Photo by Gumerov Ildar If you’re old enough to remember flower power and Woodstock, then you’ll probably recall the Keflavík stopover. Budget-conscious air travelers in the sixties used Loftleiðir (now part of Icelandair) to hop between the USA and Europe. Loftleiðir undercut the high fares of IATA airlines and pulled a young crowd of first » Read more

Brits are of course now labouring under a diet of cold turkey. Christmas generates its own extraordinary traditions across Europe, which differ greatly from country to country. There is no such thing as a standard-issue European Christmas. The English certainly like their turkey on the Christmas table, but elsewhere across the continent firm Christmas favourites » Read more

By far the best and most relaxing way to get an overview of St. Petersburg is to take a boat trip along the city’s canals and rivers. Rivers and canals in St. Petersburg play the part of roads. Many of the city’s most beautiful palaces, gardens, and cathedrals lie alongside the waterways. You can find » Read more

Adventurous Cheapos who love rail travel will find the fledgling projects of Russian State Railways very exciting. Most ambitious is the newly-announced plan to build a tunnel underneath the Bering Strait to connect Russia with Alaska. If constructed, the rail tunnel will be the longest in the world, at 100 km. The second glamorous plan » Read more

Here’s an understatement: the association of Russia with vodka is strong. Moscow’s Vodka Museum was transplanted from St. Petersburg, opening in Russia’s capital in 2006. 50,000 bottles of all shapes (including guns, swords and submarines) and ages (the oldest is over 200 years old) are kept here. All you could want to know about vodka’s » Read more

If you need a bite to eat in St. Petersburg, buy yourself a pie. Russian pies, or pirogi, are made of pizza-like pastry, rolled into large, fat cigars and filled with a generous tasty filling. Traditional fillings are mushroom and herb, minced meat, egg and rice, and curd cheese. You can buy your pie from » Read more

Dostoevsky called St. Petersburg the “most abstract and fantastic city on earth.” The city’s power to amaze is at its best in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, built in 1714 on the granite banks of the River Neva to house Tsar Peter the Great’s bizarre collection of abnormal anatomy. Siamese twins in formaldehyde, the » Read more

Meet the youth hostel claimed which function more or less as dormitories—and expensive five-star hotels. Even without the limited local selection, the hostel itself is fantastic. Its city center location is within spitting district of Nevskii Prospect, the city’s beautiful arterial boulevard. It has a variety of clean, comfortable rooms and friendly, helpful staff. It » Read more

Russia’s national airline Aeroflot recently announced that it will soon make e-tickets available via its Web site. Because of a Russian law that requires cash receipts for ticket transactions, airports won’t be able to distribute boarding passes for e-tickets on-site until this summer at the earliest. Our recent research blitz turned up an abundance of » Read more