Kaliningrad to Baltiysk Baltiysk (formerly known as Pillau) retained little of his German heritage. The entire Kaliningrad region was Russianized after World War II. Baltiysk’s old buildings stood out recognizable by their dark brick, thick walls. The town was green, clean and orderly which is typical for the places with heavy military presence. Men in […]
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Gdansk The bus Gdansk – Kaliningrad was half-full. Its passengers were Russians and Poles except for one Spanish-speaking family of four. Near Elblag, the only stop en route to Russia, we ran into thick fog that changed to rain. The bus was at the Polish border at 8:20 a.m., about 2 hours after it left
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Having left Krakow abruptly, I did not prepare myself for Gdansk as I would normally do. I knew that Gdansk (formerly known as Danzig) was a major port. It thrived as a trade center due to its location at the river mouth and on the Baltic Sea. The Teutonic Knights controlled the city whose population
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Coburg, Germany From Prague, I took the night train to Krakow, Poland. My ticket was for a 4-person sleeper. A train conductor checked it and told me to take a different compartment. I looked questioningly at him. ‘You are alone,’ he said. The guy was Czech; he struggled to find English words to explain what
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Sunday, the 13th of May was the International Museum Day. Admission to the museums was free. We used this opportunity to see Coburg, a small town with a big place in the European history. The same day, Coburg also happened to host an Old Timers show. Vintage car enthusiasts from all over the area drove
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Getting from Koblenz to Coburg by public transport was somewhat cumbersome. It was not a great distance, but the fact that I had to take 4 trains. Some connection times were very tight. I bet on German punctuality and bought a ticket to Coburg where my friend and a fellow translator Oksana was going to
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I left Luxembourg at 9.33 am and 2.5 hours later was in Koblenz. It was easy to find accommodation near the train station. The hotel National had a high-sounding name. In reality, it was a small cozy place, the kind that I like. A single room was $77 per night with breakfast. After a few
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Let me state upfront that my first impression of Luxembourg was disappointment. Maybe it was because the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg sounded so grand and romantic and it did not look that way; or maybe because I only saw Luxembourg City and no other parts of this tiny country. I left the train from Reims
That night in Reims, I had a nightmare. I was fighting with an evil witch. She turned my friends into rag dolls one by one. I was losing, feeling hopeless; my end was near. Birds signing in the inner courtyard woke me up. Where did that dream come from? Yesterday was a perfect day, I
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Laon Reims was going to be my seventh and last city in France to visit. By then, I gained some experience and developed a certain strategy for exploring new places. When the train rolls into a city I, first of all, try to determine on which side of it the city center is. In Europe,
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