Russia « In The Dark Night

Night moves

In Yekaterinburg, I spent an evening with the guys behind the Tesnota webzine walking around the Uralmash (Уралмаш) area of the city, a Post-constructivist residential area specially built for the workers of the nearby factory with the same name during … Continue reading

Women of the Gulag

I often thought that all contemporary witnesses I met during my trip should have their story recorded, in their own words and their own voice, and that these stories should be available in some kind of database (akin to the … Continue reading

Pothole problems in Yekaterinburg?

Yekaterinburg has a pothole problem, made worse by the empty promises of local politicians to fix it. Local blog Ura.ru and the Voskhod ad agency came up with a nifty solution: ‘We associated road holes with the images of certain … Continue reading

In Russia

In a few hours, I’ll board my plane back to Berlin. In the meantime, here are a few impressions from my time in Russia.

In ein paar Stunden geht mein Flieger nach Berlin – deswegen hier noch ein paar Eindrücke aus Russland.

Bordercrossing

Today, I finally managed to visit two of the places my grandmother spent time here in the Urals, a small village named named Kosulino (Косулино), where she worked for three years, 1946 – 1949, and a small industrial town named … Continue reading

In Yekaterinburg (II)

Guinness in Moscow

(scroll down for German version) Alexey Subbotin is a writer and finance expert hailing from a small district centre in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia. He lived abroad quite extensively both for work and travel experiences and called places like … Continue reading

In Yekaterinburg

(scroll down for German version) In Yekaterinburg, I thought I’d finally die of the heat. Stepping from the nicely air-conditioned train that I’d spent the previous 30 hours on, it felt like walking into a vapour-bath. Humid, muggy, 36 degrees … Continue reading

Russian train travel is not as exciting as it sounds. Yet it is.

Russian train travel is not as exciting as it sounds. Russians do it all the time. While ‘Westerners’ recall their times on the Trans-Siberian railway with watery eyes, most Russians I’ve met on the train would prefer to take a … Continue reading

Moskau ist ein schönes Land

(scroll down for German version) Moscow is a strange city. Despite the fact that everything inside the metro ring is called city centre it has no proper inner city as you’d expect from a Middle-European city, if you neglect the … Continue reading