RUSSIA

THE FIELD OF THE MADNESS THAT ILLUMINATES MY WAY

I have dreamed of going to Russia since I was 15 years old.
But then it was just a dream and a faraway destination.
Then I started traveling alone and on my return from the Basque Country. I realized that I could go anywhere with myself.
And I had no doubts or hesitations.
My next trip would be Russia. Alone.
I wanted to see the Soviet Union.

It was challenging to organize everything on my own but what I did was wonderful.
I needed more than a year but the journey was difficult, long and complicated: the Trans-Siberian Train.

I always wanted to do things big, with a bang.
And the Trans-Siberian is an atomic bomb, THE travel.

Over the years I have returned here 3 times, including one for the celebrations of the Centenary of the Red October Revolution..
The last 2 I felt even more at home, after taking the Russian language course at the Honorary Consulate of Belarus, in Cagliari.
Talking a little Russian certainly helps.

MAIN CITIES OUTSIDE AND ALONG THE TRANSIBERIAN

Usually a classic view of Russia is limited to St. Petersburg and Moscow but it is difficult to talk about Russia without linking it to the Trans-Siberian route, a fundamental railway line for connections from Moscow to Vladivastok, passing through Siberia.

LENINGRAD

I took my first steps in Russia in Leningrad (or St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Piter, everyone still calls it what he wants). Here began my Trans-Siberian, here my awareness really began of wanting to travel the world as a traveler, here I realized the dream of seeing the Soviet Union.
Leningrad is in my heart for many reasons.

MOSCOW

Arriving in Red Square is a point of arrival.

But Moscow is not just this.
Moscow is the Museum of Cosmonauts.
Moscow is the metro, its stations so spectacular that they make them museums.
Moscow is VDNH.

SIBERIA

Irkutsk deserves at least a dedicated day. The Russian music diffused by the coffers attached to the streetlights of the light acts as background in the walks among dozens of statues (the most ironic one I saw depicts one of the many boys arrived so far with the Trans-Siberian and who remains speechless while walking with the backpack in shoulder in the streets of the capital of Siberia) and wooden houses with splendid carved windows with which to face the Winter General.

Another historic and unmissable place is certainly Baikal Lake the deepest and with the largest water volume in the world, so clear that it is drinkable. It is impossible to imagine it as a lake, given its dimensions: 636 km from north to south, 48 km with average width (maximum 79.4), 744 meters of average depth (1.642 meters the maximum). Do you think to imagin it frozen? In fact, in summer it can easily be compared to the sea, in winter cars and trucks run on its icy base.