as we're getting ready for another great day around here. Today we're heading to the Kremlin before spending some more time walking through the streets to see another one or two of those Stalin skyscrapers (Moscow University yesterday morning was quite the sight, I can't wait to show you some photos of that building, it's really quite impressive with its "in your face"-type of architecture). In the evening we're hoping to catch a concert with 4 local Russian rock-bands... Should be another fun day in Moscow!! :-)

Greetings from Moscow

Good morning. It's 7:45 am around here and we're looking forward to a busy day here in Moscow where we arrived yesterday after our 76h train ride from Irkutsk. The train-ride was good, we spent most of our time sleeping, eating and reading. Unfortunately the landscape, especially in Sibiria wasn't really all that interesting, however once we crossed the Ural things got much nicer. Especially yesterday morning we had an amazing scenary in front of our window, with lots of little houses (most likely weekend dachas) surrounded by a great many apple trees. It was really quite beautiful!

Once we got into Moscow we moved into our Hostel - named "Napoleon" - and promptly proceeded to the Red Square which is only a 10min walk from here. Red Square is a beautiful place, with the Kremlin, St. Basil's and the GUM Shopping Center (definitely the coolest shopping center I've ever seen, the building's style is just amazing!) surrounding it. I did however expect it to be significantly larger, compared to the Tianan'men in Beijing it does feel a bit petite so to say. Patrick and I spent the next hour taking lots of photos and just generally enjoying the first glimpse of life here in Moscow. After some walking around we headed back into our hostel and checked for going-out options for the night. We decided to go to a place called "bilingua" which happens to be very close by to see a live concert. Turned out to be a pretty good night accompanied by some very cool Cuban-style musica being played by the band.

Right now we're off to grab some breakfast before we head to Moscow State University which is housed in one of 7 skyscrapers that Stalin built and we're really looking forward to seeing it. Afterwards we'll head to the Lenin mausoleum at Red Square before we head into the Treyakov Gallery for an afternoon full of Russian art. In the evening we're thinking about going to a Laibach (a band from Slovenia) concert. So this should definitely be a great day!

From Russia with Love

As we're paying per the minute I'm forced to make this another short message... Even though I had prepared a long rant about hiking, fucked up feet and whatnot but that's going to have to wait for another day. ;-)

Anyway, we're currently on the Island Olchon in Lake Baikal, a really nice place even though the weather hasn't been the best these past 2 days. Tomorrow we're heading to Irkutsk from where we'll be taking a 76h train-ride to Moscow the day after tomorrow. Then we have three more days there before we fly back home to Austria on September, 25th.

There's really so much I could write about but unfortunately not enough time so I'll be doing some serious posting once we're back at home...

To paraphrase Futurama: "So much to write, so little time."

Yet another quickie...

We're in the progress of moving out of UB, our train to Irkutsk leaves in a bit more than an hour. As it's a 36h ride we'll get into Irkutsk early on Thursday, where we also hope to re-unite with Martina and Fernando. Then we'll head to the Island Olchon (in Lake Baikal) as soon as possible to spend a few quiet days there.

The 3 remaining days of our Gobi trip were outstanding, especially the day after our last blog entry turned out to be amazing. Can't wait to show you the photos once I'm back home.
Since getting back to UB on Sunday we've been enjoying civilization again, especially in the form of showers, water-toilets and excellent food. Yesterday we celebrated our last night in Mongolia with a great Mongolian BBQ, 12-year old Whiskey and an excellent Cohiba cigar from Cuba while listening to two Mongolians play "La isla bonita", "Hotel California" and similar classics. Needless to say it was a good night! :-)

Take care everyone, speak soon...

Quick message from the Gobi

Just a quicky to let everyone know that we (only Patrick and me because the other two decided to do their own "tour", I don't think they realize how much they're missing out) are having a great time here in the Gobi desert in Mongolia. It's an outstanding place to be, stunning landscapes, nice people, beautiful sunsets, very cool group of people, great old Soviet-style 4-wheel-drive bus,... All in all an amazing experience. Haven't felt that relaxed for a very long time!

At the moment we're in the south of the Gobi in a city which starts with "D" (aka shithole but at least some civilization such as Internet access and a market with decent food). Our 7 day tour started on Monday so we'll get back to Ulaanbaatar (capital of Mongolia) on Sunday evening.

Ulaanbaatar is a very cool and vibrant city, something we certainly hadn't expected. Plus the Mongolian girls are simply stunning, I have never seen so many gorgeous women in one place (not even at Computex in Taiwan!). I certainly think UB could be a cool place to spend my midlife-crisis. ;-)

Anyway, gotta go and have dinner in our ger and then we might just have some beer and vodka. Should be a good night! To really experience what the term night means you anyhow have to go to a desert:-)

More details to follow soon...

Patrick's free of sense corner:
No, we do not mention that everyone else we meet in this country is much cooler than we are, and it is certainly not true that many people do the transib as an in-betweener during their year-lasting world trips... But we are the prettiest;-)