Author: admin
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Uruk
The Uruk site is well organized, with large explanatory signs, a strong perimeter fence, and (wonder of wonders) an actual ticket office, which doubles as a guard post. We were the only visitors of the day so it took a few minutes to round up the ticket seller. Uruk was the first great city, the…
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Ancient Ur
There are very few tourists in Iraq at the moment, so I was expecting the ancient city of Ur to be almost deserted. But no, as we approached the great ziggurat, we saw about 40 tour buses parked and hordes of teenagers cavorting around the site. Say what? It turns out it’s the last month…
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False Dawn in Murmansk
I was in Murmansk for the Winter Solstice. The city is North of the Arctic Circle, so the sun never actually rises in mid-winter. I had been vaguely expecting that I would be encountering a 24 hour night, but no, the sky was actually a bright twilight from about noon to about 4:00pm, as the…
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Grozny
On my way from Vladikavkaz to Astrakhan, I stopped off in Grozny. I’m not sure what I expected from Chechnya, but it wasn’t this. Almost all the buildings in central Grozny are new, built after the devastation of the second Chechen War. But there is now another enormous new wave of construction under way, with…
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Stalin in Vladikavkaz
I’m in Vladikavkaz (“Lord of the Caucasus”), North Ossetia, Russian Federation, where Stalin lurks. I was visiting the fine WWII memorial park “Monument to Glory”. And there he was, posed casually in front of a giant historical mosaic. The most surprising part is that the bust is new, added in 2009 by the local Communist…
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Tskhinval, South Ossetia
The breakaway “Republic of South Ossetia” was a major focus of the 2008 Georgian-Russian war. The border with the rest of Georgia is closed to foreigners, but it’s possible to visit from Russia. You need advance permission from the South Ossetian authorities. They don’t issue a visa or even provide an authorization letter, but instead…