My curse is I get to go to the most beautiful places in the world, and then I have to turn my back to them.
Journal
Belgrade, Serbia
Took a ballet class in Serbia today.
Bratislava, Slovakia
Was confronted with this by the hotel manager while eating breakfast.
I think we pretty much had all of Bratislava in the Old Town Square yesterday.
Vienna, Austria
Made use of my day off in Vienna. Johann Strauss performed the Blue Danube in this dance hall. Many things about this image remind of Stanley Kubrick.
Dresden, Germany
My morning jog through the rebuilt old city of Dresden deteriorated into a morning agog.
Berlin, Germany
The Germans are geniuses. Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?
Also:
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Was startled by this Visa ad looping on the wall during my layover in Abu Dhabi. I shot it several years ago and had never actually seen it before.
Moscow, Russia
Took a zippy, shiny train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Then rode a lumbering, Soviet-era hulk overnight to Moscow.
Guess which one was more fun.
Someone handed me this today.
It's going in my office.
St. Petersburg, Russia
Today I joined Napoleon and Hitler in wildly underestimating just how many Russians there are in Russia.
Helsinki, Finland
This is the cruise ship that ferries thousands on the 50 mile journey from Estonia to Finland.
The passengers were almost all male, most sprawled across the hallway floors, making the journey to buy beer at a lower tax rate. They disembarked into the night dragging handcarts stacked high with Saku.
Fins are certainly a modest bunch. The underlying sentiment for my visit seems to be, "Thank you for coming here, but why did you bother?"
Ranee, my travel assistant, booked me in a renovated Helsinki prison that is now a hotel.
The rooms are nice, but it doesn't matter how you spruce up a sauna that used to be a solitary confinement cell. NOT RELAXING.
