Red Corner: Amazing Suzdal

by Neil Woodburn on

The Golden Ring, just north east of Moscow is a wonderful area brimming with old onion-domed churches. I toured through a few years ago and walked away overwhelmed by too many churches in too small of an area. By the time I arrived at the last town on my circuit, I was burned out and had lost interest.

One place I never reached, however, was Suzdal. This was mainly because no train line was ever built to the town. While this is hardly convenient for the locals, this lack of transportation has contributed to Suzdal being the most well-preserved and arguably the most beautiful of the Golden Ring towns according to a recent article in The New York Times.

Steven Lee Myers traveled to this ancient town where he stayed in a log cabin built on the grounds of an operating monastery. He paints a quaint, bucolic image of this 12,000 person town and peppers it with touching descriptions of the beautiful churches, architecture, and walled Kremlin that makes me realize that a Golden Ring journey is best spent in one town and one town only: Suzdal.

Red Corner: Serbian Train Ride

by Neil Woodburn on

The train is my favorite mode of transport.

Put me on board with the countryside blowing past my window and I’m one happy camper. Of course, it helps when the aforementioned countryside is amazingly picturesque.

On my most recent trip to the Balkans I had heard about a particularly scenic train route from Belgrade to Bar on the Montenegrin Coast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the journey and have been wondering if I had missed out on something spectacular ever since.

Thankfully, Susan Spano of The Los Angeles Times recently embarked on this very journey and has written a short article about it.

After all the accolades I had read about the train trip, however, I was saddened to read that it really wasn’t all that spectacular after all–at least according to Spano. Sure, the train rolls though the Serbian countryside and past the Biogradska Gora National Park and the Tara River gorge, but Spano dedicates few words to the beauty one might see rolling past their windows.

I normally enjoy Spano’s articles in the LA Times but feel a bit cheated with this one. I finished reading and had to ask myself whether she actually enjoyed the trip or not. I simply wasn’t sure.

So, instead of removing this train journey from my to-do list, I think I’ll consult a second opinion and see what they have to say.

Red Corner: More Bad News for Russian Aviation

by Neil Woodburn on

Just after posting yesterdays rant about the horrendous state of flying in Russia, I received my weekly update from Transitions Online covering the same topic-albeit with far less black humor and far more terrifying statistics.

Here’s one to really scare you: there have been “26 major Russian airline accidents since the breakup of the USSR” and 20 percent of them have occurred at a single airport-Irkutsk. Some blame the presence of a nearby mass grave from Stalinist times casting a curse over the runways. Others, perhaps more practical, blame a decrepit aviation system, aging pilots, faulty planes, and airport runways constructed with sagging concrete blocks.

And then there are the bizarre, yet uniquely Russian reasons why the aircraft industry is in such horrible state. Take, for example, the Vnukovo Aircraft Repair Works in Moscow. Workers were stealing parts from the local Saturn automobile planet in Rybinsk and using them to replace parts which had broken on the planes they were servicing.

If you plan on flying within Russia any time soon, take a moment to read this informative article. A few mores stories like the one above and you’ll start thinking seriously about Russia’s wonderful train system which rarely ever crashes.

Red Corner: The Horrors of Flying in Russia

by Neil Woodburn on

It’s always fun to read a good rant, especially if it’s aimed at the airlines.

Fly The Unfriendly Skies is just that. But, it’s not the typical rant you might hear from a passenger at Heathrow or LAX. No, this one is aimed at that quirky phenomenon known as Russian Air Travel.

Ever since the days of Aeroflot, flying in Russia has been a nightmare. The advent of a smattering of independent airlines to service the country after communism fell has seemingly only exacerbated the problem.

Fed up with the whole system, Aspi Pahars, writing for The Exile, rants on about what one can expect when flying in Russia. He particularly digs into the rebranding of Siberian Airlines, which is now painted bright green and known as S7. The rebranding was necessary due to the rather poor track record of the company. I flew the airlines to Irkutsk a couple of years ago, against my better judgment, and managed to survive. This is not always the case. Earlier this summer, the same flight skidded off the runway and exploded into flames.

While catching on fire is certainly one of the worst things that can happen while flying, Pahars spends time to rant about many of the smaller annoyances as well–such as the new internet bar in Sheremetyevo Airport which charges an hourly rate but allows users to visit only a single site while online.

Take a moment to check out this humorous rant; some of your complaints will seem petty in comparison.

Red Corner: Using the Violence of Video Games to Tout Historical Memorials

by Neil Woodburn on

In an age where the horrors of war are so easily forgotten and, indeed trivialized by today’s violence infused video games, how exactly does one reach out to the younger generation and drive home historical lessons that shouldn’t be forgotten?

Through video games, of course.

Or, at least, the promise of video games.

Faced with declining attendance figures, the Lidice Memorial in the Czech Republic turned to a very controversial advertising campaign to re-spark interest in their museum. The museum chronicles a particularly horrible moment of World War II history which occurred after the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. The Nazis retaliated by randomly selecting a Czech village and wiping it off the face of the earth.

The town of Lidice, just 12 miles from Prague was ceremonially torched and 340 residents executed. The town has been rebuilt since the war and now hosts a rather moving memorial site.

A few decades ago, the memorial used to draw 300,000 people a year. Now, only 15,000 show up.

The bid to increase attendance incorporated a campaign designed as though it were plugging a video game. According to an article in The Prague Post, the ads and the website being promoted, www.totalburnout.cz, tantalized gamers with the challenge of burning Lidice “In the shortest time possible.” Players were promised a variety of weapons and were told the number of points awarded for either shooting (10 pts) or burning (20 pts) residents and for torching a house (100 pts).

In less than a week, 24,000 people visited the site where they discovered there wasn’t any game whatsoever, just some information about the massacre and a link to the Memorial’s website.

From an advertising point of view, the campaign really nailed it.

Current residents of Lidice, however, as well as survivors from the massacre, were understandably outraged and demanded that the advertisements and pseudo-game be yanked (which it eventually was).

I’m not sure how I feel about this. A mere 15,000 visitors for such a historical travesty just 12 miles from Prague is a very pathetic showing. Sometimes it takes drastic measures to keep history alive so that it never repeats itself, and this was a gallant, yet perhaps misguided effort.