Home » Russia » Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part I)

Hello my dear subscribers,<br /><br />Tomorrow I am leaving to my next trip It is not only my travel addiction, that drives me. I have to travel for health reasons also. Life in America is pretty unhealthy. People in the not so prosperous countries walk for groceries, walk to work, run after overcrowded buses and fight with others to get inside. This provides them with much needed amount of daily exercises, the natural way. Americans almost do not walk. They go everywhere by car. Every task which requires even a small muscular effort is mechanized or automated. Even two story buildings have an elevator. This, along with abandons of food produce an un-intentional result. Americans became fatter and fatter. Dedicated people with strong will, would wake up earlier and go for a jog, go to gym and eat, not tasty, but healthy vegetables. This way they stay in shape. Ordinary folks don't do that and get fat. A Stunning 70% of Americans are overweight.<br /><br />This is an unexpected result of a sincere efforts to make people's live better and easier. I did not get overweight yet, but I definitely got out of shape during four months of sitting in front of the computer and traveling between the computer and the fridge.

Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part I)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 18:13:34

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rent there, to a race. I wrote about these girls two years ago, do you remember? One girl took the challenge and we made a race along the edge of a field. I rode my bike on asphalt, she rode the horse on a dirt road. A horse cannot run fast on asphalt. We finished simultaneously.

My friend gave me a book written by Sergei Davlatov "Zapovednik" (Reservation), written about the Pushkin memorial complex. Davlatov worked there as a tour guide. So I tried to visit some places which Davlatov mentioned, mostly low key restaurants where he got drunk. Amazingly everybody here knows Davlatov's name and some remember him. My group left Sunday afternoon. I stayed and rode my bike in the evening of that day and planned to ride it the next morning also. But it was pouring rain and I decided to go back to St. Petersburg. There were not many people in the streets. I met two Gypsy girls and they explained to me, how to get to the main road. They asked me where I was from. I said from Washington. They were impressed. One offered me to tell my fortune. Another offered me a date for tomorrow, but I decided to return to SPB. There were no buses. So encouraged by very popular Russian hitchhiker site http://www.avp.travel.ru/ I decided to hitchhike to Pskov. When I reached the main road I was completely soaked. It is OK to be wet when you are moving. It is like being in a wet scuba suit. When you are not moving you start to freeze. No one stopped for me for an hour and I was ready to go back to the hotel. Suddenly, a small passenger car stopped and took me. It was a Pskovian family from a nearby village. They spoke with an incredibly heavy Pskovian accent, which has always been the subject of jokes. They made a huge loop to bring me to the highway, very good people. The next car which took me to Pskov was a big truck (Kamaz), which carried logs, a driver had cigarettes, I had vodka. We had a good time. He told me his interesting story, and I understood the ...