World – Page 2 – The Late Bloomer

From Rome to Asia without flying – Western Russia

Featured by Fabrizio Bianchi, posted in digitalnomadism, economy, travel, Lifestyle, travel, World

What we talk about, when we talk about Russia?

It’s not easy these days, let’s make that clear first.

Many people have been forced to wrongly associate the history, tradition, culture of a complex yet unbelievable country with the current state of politic or a powerful, controversial figure as Vladimir Putin.

That’s unfortunate.

I feel that, as a person who was lucky enough to traverse its vastness, diversity, richness.

Russia is the largest country in the world with a total area of 17,098,242 Km² (6,601,665 mi²) and a land area of 16,376,870 Km² (6,323,142 mi²). [1]

When we talk about Russia, we talk about an enormous body that contains different animas, religions, even continents.

Let’s focus on the western part of this multilayered tradition.

We are talking about the area that ranges from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, which takes only a tiny portion of the whole body.

It is worth to pinpoint another impressive fact at this point:

There are eleven time zones in Russia, which currently observe times ranging from UTC+02:00 to UTC+12:00. [2]

Probably, most people that live in the two biggest Russian cities, see themselves as westerners.

Or at least I had this impression when I visited back in 2019.

Things have changed since then, as Ukraine invasion by Russia has had a huge impact on that perception, I believe.

The West, which basically means USA and Europe, has moved with all its means to alienate Russia.

They succeeded, at least on a cultural level, as everything that is associated with Russia is perceived with a bias these days.

Social media, which are breeding one conformist after another, have only amplified this strategy.

History, literature, architecture, beauty, should have no flag.

That’s my belief.

But, when you talk about Russia, people tend to get cold, to turn their heads.

That’s a pity, I repeat.

While Saint Petersburg remains the cultural capital of the country, because of its undisputed beauty and sophistication, Moscow is the political and economical centre.

Most of the country wealth is concentrated here, in that tiny strip that face Northern Europe.

Capitalism, in the Russian translation, means gas, oligarchs.

After the Soviet Union collapse in 1991, the oligarchs, favored by a ruling class of inept (you remember Boris Yeltsin right?), have feasted on the country’s great mining heritage.

Putin’s rise was facilitated by some of them, who probably underestimated the man, thinking they could keep manoeuvring the Russia’s president like a puppet.

Well, it didn’t go that way.

Putin has gone out of his way to make it easier for those who never opposed him, taking out whoever tried to challenge him.

The rest is history.

In this part of Russia, wealth is often exhibited, as a symbol of power and masculinity.

It is a post-Soviet tradition that has roots in the empire period, I suppose.

Russia has always seen herself as a powerful imperial state.

This is something that goes beyond the personality of an individual leader.

It is an historical attribute.

Then there is the religious matter at the heart of any intricate dynamic concerning this country.

*A view of Red Square, with a glimpse of the mausoleum containing Lenin’s remains.*

When we talk about western Russia, we talk about a Cristhian orthodox tradition, whose incredible legacy is on display at every corner of cities such as St. Petersburg and Moscow.

On the other side, there’s revolution and the looming presence of Lenin, with whom any Russian leader must contend.

Putin has successfully navigated these two worlds without explicitly favoring either of them.

I have got the sense that on this side of Russia, no one wants to be a communist anymore.

But at the time, the revolution started far away, finally reaching Moscow.

And there’s also the journey to be taken through the social ranks.

I don’t think it surprises anyone that there may be communist nostalgics among those who are having a hard time.

And they are not a small number in Russia.

When I was visited Saint Petersburg or Moscow, I had the feeling that you get in any big western city, though.

People seemed to enjoy comfort and have a desire to live a free, happy life.

Isn’t that what we all ultimately want?

In my next article, I will talk about the days I spent in Moscow, the capital, the holy city, the centre of any historical and political intrigue.

Stay tuned fellas.

From Rome to Asia without flying – Saint Petersburg, a writer dream

Featured by Fabrizio Bianchi, posted in digitalnomadism, Lifestyle, travel, World

I don’t know about yourself, but I often have the feeling that this thing that we call life is just a dream.

It’s an old, recurring theme in literature and in neuroscience today, as the way we perceive reality can be described as a “controlled hallucination”.

We don’t see things as they are, but as we are.

Which means that our mind is constantly creating a vision before our eyes.

A dream, literary.

Past, present and future flow in that same ephemeral river, as if they never existed.

“And so I ask myself: Where are your dreams? And I shake my head and mutter: How the years go by! And I ask myself again: What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived?”, ask Dostoevsky in the White Nights, a short story he wrote about an isolated, dreamer character living in Saint Petersburg.

A classic of his.

The answer seems to be captured in another quote of the same book:

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”

We can’t, indeed, we need to make sense of that hallucination telling (writing) stories about ourselves, about others.

Especially when life seems to play the absurdity card for us.

Without doing so, we are going to fall in a bottomless, hellish pit, and we are simply going to die, miserably.

That seems an appropriate premise to make in talking about my Petersburg days.

There is probably no better city on earth for daydreaming and storytelling.

Quite often its beauty is so striking that it generates a kind of jealousy, though.

You would want to treasure it, like a rare and beautiful dream, indeed.

But that’s no the reason why we are here, and why we do what we do.

We do inflame that sparkling fantasy of ours through images, for example.

Above are some photos of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, erected on the same site where the emperor Alexander II was assassinated by members of the nihilist movement.

The “spilled blood” suffix refers indeed to his assassination.

Too bad the dome was under renovation works at that time, nonetheless the facade retained its glorious magnificence.

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams,” says again Dostoevsky in the White Nights, a book that marked my adolescence deeply.

As an idealistic, hyper sensitive, impressionable, teenager I could identify and empathize with Dostoevsky’s protagonist, with his inadequacy, his loneliness.

One of the many things that scares me about the present world, is the fact that today, young people don’t seem to have any interest in reading great literature.

They are easily addicted to social media scrolling, consuming contents that don’t nurture their mind, their souls.

That has a huge impact on their cognitive abilities, but also on their feelings.

I believe that a particularly sensitive guy finds no comfort in scrolling through pictures and videos on Instagram, YouTube or even worse, TikTok.

Honestly, I have no idea how young people can cope with life today, but I am pretty sure that my adolescence would have been darker, marked by anxiety and a sense of being constantly inadequate, without books.

You may have realized by now that I have a hard time talking about my Petersburg days through a linear narrative, but that’s because I really experienced it all as a dream.

Time windows open one into the other.

So, I’d rather let the pictures do the talking here:

St. Petersburg is the city of canals, more than 60, of one of the world’s richest museums, the Hermitage, which features a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, one of the earliest works of the High Renaissance, Madonna Litta, of Petrine Baroque by Domenico Trezzani and Giovanni Fontana among others.

It’s also the city where the greatest writer of all time, Fëdor Michajlovič Dostoevskij, lived most of his life and set most of his fiction works.

*The F. M. Dostoyevsky Literary Memorial Museum located on Kuznechny Lane 5/2*

I had the privilege to visit the apartment on Kuznechny Lane 5/2 where Dostoevskij lived twice during his life, first for a short period in 1846 in the beginnings of his career, and later from October 1878, when he wrote The Brothers Karamazov, until his death in January 1881.

Mine was thus a pilgrimage to the city where the writer who most marked my personal and intellectual path, is still buried.

From Mskovskiy Prospekt, I took the Metro 4, the orange line, to reach Alexander Nevsky Square, where the Tikhvin Cemetery is located.

Walking in that sacred place was without doubt one of the highlight of my journey to Asia.

One of the milestone of my entire life, I would dare to say.

Finding the grave wasn’t hard, as the cemetery is a tiny one.

*The grave of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his wife Anna*

I cannot hide the fact that I was particularly moved at that moment.

And I would certainly fail in trying to describe my feelings and thoughts, how surreal the whole thing appeared to me.

I cannot reveal my private conversation with him, either, with whoever was listening in the universe at that particular moment.

I want to close this article with the gold paint epitaph transcribed on the grave, including Dostoyevsky’s favorite Gospel verse:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit (Jn. 12:24).

From Rome to Asia without flying – A bus to Saint Petersburg, Russia

Featured by Fabrizio Bianchi, posted in digitalnomadism, Lifestyle, travel, World

I got on the bus at the Autobussijaam on 46 Lasted str. at 6:35 a.m.

It would have been a trip of about eight hours, one of the longest made via bus on this journey to Asia.

I remember all these women, with their faces marked by age and fatigue, boarding the bus with plastic bags full of clothes.

It had become a recurring scene while travelling Eastern Europe.

This time I picked a company called Ecolines, which provides quality services and affordable prices all across Europe.

The trip was quite comfortable, with several stops along the way.

When we reached the Narva-Ivangorod crossing border, we had to go through the check point.

For the first time in my life, I was actually traversing a land border, while leaving Europe behind me.

I also felt that I was entering a different dimension of the journey, that had nothing to do with all the trips I had done previously.

It was probably about the skin change that a tourist undergoes when he starts to actually travel.

I mean, for real.

Which is definitely not about flying from an airport to another, experiencing a city, or any place for that matter, through a schedule of things to see, to do.

In the end, I really believe that travelling has more to do with experiencing people and places with the illusion of never having to leave them.

With that same pace as life goes.

Even if your next destination it is a city that you have never seen before, as in my case, but one that you have dreamt a lot about.

So, travelling is to chase the desire that every place in the world can be your home after all.

We queued for a while, waiting to get our visa checked, then we walked for about a kilometre to get on a different bus.

We left the border after an hour, approximately.

We got to Saint Petersburg before 4 p.m.

The impression of the city was immediately different, compared to everything I had seen up to that point.

A question of dimensions, above all else.

The huge boulevards that offered the somewhat ostentatious perspective of a special grandeur.

I checked into my room in Zakharievskaya Ulitsa 23, in the Tsentralny District, right in the heart of the city.

After a quick shower, I went out looking to buy a local sim card.

I found a mobile shop around the corner, called Tele 2.

Fortunately, the guy at the counter could speak some English.

With Google Maps up and running again, I was able to find the nearest bus station with the intention to reach the Nevsky Avenue.

It was a fast ride to the Leningrado Hero City Obelisk.

There I came across of group of young fellas that were playing This is Love by Maroon 5.

Welcome to Russia, I said to myself, smiling wryly.

The Nevsky Avenue suddenly struck me with its grandiose perspective.

Ultimately, that is one of the reasons for its very existence.

In the years of its construction, between 1715 and 1726, it was referred to as the Large promising road or the Large perspective.

Here’s a note from Wikipedia:

Its name comes from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the monastery which stands at the eastern end of the street, and which commemorates the Russian hero Prince Saint Alexander Nevsky (1221–1263). Following his founding of Saint Petersburg in 1703, Tsar Peter I planned the course of the street as the beginning of the road to Novgorod and Moscow. The avenue runs from the Admiralty in the west to the Moscow Railway Station and, after veering slightly southwards at Vosstaniya Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. [1]

While I was walking along the huge avenue, with the sunset that had begun to inflame the facades of the baroque buildings, I had in mind a song of the genius Italian songwriter Franco Battiato, that goes like this:

And we studied locked in a room
The dim light of candles and oil lamps
And when it came to talking
We always waited with pleasure
And my teacher taught me how difficult it is
To find the dawn within the dusk

The song is called Nevsky Prospect.

I was getting hungry, so I decided to sneak into a Pasta Fresca and order gnocchi with cheese.

I finally walked back to my flat, that was about 30 minutes away, enjoying a lovely Petersburg evening, living a dream with open eyes.

*The window of a book store I ran into on my way home*

From Rome to Asia without flying – A ferry to Helsinki, Finland

Featured by Fabrizio Bianchi, posted in digitalnomadism, Lifestyle, travel, World

The alarm got off quite early that morning.

The delicate light of dawn touching the curved towers of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

I took a shower, then quickly dressed, skipping breakfast.

My taxi was coming at 7 a.m.

I reached the pier after twenty minutes drive.

I bought my return ticket and waited in line to board the ferry.

We sailed out of Tallinn dockland at 8:30 a.m., perfectly on time.

The boat was quite massive, an M/S Finladia of the Eckero Line, equipped with a cafeteria and restaurant and a small theatre where a small orchestra was performing.

I was not really in the mood to listen to live music so early in the morning, so I preferred to go on the deck to enjoy the beautiful morning.

*Here I am, with a marine style by a slightly overzealous French barber.*

The crossing of the Gulf Of Finland took a little over two hours.

After docking at the Helsinki marina, I grabbed another cab to reach the old market area.

I was starving at that point.

I had some Karjalanpiirakka (Karelian Pie), delicious crusty dumplings filled with creamy rice porridge.

*An Instagram story that I posted while having lunch at the old market hall.*

I then took a fast boat for a tour of the Suomenlinna archipelago, an inhabited sea fortress composed of eight islands, of which six have been fortified.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I have been relying on my cloud storage only, I don’t have many pics of that boat trip to show here.

In fact, most of the photos of my travel to Asia have been stored to a local drive that I don’t have at my disposal at the moment.

I am currently located in Vietnam, while the drive is in my hometown in Italy.

I was able to recover some shots of that day, though.

A glimpse of the island’s landscape and the majestic profile of a Viking and Silja lines M/S Mariella, which at the very moment were crossing the Kustaanmiekka Strait, an 81-metre-wide channel between Kustaanmiekka and Vallisaari island in the archipelago.

I remember walking a lot that day, exploring all the corners of the massive fortification that was built during the Swedish era as a maritime fortress and a base for the Archipelago Fleet.

It was about 5 p.m. when I got back to the Old Market pier.

There was time to stop for a drink and some finger food, before going back to the dockland.

I’m going to make a confession at this point.

I never paid for that Old Fashioned and those fries.

I ran away to a shopping mall nearby, experiencing the thrill of having just done something illegal.

The guilty pleasures of life, aren’t they?

I also remember having this moment in the waiting room at the harbour, staring at the huge glass wall from which I could see a lovely canal going through a straight line that died in the immensity of the sea.

I thought that I still had a lot of life ahead of me and I should not have been afraid anymore.

I was finally starting my recover, even though I didn’t fully realize that then.

I had a lovely dinner on the boat trip, enjoying the music abroad this time.

I was back in Tallinn on a beautiful white night.

I was ready to leave Europe.

From Rome to Asia, without Flying – Tallinn, a city on the edge of the future

Featured by Fabrizio Bianchi, posted in digitalnomadism, Lifestyle, travel, World

The next morning, I got on a bus to Tallinn, Estonia.

It was going to be a 4h30min trip.

A pleasant one this time.

I was travelling with a young girl that I had met at the bus station, with whom I had started an interesting conversation.

Her name was Viola.

She was French.

I was shocked to hear that she was just eighteen.

I remember thinking that at her age, I was struggling in high school, arguing every day with teachers that I considered too prude, dreaming about being a great writer one day.

It wasn’t on my horizon to embark myself on a solo trip around Europe.

I was convinced that my interest should have been addressed towards books, nothing else.

The world scared me, that was the truth.

That’s the reason why I admired Viola, her authentic curiosity but above all her imaginative ambition.

It was already clear in her mind that her path would never have crossed a university classroom.

She didn’t know what to do yet, but she was confident she didn’t want to be a student anymore.

“I like drawing”, she showed me a notebook with some amazing sketches she had made during her trip.

Visages, urban streetscapes, natural landscapes.

I was truly moved.

There’s nothing that makes me more excited than recognizing real talent in people.

“Whatever you choose to do, don’t waste it, Viola”, I told her.

“My parents don’t agree”, she smiled gently.

“About what?”, I asked.

“About being an artist. They are very bourgeois.”

I was not expecting that level of social awareness, especially coming from a young person like her.

But French are French, for a reason.

Pardon my tautological statement.

“You seem very independent, though …”, I had been very careful not to share my reflection on the bourgeois money that probably allowed her to travel at so young age.

One should not have this kind of expectations from an 18-year-old.

“I am, I don’t listen to them. I do, what I like to do at the end.”

After all, if you want to be a true artist, you don’t have to give a damn about moralism or money.

Let conformists care about that.

“So, keep doing it, don’t waste time in being responsible for other’s opinion. Even if they are your parents,” I was trying to “save” her from my past mistakes.

I always considered myself to be too self-conscious to become a true artist.

“No one has ever told me something like that.”

“I can relate to you. I like to write.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. What do you write?”

“Fiction.”

“Have you ever published anything?”

“Nothing, so far.”

“That’s ok, writers don’t have a biological clock, right?”

We both laughed.

We got to Tallinn at about 4pm.

It had not seemed appropriate to do anything else than say goodbye to her at that point.

No hugging, no phone numbers exchange.

“Have a great life Viola”, this is what I said to her.

I then walked to my flat, that was located in the Kaarli Church area, on the edge of the old town.

A very pretty, smiling girl welcomed me for the check in.

She showed me the small but lovely studio, with a fascinating view of the onion domes of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

I decided to have a quick nap, but I soon realized that I was too excited to sleep.

I showered and got out with the intention to do a first exploration of the old town.

The daylight was particularly intense.

I felt good, energized, like I hadn’t felt in a long time.

The separation with the past was widening, geographically and in some sense spiritually, with each day passing.

I entered the southern gate of the old city, reaching Harju Street park, next to St. Nicholas’ Church.

I stopped to Caffeine EE for a soy cappuccino.

I then profited off one of the comfortable lounger chairs that are found in the park for sunbathing.

Despite the present issues due to its proximity to Russia, Tallinn continues to be a hotspot for technology nowadays.

It is one of the European cities with the highest number of startups in the tech industry.

With all the tech giants (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.) operating in the Estonian capital, Tallinn is leading the smart city revolution.

What it really means to be a “smart city” though?

Today, 85% of Estonia’s population is connected to broadband, 100% of medical prescriptions are provided online, and 30% of citizens vote electronically. 98% of citizens have the digital identity card, which comes with a PIN code and is key to many transactions from bank to retail and transport.
Both the entire nation and the capital city are working to provide efficient, convenient digital services for citizens, visitors, and businesses. This includes common infrastructure for data exchange, the integration of the national e-ID system into authentication mechanisms, and innovations in other areas such as transport – which has been free in Tallinn since 2013 (for residents). The city’s goal for urban mobility is that everyone should be able to reach important places in 15 minutes through public or active transportation.
For Tallinn, being smart means providing good digital services through effective IT solutions. However, for these technologies to work, citizens must be willing and able to use them. Therefore, the definition term “smart” also includes the usefulness for the public. Tallinn is a very digital city with lots of free Wi-Fi, e-services, and open data. In recent years, with this infrastructure up and running, the Estonian capital has focused on involving people more in the planning process to make it smarter and more inclusive. [1]

Back in 2019, with the digital revolution at its peak, I didn’t have any clue of a city which had already embodied a so advanced concept of modernity.

To my shame, I have to admit that I wasn’t interested in such dynamics back in those days.

Let me open a small digression, at this point.

Writing about this journey not only allows me to revive something unique, a memory that would be regrettably lost.

But it gives me the incredible opportunity to rework that same memory, incorporating it with present information, creatively, reprocessing it into a totally innovative framework.

At that time, my only intent was to relish the beauty that came before my eyes.

That is what I would do that evening, enjoying a Chicken Korma in Town Hall Square, and then walking around in the areas of Viru Gate, St. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral, Vene Street.