Thought I should post something after so many months of silence - mostly due to the fact that I keep forgetting to post my travelogues.

At the moment, I am sitting rather sleepily in front of my dad's laptop in our family home in Shropshier. For once, I am not being chewed, scratched, bowled-over, sat upon or spat at by any of the numerous animals and infants that are about, which I think is actually rather sad, as far as the animals are concerned anyway. It reminds me of how much I miss my now deceased dog Gem, who used to sit next to me and alternate between enveloping my hand and drowning the cat in slobber.

Anyway, the week so far:
I arrived here on Saturday after a week of strolling the cairns of Dartmoor for a practice DofE Gold expedition and being plagued by mozzies and references to the Hound of the Baskevilles (incidentally, was that actually set in Dartmoor?).
The weekend started with our family summer party, a time for friends, relatives, conversation, arguments and too much salami. Since then, the week so far for me has been a mixture a private entrepeneurship (which is probably not only spelt wrong, but also used wrongly) - i.e: painting t-shirts, to attempting to read but finding mjyself surrounded by too many books. (We have a lot of books - too many even for a large 'FAMILY' house)

I am currently trying to read some Russian literature by Bulgakov, Heart of Darkness, a collection of poetry books by various people and an ancient copy of the Beano I found scrunched up under my bed. Maybe I should prioritise...

Must sleep now,
May write again sometime,
Why not (re?)read my travelogues below...?

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Christmas 2003-New Year 2004
Okay, I posted this a bit late, but...

Hi everyone,
I hope that you've all had a great Christmas and a reasonably uninebriated new year!
I am writing this on a train slowly slugging it's way back to London (probably by way of Inverness) after spending New Year in St. Ives, Cornwall.
My dad and I had had 'flu over Christmas, leaving much of it in a sort of green and red haze which was not actually festive as it was concentrated in my nose and throat rather than on the tree. On the other hand, we did many of the things associated with a traditional Christmas; we played charades, constantly, because I'd lost my voice, I drank alcohol - it said so on the ingredients in my cough syrup – and I slept a lot.
Nonetheless, Christmas was enjoyable, and my few attempts at singing carols to my guitar with a protesting throat lead to an interesting gargling and hissing effect that I'd been trying to achieve in perfecting my donkey impressions for years.
Anyway, so after Christmas - Cornwall.
We've been to St. Ives quite a lot in past summers for the coastal walks, giant sand dunes and pasties, but as my dad explained to me,
"We've never experienced it's cool New Year scene - I've heard it's quite the err... raving place to be. Man."
So it was decided. My parents, some Chinese friends of ours from Iceland and I arrived on a warm midwinter evening at the festive town and immediately settled into our separate occupations. My dad began, rather myopically, to admire the view and would continue to gasp and shout "look!" every few minutes for the rest of the week, my mum fussed about the bed linen and "did Sonya bring any underwear this time, because last time...” our Icelando-Chinese friends began immediately to cook and watch TV and I composed a poem about the weather. Here it is:
It's not raining cats and dogs,
Just look up at the sky
And you will see what's falling now-
It's hippopotami!
I spent most of the week wandering the local streets, rocks and beaches, notebook and pen poised to capture the next verse riding along that muse-rich sea. The other thing I did was to fly my stunt kite - crowds of imaginary people whooped and cheered as I expertly directed my kite into a spectacular dive, brushing the ground before swooping in a graceful arc into the sky followed by a daring loop-the-loop. By the time I'd finally detangled the kite from a nearby bush and repaired it's broken line, I'd decided that the gale force sea winds were probably to blame and went home, trailing several tangled meters of kite line behind me.
I have to say though that I love St. Ives - its rough waves and almost Mediterranean-clear seas, it's abundance of friendly dogs and most of all as a source for inspiration, and this includes the people - just the other day, I overheard an old lady mention that, "They're putting me on stereos again." and "We're going to Mars on Sunday." Watch out for related poems!!
Oh yeah, and the St. Ives New Year 'scene'? Torrential rain and fancy dress; lots of soaked SWAT teams, surgeons, convicts and Vikings. Us Halletts went as ourselves!
I hope that all is well and that 2004 brings... whatever you wish it to bring plus a nice new calendar!
Grinning as usual,
Sonya

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Autmn half-term 2003 - China
Return to the Motherland
Howdy, hope everyone is well,
As most of you know, I’ve been on the road again after spending a wonderfully parent-free week working out how to use the cooker and playing my guitar, writing or working steadily through my dad’s CD collection on full volume till one in the morning. So, on Friday after fencing, balancing my rucksack expertly upon my back, I set off to Heathrow… with Mr Hogan’s suitcase. Before you ask – no, I don’t regularly steal bags off teachers (as much as I enjoy marking). You see, my trip to China had conveniently collided with one of Hogan’s battleships exercises (you know, like the plastic travelling kind only bigger and err… damper) taking place somewhere in Scotland, I think, and having three bags, two arms and a willingness to share the load (how kind), he made me his porter.

Anyway, carrying only my own bag (I hope) once again, I boarded the CA938 to Beijing with only the slight unease expected of one who’s been subjected to vaguely disturbing military aircraft anecdotes for the past half hour – my return to the Motherland had begun!

I must admit that I was not entirely enthusiastic at first about going to China, it has been probably one of the longest times I’ve gone without paying my Chinese grandparents a proper visit, but my Chinese was getting ropey and the prospect of facing the dusty, polluted expanse of Beijing and being plied with food I might’ve enjoyed when I was six was somewhat daunting.

Well, the flight passed without incidence and I was interested to note that where in London the airport security flinched if they found as much as a toothpick in your hand luggage, Beijing airport was far more concerned about our physical well being, i.e.: whether we had SARs. On landing, all passengers were presented with a form which went something like this: Are you suffering from any of the following conditions?
Fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, SARs, cough, sniffles, The Plague, rigor mortis…
Certainly, SARs is still very much on minds of the Chinese population, with many changes from the introduction of cleaner, closed rubbish bins rather than open disposal chutes and proper paint instead of whitewash in residential tower blocks to small changes such as using two pairs of chopsticks at mealtimes (one for eating, one for serving) to minimise any risk of infection. But people are no longer afraid to go out, in fact, Beijing has developed a booming café culture, with not only Starbucks, but plenty of trendy, independently-run cafés springing up everywhere like mushrooms.

Another thing that surprised me on this trip was the parks – Beijing city planning seems to go through various phases in which they build large quantities of the same thing. Before, it was ugly tower blocks, shopping centres and four-star hotels, and now it’s parks – with real grass! On the very first evening, I went to a park ten minutes from my grandparents’ flat which, as far as I can remember, used to consist of an oozing bog and a dusty patch of earth where I used to look for crickets – now it’s so well maintained they’ve even planted turf in the gaps between the rose bushes and the cracks in the crazy paving – and this is just in the car park! The bog has been turned into an ornamental canal and there are polished rocks lining the paths labelled in Chinese and broken English with descriptions such as, “This is famous stone from East mountain. It strong and inarticulate. It look like spewing and grotesque fire. This is why it called as ‘flame’” And the amazing thing was, the park as a whole wasn’t actually kitsch, which used to be the norm for some Chinese parks, just, well… fun (and a little weird). Oh yes, and the funniest thing is that on almost every lawn or grassy verge you’ll find a sign that, rather than say simply ‘keep off the grass’ would read, “Quiet! The little grasses are growing.” or “Respect the grasses that are improving the environment of the motherland.” “Little grasses have lives too!” or even “The developing grasses say, ‘No!’ to trespassers!” I wanted to put my ear to the ground to test this last theory but a park warden was nearby and I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of his secateurs…

Of course, Beijing has by no means solved its pollution problem, in fact, I experienced some of the worst ever this time with yellowy-grey smog so thick you literally couldn’t see across the street. Certainly, it all clears away when the wind starts up, but one does wonder where it all goes… Then again, like I said to my dad the other day (at least I think it was my dad – I couldn’t quite tell due to the smog), “You still can’t see into the distance in Beijing, but at least the foreground’s greener.”

Now, this being a family trip, it’s only to be expected that I’d spend a lot of the time visiting all the various friends, relations and official connections my parents and grandparents have acquired over the years, but it seems that the protocol for such events has changed. Whereas before, a typical social call would be chatting over a meal at someone’s home, they now can be summed up in two words: restaurant and television. For example, we went to visit this family with whom we’ve been close friends for many years, and rather than eat at their home as we used to, we went to this huge restaurant and were led to a private room, the key feature of which (asides from the large circular dining table) is the thirty-inch screen television in the corner blasting news and serials at the top of its chrome-finished speakers. In fact, so popular is this new trend that, according to my grandfather, a new law is to be passed banning all advertising of medicines or other products that may make an audience squeamish during mealtimes. Just as he finished telling me this, an ad for Pampers came on and my granddad turned away in disgust. Rather ironically, it seems that rather than pulling families apart and discouraging social activity as it seems to be doing in the West, in China, a television softly buzzing in the background has become a must for any social occasion. Interestingly, it didn’t get in the way of conversation either, the gathering was actually more lively than usual as my grandmother and Mrs Zhou (one of our hosts), are both avid followers of a certain ‘Doctor Red’, a nutritionist who has gained a sort of cult status amongst the nutritionally aware (and that’s most) of China. The conversation went something like this:
“Have some soup, Dr Red says that it’s slimming and helps with digestion.”
“I thought he said it was fattening to have soup before the main course?”
“No, that’s afterwards, it’s to do with the digestive process.” (Much debate follows)
“Waitress, what’s this dish?”
“It’s Wahaha fish, steamed, very good for the heart and it contains essential fish oils that help the neural receptors in the brain.” (She really said this!)
“Ah good! Sonya, have some fish, it’ll get you good grades!” (And it goes on…)

In fact, nutrition and health is such a big thing in China that a French filmmaker wants to make a whole film based around it. So one smoggy evening, our whole family plus friends were invited to a traditional old-Beijing style restaurant and filmed by a team of Frenchmen, eating and discussing the nutritional benefits of this type of bean or that breed of chicken. My grandma rose to the occasion, probably reciting the whole book of Dr Red’s culinary lore by heart, but I kept fairly quiet, partly because I was not particularly skilled at the intricacies of the effects of seaweed on the brain, but also because it was my second large meal of the day (I’ll come to the first one in a moment) and my mouth was gummed shut by a rather over-generous portion of a kind of sticky rice cake, bits of which I still found clinging to the roof of my mouth several hours later.

Now onto that ‘first meal’. For a while now, my dad has been involved in a charity helping visually impaired children across China, and the last couple of weeks have been essential as it marked the visit of the American secretary of state for commerce, Donald Evans, Texan cowboy and one of Bush’s top right-hand men. The importance of this is that as detestable as the Bush regime may be, their desperate need to look like the ‘good guys’ means that small charities such as the above mentioned could stand to get a little donation as a show of ‘we cowboys ain’t all that bad really’ – even if the REAL point of the visit is an attempt by America to gain a firmer grip on China’s resources and flatten any competition. So Evans came and went in his cowboy boots, sending alternate greetings from Bush and God, leaving behind a rather disappointing sum to the charity and achieving the desired affect of sweetly naïve admiration from the local village folk. Anyway, the upshot of this was that my parents and I were invited by the American embassy’s trade attaché and his wife to a meal at Grandma’s – a recreation of a real 1950s-style American diner, somewhere in the middle of the embassy district in Beijing (rather surreal!). Before the meal, my dad jokingly said that if they should ask me whether I’m a Christian, I should just say that we are spiritual and that I go to a church school. Now, half way through our meatloaves and Texan hamburgers, the trade attaché puts down his peanut butter milkshake and says, “Now Stephen [my dad], you are a Christian, aren’t you?”
“Err, well…” mused my dad, “we are… um, well, um… sort of… spiritual – oh, and Sonya goes to a church school.” All eyes turn to me.
“So do you go to church regularly?” asked the attaché’s wife.
“Regularly? Um, well, um yes…” I stammered, “that is to say, no, I mean I go with school and err, yeah, we pray and stuff…” I trailed off, wondering at the charity-and-America relations which may be at stake.
However, she seemed pleased with my awkward answer and we resumed eating while my dad tried not to sound too reluctant to the attaché’s offer of making him a fellow of his local church – the Church of the Good Shepherd. “Imagine,” my dad had said afterwards, “I’d be the only non-Christian serving the communion!”

Another focus of the American trade department is in the rooting out of piracy, to make their wealthy companies wealthier and even less accessible to the third world, I guess. So after the meal with the trade attaché, my parents and I went of in search of some CDs – pirated CDs. You see, it is virtually impossible to NOT to get pirated CDs and DVDs in China, hardly any of the shops stock legitimate imported copies now as they are too ridiculously expensive! So off we went down a busy market street and before long, a man sidled up to us and squeaked, “DVD?” we knew that there was supposed to be a CD/DVD shop nearby so we asked him to show us. The man led us almost half a mile down the street, refusing to speak Chinese for the whole time and instead choosing to chatter away in his own brand of broken English, “this way Sir, follow follow, CDs many many!” pausing only when we passed any foreign looking person to squeak in the same inquiring tone, “DVD?” After some time in this fashion, we came to a small, dusty courtyard wedged between some crumbling tenement blocks and were led to a small stone table. Our guide pulled out a couple of chairs, dusted them off reverentially with a handkerchief and indicated that we should sit down and wait. He then walked across the yard, opened the door of a sort of lean-to underground shed and disappeared. Some scratching and scuffling noises later, he re-emerged dragging a large and grubby canvas bag, from which he began to produce endless bundles of CDs, all in neat little plastic packets. He was right – he did have “many many”, and before long, my dad and I had sorted through a large pile of almost every type of music imaginable, some of it probably not even released yet in the West. We bought about twenty or so of our favourites – all haggled down to less than seventy pence each! As I am writing this, I am happily working through my half of the loot, listening to Strange Days, Sergeant Pepper’s and Reptile (Doors, Beatles and Eric Clapton), much to the confusion of my grandparents to whom it all sounds the same. Just don’t tell the American embassy!

Oh, and one final thing that might put things in a bit of perspective if work’s getting you down. I spent some time talking to a couple of girls who I used to play with when I was about six or seven. They now go to the equivalent of year eight or nine and when I asked them what hobbies they have, this was their answer:
“Well, not much, we don’t have time. We get to school at seven-thirty and finish at about six or seven in the evening, then homework can go on till twelve. We usually sleep or watch TV in any spare time we get as it’s too tiring to do anything else.”
“What about weekends?” I asked.
“Well, I have music lessons and lots of homework,” said one.
“And I’ve got to go to school – I had a whole day of maths today” and this was Sunday!
It turned out that, due to SARs, the exam years have been under extra pressure to catch up on the two months of missed schooling, with some schools opting to scrap weekends altogether in an effort to reach the desired grades – partly due to the performance-related pay system for the teachers, but also the general pressure from parents and society not to fail. Though I have to say, even without SARs it was pretty bad – when I was at school in China I used to regularly get homework till ten at night – and I was in year two of primary school! I’ll never forget a question I was once asked by an old friend of the family who I hadn’t seen for some years, “Do you still play?” she asked tentatively (the word ‘play’ in Chinese generally refers to any leisure activity). So the next time you feel like you’ve got essays up to your armpits or homework up your, err… hairnet, remember – we’ve got it easy!

Well, anyway, I set off writing a short(ish) letter and it has turned into another marathon – sorry! It’s just that there are so many big changes going on in China right now and it is so interesting to be looking at it from a semi-outsider’s point of view, and also after visiting Russia. Those of you who’ve read my ‘Russia letter’ may remember that I talked about the totally incredibly bizarre nature of everything, but thinking about it now, there was actually some sort of skewed logic or order at work, whereas in China, it seems to be chaos theory in practice – in a very innocent way you understand, but nonetheless disarming. Just yesterday, they were talking about a new road that is being built from Beijing to Inner Mongolia – and that they had made great progress, “it’s already reached the fifth ring-road,” it was proudly announced (which isn’t even out of Beijing). Also yesterday, I turned a street corner to be confronted by a dimly-lit shop, the doorway of which was blocked by a huge stone Buddha’s head staring benignly at me from the floor and next to this was a shop window full of gleaming imitation Oscars… I could go on and on, but I won’t or I’ll never be able to finish typing this up!

Worry not – the voices are in my head too,
Toodles,
Sonya

Summer 2003 - Journey to Russia
Overall journey plan: Start: 31-07-03 Church Stretton
- Newcastle - Gothenburg - Stockholm - Helsinki - St.
Petersburg - Moscow - Warsaw - Cologne - Brussels -
London End: 20-08-03
Part I (Church Stretton - Newcastle - Gothenburg -
Stockholm - Helsinki)
Hi all!
This is gonna have to be very quick as the 'net is
VERY expensive here. (Grrrrr, damn this posh hotel,
hoho!)
So, a roundup of events so far:
Day I:
Stretton to Gothenburg
by boat via Newcastle docks - train delayed... OF
COURSE! Something silly like air on the line, so we
waited for ages on train seats shaped like lumpy,
crystallised putty - just made it to the ship -
thought that it was big until I saw our cabin - flea
bacteria sized - the description said COSEY. But it
didn't really matter as I spent most of the time on
deck doing history and drama homework - so now I know that
Russia was invaded by Tsar Henry VIII in 1982, and
that Shakespeare was a Marxist influenced by Lenin who
had lots of wives (I forget how many, please don't
quote me on my info - I hold no responsibility etc
etc.)
Day II:
Gothenburg lovely and uneventful. No time to say more, except that it’s a very sweet town/city.
Day III:
X2000 tilting train to Stockholm - train tilts. Looks
like sheep are tilting, now I walk sideways.
Stockholm yucky. (didn’t have time to see/find ‘the good bits’)
HUGE boat to Helsinki - size of large building incl.
almost 1/2 mile long shopping st. and glass bubble
lifts - our cabin was bigger than the last one and
good for one being in the bilge (as low as you can go in a
ship w/o getting wet!) Didn’t feel like a real ship though.
Say more 'bout it later. Maybe.
Day IV:
Helsinki, spent day in ancient fort - like giant
hamster home system (you know), sing the bicycle song
all the way home with rude(r) alternative words
supplied by dad - wonder if I've had too much coffee.
Hardly ate – can’t find restaurant. Met American man and old
English man in lift, old Eng. pulled some gum off a
button and the Americ. started telling us that all
UKns are WONDERFUL, felt half proud, leaving Chinese half
confused and dissilusioned.
To Russia (St. Petersburg) anon by train!!
Must go,
Toodles,
Sonya
To be continued...



Part the Second:
Hi everybody!
I am writing this just before setting off to school for results day (gulp!) so I’ll probably see a lot of you before you get this. You may have guessed by now that I’m writing from home – this is because I only arrived home last night, and the last couple of weeks have been so overwhelmingly full and busy that I haven’t had a chance to write up anything.
So, a very selective run-through from when I left off in Helsinki:

From Helsinki to St. Petersburg (Finland to Russia) by train:
Let me first tell you a little about St. Petersburg:
St. Petersburg, known as ‘the city on the swamp’ was built by a Peter the Great… on a swamp (surprise, surprise), because, well, he just kinda felt like it (I’m sure Miss Stevenson will tell us differently next term, but.)
Our original plan had been to meet up with my godfather, John, at the train station in St. Petersburg, from which he’d take us to our rental flat… err… somewhere in the city. So my dad and I happily arrived at Finlanski Station at about 10pm to find not only no John, but also an almost empty station that seemed to be inhabited solely by a drunk flower salesman, a sleeping guard and a very old man trailing an even older plastic bucket containing copious amounts of, err, something in bottles… probably vodka. My dad immediately put on his most optimistic face,
“Maybe he’d got the time wrong, let’s stand somewhere conspicuous.”
I decided that I was too tired to explain that two dishevelled yet grinning foreigners standing in the exact centre of an almost empty station at 10.30pm was already rather worryingly conspicuous and instead busied myself in trying to conceal the bundle of dollars that was sticking out of dad’s pocket.
11.30 passed, no John.
“Well, maybe he’d got the time wrong by two hours…” Said dad as I began to look through the hotel guide.
12.30 passed.
“Err, dad?” I said, “Maybe we should find somewhere to stay.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure he’s only got the time wr-” he stopped and looked at his watch, “hmm, maybe we should go.” And we set off to look for a taxi.
I guess I should probably explain that at this point we were both rather worried, partly because we’d not heard the best reports about the safety of St. Petersburg by night, but also because we were sure that either something terrible had happened to John, or that he must be really worried about us.
Our hotel guide, on the subject of cheap and simple, recommended the ‘Bolshoy Big Puppet Theatre Hostel’ as a good place to camp out for the night – so there we went, ignoring the exorbitant fare offered by the taxi driver - to find that a) the hostel was full and b) that we couldn’t use the phone as John’s Moscow-registered mobile counted as an international call. There was however, said the hostel manager, an ‘International Hostel’ about 20mins away by foot.
“Just take a left,” she said, jabbing at some unknown point off the map, “then a- a- how do you say… right? Yes, yes, then along Nevsky Prospekt over there, across here... no, I mean here and along the park by the, no, one moment…”
The whole time, my dad nodded and grinned as if he already knew the way… then we set off into St. Petersburg’s 1am night. (In completely the wrong direction)
I won’t go into the details of our night’s trek, suffice to say that we did find the hostel – at about 2.30 or something similar, that some very friendly drunk people stopped cars to get us there (literally) and that the people at that “nice café” as my dad likes to call it who gave us such wonderfully conflicting directions were (in my honest opinion) the owners of a strip-club… not that they weren’t helpful or anything.
Finally, after half a night of being a PMR (Public Mosquito Restaurant), we managed to get through to John and meet up with him. It turned out all to be a big misunderstanding about train times and stations etc, partly due to a person at the Finlanski station (where we arrived) insisting that our train wouldn’t be arriving there. So that was my first taste of Russia, I’m quite proud of it really, it was fun – well, in retrospect anyway.
After this adventure though, everything, I have to say, went wonderfully.
More-or-less.

(To be fair though, John was absolutely brilliant and took us to so many incredible places that it felt like information – and food! – overload… I haven’t had a more mentally stimulating experience in a long time!)

Moscow:
I have never done anything as wonderfully surreal and mind boggling as this trip to Russia, it’s like some kind of incredible mix between The West, The East, The Unimaginable, The Eccentric, The Unexpected and The Downright Unusual. (So I felt completely at home!)

A couple of Moscow stories:

The incident of the old lady and the photo booth:
I had to get a passport photo taken for some official visa documentation or other involving endless forms, running between embassies and countless officials going, “errr… I dunno…” when asked about some form and then, “that’ll be $20.”
Anyway, so off we went to look for a photo booth in Moscow’s huge metro system.
The first one we found had two old ladies sitting in front of them, chatting loudly in Russian and ignoring us – we decided not to disturb them and move onto the another station. The next photo booth seemed empty and usable, relieved, my dad and I fumbled for spare change and tried to decipher the instructions. Just then, a tiny and incredibly wrinkled old lady came out from somewhere behind (or under??) the photo booth and started waving a crumpled sheet of paper at us, it turned out that she was in charge of this particular automatic photo booth, and that we had to let her operate it. No sooner had my dad given her the money, when she opened a tiny door on the side of the machine, inside was a purse, a flask and, I think I saw it right, a bunch of neon-coloured fake flowers. She took out the purse and put the coins needed into the machine, then busied herself with cleaning the screen, getting me to brush my hair and generally make me to look pretty (!?! Hmmm, or at least presentable). A few buttons later, and the pictures were taken – and they weren’t too bad either (considering I was in them…), and it was certainly the first time I’d ever used an ‘old-lady operated automatic photo booth’!

The incident of the empty museum and the cow restaurant:
When my dad heard that I’d be doing Russian history next year for A/S, his first response was, “Well, you’ll learn loads when we go to Russia then!” Then he started looking through the guidebooks and planning a whole list of museums to go to, to teach me to know my Serfs from my Socialists, I suppose. So anyway, one of the museums we decided on was the grandly entitled the ‘Museum of Modern Russian History’, a big, carved-stone building decorated with hyena-esque lions or lion-like hyenas or something similarly disturbing. A brief survey of the building told us that the front gate was locked, but that a small door around the back, through a building site and next to a skip was the main entrance. The inside of the building was huge, but there seemed to be no sign of the exhibition, finally, after many twisting corridors and grand ballrooms, we found a dusty sign with an arrow on it pointing to a room about the size of an (well okay, quite large) extended broom cupboard. Inside, so it seemed, was the sole contents of the museum – a couple of old uniforms and medals belonging to Stalin, some of the gifts presented to him, including an incredible grandfather clock made of gold and ivory and the size and shape of a miniature cathedral, a few dusty, and rather bloodthirsty propaganda posters along the lines of, ‘the enemy will die, we will spill their guts and dance on their entrails…’ and a video showing Stalin’s funeral – altogether an extremely odd, if rather small, collection. On trying to get out of the museum (we got lost and ended up between a toilet and a semi-disused lift-shaft), we discovered the museum shop and were finally able to unravel the mystery of the size of the museum – the shop seemed like twice the size of the real exhibition itself and was crammed, floor to ceiling, with ancient cameras, letters from soldiers and holidaying families, original propaganda posters, medals, trophies, space suits from various Russian expeditions and an unimaginable assortment of stuff THAT PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON DISPLAY!! The story of the museum, it turned out, is rather sad, (and at the risk of sounding like some sort of charitable trust) unable to attract visitors (especially since nobody seems to have heard of it), the museum is being forced to, bit by bit, sell off most of its exhibits until there is hardly enough left to fill a wardrobe. I suppose one day we shall be seeing that giant ivory clock shoved into a dusty corner of the shop between a box of forgotten love letters and someone’s Olympic medal, with a price tag of the equivalent of about 30 quid.
I should mention, however, that not all of Moscow’s museums are selling themselves off – nope, just the other day I heard about a very successful little museum called ‘Moscow Lights’ – a magnificent showcase of Moscow’s lampposts throughout the ages!! (And we were guided to it by a great little map courtesy of the Moscow Times entitled: “The Crime Scenes of the Moscow Strangler”!)
Oh, and the cow restaurant? I just thought that you might be interested to know that later that day (I think it was that day, my records are becoming somewhat muddled) I went to a very nice restaurant called ‘MY! MY!’ (Pronounced: MOO! MOO!) Where all the cutlery, bowls, plates, etc were covered in a sort of black-and-white cow-print design. There was very little beef on the menu but the food was very good nonetheless! (especially since I prefer chicken)

The Russian countryside and beyond:
I spent the last three days of my time in Russia at my godfather’s dacha (home in the countryside) about two or three hours drive from Moscow. And it was here that I: befriended frogs, froze in a river, found a sister and submitted to having all my hair plaited and having my face painted to resemble some kind of tribal warrior.
I suppose I should explain (quickly) in order:
1) Befriended frogs: Have you ever tried? You should.
2) Froze in a river: I didn’t quite fall in… see ‘Befriended frogs’.
3) Found a sister: My godfather’s daughter, Nica has become my dad’s goddaughter, making us (sort-of) ‘godsisters’!
4) Submitted to having all my hair plaited and having my face painted to resemble some kind of tribal warrior: Ah the things a big sister must put up with… I sympathise with those of you who are, I really do! (hehe, I didn’t mind really, I’m just making it clear that none of YOU are allowed to do it, as much as you may want to ply me with makeup!!)

And Finally:
My dad and I left Russia with an excitable, if slightly tipsy, farewell… but it never really seems to have quite left me… J
Well, so that was Russia – condensed – I can’t possibly write about every amazing thing that happened, like the £20 teabags, the opera singer in the underground, the goose-stepping, the guns, knives and chemist shop (or something similar?), the singing metro barriers… as it would take me days to type up and a bit too long, I think, for all of you as well.
So at last, going home – trains with ancient warplane-type leather safety harnesses, Warsaw a lovely garden of five-year-old medieval houses and great cafes, Cologne with tea and a cathedral for an hour, three hours in smelly, messed-up Brussels train-station, then home…
And boy am I happy to be back!!

See ya’ll soon,
Sonya

Summer 2003 - Italy
Lucca, and other bits of Tuscany

Dear friends, acquaintances and anyone further along the e-mail line,
Buongiorno! I hope that you're all well!!
I am writing to you from the small town of Lucca in Tuscaninny - I mean Tuscany, Italy. (Actually, that's not strictly true - I couldn't find the internet over there so I'm copying this up back in London)
Before I go any further, let me give you some background info. Lucca is a medieval, walled town with tall buildings, narrow streets and towers sticking out of every orifice. (!) It's half an hour away from Pisa (the one with the wonky tower) and contains a lot of pizza. Yum.
On arrival at Lucca station, we were kindly picked-up by the owner of our rental-flat and given a brief tour around Lucca. My dad, overwhelmed by his love for Italy stuttered himself into conversation with our hostess with a glint of tears in his eyes.
"Wow!" Exclaims my dear daddy, "and I expect there's lots of wonderful music here too."
"Oh yes!" Beamed our guide, "you are very lucky to arrive during the Lucca festival." dad seemed to pass out with pleasure.
"Yes," she continued, "we have Toto, and Craig David... Sir Elton John..."
My mum and I exchanged bemused looks but my dad seemed not to notice.
A little later, while admiring the delights of our flat which, by the way, resembles a small Romanesque mansion, my dad suddenly said, "Oh, we must go to one of those concerts, they have Puccini and Vivaldi... and Turendot!"
Errr daddy, actually, I think it's more like Craig David and Elton John and, err... Toto - whoever they are." I said, pointing to a poster of the Lucca festival. My dad seemed to consider this problem for some time.
"Then we'll see Toto," he finally said decisively, "because we don't know who they are, so they're probably Italian."
Anyway, after spending most of Sunday oohing and aahing at cathedrals, making plans and restraining my dad from bursting with excited emotion, I told my parents politely, but firmly, that I didn’t really want to be ‘dragged around by them for the whole holiday’, to which they said, “oh, good!” and walked off with a spring in their step that I’m sure wasn’t there before.
So on Monday, armed with a map and a few other essentials, (namely: water colours, paintbrushes, sketch book, reading book, spare reading book, diary, water bottle, note book, pencil case, camera, spare poetry book, batteries, pliers etc.) I set off alone across Lucca.
My plan was to find somewhere picturesque and paint it, so I went to look for one of Lucca’s famous churches.
Now, in theory, this exercise shouldn’t have been hard – there are at least twenty-five churches in Lucca, all within a few hundred meters of each other. So off I skipped, down random side streets until – I hit a dead end with a couple of old crates, a wheelie bin and a mangled-looking pigeon.
Well, to cut a long story short, I finally found a church after close scrutiny at a map and surreptitiously following a German tour group. Feeling very proud of myself, I sat down on a step and began to paint. I stayed there for a couple of hours, painting, sketching, watching the pigeons chase away American tourists and spending a happy twenty minutes trying to fish my paintbrush out of my water bottle. I finally succeeded by using two other brushes like chopsticks and spilling a lot of water over me in the process. I looked up to find that once again, I, Sonya Inge Hallett had become a spectator sport; an old couple were looking at me and cackling while, rather disconcertingly, a nearby tour group started aiming their cameras in my direction. Maybe I should start selling tickets…
Before I go any further, my dad has kindly reminded me to ‘tell my nice friends something about our flat and the history of Lucca.’ Okay, first of all, as I’ve already said, Lucca is old. Right, that’s the history done. Now, the flat is err… big, oh and I have chandeliers in my room.
“Okay daddy, I’ve told them!”
Right, where was I?
Oh yeah, the next day was Toto day (!)… so we went to Florence. Now call me an idealising, anti-colonial romantic (no, actually, just call me Sonya) but wouldn’t you agree that the Italian name for Florence, Firenze, is far more poetical? Florence?? Huh! Anyway, so we spent a stressed couple of hours there, pushing through crowds and posing in front of reproductions of Michelangelo’s David and other, similarly naturist, statues while my dad took pictures. I'm afraid that Florence/Firenze wasn't all it's hyped up to be (perhaps it was the wrong time) - it was so hot and crowded it felt like wading through a hippo-infested sandbox and we couldn't get into any of the galleries as the queues were longer than a stretched milipede, oh and the river smelt funny. Finally, we returned to Lucca by train by way of a sweet little village called Poggibonsi (pronounced: Podgy-bon-see) – just thought I’d mention it!
Oh yeah, we did get back in time for Toto, to find that they were a bit like a mixture between very bad copy of Queen and something you’d expect to hear in swamps in ‘Night of the Living Dead’, and if their instruments were strung with catgut, I’m almost convinced that the gut was still inside the cat when they started playing. Well, if you like that kind of thing…
I spent the next few days cycling around Lucca looking for bats – of which there are many, and looking for an internet café that charged less than seven euros (about four or five pounds?) for forty-five minutes – which was non-existent. Oh, and to make all of you jealous – a week of pizza, pasta and fresh Italian ice cream? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm…!
Anyway, must go and think about purple hedgehogs…
Ride the heat wave!
Sonya

Spring half term 2003
Hey everyone, I'm back!!!!!
Anyway, I just spent the last week in Church Stretton (no, not a church, a small town near Wales). I've been cleaning a model metal ship for the last two days (!) so it was a case of swabbing the decks (with metal polish)! Up the sails (with superglue)! And tie the rigging (with pliers)! So now it's all shiny from gleaming fore of starboard to glistening aft of port (or however it goes)... is this starting to sound obsessive?!? Must be the polish. Sorry. Anyway, as it’s one day ‘till school and most of you probably won’t check your e-mails before (most of) you see me I’m not completely sure why I’m writing this… oh well! I spent most of my half term with Gem, and let me tell you: I really love that dog!! There’s just one problem though, as I’m the household animal-lover, whenever I visit I somehow end up in charge of not only one dog, but also one cat (called Jess) and two tanks of assorted fish. Now the two best things I can say about fish are 1) they don’t have sharp claws, and 2) they don’t try to sleep with you. I have nothing against the Gem and Jess sleeping on my bed but last night, I woke up at about two absolutely freezing to find Gem’s head next to me on the pillow (having somehow stolen most of the duvet!) and Jess staring at me eyeball to eyeball and eyeing up my ear for target practice - ouch! Gem then got up and started chasing Jess around the room in a very flirtatious, if rather rough, manner which I found very confusing at two in the morning, especially as I was trying at the same time to check if my ear was still intact where Jess had attacked it. Oh well, all in a night’s sleep, eh.
What more is there to say? My cousins are still as dangerous and rowdy as usual, I’m, as always, still unsure about my homework and LIFE IS GREAT!! And this time (as always), despite the coursework etc., I really do mean it! :)
I hope you have all felt/are feeling the same at some point during the holidays and are all having a great, or at least relaxing time!
See most of you on Monday,
Sonya

The beginning...
I have finally got round to putting my travelogues online! Of course, these first entries are gonna have to be on the wrong dates... but all should be in order in future.