Veronika Wild

Please try to read these in English if you can. I can't speak for other languages, but I have just checked the German. Google translate is much better than it was, but some meaning will be lost. Curious how others find it. Alexandra Platz in the centre of town is where the buses stop. That's the Baden -Baden Casino on the left Although I had now passed through Baden -Baden a few times, I hadn’t really stopped to have a look at it as I was usually hurrying to catch another bus. The weather channel had predicted a change on my last day anyway, so I thought that would be a good time to have a look around and to visit one of the galleries I had wanted to see. No – one I knew had ever been to Baden -Baden, which I thought was rather odd, given that it was a well – known spa town and not too far away. When they said, “No, they hadn’t," they usually did so, with a slight sniff of disapproval. Do I detect a Calvinistic streak in this part of of the world which frowns on exce...

“Those who find love at the foot of Mt. Mashuk will have it for the rest of their lives.”   The Lermontov Baths in Pyatigorsk- now a theatre since this spring ran dry -Photo by German Espinov Pyatigorsk in the mineral waters area of southern Russia, was a marvellous discovery and remains one of my favourite places. I had wanted to get out of the cities and see a bit of the countryside – touch the earth as it were, rather than see it through train windows as you do on the Trans Sib, but few of my Russian friends could suggest places to visit. Yes, they had been to Moscow and St. Petersburg and maybe even to Beijing, or Poland, but they had done very little travelling within their own country. In fact, I had probably seen more of it than they had. The trip down was a trial. There were very few seats on the trains and it got hotter and hotter the further south I went. As the country flattened out around the Volga, there were enormous fields of glorious sunflowers (lots of Sametchky t...