Destination Russia. A ship and a cat in the tundra and other extra-ordinary encounters E-Book

Fabio Bertino

• Herausgeber: goWare
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The road to travel with Destination Russia is a long one: it takes many hours by train. But there is no time to be bored: the journey is a continuous discovery unveiling the true essence of this extraordinary country through encounters with ordinary people met in environments only cold in appearance but which, in reality, warm the heart. Destination Russia is, then, the narration of a string of unforgettable stories: the elderly lady travelling towards a remote archipelago in search of “hope” or Yashik, with his face marked by life, who already beyond the Arctic Circle, tells us he comes from North, the meeting with a cat (rather, a female cat) in the tundra, or the one with a couple of railway workers, living their love aboard the world’s longest railway line, or with the students of a school-museum. Even the one with an uncontaminated lake or simply with compartment mates on the train “where all of Russia travels”.
The authors show us an extraordinary world through their eyes, a gaze that manifests all their love for this endless land, a passion as limitless as Russia itself, able to overcome geographical boundaries to reach the soul.

Leseprobe

Cover

Begin reading

About the Author

Photo Gallery

Russia by the numbers

List of Names, Places and Tracks

Table of Contents

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© goWare 2018, Florence, Italy

First English Edition

ISBN 978-88-3363-020-5

Translation into English by Maria Gabriella Bertino and Kirsten Akers Dhillon

Cover design: Lorenzo Puliti

ePub developer: Michela Allia

Picture # 12 “Nevsky Prospect” by Daria Vedrinskaya.

All other pictures are supplied by the authors.

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Colophon

Description

Preface

Places in the story

Heading East

Towards Belarus

Jeans and tenors

The world after mankind

In the world’s biggest country

A dinner in Moscow

The beauty of Petersburg

Travelling with Vera

A cat in the tundra

Visiting the Museum

Beyond the iron door

At the eastern fair

A life on the Trans-Siberian Railway

The song of the shamans

The biggest heads on Earth

Russia Map

Russia by the numbers

Photo Gallery

Picture 1 – Bolshoi theatre

Picture 2 – Independence square, location of the imposing government building

Picture 3 – A different view of Minsk

Picture 4 – The small “graveyard” in Chernobyl

Picture 5 – The surreal landscape in Pripyat

Picture 6 – Carefree faces from the past

Picture 7 – The desolate Ferris wheel in Pripyat

Picture 8 – The Radisson Royal Hotel, one of the skyscrapers known as The Seven Sisters

Picture 9 – The “house by the riverfront” in Moscow

Picture 10 – View of the Kremlin and of the Moscova river from the Patriarshy bridge

Picture 11 – Red Square: a glimpse of the history of Moscow

Picture 12 – The scintillating Nevsky Prospect

Picture 13 – The inspiring Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood

Picture 14 – The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg

Picture 15 – The Solovetsky Monastery

Picture 16 – The typical wood houses of the Solovetsky archipelago

Picture 17 – Fragments of history on Bolshoi island

Picture 18 – A small group of pilgrims looking for “hope”

Picture 19 – The evocative ship in the tundra

Picture 20 – The snowy landscape on the Seyda river

Picture 21 – Katyusha, the “lady of the house” in Seyda

Picture 22 – The Arctic “subway”

Picture 23 – The icy and snowy Ulitsa Lenina in Vorkuta

Picture 24 – The buildings in Vorkuta “guarded” by snow

Picture 25 – Crosses in the Tundra: memorials of the gulags prisoners

Picture 26 – The limitless, immaculate landscape of Siberia

Picture 27 –The Urals, Siberian mountains

Picture 28 – The tiny store in a small railway station in the Tundra

Picture 29 – The monument on the border between two continents, Europe and Asia

Picture 30 – “Stolen” shot

Picture 31 – Yashik’s face marked by life

Picture 32 – A Nenets reindeer breeder

Picture 33 – Nenets annual gathering in Salekhard

Picture 34 – The monument to the Arctic Circle

Picture 35 – A contender at the sleigh race

Picture 36 – The Rossiya, the train that travels along the Trans-Siberian

Picture 37 – The landscape from the window of the Trans-Siberian

Picture 38 – Sellers along the tracks of the Trans-Siberian

Picture 39 – Kyzyl, crossroad of cultures: the monument at the center of Asia

Picture 40 – Ai-tchourek, the lady shaman

Picture 41 – The meeting with Ai-Tchourek at the shmanic centre in Kyzyl

Picture 42 – The “black lands” of Tuva

Picture 43 – The Ovaa in Tuva

Picture 44 – The big “head” of Lenin

Picture 45 – The typical physical features of a Buryat couple

Picture 46 – On the banks of beautiful Lake Baikal

List of Names, Places and Tracks

Description

The road to travel with Destination Russia is a long one: it takes many hours by train. But there is no time to be bored: the journey is a continuous discovery unveiling the true essence of this extraordinary country through encounters with ordinary people met in environments only cold in appearance but which, in reality, warm the heart. Destination Russia is, then, the narration of a string of unforgettable stories: the elderly lady travelling towards a remote archipelago in search of “hope” or Yashik, with his face marked by life, who already beyond the Arctic Circle, tells us he comes from North, the meeting with a cat (rather, a female cat) in the tundra, or the one with a couple of railway workers, living their love aboard the world’s longest railway line, or with the students of a school-museum. Even the one with an uncontaminated lake or simply with compartment mates on the train “where all of Russia travels”.

The authors show us an extraordinary world through their eyes, a gaze that manifests all their love for this endless land, a passion as limitless as Russia itself, able to overcome geographical boundaries to reach the soul.

* * *

Roberta Melchiorre, after graduating in Foreign Languages and Literature, with a Slavic emphasis, lived for long periods of time in Moscow and Petersburg. She works with international projects at the Polytechnic University of Turin and, for some years, has been a happy volunteer Italian teacher for foreigners in Alessandria, Italy.

Fabio Bertino, once achieved his Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business, tries to compensate with another in Cultural Anthropology. He lives between Alessandria and the hills of the Monferrato, loves writing and travelling and contributes to the online magazine, “Erodoto108”.

Together Fabio and Roberta also published World zapping. Racconti di viaggio.

To the on line coverage of Erodoto 108, an amazing adventure that is so much more than a simple magazine.

To the School of Travel in Milan, which continues to teach us a lot.

To our companions of the Social Lab in Alessandria, “a world containing many worlds”.

To Dasha, Marina, Lilie and the Russian people for the many, unforgettable memories they gave us.

“From every journey I returned with the memory of someone more than of something.”

Pino Cacucci

O Russia, raspberry and azure

coloured land fallen into the river,

I love to the point of joy, to the point of torment

Your lake of sadness

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin

“My rustic cart began to sing” (from Russia and other poems)

Preface

How curious is geography. Moving East, thus changing our centre of gravity, adjusting point of view, is sufficient to realise that Europe is not the centre of the world and that Italy is not the centre of Europe, as the maps in our libraries seem to suggest. A train to Warsaw, getting off at the station, suffices to understand that this, if anything, is the centre of Europe. And from there, still running up towards Russia to see the whole world from another window: new perspective, unexpected relationships and scale.

How curious is geography, above all if we learn it on land, in person, with our eyes and feet, like the first geographers used to do. And in the way in which inquiring and attentive travellers still do, studying language, customs, music, the local cultures, but who are always amazed when the time comes to touch them for real, to chat together.

This is how, at the School of Travel, we teach looking at, even before speaking about, the places and the people living there. A way consonant with the speed of the glance and comprehension, to be “turned on” in every situation, receptive, ready for the exchange, the pure essence of a journey.

And Destination Russia recounts, actually, a geography discovered little by little, at the speed of a train or a bus covering the road foot by foot, taking us far away from home but closer and closer to ourselves, as we are reflected in the eyes of some stranger.

To reach Russia, involves many hours of trains, sleeping cars, chats, thoughts, stations and small discoveries. Everything helps to remove the stereotypes from the mind and eyes: the theatre in Minsk that recalls the Bolshoi in Moscow, the terrifying and silent Chernobyl, turned into a tourist destination, and Italy, always a relevant topic to break the ice, to talk, to learn and understand.

The journey, in fact, consists mainly of encounters: enjoyable or unpleasant, enlightening or merely interesting, but seldom useless. The one with the old lady travelling towards a far away archipelago to fulfill a vow or with a cat (rather a female cat of the tundra), with students or with museums guards, with train engineers or simply with travelling companions of a few hours or miles. Even the one with a pristine lake can be an encounter from which a dialogue is born.

Here is, therefore, Destination Russia: about the journey even more than the destination, the anticipation more than the outcome, the desire more than the enjoyment.

Guido Bosticco e Claudio Visentin, School of Travel

Places in the story

Warsaw

Minsk

Chernobyl and Pripyat

Moscow

Saint Petersburg

Solovetsky archipelago

Seyda

Vorkuta

Labytnangi

Salekhard

Trans-Siberian (Urusha and Bamovskaya)

Kyzyl

Ulan-Ude and Ust- Barguzin