Red Corner: Jumping off the Trans-Siberian

by Neil Woodburn on

Although we’ve posted a couple of times before on the Trans-Siberian, I couldn’t resist directing you to an article printed in last Sunday’s Independent that covers this epic train journey far better than most accounts I’ve read before.

The theme of this particular article is not about the 6-day, Moscow to China train journey itself, but rather the stops in between. Get off the train, and get off of it often is what journalist Simon Calder recommends.

Calder suggests a few choice stops that help to break up the long journey. Travelers should think about jumping off the train in Ekaterinburg (where the Czar’s family was shot), Novosibirsk (the Chicago of Siberia and home to the mighty Ob River), Irkutsk (site of the Decembrists uprising), and of course, majestic Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world.

Calder’s in-depth article also recommends some guidebooks and travel agencies to help with the journey. And please don’t think that this is a bad time of year to be traveling through Siberia. The train is nicely heated and the snow-covered Siberian steppe is said to be extraordinarily beautiful in the winter.

Given the option, however, summer just seems like a much better time to go.

Red Corner: Go to Cuba, Go to Jail?

by Neil Woodburn on

The Bush Administration has just revoked the license of a Florida-based travel agency for arranging American tourists to visit Cuba.

Stop and think about this for a moment.

The democratically elected government of what is supposed to be the freest country on this planet is actually prosecuting people for traveling to a place they don’t want you to go. But that’s not all. In addition to suspending travel agency licenses, the government is also fining individuals up to $7500 for merely stepping foot in Cuba. In 2004 alone, when the Bush Administration stepped up efforts to curtail this “illegal” travel (and in the process, support Brother Jeb, governor of Florida), they fined 894 people a total of $1.5 million dollars for the heinous crime of vacationing on the Caribbean island.

The law that prevents Americans from traveling to Cuba is the Trading with the Enemy Act. Technically, one can still go to Cuba, but if more than $100 is spent while there, the person is financially supporting the enemy government of Cuba.

Oh come on!

Americans could travel to the Soviet Union and every other Warsaw Pact country during the height of the Cold War, they could travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya before we bombed them, and today can even travel to Iran, North Korea and every Middle Eastern country with whom America currently has problems. But, Americans can’t travel 50 miles off the coast of Florida to visit a harmless country of salsa-dancing, baseball-loving North Americans? Am I the only one that finds this crazy?

There certainly was a time when Cuba was a danger to the United States, but the Soviet Union is now dead and no longer supports Cuba with nukes, arms, fuel, and basic necessities. Today, Cuba is nothing but a destitute country desperately trying to survive on its own. Sure, there are horrible human rights violations occurring under the Castro regime, but the same abuses happened (and are still happening today in some cases), in every one of the countries listed above that Americans are free to visit and spend their dollars.

Preventing tourists from visiting Cuba isn’t going to bring down the Castro regime, nor is the economic blockade imposed by the United States (but virtually ignored by every other country in the world). No, the Castro regime will only fall when the locals get so fed-up they rebel. And what is the best way to sow such strong seeds of discontent? Look no further than East Germany. Overexposure to the West through relatives, tourists, and television broadcasts is what really taught East Germans how bad things really were. Otherwise, ignorance was bliss.

An invasion of Chatty American tourists is simply the best thing that can happen to Cuba. But in the meantime, don’t tread on my civil liberties and try to tell me where I can’t go.

Red Corner: Cheap Moscow Digs Disappearing

by Neil Woodburn on

The chance to sleep in one of Moscow’s most famous buildings may soon go the way of the Hammer and Sickle.

The Ukraina Hotel is one of Moscow’s famous Seven Sisters-seven skyscrapers Joseph Stalin built in the 1950s to anchor his Albert Speerian attempt to rebuild Moscow as the modern throne of communism. All seven buildings share the same wedding-cake style of layered architecture that continues to cast an eerie, Gothic sense of oppression over Moscow long after the death of communism.

The Ukraina Hotel offers cheap accommodations for less than $100 a night-a good bargain in a very expensive hotel market. When I stayed there, I found it a decent, functional place that was worth more than $100 for the historical buzz, but worth less than a kopek for the foul bathroom which accompanied my room.

This may all change, however.

The Russian government, who owned the hotel, has just sold it to a private company for $274 million. There is no word yet on future plans for the hotel, but based upon the current state of accommodations in Moscow, my guess is that the Hotel Ukraina will be upscaled and placed far out of reach of proletariats such as myself.

But that’s not all. There is other bad news for affordable accommodations in Moscow. The decision was just made to knock down Europe’s largest hotel – the 3,000 room Rossiya Hotel on the edge of Red Square. Although this was another source of cheap accommodations in the Russian capital, the hotel was despised and few will shed tears over the loss of this monstrous, rat infested dive.

Red Corner: Tchotchkes of Evil

by Neil Woodburn on

With so few despots and dictators ruling these days, state-sponsored monuments to megalomania are rare and endangered. They used to be run-of-the-mill during communism when numerous museums lovingly displayed every item Lenin once touched, thought about touching, or ordered others to touch for him. Without fail, there was always a section dedicated to the numerous gifts Lenin received from abroad. The tchotchkes were universally absurd, in bad taste, and always amusing to Westerners like myself.

Naturally, such museums have all but disappeared. And so, it was with nostaligic humor that I came across a recent LA Times article detailing what might simply be the very last musuem dedicated entirely to such inane gifts. No surprise here that it is located in North Korea.

This fascinating article paints a far more extreme museum than I have experienced anywhere else in the world. Even Moscow didn’t have Lenin musuems buried NORAD-style deep in a mountain and protected by enormous steel doors and submachine gun toting guards. And yet, apparently North Korea’s International Friendship Exhibition feels the need to do so. At stake are the museum’s nearly 300,000 gifts, ranging from beer coolers to train carriages, that foreigners have presented to the late Kim Il Sung and current leader Kim Jong Il (including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who thoughtfully gifted a glass bowl to the evil tyrants).

The collection is so extensive that it takes 200 rooms to house all of the gifts and a year and half of your life if you want to spend one minute admiring each one of them.

Visit now before the Bush Administration decides it wants Madeleine’s bowl back.

Red Corner: North Korea on my Mind

by Neil Woodburn on

North Korea fascinates me. It is not so often that one can step into the past and witness a bygone era that is preserved in its entirety. Unfortunately, the reason for such preservation is an authoritarian regime that allows almost no tourists in and even less citizens out.

Recently, however, the Hermit Kingdom briefly opened its doors to celebrate the North Korean Workers’ Party 60th anniversary. Those allowed in were hand-held the entire time and never allowed to deviate from pre-planned itineraries (for example, they could see only two underground subway stops in Pyongyang and no others). It was a blatant exercise in Propaganda 101 that included an obligatory laying of flowers at the base of a 60-foot statue of Kim Il Sung.

Nonetheless, the experience must have been amazing as is evident by the numerous articles which continue to surface in the media about this rare opportunity to visit North Korea. One of the more fascinating, published in the International Herald Tribune, focuses on the tightly controlled aspects of the journey and the anachronisms which abound.

It is certainly not a trip for everybody, but I’m going to be the first in line if they open their doors again for the North Korean Workers’ Party 70th anniversary.