Series 5 is the first one published directly on the website after its public launching on May 12, 2005.

Act III   In an interview Jane Fonda recently gave to publicize her new autobiography, she described her life as having taken place in three acts, childhood, marriage and now, a period of individuality. She said she’s starting Act III while in her 60’s. So am I.

I had tickets in place as of last summer for both Beverly and me on the Siberian train and the QM2 for this trip, which I had to adjust immediatly after we got home last summer (also for the Deutschland last December as). Of course, changing from two to one usually means still paying 1 ½ fares anyway (sometimes less, occasionally double, but 1 ½ in these two cases), but I suppose that’s how it goes in Act III.

South, West-East, North   In a Euramerican spirit, Beverly and I had for decades done our travelling in Europe and North America, since those were the areas whose languages and cultures interested us, and occasionally just beyond, once to West Asia (Middle East) also North Africa, a number of times to the Caribbean. But for 2004, I decided (Beverly was no longer able to do so) that it was time to break the mold. There are four directions, and I decided to expand into each of them, in three “expansion trips”.

Our expansion trip to the South was last winter, 2004, on the Caronia, seven weeks around South America, including our overflight of the Antarctic Peninsula. Obviously, this was the only expansion trip Beverly survived long enough to make, and I’m glad I squeezed it in, even though we had already been scheduled to go to Europe in the summer. I do know she enjoyed our trip South on the Caronia.

I don’t like to announce things in advance, but in this case I’ll say that my expansion trip to the North will be in 2006 when I sail up to the polar ice cap on the Deutschland. This is a trip it does every year at the time of the summer solstice. I’ve got the rest of that trip filled out quite well, and will start final bookings when I get back from the current trip. Of course, most of the planning for the current trip was done quite some time ago.

Expanding West and East is best taken care of by going around the world. Remember the rule, if you have a choice, always go West, since you’ll have 25-hour days instead of 23-hour days. There are three possible routes I like, and I’m doing the Siberia one this time. I’m not saying I’m planning any others, but—you never know.

Cyrillic 1   I’m going to intersperse all the comments on this trip with a number of notes on the Cyrillic alphabet. I have no intention of teaching anyone Russian. I’m not even really planning on going into the entire Cyrillic alphabet, but we’ll see as time goes by. We’re just going to play some games and do some puzzles.

But first let me ask this: if you weren’t planning on learning anything about the Cyrillic alphabet at your current age, then at just what age were you planning to start?

In school, Beverly and I always used the game Hangman to practice using the alphabet of whatever language we were teaching, and it was quite effective. Then, Merv Griffin made a bundle in changing that game into the show “Wheel of Fortune”. It’s all the same principle. You recognize most of the letters in a word that still has some blanks in it, and you make an “intelligent guess” as to what the word is, helped further along with a clue.

I’m going to start with something that is so obvious that it doesn’t even need a clue. Here is a Russian word, written in the Cyrillic alphabet. I’ll also say that it’s in the Verdana typeface used in this website. People are sometimes surprised when they find out that other alphabets (Greek, Cyrillic) appear in different fonts, just as the Roman alphabet does.

It is immediately recognizable. Note that it is all in lower case, so the first thing you note is that, for most Cyrillic letters, lower case is just a “baby” version of the upper-case form. Take pen and paper, print out this word several times until it feels right to write it that way, and start your own tally of letters. I won’t do your homework for you! Teach yourself. After all, that’s how Bev and I learned all this.

All right, here’s Puzzle 1, as is done on Wheel of Fortune.

Well, there’s just one new letter there. Make believe it’s a blank, figure out the city, print it out several times just as you see it, and add the new letter to your tally. [Extra hint: if you remember using pi in math class, that’s just what you’re using now.]

An important note: I say to print it out, because, just as in the Roman alphabet, there are occasional variations in Cyrillic between the printed version and the script version. As an example, picture a Roman D in script, with all its extra loops, and you’ll see what I mean. Not to scare anyone, but the simple Cyrillic T above in script has no fewer than THREE verticals dropping from the upper crossbar instead of just one. It’s beautiful to look at in script, but—it is different. Stay with printing for now, as in elementary school. Crawl before walking and walk before running.

I can’t resist. Here is the above city written in the font known as Monotype Corsiva, which either in Roman or Cyrillic, is very close to script:

Yes, that’s a T at the beginning, and our “pi” now looks alarmingly like an “n”. Also, the lower-case “a” varies from the earlier one, but in just the same way that a Roman one can, which is again reassuring. It’s best to put this script thought aside right now and get back to crawling. But isn’t the script form graceful?

Planning a Complex Trip   I don’t think I’ve documented before how a major trip falls together for us. Those two sabbatical trips and West Asia were the most complex in planning that we’ve taken, but other trips require quite a bit of work, too. They say that half the fun is getting there. That’s true, especially if by train, ship, or leisurely driving (not by intense cross-country driving, bus, or plane—more on that another time). Yet for years Beverly and I have always felt that half the fun is in the planning, then getting there and actually being there split the remaining two quarters. Putting something like this sort of trip together is a creative effort with the major problem being synchronizing schedules. Then you just play follow-the-dots.

To explain this trip, it’s best to start in the middle, then go to the end, then to the beginning. My friend Jürgen in Germany, who supplied the German texts for the Words for Beverly, started discussing long-distance routes a few years ago with me, including the Transsiberian Railroad and the Silk Road, the route across Central Asia. I then researched the TSRR. It’s certainly doable over many days on the regular train, but then if you want to see something, you have to keep getting off and taking the next train the next day. That’s the sort of thing we might have considered in 1972, when we were more amenable to roughing it, but not now. I discovered online a private train, one of several run by a company in Cheshire in the north of England, called GW Travel (gwtravel.co.uk), rather luxurious, that make various runs in Eurasia. They usually do the route in question four times a year, once in each direction in the spring and fall. I only wanted the westbound possibility, and booked the DeLuxe accommodation because of the wheelchair. That’s no longer necessary, but I’m keeping it. It makes the trip from Vladivostok to Saint Petersburg, then Moscow, in about two weeks, with all the stops and included excursions in between. If you have any doubt that the early bird catches the worm, note this: I booked our cabin on this year’s train even before the final travel date was listed on the website last year, and before we went to Europe. When I got back and had to change it from two to one person, I was told the rest of the train was sold out already. I was also told that 92% of the train was booked by a Stanford University Alumni Group. I’m not delighted about having such a large “in-group” on board, but now I’ve been told that more cars have been added and there will be 104 passengers, a good number from Australia and New Zealand.

GW Travel talks a lot on their website about flying people from London to either the Moscow or Vladivostok end, but it seemed to me immediately that, if you’re starting from the US, it is logical to go to Vladivostok in one direction and come back from Moscow in the other direction, so it became a round-the-world trip when that thought occurred to me.

I’ve described the middle of the trip; now for the end part. Knowing the schedule for the TSRR allowed me to know when to book the QM2 last summer, to get the discount for future reservations made on board. It will be very strange crossing the Atlantic only one-way, but that’s how it is, going around the world.

It gradually occurred to me that, since I enjoy rail travel, if I went from Moscow to the QM2 by train, I would have covered all of Eurasia, Pacific to Atlantic, Vladivostok to Southampton, by rail. This immediately appealed to me. As I considered the time I had until the sailing, I found I could spend more time in Russia. There are two reasons for what I ended up planning. First, the train I’ll be on runs up to St Petersburg for only one day, then ends in Moscow, and I wanted more time in St Petersburg. Second, I wanted to take one of the most famous trains in Russia, the Krasnaya Strela (Red Arrow) that goes overnight between the cities, so I’ve arranged that, round trip. I then take a sleeper overnight through Belarus and Poland to Berlin, where I’m staying at the Adlon, then overnight to Paris and Le Grand Hotel, the Eurostar through the Chunnel to London for one night, then the train to Southampton and the QM2.

I will digress here to point out that it might start to become clear why, in the past year, I’ve discussed topics such as why I feel Europe has a Pacific coast, why it was interesting for me to sit in the Adlon lounge on the Deutschland, and one reason of several why I explained my first stay in Europe in 1957 as being in Le Grand Hotel. All those stories were told in preparation for this trip.

Now the beginning. GW Travel’s agent in the US is MIR Travel in Seattle, which handles all sorts of travel to the countries of the former Soviet Union. You might know that “mir” is the Russian word for “peace” and also “world”, and is also used as the name of a spacecraft. The agent at MIR explained that connections from the US are made via Korean Air, since their flights from North America connect in Seoul with their flight onward to Vladivostok. If I were in a hurry, I could have flown New York-Seoul, but where’s the fun in that? I’ve said before that Beverly and I have crossed the US and Canada by rail many times, on all the routes, but I felt we should do it again. I decided on the Canadian in Canada, since the Amtrak cross-country trains are all double-decker. They have a handicapped room downstairs, but it’s more fun eating in the dining car. The Canadian trains are all one level. Plan A was to take the Maple Leaf New York-Toronto, and then the Canadian, Toronto-Vancouver. But then Plan B struck me.

We’ve taken US trains coast-to-coast on all the routes. In Canada, although we’ve been to Eastern Canada by car many times, we never took any trains there, such as the famous “Ocean”. I then figured, if I’m not going to go coast-to-coast in Canada at my present age, at exactly what age would I be doing it?

This is the final route for the beginning of the trip: Sunday morning at 7:45 (not my time of day) I take Amtrak’s Adirondak to Montreal, and I overnight there. Then I go east in a sleeper on the Ocean to Halifax on the Atlantic for two nights, then come back on the Ocean. After a day train Montreal-Toronto and a night there, it’s off on the Canadian Toronto-Vancouver, on the Pacific. A special North American Rail Pass offers a good discount on the non-sleeper fare, other discounts are pre-season travel and senior travel. Thus, in North America I will be going from New York on the Atlantic and also from Halifax on the Atlantic to Vancouver on the Pacific, simultaneously going Canada coast-to-coast by train. The flight gets me to Seoul, where I spend two nights before going on to Vladivostok, partially to recover from the jet lag and of course to take advantage of seeing a bit of Korea. I’ve already arranged for a drive up to the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) and a tour of Seoul. This is an area I’m unfamiliar with (although that I’ve been reading up on), and where I won’t mind being taken by the hand for a bit. Of the hotels I’ll be staying in on this trip, four will be free on Starwood points.

It was interesting dealing with MIR. I had to explain to my contact there that I usually do my own travel, but had to conform of course to their rules, which is fine. She did describe me as “well-prepared” for doing what I do. It is interesting that MIR usually deals with an upscale group of people that I would name “the chronically well-traveled”, and the agent guessed that maybe 30% of her clients are members of the Travelers’ Century Club.

Cyrillic 2   If you had any trouble figuring out what city Тампа was, maybe you want to check with either of these people:

Here’s Puzzle 2. The clue is the same.

Two new letters. Do your homework, copying and tallying.