Russia and its neighbours... (1 Viewer)

[Rimbaud]

So - i`m bored - this travel forum thingy has`nt really taken off as good as i thought...

Someone tell me about they`re trips to strange Eastern European countries(Moldova, Ukraine amd such...) and Russia.
Anyone been to Georgia?Central Asia - the stan countries?

 

[Rimbaud]

Ah yer useless!!Off to Ibiza the lot of ye`s!!

I`m off to the lonely Planet message board to talk to some REAL russian people that have actually BEEN to Russia!!!

 

[broken arm]

airport, moscow, train, trees, orphanages, street children, hotel, picnic, cinema, car, orphanage, football, more street kids and orphans, train, moscow, hostel, kremlin, lenin the big candle, hostel, airport.

 

[krystal]

I've been to montenegro.

 

[Buzzo]

What Broken Arm said, + Beautiful young women, haggard old women, tomatoes and cucumbers, cheap beer, angry Russians shouting at you because they think you're american. Ladas/skodas everywhere. Trees, mines and desolate looking flat complexes with heavy iron gates.

I love Russia so much and want to live there when I get growed up.

 

[Rimbaud]

airport, moscow, train, trees, orphanages, street children, hotel, picnic, cinema, car, orphanage, football, more street kids and orphans, train, moscow, hostel, kremlin, lenin the big candle, hostel, airport.

This was to Perm?
You can speak a bit of Russian can`t you?How did you find riding the trains/getting tickets?
Were you travelling on your own?

 

[broken arm]

what aoife said + ex-army trucks everywhere, a headmistress that looked like [size=-1]Raisa Gorbachev, difficult to find stamps and this guy

[/size]

 

[Rimbaud]

I've been to montenegro.

For the beaches i presume?
Montenegro - i`d like to go there some day.I`ve been to Bosnia & Serbia - no time to take in Montenegro though.

 

[Buzzo]

This was to Perm?
You can speak a bit of Russian can`t you?How did you find riding the trains/getting tickets?
Were you travelling on your own?

Yup, Perm it was. That's us in the photo that Broken Arm attached there. Me and BA and a couple of our friends went over for a bit. I have a teeny bit of Russian. I'm lucky in that I pick up a language very quickly and remember it for ages and ages afterwards.
We didn't really have any trouble getting around because the guy who runs the organisation that we volunteer with had been a couple of times before and knew enough about the country to get by.
The trans siberian was one of the funnest days of my life. Lots of crazy people practicing pidgin English on us, like that guy with the huge moustache that broken arm just showed, or some guy who told me I'll never find a husband with a pierced nose. Deadly buzzka.

 

[Rimbaud]

Sounds like fun!

Here`s a good/funny travelogue of a guy who travelled about Russia, getting drunk on vodka, getting spiked in Murmansk etc...:
http://www.travelhog.net/mytriptorussia/index.php

 

[Rimbaud]

We didn't really have any trouble getting around because the guy who runs the organisation that we volunteer with had been a couple of times before and knew enough about the country to get by.

Hope you don`t mind me asking - was the volunteer work in conjunction with college/study?Like did you have to have qualifications or meet certain requirements(or pay a load of money) to be accepted as a volunteer?

I did intend on going to Russia this year to Lake Baikal volunteering for these guys:
http://www.earthisland.org/ecotours/volunteer/eurasia/baikal.html

...but i got side-tracked/decided to do other things instead.

But i`ll definatly(all going well) be going the start of this summer for a few months.

 

[krystal]

No, just on a day trip from Croatia. It's very different to there though, proper eastern europe. They use the cyrillic alphabet n ting. And it's full of yugos and trabants and horrible high rise buildings on their last legs. Scenery wise it is breathtaking but it's a dirty kip - the mountains are destroyed with littering.

For the beaches i presume?

Montenegro - i`d like to go there some day.I`ve been to Bosnia & Serbia - no time to take in Montenegro though.

 

[broken arm]

I really want to go to kaliningrad. I want to go to Lithuanina very soon (time and money permitting) and will skip into kaliningrad. I don't think you need a visa from moscow anymore.

 

[hugh]

I really want to go to kaliningrad. I want to go to Lithuanina very soon (time and money permitting) and will skip into kaliningrad. I don't think you need a visa from moscow anymore.

My brother just came back from Kaliningrad. Said it was a bit of a dump but he had a good time .... Is Kaliningrad the place the German army got encircled and then massacred at the end of WW2?

I was in Moscow and Kiev once .... dont remember much about it except vodka, very wide streets, and that funny old shopping centre (BAM? LOM?)

 

[nlgbbbblth]

I've been to Croatia. It's nice but the food is average.

 

[broken arm]

My brother just came back from Kaliningrad. Said it was a bit of a dump but he had a good time .... Is Kaliningrad the place the German army got encircled and then massacred at the end of WW2?

i had a lecturer who was telling me to go. He used to work for the Lithuanian Ministry of Environment and had to go into Kaliningrad a lot to study the coasts and water etc.

 

[hugh]

i had a lecturer who was telling me to go. He used to work for the Lithuanian Ministry of Environment and had to go into Kaliningrad a lot to study the coasts and water etc.

Actually the brother did say there were weird ecosystem stuff there. There's some stretch of coastline where there's desert on one side and forests on the other or something like that ....

 

[Juno]

Is Kaliningrad the place the German army got encircled and then massacred at the end of WW2?
(BAM? LOM?)

No, that's probably Stalingrad you're thinking of.

 

[ITalkShite]

No, that's probably Stalingrad you're thinking of.

No, they were massacred in two different battles, at Undergrad and Postgrad.

 

[hugh]

No, that's probably Stalingrad you're thinking of.

Nah ...... I know it happened at Stalingrad too when the Germans invaded Russia, but I mean when the Russians later invaded Europe they cut off a big chunk of the German army somewhere up north near the Baltics .....