wherever we lay our backpacks, that's our home

so, after the grey skies & buildings (& faces) of Murmansk, Petrozavodsk is a breath of fresh air. literally.

we've just spent the day admiring peasant wooden Russian architecture on the island of Kizhy (surprise, surprise it's a Unesco World Heritage site) and i couldn't help but wonder if the Irish peasants of the same era could have seen the luxurious structures we saw today they would have been green with envy (instead of green with national spirit).

we also really enjoyed staying in a large, comfortable bed last night, lately we seem to be spending our sleeping hours in train berths and ferry cabins. space is a real luxury.

We'll be on our way to St Petersburg at 11 tonight on another 4 berth train carriage with Scott & Gill. Alas, our days of sharing the train cabins with friends our numbered (i.e. 1) Scott & Gill will leave us in St P's to go back to London and their jobs. We are trying to convince them to pack in their jobs and come with us...

Oh we are enjoying our nomadic life and as we have no home anywhere, wherever we lay* our back packs that's our home. I'm resisting the temptation when people ask us where we're from of saying "why we're from here of course".


*admittedly 'lay' makes the pack sound quite light, what i really need here is a verb that means; falls heavily to the ground crushing anything beneath it and invoking in the former carrier the feeling of flight.