Dani dropped onto a black couch while I walked to the desk.
The woman behind the counter typed into her computer. A moment later, she had found our reservation.
“Tomorrow.”
I sighed.
“Yes. We’re here a day early, but do you have room tonight?”…
Category Archives: The Winter Thaw
Snow followed us through Russia and Scandinavia. We crossed frozen water, pushed open doors against Arctic wind, searched for small restaurants, and kept moving even when the cold made every step harder.
Dani was pregnant, and the trip was changing underneath us. She got sick. Plans became smaller. Some days were measured less by what we saw than by whether she could keep water down. I kept looking for things I could fix—routes, rooms, food, the next decision. Sometimes there was nothing to fix. There was only the person beside me, tired and uncomfortable, and the choice to stay there.
The Coronation
Eighteen months later, Dani found it—buried in the lower floors of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. Russia of all places.
The museum stretched endlessly, room after room of imperial accumulation, but the basements held the strangest pieces.
Serbian coffins carved from logs, still smelling of resin.…
A more Convincing Picture
The minibus dropped us at Catherine Palace. It stretched away in both directions.
Three stories of blue, white, and gold.
A line ran along the side of it.
We joined the end.
~
Snow blew down from the roofline.
The schoolchildren built a snowman in the grass.…
The Bastion
We followed our map to what should have been the next museum.
Instead, we reached a tunnel through the fortress wall.
Dani pushed. The doors wouldn’t open.
We continued to the water—shadow turning to white.
The wind coming off the bay drove us back.…
Bear Season
The hotel looked grander than I remembered.
Chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Red carpets muffled our footsteps. Even the restroom urinals were motion-activated waterfalls.
Outside, snow whipped across the inky Baltic.
Near the restaurant entrance, a framed menu advertised the seasonal buffet.…
The Ship Grew Larger
An hour into our walk, the park narrowed against a freeway.
The snow had returned despite the forecast. Cross-country skiers glided between the trees while traffic hissed somewhere ahead.
I knew our ferry terminal sat beyond the highway, somewhere along the harbor, but I couldn’t see a way through.…
Four Kilometers from Kideksha
We reached Boris and Gleb just as the sun touched the horizon.
The church was nearly nine hundred years old.
A single room. One display. Interiors already growing dark in the falling light.
We spent less than ten minutes there.
The attendant had already put on her coat and gloves by the time we were ready to leave.…
The Surface Looked Frozen
A ferry waited at the docks outside the market hall.
We jogged the last hundred meters, stopped long enough to buy transit passes from a ticket machine, and boarded moments before departure.
The harbor appeared frozen.
A narrow channel of dark water cut through the ice toward the islands.…
Room #7
Most of the passengers who stepped off the ferry climbed straight into taxis.
We kept walking.
Dani followed her map through the quiet streets of Tallinn’s old town.
Snow dusted the cobblestones.
Gothic churches rose above shuttered cafes and dark shop windows filled with wooden toys.…
A Crane Hung over the Cathedral
“Do you know how to get to the Sagrada Família from here?”
My feet sweltered inside my winter boots as we climbed out of the Barcelona metro.
Three weeks in Russia had left us dressed for snow.
Dani smiled.
“Turn around.”…
Fabragé
Before this trip, I couldn’t have told you what a Faberge egg was.
On the walk to the museum, I asked Dani.
“Is it a real egg?”
She laughed.
“It’s just around the corner.”
~
The museum occupied a nineteenth-century mansion whose name was written in Cyrillic across the entrance.…
Four in the Morning
We stepped off the train into falling snow.
It came down harder here than anywhere else on our trip, reducing everyone exiting the cars to the same hunched shape.
We followed them up a metal staircase over the tracks and into the station.…
Beneath the Monument
The bus emptied beneath a monument.
A titanium rocket curved into the sky atop a sweeping plume of metal, its nose disappearing somewhere above the apartment blocks.
Dani found a bench while I tried photographing it, but every angle lost either the rocket or the curve that held it aloft.…
The Mansion, … Mostly
The palace was once lavish. Now, apartments and storefronts hid it from the street.
A small sign pointed us through a gate toward a snow-covered courtyard.
At the entrance, a guard shook his head then pointed instead to an unmarked door half a flight of stairs below ground.…
The Crossing
The conductor barely glanced at the visas and invitation letters I’d carried so carefully across Estonia.
“Passports,” was all she said.
A hand outstretched.
She compared our faces against a handwritten ledger, nodded once, and stepped aside.
Inside, lace curtains hung in the windows.…
Five o’clock Snow
The conductor slid down the aisle without taking a step.
The bus looked older than me. Faded green paint showed beneath newer coats, curtains hung in the windows, and decades-old advertisements ghosted through the peeling sides.
A woman wearing a white cap worked her way down the aisle.…
The Boat from Terminal 1
The terminal stood dark and empty.
No lights glowed inside the building.
No passengers waited outside with luggage.
And no ferries sat behind the terminal.
A mile away, another ship towered above the harbor beside a building labeled TERMINAL 1 in giant illuminated letters.…
Nevsky
The sticker on the window said “Nevsky,” but so did everything here. It was two in the morning, and we’d walked miles in the snow, trying to find our hotel.
A service entrance.
A bar.
An after-hours pharmacy.
A twenty-four-hour coffee shop.…
I Can’t even Keep Water down
Dani vomited again on our way back—noodles and water. Then more water.
“I can’t even keep water down.”
The words hit me harder than she intended. She was pregnant, sick, and we were in a foreign country halfway around the world.…
The Frozen Ocean
I slammed my weight against the ship’s doors and they finally opened.
I hadn’t expected the wind.
It slammed into me and slid me backward along the slick deck. Ice stung my face and covered my camera in a dusting of snow.…
The Donut Shop
Dani had pinned a place called “Pyshechnaya” on the map—apparently just the Russian word for “donut shop.” In Saint Petersburg now, we couldn’t find it.
We passed a security kiosk in our wandering. The guard nodded at us as we passed, but he stepped out of his booth now to investigate.…
Icons and Oil Lights
We’d passed the cathedral earlier that morning, five golden domes rising from white stone and snow like lamps in the fog.
Dani had tried the door then, but it wouldn’t budge.
A groundskeeper intercepted us, a bearded man in a thick coat and heavy boots, half-lost in the morning snow as he shoveled the steps clear.…