Night Train to Kaliningrad — Night Flight to Vladivostok: A Journal of Travel and Recovery

This book is the memoir of an inner and outer journey across the Eurasian landmass from Vienna to Vladivostok, undertaken in order to regain confidence in my mental and physical powers after a harsh cancer treatment. The first third of the book consists of reflections and memories prior to departure, while the latter two thirds recount my experiences, encounters, and observations in route through the cities of Austria, the Baltic states, Russia, and Siberia. The memoir incorporates reflections on German mysticism, Russian and German literature and philosophy, as well as observations of people and places. Cities visited include Salzburg, Vienna, Gdansk, Kaliningrad, Svetlogorsk, Vilnius, Riga, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski. Authors reflected upon include Boehme, Goethe, Kant, Herder, Schopenhauer, Thomas Mann, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Leskov, Dostoyevsky, Berdyayev, Tolstaya, Alexievich, Lomasko, Petrushevskaya, and Ulitskaya. Travel across Russia became the occasion for reflecting on life, death, the threatened culture of reading, literature, and the comparative study of national character.