To my gleeful amazement, I unexpectedly ran across Gagarin’s Vostok-1 capsule yesterday! I was out wandering in Moscow and at the VDNKh exhibition center I discovered a newly opened museum “Cosmos”. It turns out to be a big new Space Technology museum. And sitting in the lobby was the original Gagarin Vostok-1 capsule. Oh wow! […]
Browsing Posts in Travel
Moscow: Vostok-1
September 5, 2018
Perm-36 Gulag Museum
August 31, 2018
Perm-36 is the last surviving Gulag camp, now the “Museum of the History of Political Repression“, about 90km East of Perm. It was abandoned in 1988, became extremely dilapidated, then was reclaimed as a Museum in 1994 and partially restored. So what is visible today is a mix of original buildings and reconstructions. It is […]
Gdansk: Neptune
August 23, 2018
As a loyal follower of Neptune, as soon as I arrived in Gdansk (née Danzig) I made a beeline to the bronze Fountain of Neptune, a stylish affair dating from 1615. When I got there I was surprised to find Neptune sporting a stylish tee shirt. He looks good in it, but say what? The […]
Hawaii: Lava 2018
July 25, 2018
Fissure 8, from 3000ftI’m out in Hawaii to see the current lava flows. I started at 4:00am with a bouncy boat ride with Lava Ocean Tours. I had sacrificed a delicious lemon muffin to Poseidon, so the sea was reasonably smooth and we got a good view of where the lava river is hitting the […]
Cyprus: Gothic Mosques
July 5, 2018
In North Nicosia, I visited that rare architectural oddity, the Gothic Mosque. The Selimiye Mosque was originally a 13th c French Gothic Cathedral and after the 16th c Ottoman conquest was turned into a Mosque. It comes complete with flying buttresses, vaulted ceilings, an arc of tiny carved bishops over the entrance arch, and two […]
Tirana: Familiar Faces
June 26, 2018
I was striding past Albania’s National Art Gallery when I suddenly spotted a familiar face lurking at the back. Wait, it can’t be? Can it? Yes, it is! Stalin himself, larger than life, glaring disdainfully at the passers by! It turns out that an area behind the Gallery has a small selection of communist-era statues. […]
© 2025 The Wandering Scot
Design by SRS Solutions