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It's a common curse facing many developing nations: the local economy improves, money starts to flow, and suddenly ethnic restaurants start popping up on street corners everywhere because locals--long tired of eating the same old national dish--want to try something new and ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Red Corner
Red Corner: Finding your Blini in Moscow
It's a common curse facing many developing nations: the local economy improves, money starts to flow, and suddenly ethnic restaurants start popping up on street corners everywhere because locals--long tired of eating the same old national dish--want to try something new and ...Red Corner: Mass Games Video, North Korea
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Yesterday we introduced you to a cool new site on Yahoo which allows travelers to send in video clips of their vacations in YouTube fashion.
Today, we'd like to direct you to one of the more amazing videos on the site.
We've posted a couple of times before about the Mass ...Red Corner: Dresden Turns 800
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It's not so often one gets to celebrate a birthday after being fire-bombed by 3,900 tons of ordnance. And yet, the city of Dresden--80% of which was destroyed after the infamous World War II air campaign which leveled the city--turns 800 this month.
Celebrating Dresden's ...Red Corner: GDR Museum
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When the Berlin Wall finally toppled, East Germans disposed of their communist era goods and lifestyle as fast as humanly possible.
The change was so thorough that visitors to eastern Berlin today have to search very hard to find artifacts from the communist era. In fact, ...Red Corner: Moscow Parks
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Like most big cities, Moscow can eat away at one's soul. Too much traffic, too many people, and too much noise pollution can quickly transform even the most mellow of people into high-strung neurotics. Thankfully, there is a remedy.
When the big city encroaches on a ...Red Corner: Amazing Suzdal
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The Golden Ring, just north east of Moscow is a wonderful area brimming with old onion-domed churches. I toured through a few years ago and walked away overwhelmed by too many churches in too small of an area. By the time I arrived at the last town on my circuit, I was ...Red Corner: Serbian Train Ride
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The train is my favorite mode of transport.
Put me on board with the countryside blowing past my window and I'm one happy camper. Of course, it helps when the aforementioned countryside is amazingly picturesque.
On my most recent trip to the Balkans I had heard about a ...Red Corner: More Bad News for Russian Aviation
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Just after posting yesterdays rant about the horrendous state of flying in Russia, I received my weekly update from Transitions Online covering the same topic-albeit with far less black humor and far more terrifying statistics.
Here's one to really scare you: there have ...Red Corner: The Horrors of Flying in Russia
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It's always fun to read a good rant, especially if it's aimed at the airlines.
Fly The Unfriendly Skies is just that. But, it's not the typical rant you might hear from a passenger at Heathrow or LAX. No, this one is aimed at that quirky phenomenon known as Russian Air ...Red Corner: Using the Violence of Video Games to Tout Historical Memorials
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In an age where the horrors of war are so easily forgotten and, indeed trivialized by today's violence infused video games, how exactly does one reach out to the younger generation and drive home historical lessons that shouldn't be forgotten?
Through video games, of ...Red Corner: Mother Russia
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If Mother Russia had always stood where she stands today, German soldiers would have taken one look at the sword-wielding, screaming Banshee, and high-tailed it back to the Fatherland for some nerve calming schnapps.
When the Mother Russia statue was unveiled in 1967 at ...Red Corner: Balancing Out Borat
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Having posted a fair amount about Kazakhstan's most despised and erroneous ambassador, Borat, we here at Gadling realize it is important to maintain some editorial balance, and therefore feel obligated to direct you towards a more responsible representative which better ...Red Corner: Touring Bohemia
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When it came time to come up with a name for the non-Slovak part of Czechoslovakia after the country split in 1993, Bohemia was one of the frontrunners since the Bohemian region made up most of the area in question. Unfortunately, the non-Slovak part also consisted of ...Red Corner: Touring Korea's DMZ
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The Cold War is mostly over with the exception of a few renegade stalwarts. Witnessing this bygone era, however, can still be experienced at the border between North and South Korea where two massive armies have faced off against each other since the Korean War ended nearly ...Red Corner: Balkan Odyssey Tour
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We're usually not in the habit of plugging group tours here at Gadling, however, I recently came across one highlighted in the LA Times which covers many of the same places I recently traveled during my Balkan Odyssey this last summer.
Kutrubes Travel is offering an 18-day ...Red Corner: Borat's New Movie
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We're all big fans of Borat here at Gadling.
The bumbling Kazakh reporter, played by comedian Sasha Baron Cohen, mercilessly ridicules the people of Kazakhstan with an over-the-top impersonation frothing with bad English, anti-Semitism, misogyny, sexism, and ...Red Corner: Going to the Salt Mines
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As a youngster growing up during the Cold War in America, I naturally assumed that any Warsaw Pact communist who did not toe the party line received a one-way ticket to either Siberia or the salt mines. Having now visited both locales, I'm inclined to think that dissidents ...Red Corner: Moscow's Most Extravagant Restaurant
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The Soviets were always gung-ho over building the very biggest of things.
Their predecessors, the Capitalist Russians, share the same passion.
Consider for a moment, Turandot. This Moscow restaurant, which opened earlier this year, spreads across 65,000 square feet, ...Red Corner: Toilet Summit in Moscow
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I thought this was a joke, or modern art exhibit, but apparently it's not.
Today is the third day of a four-day toilet festival in Moscow. Technically, it's the 6th annual World Toilet Summit sponsored by the WTO, or World Toilet Organization. The event "highlights topics ...Red Corner: A Slice of the Time-Frozen Carpathians
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Here's a wonderful little photo essay about a tiny, obscure corner of the Ukrainian Carpathians called Dzembronya.
Slovak photographer Lucia Nimcova describes the location of this small farming town as "in the Chornohora range not far from the Romanian border, in the ...
