russia
this is the biggest country in the world

i used to have dreams as a wee little man, of being on a train in russia. not nightmares, but little adventures that would lead to germany before i woke up. the trans-siberian railroad gets dream-like in parts; particularly after waking up in your bunk, still a full day from the next stop, and you can't vividly remeber ever being off the train.

my trip allowed for 4-day stops in both irkutsk and novosibersk before rolling west into moscow. russia is not an easy place to get around, but is not the anarchy some would imagine. russians are generally very hopeful and proud of their country, and enjoy dialogue with a traveller. many russians speak german as a second language, but english is spoken by a few.

moscow reads like a mid-century vision of the future. chrome bullet-speed metros and giant art-deco skyscrapers are the pride of a people that seemed to create an entire culture out of pure sweat. not a menacing city, but incredible and impressive. everything here seems to ask you, not quietly, for due respect.

everything about russia is on a grand-scale; it's a place where being epic alone seems a virtue. anything magnificent about the soviet years is maintained as such, and what's held as the greatest shame about the u.s.s.r. is that it fell apart, not that it was necessarily so terrible in and of itself. the aftermath of that breakup has led to a great deal of uncertainty about russia's future, but it seems that the vision of the future is what it's always been; the pursuit of glory hasn't broken apart.