Barbed Wire and Babushkas

Barbed Wire and Babushkas PDF Author: Paul Grogan
Publisher: Virgin Books Limited
ISBN: 9780753522783
Category : Amur River (China and Russia)
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Victor was clearly concerned about our plans to travel along the border, promising that the guards would shoot us on sight: 'They will be made heroes, with medals from Moscow,' he thundered, slapping his chest, ' but you will be dead!' And with that, he moulded his hands around an imaginary machine gun and sprayed our chests with an impressive salvo of spittle. For years they'd dreamed of packing in their day-jobs and travelling one of the world's greatest rivers, so long as it was somewhere warm. Siberia seemed like the obvious choice... Starting from high in the mountains of northern Mongolia, Paul Grogan and travelling companion Richard Boddington set out to make the first source-to-sea descent of Siberia's 4,400km Amur River, known in China as The Black Dragon. After wading up-stream for five days to reach the source, they begin their epic, four-month journey knowing virtually nothing about the region they'll be travelling through, or even where they'll be able to find food along the way. One of the few things they do know about the river is that for almost 2,000km if forms the long-disputed border between Russia and China. the scene of armed conflict up until the late 1980's, it's still considered off-limits, even to Russians. Never sure if they'll be able to continue around the next bend, the pair face guns, gunboats and arrest at every turn, and are forbidden to even set foot in Chinese territory. But beyond this fascade of military might they find a generous, warm-hearted people with a wicked sense of humour and an unhealthy predilection fir poetry, pig fat and home-made vodka. With sun, sauna's and dancing girls also high on the agenda, they are soon swept along by life on the river and the occasional 4 a.m. flood.

Barbed Wire and Babushkas

Barbed Wire and Babushkas PDF Author: Paul Grogan
Publisher: Virgin Books Limited
ISBN: 9780753522783
Category : Amur River (China and Russia)
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Victor was clearly concerned about our plans to travel along the border, promising that the guards would shoot us on sight: 'They will be made heroes, with medals from Moscow,' he thundered, slapping his chest, ' but you will be dead!' And with that, he moulded his hands around an imaginary machine gun and sprayed our chests with an impressive salvo of spittle. For years they'd dreamed of packing in their day-jobs and travelling one of the world's greatest rivers, so long as it was somewhere warm. Siberia seemed like the obvious choice... Starting from high in the mountains of northern Mongolia, Paul Grogan and travelling companion Richard Boddington set out to make the first source-to-sea descent of Siberia's 4,400km Amur River, known in China as The Black Dragon. After wading up-stream for five days to reach the source, they begin their epic, four-month journey knowing virtually nothing about the region they'll be travelling through, or even where they'll be able to find food along the way. One of the few things they do know about the river is that for almost 2,000km if forms the long-disputed border between Russia and China. the scene of armed conflict up until the late 1980's, it's still considered off-limits, even to Russians. Never sure if they'll be able to continue around the next bend, the pair face guns, gunboats and arrest at every turn, and are forbidden to even set foot in Chinese territory. But beyond this fascade of military might they find a generous, warm-hearted people with a wicked sense of humour and an unhealthy predilection fir poetry, pig fat and home-made vodka. With sun, sauna's and dancing girls also high on the agenda, they are soon swept along by life on the river and the occasional 4 a.m. flood.

Babushka's Journey

Babushka's Journey PDF Author: Marcel Krueger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786723840
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This is the story of a grandmother, and what happened to her and to Eastern Europe in World War II. Following the tracks of his grandmother Cacilie, Cilly for short, into her vanished homeland of East Prussia and to the labour camps of the Soviet Union, Marcel Krueger has interwoven contemporary landscape and family history into an evocative travel memoir. Babushka's Journey is the record of his grandmother's journey from the snow-covered battlefields of East Prussia in January 1945 to the Soviet labour camps in the Urals, where she spent five years before returning to Germany. Chasing the sights, sounds and voices of past and present along this route, the author has created both fictionalised historical narrative and contemporary travelogue, covering two different journeys that follow the same path. As he stumbles through the bars of present-day Poland and dreams on the bunk beds of the Trans-Siberian railway, Krueger forges an authentic retelling of Cilly's tragic yet hopeful story, discovering that her journey reflects tens of thousands of similar personal histories, which continue to haunt Germany, Poland and Russia today.

Mobility in the Russian, Central and East European Past

Mobility in the Russian, Central and East European Past PDF Author: Róisín Healy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042975597X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The "new mobilities paradigm" which emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century has identified mobility as a process intrinsic to the human experience and fundamental to the formation of social and political structures. This volume breaks new ground by demonstrating the role of the journey as a key motor of human development in Russia, central and east Europe in the modern period. It does so by means of twelve case studies that examine different types of movement, both voluntary and involuntary, temporary and permanent, short- and long-distance, into, out of, and around the region.

Kaapse bibliotekaris

Kaapse bibliotekaris PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Issues for Nov. 1957- include section: Accessions. Aanwinste, Sept. 1957-

Mind of Winter

Mind of Winter PDF Author: Laura Kasischke
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006228441X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
“Leave-the-lights-on-tonight frightening, with a quiet edge of horror that is much more effective than gore.” — NPR “If I could stand on a mountaintop and shout over the land, I would do it now: This book is magnificent! It’s a gripping psychological thriller, at once both charmingly domestic and flat-out terrifying.” — Elin Hilderbrand, author of Beautiful Day From Laura Kasischke, the critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling poet and author of The Raising, comes a dark and chilling thriller that combines domestic drama with elements of psychological suspense and horror—an addictive tale of denial and guilt that is part Joyce Carol Oates and part Chris Bohjalian. On a snowy Christmas morning, Holly Judge awakens with the fragments of a nightmare floating on the edge of her consciousness. Something followed them from Russia. Thirteen years ago, she and her husband Eric adopted baby Tatty, their pretty, black-haired Rapunzel, from the Pokrovka Orphanage #2. Now, at fifteen, Tatiana is more beautiful than ever—and disturbingly erratic. As a blizzard rages outside, Holly and Tatiana are alone. With each passing hour, Tatiana’s mood darkens, and her behavior becomes increasingly frightening . . . until Holly finds she no longer recognizes her daughter.

ATM Sex

ATM Sex PDF Author: Alan Lord
Publisher: Guernica Editions
ISBN: 155071354X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
ATM SEX is a furious collection of satirical sketches and fearless social commentary that manages to skewer everyone and everything under the sun, often employing the absurd lingo of advertising. It makes fun of the doomed dysfunctional interplay between the sexes, and kicks the ass of our crackpot lifestyles, hysterical consumerism, and overreliance on technogeekery and media-drooling, which are supposed to solve our pathetic lives dominated by tragic consumerism, arrogant gadget-diddling, and rampant narcissism. In Alan Lord, we have finally found an unapologetic un-Canadian over-the-topper, willing to throttle the myriad squawkboxes of our out-of-control dumbed-down zeitgeist.

The Interrogators

The Interrogators PDF Author: Chris Mackey
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0759511098
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
More than 3,000 prisoners in the war on terrorism have been captured, held, and interrogated in Afghanistan alone. But no one knows what transpired in those interactions between prisoner and interrogator -- until now. In The Interrogators, Chris Mackey, the senior interrogator at Bagram Air Base and in Kandahar, where al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners were first detained and questioned, lifts the curtain. Soldiers specially trained in the art of interrogation went face-to-face with the enemy. These mental and psychological battles were as grueling, dramatic, and important as any in the war on terrorism. We learn how, under Mackey's command, his small group of "soldier spies" engineered a breakthrough in interrogation strategy, rewriting techniques and tactics grounded in the Cold War. Mackey reveals the tricks of the trade, and we see how his team -- four men and one woman -- responded to the pressure and the prisoners. By the time Mackey's group was finished, virtually no prisoner went unbroken.

The Cloister

The Cloister PDF Author: James Carroll
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1101971584
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
From National Book Award-winning writer James Carroll comes a novel of the timeless love story of Peter Abelard and Héloïse, and its impact on a modern priest and a Holocaust survivor seeking sanctuary in Manhattan. Father Michael Kavanagh is shocked when he sees a friend from his seminary days at the altar of his humble parish in upper Manhattan—a friend who was forced to leave under scandalous circumstances. Compelled to reconsider the past, Father Kavanagh wanders into the medieval haven of the Cloisters and stumbles into a conversation with a lovely and intriguing docent, Rachel Vedette. Having survived the Holocaust and escaped to America, Rachel remains obsessed with her late father’s greatest scholarly achievement: a study demonstrating the relationship between the famously discredited monk Peter Abelard and Jewish scholars. Feeling an odd connection with Father Kavanagh, Rachel shares with him the work that cost her father his life. At the center of these interrelated stories is the classic romance between the great philosopher Abelard and his intellectual equal, Héloïse. For Rachel, Abelard is the key to understanding her people’s place in history. And for Father Kavanagh, the controversial theologian may be a doorway to understanding the life he himself might have had outside the Church.

The 'classic' Moulton

The 'classic' Moulton PDF Author: Paul Grogan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780954326531
Category : Moulton bicycles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Grounded

Grounded PDF Author: Seth Stevenson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101186488
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
An eye-opening and fascinating slow travel journey from an acclaimed writer who circled the globe without ever leaving the ground. In this age of globalism and high-speed travel, Seth Stevenson, the witty, thoughtful Slate columnist, takes us back to a time when travel meant putting one foot in front of the other, racing to make connections between trains and buses in remote transit stations, and wading through the chaos that most long-haul travelers float 35,000 feet above. Stevenson winds his way around the world by biking, walking, hiking, riding in rickshaws, freight ships, cruise ships, ancient ferries, buses, and the Trans-Siberian Railway-but never gets on an airplane. He finds that from the ground, one sees the world anew-with a deeper understanding of time, distance, and the vastness of the earth. In this sensational travelogue, each step of the journey is an adventure, full of unexpected revelations in every new port, at every bend in the railroad tracks, and around every street corner.