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

Displayed times (last time: )

main advantage of hitchhiking: you systematically meet a good people. Bad people do not stop for you!!! I was in Pskov 35 years ago on my honeymoon, or more properly to say honey-weekend. Pskov seemed to me a sizable town at that time. On a bike it is petty small. Bums on the streets sell porchini mushrooms (belie gribi), $1.50 for a large bunch. I had porchini soup in a local restaurant, which I could smell from a distance. Pskov is the center of mushroom country. My bus tour stopped in Pskov two days ago and we visited Pskov Kremlin, again, in large group with other tour groups around. Riding bike along river Velikaya in the evening was much more pleasant and romantic experience. Pskov is in a much better shape then other Russian provincial cities.

Alex Mumzhiu
Saint Petersburg Russia
July 3 7 pm

I wrote to you about Russian writer Sergei Davlatov, whose book about Puskin memorial complex I read in Pushkin Hills. I have found that I have a lot in common with him.

Contrary to common opinion he was not a dissident back in the Soviet Union. However he had a capability to systematically get into the wrong place at the wrong time. An already printed book of his stories was destroyed in Tallinn simply because the government decided to make next round of tightening of strict controls over the press. I also had this capability to get in the wrong place at the wrong time. The most funny of my misdemeanors was this, as quoted from my KGB file: "Interrupted the movement of foreign oceanic ships on the Azov Sea (being in a canoe)"

Davlatov complained that they did not allow him to travel even to Bulgaria, which was the easiest foreign country to get permission to travel to. I also was not allowed to travel to Bulgaria.

While Davlatov served in the army, he worked as a guard in prison camps for the most dangerous prisoners. He wrote that he invented for himself the exercise, which he called ...