Blog Redirect

Thank you to everyone who has been following my blog this year.  Right now, I am home in Colorado and on to my next adventure.  Of course, a new adventure requires a new blog.  So I hope you will continue to be in touch with me and follow my progress at:

 ”A Runner’s Guide to Europe”:   http://www.runnersguideeurope.com.

Thank you very much.  My best to you all, and see you on the road.

Here on the shores of Patriarch’s Ponds . . .

Patriarch's Ponds on a summer evening.

This was always my favorite place in Moscow.  Even though it is just a block off the Garden Ring and three streets away from Tverskaya, the ponds engender a center of their own.  This area possesses a quiet aura of separation, a special energy unlike any other place in the city, or any other place I’ve ever been.  Even today there is a special glimmer as the last rays of day linger, reflecting off the water’s surface, illuminating the light of the evening strollers who pass by.

I am not the first to feel this energy.  Many writers who have come before me have come as I do tonight, to breathe in the cool summer air, watch the leaves rustle in the wind, to gently grasp the cool metal hand railing that circles the pond.  To take in this city, breathe in its life, to surrender to the mystery of what will come of it all.

Tonight I have not much time for these questions.  I have to catch a train to Domodedovo Airport, and a plane to go home.  Yet I could not leave without coming here to say goodbye.  I don’t know when I will ever be back at this site, but I am so grateful for all the moments I spent here, and everywhere, in Russia for a year.  I am ready to go, I am ready for the next adventures that take place.  But for a moment I pause, in awareness, in awe, in appreciation, of all that has been, and all that always will be, in this city of mine.

Namaste, Moscow.

And that is how the traveler came home again.

Back in the USSR

Ole Mayakovsky – it’s good to be domoi

Back at RGGU – lucky for you . . ?

Evening on the Arbat with Katya

Friends will be friends . . . right to the end

You don’t know how lucky you are, Tay.  But after six weeks of running from the Baltics through the Balkans, I had 22 hours back in Moscow.  22 hours to walk, to think, to see my Katya, and to say goodbye.

Follow me on Everlater

As this is the last week of my trip, I don’t know how much time I will have to regularly update this blog.  To keep track of my day-to-day activities I am using Everlater, the newest social network for travelers.  You can follow my progress and stories at http://www.everlater.com/taychase/a-runner-s-guide-to-eastern-europe.

Belgrade

I arrived in Belgrade at 6 a.m. on Monday.  This was the first thing that I saw:

Destruction from 1999 Bombing campaign

I had never really planned on coming to Belgrade.  But after bouncing around the Balkans for the past two weeks, after hearing tales of war, nationalism, and oppression on the part of the Serbs, my curiosity was invoked.  As was my desire for the other side of the story.

So I took a two-day detour into the capital of the former Yugoslavia.  And, well, I’m glad that I did.  It was definitely not the most beautiful place I’ve ever visited (any urban environment would have a tough time topping Kotor).  It was not the most interesting place I’ve ever visited – although the dogged determination to preserve 1999’s destruction and the desperate clinging to the past in the Museum of Yugoslav History (where I learned the interesting historical interpretation of Serbia gaining independence from Montenegro) did spark a long chain of thought. 

But the Balkan narrative in my mind was lacking one important voice, and that was not just the voice of the Serb politicians.  It was also the voice of Marija, a friend of Alonit, who took me out for coffee, showed me the cool and quaint cobblestoned corners of the city, and shared with me the joy and pleasure that can be a summer evening in that city.

I think, at the end of the day, Belgrade is a lot like Moscow.  It feels big and fast, and a lot of it is concrete.  Because I don’t know this city, I am more likely to be suspicious of it than to be open to it.  But if I were to spend a significant amount of time there, I’d probably come to love it, and hate it, the same way I do my Russki home.

Destruction from 1999 Bombing campaign

Downtown Belgrade on a sunny day

Tito’s Grave

These peaches cost 50 cents a KILO

Bohemian District in Belgrade

View of City