Stockholm: The Door Collection

My 'adopted' Finnish parents took me along on a family vacation to Sweden this weekend, a Helsinki - Stockholm - Helsinki cruise.  We had about seven hours in Stockholm to explore the city:  Just enough time to visit a very old church, watch a parade, walk through the old town, and have a nice lunch out on the terrace of one of the many cafes.

Stockholm has some magnificent doorways!  I snapped these quick shots along the way...

Antigua: The Door Collection

Antigua is a beautiful, colonial city nestled in the central highlands of Guatemala, in the shadow of the beautiful Volcán de Agua.  The city was founded in 1543 by the Spanish, who came to colonize most of Central America until 1773.  That means the Spanish were ruling Central America from the time Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel and Copernicus was suggesting that the Sun is really the center of the universe ... until the time the United States of America was founded.

Dublin: The Door Collection

You're in for a treat.  This might be my favorite door collection to date.  Dublin is full of incredible entries!  This warm-spirited, friendly and ancient-looking city will draw you in with coziness at every turn.

Moldova: Who/What Are You? A country in the midst of a major identity crisis

**Written July 24, 2011.  Published August 15, 2011.

The road to Moldova...Sunflowers for as far as the eye can see!

Last Thursday night I was thinking about the weekend ahead and decided spontaneously to make a trip to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.  Two of my friends from Belmont - Stas and Eugen - are international students and are back visiting their family in Moldova this summer.  (In fact, Stas just graduated this spring and got married this weekend -- a big congratulations to him and his new wife, Mariana!!)
Stas and Eugen have told me a lot about their country during the past few years at Belmont, and I always told them one day I would visit them in Moldova.  Now, living just 180 km away, I couldn't pass up the opportunity!  So on Thursday evening I walked into the kitchen where Anna, my Austrian roommate, was eating a buterbrod, and said, "Hey Anna, I think I'm going to Moldova this weekend.  Do you wanna come?"
When I pulled my water bottle out of the fridge and turned around she was just staring at me.
"Are you serious?" she asked?
"Yeah, of course.  Let's just go for the weekend; spend one night; see the city a little; and come back by Sunday afternoon -- we'll still have enough time to do our homework and take a nap!"

Adventures in Odessa

I just updated my blog subscription list and realized I have a whole new problem - in the best sense of the word.  My friends and blog subscribers include English, French and Russian speakers...and I want to keep in touch with all of you, so where/when possible I'll try to add translations for stories and captions.
Je viens de me rendre compte que, de nouveau, j'ai fait des amis uniquements francophones et russophones - donc je commence à faire des traductions pour que tout le monde puisse suivre :)

Поняла, что мои новые французкие, русские и украйнские друзья, не говоряющие по-английский не будут мочь читать эти истории.  Поэтому переводу когда возможно.

Between classes and homework I've been trying to fit in a few daily excursions around Odessa.  These often include a trip to the beach -- a convenient ten minute walk from the language school.
Après les cours nous avons beaucoup de temps libre et on va souvent à la plage boire un verre ou bien nager. L'école se trouve seulement dix minutes de la plage donc on se promener jusqu'à la mer presque tous les jours.  C'est là, où se passe souvent des histoires mémorables.

После уроков мы с другими студентами часто ходим на пляж или погулаем по городу. Школа находиться только 10 минут пешком от пляжа поэтому, почти каждый день мы ходим к море - или загарать или пить пиво и капучино в наше любимое кафе на берегу моря....Кафе пиратов!

The Fontanka Most Project

While living in St. Petersburg, I crossed the most (bridge) over the Fontanka canal every morning on my way to work.  Sometime in the first few weeks I started to notice that the view from the most could change drastically from day to day, and I got into the habit of stopping to shoot a photo every few days.  It gave me a moment to pause, relax, be thankful for another day, and then continue my forty-minute commute with a new vigor.  While tidying up and cataloging my photos this weekend, I ran across this collection and it made me smile as I thought back on my time in St. Pete and the little things that made each day special.

Feb.15

Privoz Market

Privoz is Odessa's biggest and oldest open air market. It occupies three huge warehouses, an awning the size of a football field, and tons of semi-permanent and completely temporary stalls.  People sell their goods off of anything.  Some just squat around the perimeter of the market and display their garden herbs on a piece of cardboard. You can buy anything at Privoz - from homegrown veggies to knock-off coach bags, plucked chickens that are so fresh they're practically still moving, to freshly-squeezed juice, q-tips, and screwdrivers. And it's open 24 hours. At about 6.30 pm the consumer-oriented day-sellers go home and the bulk goods vendors quickly file in.

For the mixer we hosted at our flat last night, my house-mate Adrien and I went on a wild shopping adventure at Privoz. We quickly learned some survival methods...

Odessa: Ultimate Eastern European Vacation Destination

I've been in Odessa for less than 48 hours, and already I've explored downtown on foot, eaten at some delicious local restaurants, refreshed my wardrobe with attire appropriate for the 95F (35C) weather, attended a spectacular performance of Madame Butterfly at the world-famous Odessa Opera House, spent a morning sunning on the beach (during which I fell asleep in the sun and will continue to pay for that nap as my sunburn becomes more and more painful), swam in the Black Sea, and made Ukrainian friends at the Irish pub next door to my apartment.

St. Petersburg Center: A Guided Tour

Last week one of the coordinators from the School of Russian and Asian Studies, named Sergei, led Sarah, Hillary, and I on a walking tour of central St. Petersburg.  It was a warm, clear day and perfect for walking.  It turns out Sergei is a professor at one of the universities in St. Petersburg, and he is a wealth of great information.  Beyond simply knowing an immense amount of information about Russian culture and history, he is able to detach himself from his Russian identity and talk about issues objectively and in a global context.  

"Dom Knigi" ("House of Books"), otherwise known as The Singer House.
It was the first building built in St. Pete by an American company,
(Singer Sewing Company), and at one time it even housed the
U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg!

A Sunny Day in St. Pete

A while back, I started using a site called DailyMile as an exercise log. It has a neat feature that allows you to map your routes, and even save commonly-used routes such as a daily commute.  I realized that my daily commute to school and back totals about 3.5 miles of walking (and about 40 minutes on the metro each way). When I plugged this in, and then added my other walking excursions, I was surprised to find out that I walked 29 miles last week!

I know it sounds unbelievable, but I happen to have 29 miles worth of photos to prove it.  And we've had lots of sunny days lately, a climate which always inspires me to pull out my camera.  In a city like St. Petersburg, I just can't resist the temptation to snap a photo of almost every building I pass.

Helsinki Cityscapes

I've had a special request.  My mother called last night and said, "I want to see what it looks like when you're just walking down the street."
I usually get frustrated when I try to take "walking down the street" photos, because I want to cram all of the people, sights, sounds, and smells into my lens, and it's just not possible.  Nevertheless, I'll give you what I have....

C'est ma maman qui voulait regarder les photos de mes promenades en ville.  Souvent je n'aime pas ce genre de photo quand je les fasses, parce que c'est impossible de mettre tous les sons et goûts d'une ville dans le petit écran sur mon appareil. Mais bon, un essaie....