Welcome to my early-September travelog from a completed trip across Russia!

This is Part I covering Akademgorodok (the university village) of Novosibirsk, and the opening shots above were made with my new phone, actually bought there! It is a Xiaomi Note 7, which has turned out to be a wicked shooter :-). On the right are the hallmark giant pines, without which the place would never be the same, but alas! they are being slowly razed to clear up the space for a burgeoning technopolis with its ultramodern buildings, such as this (also shot with the Xiaomi).

Forgive the wildish angle — I was rather limited as far as the vantage point, not to mention quite a few happy pints (ah, it’s litres over there). Switching to proper gear now:

The heart of Akademgorodok is the University, which has grown bigger thanks to the new academic complex built 3 years ago. The ghost in the low-right corner is a travelling spirit from my early days here, the 1980s, when this was one endless forest. She must be as curious as myself…

Some more nocturnal life while we are at it:

I spent just shy of 3 weeks here and had a couple of opportunities to take pictures. What they congealed into is a multitude of faces, not unlike my “Faces of Cambridge”…

Doing? what?

It’s a land of serious people 🙂

But youngsters don’t tend to be as dour:

Except, of course, those of philosophic persuasion:

Some of them are already looking for a place at the Uni…

(you have to let them get used to it first 🙂 )