Trip #5
Frazier makes this one alone. It is shorter, less perilous, but he still has to rely on his own Russian. Pretty impressive. Oil as future wealth for Russia--book was published in 2010, so probably written before the impact of fracking on the world oil market was clear . . . Aeroflot--no smoking, cleaner (no lawn chairs for seats) . . . jets named after writers (Pushkin, Dostoevsky--very Russian. Our Alaska A has football teams.) Novosibirsk Regional Museum with a mummy exhibit where the mummies are replicas, maybe, of real mummies, or then again just might be "mummies" created for the exhibit. . . . Small boy singing Jingle Bells while waiting for his mother--no accent at all . . . Pages 463-64 All the contradictions of Russia . . . Stalin as the third most greatest (!) man in Russian History. . . . Russia losing population. Around 144 million -- 150 million mastodons buried in Siberia! Pollution . . . methane gas escaping as permafrost melts . . . Russians burn off natural gas in Siberian oil refineries . . . the "drunken" forest--land shifting, making the trees in the forest all shift . . . climate disaster awaiting us is clearly evident in the place no one goes--Siberia.
Everything you could want in a travel book!
Frazier makes this one alone. It is shorter, less perilous, but he still has to rely on his own Russian. Pretty impressive. Oil as future wealth for Russia--book was published in 2010, so probably written before the impact of fracking on the world oil market was clear . . . Aeroflot--no smoking, cleaner (no lawn chairs for seats) . . . jets named after writers (Pushkin, Dostoevsky--very Russian. Our Alaska A has football teams.) Novosibirsk Regional Museum with a mummy exhibit where the mummies are replicas, maybe, of real mummies, or then again just might be "mummies" created for the exhibit. . . . Small boy singing Jingle Bells while waiting for his mother--no accent at all . . . Pages 463-64 All the contradictions of Russia . . . Stalin as the third most greatest (!) man in Russian History. . . . Russia losing population. Around 144 million -- 150 million mastodons buried in Siberia! Pollution . . . methane gas escaping as permafrost melts . . . Russians burn off natural gas in Siberian oil refineries . . . the "drunken" forest--land shifting, making the trees in the forest all shift . . . climate disaster awaiting us is clearly evident in the place no one goes--Siberia.
Everything you could want in a travel book!
Comments
Post a Comment