Moldova June

Satellite image of the Crimea.

Hopes of seeing Aurelia Borealis in Northern Finland.

Tallinn,

Riga, and

Vilnius

30 June...Exit Strategy...almost all the plans have been made, Dan has arrived to travel with me and the visas should be ready at the Russian Embassy on July 4...so one week from today, I will depart Moldova! All of the travels will be exciting and I will visit 5 more Republics of the former Soviet Union. Here is where I am going...

July 7: Odesa, Ukraine but just for a few hours. Because of the Transnistrian conflict, we can't get a train directly from Chisinau to the Crimea where we are spending some days at the Clipa Siderala camp...so we have a car hired to drive us to Odesa to catch the overnight train.
July 8: The Crimea, Ukraine famous for Stalin, Churchill, and FDR meetings; high bluffs, and Black Sea beaches--this is also where Clipa Siderala has its summer camp and four days with them will ease my Moldova withdrawals.
July 12: Moscow, Russia--what more can be said--it is where it all happened--Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev (well he actually came from Chisinau), Gorbachev...Red Square, the Kremlin, and St. Basil's await in our two-day whirlwind. But I hope that I have learned the Russian alphabet well enough not to be lost constantly, I hope! And I can also count to ten!
July 14: Tallinn, Estonia...we would have gone to St. Petersburg but our schedule conflicted with the G-8 Summit and I hear that President Bush brings a lot of people with him when he goes on tour.
July 16: Helsinki, Finland will be my reintroduction to "western" life and should be a fascinating base for a week of relaxation.
Above the Arctic Circle, Finland--the opportunity to see the Northern Lights and visit one more "cool" place!
July 23: Riga, Latvia--the largest city among the Baltic Republics and supposedly a great place to shop.
July 26: Vilnius, Lithuania is know for having a magnificent medieval center and a statue memorializing Frank Zappa. It is from Vilnius that early on the morning of July 28th I will get on a plane to...
July 28: Copenhagen, Denmark...for a swap to a Delta flight to...

Atlanta, Georgia, USA...and then by car back to Macon and back to my normal life!

It should be quite the ending to a magnificent adventure!

P.S. On the map above...orange is for travel by bus or train....blue is for boat...and green is for plane.