Bald and Bankrupt

The Nagorno-Karabakh region which had been quiet for the last decade recently boiled over again when Azerbaijan mounted an attack which led to it conquering much of the territory it had lost in the previous war. I flew into a bitterly cold Yerevan in early January with the intention of heading down to the capital Stepanakert to see what was happening there since the war. Would I make it or not?

We all know about Tallinn the vibrant capital of Estonia with its tech start-ups and modern infrastructure. It's lauded as a miracle of the post-Soviet sphere and rightly so. But what about the rest of the country? Is that reaping the benefits of EU accession too? I jumped on a train heading east to find out...

There are plenty of videos on YouTube about Ukraine and they all show the same things; pretty churches in Kyiv, beaches in Odessa or Lviv's incredible town square. But did we really learn about the country from those generic films? I don't believe so. And so I wanted to travel off the beaten track and show you the real places and meet the real people of Ukraine away from the cliches. Oh and we will search for some Soviet mosaics too. Join me on an adventure in what may well be Europe's friendliest and least understood country.

In 2014 the Ukrainian part of the Donbass erupted into war. Separatists from the Lugansk and Donetsk regions took up arms and took control of Ukrainian towns all along the eastern region of the country. Eventually they were pushed back until they controlled just the cities of Lugansk and Donetsk and some surrounding villages. I went off to visit some of the towns that the Ukrainian army had re-taken along the front lines to see how life was progressing and to hunt for the ultimate Soviet mosaic...

I hadn't been in Kharkiv very long before I started hearing about the dodgy gopnik filled suburb called KhTZ ( Kharkiv Tractor Plant ). None of the people I spoke to had actually been but they all told me stories of a region known for its fights and muggings. Well I decided to go check it out with my good mate Johnny. Join us both on a gopnik adventure in Ukraine's dodgiest hood.

Doing the simplest of tasks like popping to the shop for a loaf of bread is no simple thing in Kryvyi Rih. That's because it's seemingly the longest city in the bloody world and going anywhere takes a bloody eternity and ends in sweaty frustration. However I was on a mission to seek out its Soviet past so I stopped complaining and set off on an adventure in search of an old dude with a Lada. Join me as we go back in time to good old Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine's most frustrating city.

Greetings from beautiful Ukraine. Myself and my bodyguard Johhny FD left the capitol city Kyiv on a provincial adventure to the town of Pereyaslav in search of a Soviet Cosmic church I had tried and failed to visit last winter. On the way we learnt some more about this great country, for example: to always avoid Burger City, how not to serenade babushkas and that even dogs have bad reputations and are banned from shopping at some places. Join us on a trip to what might actually be Ukraine's friendliest little town, Pereyaslav.

We all want to find that special someone, the person who will accept us and love us despite our madness and idiosyncrasies. We all hope that that person is out there somewhere waiting to be found. And so when myself and Johnny met a woman on a provincial bus journey who told us of the mythical village of Sofiivka, a place supposedly full of fair village maidens all searching for husbands, we decided that we would have to travel there and investigate for ourselves to see if we could find true love. Get ready for the feel good movie of the year...

The Trans-Siberian train, who hasn't dreamt of taking it across this leviathan of a country? Well not me to be honest but somehow I decided to override my dread of endless train rides to show you what nobody has shown you before. The real Trans-Siberian. This isn't a package tour, nothing is booked in advance. It's just me on my own hopping from town to town on whichever train is leaving next, meeting locals, drinking vodka, avoiding snorers, exploring Russia. Join me!

Under Stalin the G.U.LAG ( Main Administration of Camps ) system spread out across what was the former Soviet Union, swallowing up citizens and foreigners from all corners of the empire. Ukrainians, Estonians, Kyrgyz etc. were taken from their homes and sent north in box cars to the camps to work away their stretches. Millions passed through the camps and many never returned home. Those camps have long been dismantled or converted into regular factories and work places and you'd be hard pressed to know that you were visiting a former camp. However Perm 36 logging camp has been preserved and so I travelled to the very edge of Europe to a village called Kutchino to visit the last Gulag and to see how the prisoners lived.

What does a man have to do to get a beer around here? Well if you're in the Siberian town of Taiga then the answer is quite a lot. I searched everywhere for a beer and met legends on the way. Welcome to the towns other bloggers don't show you, where everyone is a character with a twinkle in their eye.

We have all heard of the Trans-Siberian, Russia's mega train journey that crosses Siberia as it skirts the Chinese border. But few have heard of the even more impressive B.A.M ( Baikal Amur Mainline ) which passes through virgin forest in the middle of Siberia. Built in the 1970s by young communists, the BAM is the greatest construction project of the 20th Century. And yet it is unknown in the West. I decided to go and ride this unknown journey across northern Siberia and speak to the people who came to build it. Join me as we ride 'The Bam'!

Since Lithuania gained it's independence in 1991 it has removed as much of its Soviet past as it possibly could unlike in other post-Soviet republics where there are constant reminders of the USSR around every corner. However in the north of the country lies the town of Visaginas where I was told I could find the last remaining Soviet mosaic ( kind of ). Join me as I head north to see how life is in Visaginas which was built to house the workers from the nearby atomic power station and maybe meet some babushkas on the way.

As the USSR entered its final stages, law and order began to break down and there began a period which has since been called the period of 'Bandit Capitalism'. This was a period when gangs protected by tough sambo fighters and boxers from the different republics began to form and to exploit the new riches that were to be found in the burgeoning capitalist era. One of those gangs was known as the Vilnius Gang which had a fierce reputation in Lithuania and further afield.