Common Sense and Whiskey

Fabulous Destinations When Money Doesn't Matter #9

Proximity to Power is Pricey.

This surely wouldn't appeal to everybody, but it's right up my nerdy alley:  

Global Challenges in a Post-Perestroika World

World Leaders Symposium: Russia & the Black Sea

With Condoleezza Rice, William Perry, Mikhail Gorbachev, and other special guests

Aboard the Silver Wind • August 30 — September 15, 2010

I'm no cruise fan, but this is no ordinary cruise. It's a symposium that begins in Moscow, travels to Istanbul, and then continues by ship and local transport to Batumi and Tbilisi, Baku, Sochi, Yalta, Sevastopol and Odessa. 

I'd say put me down for that in a flash. Just one tiny problem: The least expensive accommodation is $47,980 for a "Vista Suite," based on double occupancy.

*****

There are photos from Moscow in the Russia Gallery, Istanbul in the Turkey Gallery, Tbilisi in the Georgia Gallery, Baku in the Azerbaijan Gallery and Odessa in the Ukraine Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Travel Around the Old Soviet Rim

Travel in former Soviet lands has a special place in my heart. When I first began to travel a little off the beaten path, in the late 80's and early 90's, the lands from the Arctic east of Finland to the Adriatic east of Italy, and all the way east to the Pacific Ocean, were in greater or lesser spasms of turmoil. Some of my fondest travel memories include wicked cold, gloomy trains and bad sausage - all part of the experience of travel in the dying Soviet Union.

With my own personal souvenir pieces of the Berlin Wall in my bags (that I had proudly chiseled from the wall myself), I spent the night on the floor of East Berlin's Lichtenberg Station in the first days of 1990, having missed the late train to Prague, where the revolution still surged ahead. From Tallin, Estonia, we watched Finnish TV with considerable alarm (and couldn't understand a thing they said) as they displayed maps of the nearby Sosnovy Bor nuclear plant's leak on 25 March, 1992. Once on a train bound for Moscow, I woke up with a bag of potatoes at my feet where my camera should have been. I found the camera several compartments down the aisle. I've forgotten what happened to the potatoes.

Here are a couple of new articles about trips around the former Soviet Union's still unkempt borders that you can take today:

- A few years ago we sailed across the Black Sea on a working ferry (not a luxury cruise liner), the M/V "Yuzhnaya Palmyra," from UKR Ferry shipping company, Istanbul to Odessa, Ukraine. This same company puts on what is probably a little more adventurous travel experience elsewhere across the Black Sea, from the Georgian port of Poti to the Ukranian port of Ilychevsk.

Read about it in the article The Ukraine-Georgia Black Sea Ferry is no package tour from georgiandaily.com, which starts like this: "The ferry connecting Ukraine and Georgia across the Black Sea is, depending on one's point of view, either a tourist experience from Hell, or one of the world's last properly adventurous sea voyages."

I'm in.

- This morning comes the BBC article Belgrade-Sarajevo railway reopens after 17 years. The former Yugoslavia wasn't part of the old Soviet Union. But when Russia's dominion collapsed, the former Yugoslavia was thrown into much worse paroxysms than much of the former Soviet space.

As the article puts it, in the 1970's & 80's "Golden Era" of Yugoslavia, "People could start the day in an Ottoman-style cafe in the Bosnian capital before taking an easy six-hour ride in comfortable carriages to party in Belgrade."

Put me down for that one, too.

*****

The book to read is Murderers in Mausoleums, Jeffrey Tayler's Moscow to Beijing adventure around the old Soviet rim.

(Top photo, of the UKR Ferry Shipping Company's M/V Yuzhnaya Palmyra at dock in Istanbul, from the Turkey Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. See also the related Ukraine Gallery and Georgia Gallery. Bottom photo, of a pedestrian street in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, from the Former Yugoslavia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Cappadocia: Most Popular

Funny, two of the three favorite photos right now as voted by users at EarthPhotos.com, of over 10,000 photos from all around the world, are co-incidentally both from the Cappadocia region of Turkey. One of them is shown here, a landscape of flowering apricot trees.

See the top six favorites on the EP splash page, and all the favorites in the Most Popular Gallery. And more photos from Turkey in the Turkey Gallery.

You can rate photos with the "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down" icons that appear when you mouse over an individual photo anywhere on EarthPhotos.com. Photos with the most votes appear in the Most Popular Gallery.

More Football Diplomacy

For its combination of sheer cultural eclecticism and pure physical appeal, Istanbul has to be one of the top five cities on earth.* If you've spent enough time there to become a fan, you'll doubtless have become a fan of Turks, surely some of the nicest people anywhere.

Turkey is never long without troubles or controversies. September saw record flooding in Istanbul. The country's biggest media tycoon, who is not a favorite of the Prime Minister, was assessed "a staggering 3.75 billion lira ($2.5 billion) fine for allegedly evading taxes." To make domestic political hay, Prime Minister Erdogan  (a former mayor of Istanbul) has had a running battle with Israel since the Davos meetings in January, and just this week Turkey stopped Israel from participating in a NATO war exercise in a dispute over Gaza.

But despite the usual calumnies and controversies, the Turks are in the midst of doing something good. They're playing football. Today "Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan arrived in the western Turkish city of Bursa Wednesday to attend a Turkey-Armenia World Cup qualifier as part of the two countries' move to normalize ties after nearly a century of rift," according to the AP. 

This brings to mind a fine photo of Turkish football fans being protected by Armenian troops in Yerevan a year ago. It was great photographic work from Onnik Krikorian/Oneworld Multimedia 2008. we posted it here at the time (and will use this excuse to post again).

The occasion for the photo? Turkish President Abdullah Gul was in the house on 6 September, 2008 in Yerevan's Republican stadium for a World Cup qualifying soccer match. 

There will be trials, and there are many on both sides who oppose reopening the Turkish/Armenian border that Turkey closed in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan during the conflicts that engulfed the former Soviet Union after its collapse.

But as we've said, open borders is good. And anything that will facilitate freer movement of people and commerce to and through Armenia is bound to improve the lot of its people.

(See extensive photo coverage of the region in the Turkey Gallery, Armenia Gallery, Azerbaijan Gallery and Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. Top photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

*I'd fill in the rest of the top five with Hong Kong, Paris, Sydney and leave the fifth open for debate - your results may vary.

Open Borders is Good

Political skirmishing continues, but it appears Turkey and Armenia will at last bury enough of their differences to reopen their border, with protocols for establishing relations set to be signed on 13 October. That should help tourism as well as trade on both sides of the very rural border, in the shadow of Mt. Ararat not far from the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

Turkish Airlines flies from Istanbul to Tbilisi and Baku, capitals of the other Caucasus countries, Georgia and Azerbaijan, but when we flew to Yerevan we had to catch a plane from Vienna. Anything that will facilitate freer movement of people through the cul de sac that Armenia has become is bound to improve the lot of its people.

The military transport vehicle in this photo, taken in the early morning light from the Khor Virap monastery in Armenia, is on a highway on the Turkish side of the border. See Khor Virap in Armenia, with Mt. Ararat in Turkey looming in the distance, in the Armenia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

(See also the Turkey Gallery, the Georgia Gallery and the Azerbaijan Gallery.)

Fifty Photos: #9

This photo, of a dawn balloon flight over Cappadocia, Turkey, is today's contribution from the Top Fifty Prints collection at EarthPhotos.com.

Friday Photo Quiz #17

The windswept plain in this week's photo quiz is perched at a crossroads of continents, where Christianity & Islam, East & West and farmers and invading nomads have intermingled and clashed for millennia.

Can you name the country, and for extra credit, the region in the photo?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Football Diplomacy

Photo from Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2008

Turkish football fans, protected by Armenian troops in Yerevan, 6 September, 2009.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul was in the house on 6 September in Yerevan Armenia's Republican stadium for a World Cup qualifying soccer match. It was the first ever visit to Armenia for a Turkish leader. The Caucasian Knot has lots of photo coverage.

Following the Soviet collapse, in 1993 Ankara closed the Turkish land border with Armenia in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan, to Armenia's east, which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The border remains closed today.

Politics is complicated in the Caucasus. Armenia's eastern neighbor, Azerbaijan, supplies Caspian Sea oil via pipeline through Georgia to Ceyhan, Turkey, for shipment, bypassing Russia, to the west. Georgia meanwhile, shares borders with Turkey to its west, and Russia to its north (as we all now know) along the spine of the Caucasus Mountains.

Mt. Kazbeg, on the Georgia/Russia border, is taller than all the Alps at 5047 meters, versus Mt. Blanc's 4810. Scarcely 70 miles northeast is Chechnya's capital, Grozny. And notably after the August war, Sochi, site of the 2012 winter Olympic Games, is scarcely 25 miles north along the Black Sea beyond the disputed Abkhazia region of Georgia.

Oh - and Christian Armenia borders, to its south, Islamic Iran. In June 2006, we drove down to the Khor Virap Monastery (near the Armenia/Iran border), which sits in the shadow of Mt. Ararat, in Turkey. We have extensive photo coverage of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey on EarthPhotos.com.