asia – Page 2 – The Late Bloomer

From Rome to Asia without flying – Moscow, the holy city

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

The ride from Saint Petersburg to Moscow is a straight line that runs for about 650 km Southside, through the oblasts of Leningrad, Novgorod, Tver and indeed Moscow.

On May 23, 2019, I took a taxi at 7:30 a.m. to the Petersburg Moskovsky Station, one of the oldest train station in Saint Petersburg, located on 85, Nevsky Avenue.

Upon arriving at the station at about 8 a.m., I sit to the only Café present in the main hall for a black coffee.

My train was schedule to leave the platform 1 at 8:55 a.m.

It was a Sapsan (it means peregrine falcon in Russian language) high speed train.

To my surprise, we were required to go through a security check before boarding.

The train left the station right on time.

It was a comfortable, relatively fast, ride, like what you can get when travelling from Rome to Milan on a Frecciarossa.

We arrived at the Moscow Leningradsky Station 4 hours later.

I had to queue several minutes outside the station to get a taxi.

Then we had to drive through the heavy traffic of Moscow to reach the hotel at about 2 p.m.

After checking in, I went to my room on the second floor and crashed on the king bed.

I woke up at 5 p.m.

My mobile made a final bit, then died.

I was starving.

I realized at that point I had left the charger behind.

I walked to the nearby Tverskaya Street, the main radial street of Moscow, looking for a phone shop.

I was quite lucky to find a guy that was selling mobile accessories in the underpass instead.

I got my new charger and I walked a little bit further Southside, until I came across a small market.

I had a sandwich while sitting by the window, waiting for my phone to come back on, admiring the austere yet fiabesque facade of the State Historical Museum.

The *Marshal Zhukov monument standing before the State Historical Museum*

After sending few messages, when my phone had reached a sufficient capacity, I kept walking in the direction of the Museum.

*Voskresenskiye Vorota, The Resurrection Gate*

When I finally reached the Red Square, I had one of those moments that are difficult to put into words.

I was born in 1980, my childhood was full of Holywood references, from The Goonies to Ghostbusters.

The pop culture coming from the USA infiltrated our way of living at every level.

It was a happy, wealthy era.

Despite that, the Italian Communist party was still one of the biggest in Europe.

In 1984, Enrico Berlinguer, the PCI secretary, one of the most beloved political leader in the history of Italian politics, died as a result of a stroke he had while holding a public rally.

That same year, in the European elections the PCI achieved its highest result (33.3 percent of the vote), overtaking albeit slightly and for the first and only time the Christian Democratic Party (33.0 percent of the vote). [1]

The Italian Communist party would disintegrate in the next few years, but its big influence would hold throughout the ’90s.

As a rebellious teenager, I would embrace that ideology as a form of counterculture.

There had been the Gulf War, then the bombing of Serbia.

At that time, we were beginning to understand that soft power was meant to hide a much more aggressive face of the USA.

All this is to say, that to me, the Red Square has always been much more than a mere geographical place.

It was a symbol of a totally different way of thinking and living.

A kind of hope (never fulfilled).

Lenin’s Mausoleum, located at Red Square in Moscow, Russia. It serves as the resting place of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, whose preserved body has been on public display since shortly after his death in 1924

I had a superb dinner at Grand Cafe Dr. Jhivago that evening, where I ordered a mushroom soup with Porcini and Siberian dumplings.

That next day, when I opened the blue, heavy curtains from my room at the Neapol Hotel, the sky was cloudy but somehow purposeful.

I felt in a great mood for the day ahead.

I went back to the Red Square, where a huge stage was on display on the south-east side for the celebration of slavic culture.

From there you can usually admire the stunning beauty of the St. Basil Cathedral, emerging from the ground.

That view was obstructed, unfortunately, but I was able to take a lovely pic of the Basil nonetheless.

From the Red Square to the Kremlin (it means fortress in Russian language), it is a short walk (less than 10 min) that you can take through the Alexander Gardens.

*View of the Gardens Parade from the Kremlin walls*

You will take the entrance of the fortress, traversing a bridge that connects to the Troitskaya Tower.

Once you enter the Kremlin, you just need to walk a few steps further to step into Cathedral Square, one of the holiest places on earth.

You’ll then come across The Cathedral of the Dormition, dedicated to the dormition of the Theotokos.

*The Cathedral of Dormition, also known as The Assumption cathedral. In 1547, the coronation of the first Russian Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, took place here.*

I don’t think you have to be religious to experience the sheer beauty of such a place.

*View of Cathedral Square from the North Side*

*The Ivan the Great Bell Tower on Cathedral Square* *is the tallest tower and structure of the Kremlin*

*The Cathedral of Dormition* and *Ivan the Great Bell Tower* *side by side*

*The Cathedral of the Annunciation dedicated to the Annunciation of the Theotokos is also located on Cathedral Square*

*The Cathedral of the Archangel on the South East side*

Walking past Cathedral Square, overwhelmed by its magnificence, I reached Bol’shoy Kremlovskiy Square.

*View of the Tsar bell and the Spasskaya Tower* *inside the Kremlin walls*

After spending the entire morning there, I walked out of the Kremlin, taking through the Alexander Gardens once again.

*A different view of The Alexander Gardens*

I finally sit on the steps of Borovitskaya Square to enjoy a quick lunch that consisted of a sandwich and a banana I had got in a small market nearby.

The sky had cleared at that point.

*The Monument of Vladimir the Great standing of Borovitskaya Square*

My legs were a bit sore, but I was excited about all the sights experienced up then.

And I still had a full afternoon head of me.

In such moments, you can really realize how many good things you can realize in a single day.

In the day-to-day life, you miss all that magic.

The Bolshoi Ustinsky Bridge is only a few steps away from Borovitskaya Square.

From there, you can enjoy the best panoramic view of the Kremlin, one that has been impressed in the memory of millions of people in the West.

*View of the Kremlin from the observation deck on The Bolshoi Ustinsky Bridge*

I kept walking along the Moskva River, on Bersenevskaya Naberezhnaya to reach the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, a few hundred metres southwest of the Kremlin.

*View of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the Patriarshy Bridge*

The Cathedral was entirely rebuilt after being destroyed in 1931 on the order of the Soviet Politburo.

The first church took more than 40 years to build.

*Another view* of the *Cathedral of Christ the Saviour from the Patriarshy Bridge*

It was a lovely afternoon, the sun was still shining bright on the sky.

I grasped whatever I had left in the tank, and walked back to the Tverskoy District, to enjoy the rest of the day.

*People enjoying a sunny afternoon in central Moscow*

I sit across the splendid neoclassical facade of the Bolshoi Theatre, in admiration of yet another landmark of this incredible city.

With the sun setting behind the massive mansions of central Moscow, I picked one of the many outdoors on Ulitsa Rozhdestvenka to enjoy some Russian Pelmeni (meat dumplings).

Back to my room at Neapol, I had a long, hot shower, and finally crashed on the bed to sleep like a baby.

I had another train to catch, early in the morning the next day.

A dream to grasp, within the dream I was already living.

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.