traveling 'home'

After Riga we stayed for a view days in Vilnius on our way to Warszawa. Christmas we celebrated in Berlin before we went finally back to the Netherlands. We spend some days with our family and celebrating New Year under the clear stars of the Noordoostpolder. For now, we live in Delft and will see for how long, because this year of traveling makes you even wish for more :-). Because there is still one painting from India missing, there is a good reason to travel again and to say ‘hello’ to this awful ACX courier. Rolina is doing an artist in residence at Kaus Australis in Rotterdam and I started working on Monday. This will be the last post on this web log till we will start traveling again :-). You can follow Rolina her work and upcoming exhibition at her web log. If you are ever in the Netherlands, please visit us.

christmas greetings

some time ago

sleepy

Rolina finished her installation at Andrejsala in Riga before we made a trip to Tallinn. We cannot pass Estonia without visiting Marit (a volunteer once for stichting Link). Since the work of Rolina went much more rapidly than planned and Riga is much more picturesque and smaller than we thought, a visit to Tallinn is very welcoming even if it is in fact the opposite direction of our travel destination : -) and we both seen Tallinn before. Just like Riga Tallinn has a sleepy influence on us. Not that both cities are boring, far from that, but the days have been wrapped in darkness. It seems the day never really breaks through and before you know it is entirely dark. We have slept never as much as in these two cities! Or is it just because we are tired of traveling for a year? : -)

art in process

Russia

Still in the mood for contests; the Russians will surely never win the one for friendly service. If you want to see a Russian smile, you should visit a museum where the paintings from the communist likeable social-realism shows plenty of them. The Russian landscape is beautiful and the Okhon Island in Lake Baikal one of the most beautiful spots I have seen. The train takes us from Ulan Ude to Irkutsk, to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Staring at the snow-white landscape results in just seeing your own thoughts at a certain point.
In Saint Petersburg we met Zhenya, who did voluntary work in The Netherlands and two other nice Russian art students that show us the local art scene, some bars and in general the city. The planned artist in residence did not worked out so we just spend some days in Saint Petersburg before we went of to Riga. In Riga Rolina will work at Singalong.

Ulan Bator

Ulan Bator doesn’t seem to win the contest for the most beautiful city on earth. The surrounding landscape will have a high score instead. We went by minivan and horse to explore Mongolians nature and spend the night at a nomad family. In despite of my cowboy aspirations I got kicked of the horse, but survived. To see the horses on almost al the paintings from the artists from the Union of Mongolian Artist, turned out to be a much saver experience. We leaving beautiful Mongolia behind and continue our travel to Ulan Ude in Russia.