Noordsestern

When I first heard that I would probably join a wedding in North Ossetia, I started to investigate. Of course, I heard about the war in South Ossetia before. And other Russian counties in the neighborhood are not a good advice to travel to, too. The German embassy even warns about traveling to North Ossetia. But as for Nicaragua, we are too far away to properly assess regional conditions only based on some spectacular headlines in newspapers. And as I would travel with Russians who are as foreign in this part of Russia as I am, I gave it a shot. We were 4 people and 1 cat in 1 car driving 25 hours non-stop (except for coffee and related pee breaks). Taking a cat with us was both entertaining and annoying at first. Because the cat had not seen anything else than a flat, it felt quite uncomfortable in the car. After the first hour, ti nervously peed in front of my seat. What a joy. After another hour it puked. After the third hour it realized that open car doors are a perfect chance to e

After starting to work, your free time seems to shrink. Rather not because of more workload, but due to rather fixed working schedules. That's why they invented holidays. Unfortunately, you never have enough holidays to succeed in all the trips you. So you have to delay plans and focus on only an excerpt of your plans. That means for me in particular: only one trip per year for me which I would actually allow to be called "vacation". The remaining free days are used for short trips like those recently and those which will come ahead. This years main holiday was designated to Russia. Originally, I just wanted to visit Alina in Moscow with an option on a few days in St.Petersburg. But then suddenly her brother decided to marry in just that period of time and I had to decide to either delay my holiday or extend it. Of course, i extended it and ended up for almost 3 weeks in Russia. I started in St.Petersburg, traveled through Moscow further to North Ossetia in the Caucasus r