A Trip Abroad. Part 1 of Many

Day -72 Wednesday 10/16/19 14:41:00.

Location: +28.214772 -82.265699

Wesley Chapel, Florida. USA.

Dear friends, I am at it again. I’m off on a grand adventure this December, this time to the snowy north. I will be traveling to Norway via St. Petersburg, Russia, to view the northern lights. Well entrenched in the arctic circle, I fully expect to be challenged, particularly during the winter solstice season. I start this December 27^th, as near to the winter apex as I could get, and travel from Tampa, Florida to Kirkenes, Norway, a deviation of:

27° 56' 50" N 82° 27' 31” W - Tampa, Florida.`

69° 43' 30" N 30° 3' 6" E - Kirkenes, Norway

There is a 41° 46’ 40” difference in latitude and a 112° 30’ 37” difference in longitude. Nearly a third of the way around the world. What fun!

I will travel mostly by train, from St. Petersburg north to the border with Norway, where we will transit countries via bus. A few days will be spent in Norway viewing the northern lights, sightseeing, and generally being cold and exquisitely entranced by it all.

I am in a tour with the same group I used to travel the trans-Siberian railroad last year. Maybe you saw my travel log of that adventure. It was a wonderful time. I learned a few things on that trip, one being that I could take a few days extra before and after my scheduled trip to have on my own. I will be staying a couple of days in St. Petersburg before the start of my trip and a few more in Moscow at the end before departing from the Sheremetyevo Alexander S. Pushkin International airport this January.

On my trip last year I found my times just wandering away from the group were most enlightening. I met some very nice people. A lovely woman at the Bolshoi ballet named Paulina. A couple of wise crackers in Ulan Ude. And some very nice children who wanted to have their pictures taken with us. And there were those bar flies in Novgorod who wanted to know what I thought of Russian food. “It’s wonderful,” of course I said. And so it was.

Since I shutter boxed my actual tour with a few extra days on either side to go wild in St. Petersburg and Moscow, I have some decisions to make. What do I want to do in Russia’s two top cities? Well, I’ve always been a fan of subways and mass transit, being familiar with New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Berlin, London, and Paris’ subways. They are all cool. I visited a couple of train stations in Russia last year and they were all impressive. I’d like to get into the actual Moscow underground. That sounds so revolutionary. Da, comrade. I just didn’t have a chance to more than just walk through a subway station last time I was there. You really have to see the murals.

I have tickets now to a play in St. Petersburg. It’s a kind of Russian folk show with native dancing and songs. Intermission includes some local food and vodka. I’m sure it’s the Russian version of Disneyfied Americana. I also got a ticket to the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet’s production of Iolanta by Tchaikovsky. There are some other places I’d like to see in Russia, while I’m there.

I’d like to visit the park of old Soviet relics. It’s a place where Muscovites decided to put all of their Soviet Union monuments that the modern country of Russia wishes to disavow. They didn’t just tear them down. No iconoclasts they. Instead they banished them outside of the city gates and left them, undisturbed. So that people can view them. And take from them what they want. Or will. Or are capable of. Or won’t anyway. Just like us and our dark history.

I could stand in fascination of a place like that. I remember the cold war, some parts of it, at least. What damage it did to me as a person and us as a nation. Two nations. I believe in honoring the past, not second guessing it. There, in that park of old Soviet relics, I might see the train wreck of a civilization, in slow motion. A creeping disaster. One moment at a time. Bringing headlong annihilation.

Shan’t we wonder at it? Can we avoid it? Could you stop it if that dreadful specter came your way? And even worse. Could you live it again, willingly and with fervor, not knowing the consequences? Not knowing the despair and the loss of charity your deeds may forge. Not knowing the cries of future generations, the many tear wrenched sobs of, “What hast thou wrought?” I dare not think of it.

Well, I don’t want to start my new adventure on a depressing note, Russian though I am. It’s in our DNA, they say. It’s certainly in our poets. Let’s just look to the north. To the bright iridescent lights of the northern sky and the reindeer sleigh rides and the snow queens and crab feasts and ice hotels against the dusty, burnished sky of night, eternal. And cold. And man against nature, or at best, cold partners in the snow. The brilliant, biting snow.

What journey do I face? What wonder encompasses me now?

Stay tuned for more.