Siberia is Below

TomskIt is 5:08am in Tomsk, Russia; 2:08am in Moscow, Midnight in Amsterdam, 6pm back in New Jersey, and 3pm in LA. I didn’t have to come to Siberia to give you a run down of time zones, but after taking off and landing a couple of times today, I feel like I’m really living in all of these. As I look down to see scattered lights of unknown Siberian towns, I’m like an astronaut looking down at earth, watching land masses go by and fairly often; in awe of it’s vastness.

Beautiful girl next to me has a book. It’s probably nothing special as far as books go, but looking over at it’s pages spilling over with Cyrillic text, in my eyes it is some ancient text drafted by a highly advanced society. The girl herself- a beautiful scholar with the wisdom to understand it all and dare I think it- to explain it all to me during the next four hours aboard Siberian Airlines flight bla bla with nonstop service to Tomsk. “angleski?” I ask in my makeshift Russian dilect I create on the spot. “very bad” she responds. We smile at each other….

ctrp330 Thoughts on Upcoming Siberia Journey and More

In less than one month I will be in Siberia, at the University of Tomsk where I will be guest lecturing for a few days. After that I will set off to several parts of Siberia and eventually if all goes well, on to Mongolia.  The following podcast, instead of the usual interview style program I do, is simply me testing out the old binaural microphones while walking around my house explaining the trip as well as my recent guest lecture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Its odd to think that 6 years ago when this podcast got started, this style was quite common.