In the Kremlin armory, there’s an ornately crafted Faberge egg, given by Nicholas II to his wife Alexandra. It celebrates the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was a project under Nicholas’s leadership when he was Tsarevich. Inside the egg is a minute replica of the royal train. While the real train wasn’t made out of silver, I’m […]
Siberia to me always sounded like a desolate, cold, uninhabited place with little to no vegetation. The areas we drove through and cities we visited certainly did not have all those traits, but they certainly still felt Siberian, even though I have no accurate or even correct idea of what makes a place actually “Siberian”. […]
I tried my best to go for a run frequently in Russia, and I am a little disappointed with how infrequent it actually turned out to be, but the times I was able to were extremely memorable. In Moscow, all my runs were along the Moscow river, and I usually would run northeast toward Gorki […]
One of the most frequently asked questions put to me by Russians during my time here is: “what stereotypes do Americans have about Russia?”. Then, before I can give an answer, they list the things that they’ve heard we think about them: bears in the streets, everybody drinks vodka, it’s always cold, and Siberia is […]
During our week and a half in Siberia, we got to experience a very different part of Russia from the metropolis of Moscow. We traveled throughout Buryatia and to Irkutsk in a bus, visiting as many places of interest as we could. With this different setting came a very different routine and diet for us. […]
A trip to Buryatia, Siberia (see feature image) is incomplete without spending hours upon hours bumping and bouncing in a bus. A bus takes you through multiple climates, ecological zones and types of existence. After nine days of long bus rides, one day of which eleven hours were spent on the bus, I gained an […]
Our coupe on the Trans-Siberian. Owen Yager photo I’m starting to write this post on the first morning of a train ride that will take us from Irkutsk, on the western shore of Lake Baikal, to Moscow. We got on this train some twelve hours ago; in total, we will be on this train for three […]
On the southern and eastern shores of Lake Baikal is the Republic of Buryatia, one of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The Buryat people are closely related to Mongolians, so much so that Mongolians refer to Buryats as Russian-Mongolians. Buryatia has its own distinct language, culture, and history, distinct from other nearby tribes and […]
Our first view of Novoselenginsk, a small, dusty settlement flanked by the Selenga River and the road from Ulan-Ude to Kyakhta, came from a rocky outcrop to which our Buryat driver, Ruslan, expertly navigated our seemingly indestructible bus. We turned east off of the pothole-filled highway onto two dirt strips and bumbled onward, putting our […]
Everywhere you go in Russia, there are khramy. In Russian, this word means “place of worship” and is differentiated from the word for church or cathedral because one khram can contain multiple chapels or churches, as St. Basil’s on Red Square does. Many have onion domes and bell towers to distinguish them, others are behind […]