 | North Korean sleeping car On my trip to Siberia in december 2006 I decided not to travel in an ordinary Russian sleeping car, but in the sleeping car Moskva - Pyongyang, which is leaving Moskva on the 11th and 25th of each month (attached to train no. 1 (Moskva - Vladivistok)). This sleeping car is provided by the state railways of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). The trip was an interesting possibility to talk with people from North Korea, for whom it was quite sensational to have an Austrian citizen as fellow passenger (all the other passengers as well as the conductors in the sleeping car were DPRK citizen). Using the sleeping car for domestic trips inside Russia is officially not possible, a ticket for a cross-border trip to DPRK is necessary. But it is no problem to get a ticket to the first station in the DPRK (Tumangan) and get off before the border. |
 | В.Путин.Прямая линия.27.09.05.Part 3 Presidents Live Television and Radio Dialogue with the Nation.Part 3 September 27,2005 The Kremlin,Moscow Прямая линия с Президентом России 27 сентября 2005 года Южно-Сахалинск,Томск,Воркута,Ижевск,Саратов,Грозный,Рига, Геленджик, Волгоград,с.Головчино(Белгородская область,Москва VLADIMIR PUTIN: Go ahead. QUESTION: Good evening, Vladimir Vladimirovich. VLADIMIR PUTIN: Hello. QUESTION: My name is Denis. Im a second-year student at the Sakhalin State University. Im actually from Yuzhno-Kurilsk but Im studying here. Im not the only one here a lot of others from my home islands are also here and we have a common question. We are all students but we will soon finish our studies and will begin our future lives, hopefully bringing benefit to the Kuril Islands. Our question is, how will our islands develop and will we be able to have decent lives, decent professional lives there? And how will the Japanese problem be resolved? VLADIMIR PUTIN: What problem? QUESTION: The issue of handing the islands, the Southern Kuril Islands, back to Japan. VLADIMIR PUTIN: First of all, regarding the Far Easts development, we have a targeted federal programme for developing the Far East and there are no plans to end it. As you know, at my instruction and the Prime Ministers instruction, a group of government ministers recently visited the Far East and drew up the outlines for developing the region and set the priority areas for federal funding allocated to the region. All of these programmes will be carried out. This I can guarantee. We understand all the problems the Far East faces. They include movement of people, high prices for air and rail travel and so on, and the decline in population. All of these issues are not easy to resolve in todays conditions. But we will concentrate our efforts and our financial resources on tackling these problems. I very much hope therefore that you and your friends and everyone who lives, studies and works in the Far East will have every opportunity to make use of your knowledge and your strength in your own region, in the place where you live, study and work. Regarding the negotiation process with Japan over the four Kuril Islands, they are Russian sovereign territory and this is fixed in international law. This is one of the results of World War II. We have nothing to discuss on this particular point. Based on this position, we are ready to negotiate and we are negotiating. We would like to settle all points of dispute with our neighbours, including with Japan, a country with whom we have good-neighbourly relations. Our relations with Japan are growing stronger with every passing year. Both Russia and Japan have objective reasons for developing our economic, cultural and business ties and cooperating in a whole range of areas. The issue you have raised is, of course, a very sensitive matter both for Japan and for Russia. I hope and am really convinced that if we show good will, and Russia does have this good will, we will always be able to find a solution that suits both parties, a solution that will benefit the people living on these islands and benefit the peoples of Russia and Japan. If we show that we are willing to accommodate each other we can find a solution. |
 | KAMAZ exalted of the earth RUSSIAN MONSTER TRUCK |
 | Alaska WTF-DVD-AK - ALASKA Filmed and produced by Fran & Brooke Reidelberger Scripted and narrated by Fran Reidelberger In southeast Alaska, the towns and places visited include: Ketchikan, Petersburg, Sitka, Juneau, Haines, Skagway, Glacier Bay National Park, Chilkat RIver Eagle Preserve, Misty Fjords National Monument and a fly-in fishing camp.Features include:-- Scenes of Ketchikan, the Gateway City, with its "red light" district, plus totem carving and historic Totem Bight - -- a fly-in to a luxury fishing camp where record breaking Silver Salmon abound and brown bears are seen on nature walks - "Big Blue Canoes", the state-run ferry system that is the real highway for most people who live in the southeast Alaska - -- The Norwegian heritage of Petersburg and its commerical shrimp fishing industry - -- Sitka, rich in Russian history, religion and dancing, along with the annual Luumberjack Contest and lumbering in the Tongass National Forest - -- the state capital of Jueau, with its gold mining history, cruise ships and salmon bakes, modern merchants and torist momentos, plus Mendenhall Glacier - -- a flight over the Juneau Ice Field and glacier calvig at Glacier Bay National Park - -- Chikat Indian dancers in Haines, historical Ft. Seward and thousands of eagles along the Chilkat river - -- Skagway's modern "gold rush" of tourists who flock to the shops and to ride the spectacular White Pass and Yukon Railway - In Alaska's Interior, towns and places visited include: Tok, Fairbanks, Prudhoe Bay, Valdez and Prince William Sound, Nome, Kotzebue, the Pribilof Islands, Seward, Homes, Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula, Matanuska Valley, and Denali National Park.Features include:-- Historical photos and information about the contruction of the Alcan (Alaska-Canada) Highway - -- Tok, the first Alaskan town reached on the Alcan - -- paddle wheel river boats and modern gold mining in Fairbanks - -- driving the "haul road" along the oil pipeline with stops at the mighty Yukon River and the Arctic Circle - -- oil story from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez and Prince William Sound - -- the Kenai Peninsula -- a variety of wildlife and wildflowers, all within minutes of downtown Anchorage - -- 4th of july in Seward, world-class halibut in Homer and giant vegetables in Palmer - -- huskies and dog sleds in Nome - -- Blanket tosses and Eskimo art in Kotzebue - -- rare birds and fur seals in the Pribilof Islands - -- a look ast modern Anchorage, Alaska's largest city and air crossroads of world travel - -- Denali National Park with incomparable Mt. McKinley, pluse moose, caribou, giant grizzly bears and tiny wildflowers. |
 | Macedonia protests against Greece 2008 Greece is an Unworthy EU Member by Gunnar Nissen Danish newspaper Morgaenavisen Jyllands-Posten 2/26/1999 If this chronicle gives rise to conflicts or trouble, it is not the fault of the Macedonians, nor me. When the politicians in EU countries don't speak out, it is due to ignorance or indifference. Denmark is a member of the EU. It remains a mystery that Greece is too. The member countries must recognize human rights and minorities rights. Those are the demands put in front of the central European states and they must abide by them. That has been hard on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who are brought to recognize national minorities, especially that large Russian one. Slovenia is on that point influenced by the Yugoslavian constitution of 1974, an exemplary country with full recognition of small Croatian and Italian minorities. But Greece - Oh Dear! From official Greek side it is bombastically announced: Only Greeks live in Greece. Nonsense! In southeast Europe, not a single state exist of one nationality alone. In Greece, you find a large Turkish minority (who do not wish to be presented as Greeks that has converted to Islam) in Thrace, a small Albanian minority in Epiros and finally a Macedonian minority in Aegean Macedonia, who numbers somewhere between 75.000 and 500.000. An exact estimate doesn't exist, since Greece persistently deny there existence. If one put some pressure on high ranking civil servants and self-proclaimed experts, one may achieve an admission that "a small Slavic speaking minority exist in Greek Macedonia", but they "do not wish to be a national minority; they can freely use their language". A pack of lies! For many years I have had a friendly relation with numerous Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia - a people that officially doesn't exist. I do speak Greek, but I speak fluently Macedonian. Almost every time I take the train south, over Munich to Balkan, I run into Macedonians from Greece (2. generation of workers). The same happens when I traverse the Greek border. Some people speaks only Greek, but a lot, really a lot, speaks additionally Macedonian ("our mother tongue") which is forbidden as language in school. Last year a couple of shop owners were taken to court -their "crime" was that they had written some words in Macedonian in their shop windows. When I sit on cafe's in villages in Aegean Macedonia, the conversation always ends at "the Macedonian identity". "What do you in the rest of Europe know about us?" I must admit that it's very little. "We would like to have some Macedonian schools" the man continues at the cafe. "I speak my Macedonian mother tongue, but my son is struggling, although he watches Macedonian TV, Televizija Skopje". He, and the others speak in a low voice, while glancing towards the neighboring table where a man is picking up his phone. Moments later, two angry police officers enter and the gathering around my table splits up. The border control between the Macedonian Republic and Greece are, known to be among the toughest in Europe. Certainly the slowest. Not on the Macedonian side, where the border police take a peek at the Danish passport, after which it's over. But on the other side of the border, the border police confiscate all passports and later we have to spend a long time, be it snow storm or bumming hot, cueing to get the passport back. With particular thoroughness, the custom control ransack the luggage of travelers from the Republic of Macedonia. Foreigners can not be sure to get a travel permission, even when born in Aegean Macedonia in Greece. It has happened that a Canadian bus full of Macedonians with Macedonian names, but born in Aegean Macedonia, were not allowed to enter the country. |
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