long red lines across a map

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Welcome to Russia and awesome newspaper headlines. The title of this entry was just below the fold on the free English paper that you find around town. Others beauties include Police Bust Estonian Vodka Pipeline Gang, an article I initially ignored thinking it was merely a euphemism for some smuggling ring blah blah boring; but no it was an actual 2km pipeline from some illegal stills in Russia across the border to Estonia where, as a result of joining the EU, vodka prices have skyrocketed making the product a prime target for mafia types. The best part is that it’s not the first one they’ve found, quite how you secretly lay a 2km pipeline across a border I’m not sure. The main headline was Condeleeza Rice embarrassing herself calling Russia irrelevant, you’d think with all those Russian experts they still have knocking around over there they’d be able to come up with some accurate analysis. [read on]

All I can recall of Tuesday through to mid afternoon is lying of my top bunk wishing the world would stop trying to force its way into my head in quite so insistent a manner.  With a pressing list of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Less than an hour in Russia proper and I have already been fined by a very severe looking railway official.  The crime was taking a photo of an, on reflection kind of average, wall mosaic of Lenin.  The site Finland ... [Continue reading this entry]

This is a lesson in how to forget a city.  With Russia dominating the planning and preparation, the regionalism of the Baltic being the first stop, the only thought that had gone into Helsinki was that there is a ferry ... [Continue reading this entry]