More than a Mir castle

That was Mary's, in case you're wondering. She's been taking some pretty long punts recently. We continued Mary's magical mystery fairy-tale tour by visiting two castles today - Mir and Nyasvizh.

A fortnight-long logistical headache solved itself when we approached the taxi rank outside the hotel. Mir and Nyasvizh are both about 90 kilometres west of Minsk, and only about 27 kilometres from each other. Here's the fix: there isn't public transport between the two. Two weeks ago I started looking for tour agencies offering private excursions covering both castles. Some didn't reply, others offered prices which were too expensive for us (at least US$200). Mary agreed it was too much to pay, so we settled on visiting only one castle by public transport (Mir). Even then, the most convenient way to the bus station was by taxi. The driver we approached offered the exact arrangement I was searching for, at US$150. My limited bargaining skills (here Mary's prowess was shackled by her inability to speak even one word of Russian) brought it down to US$140. Still expensive I reckon, but a significant discount from what was previously on offer, and at a stroke solving our transport conundrum.

The two castles were once owned by the Radziwills, a once-powerful noble family in these parts. Mir looks more like your archetypal castle, built in the imposing Gothic style and cornered with four stout turrets. It currently houses a hotel, into which we were led by our (eventually thwarted) stomachs. Our nobler inclinations led us behind the castle into a red-brick church, to which crypt its attendant led us to. It contained the sarcophagi of some members of the Sviatopolk-Mirski family, who bought over the castle in 1895 only because of its nominal connection to the family name.

Nyasvizh, although it is ringed by both a fortified wall and moat, has been moulded by its baroque adornments to resemble a palace more. This we entered, lapping up the sumptuous interior under the intense scrutiny of a dedicated corp of stewards who seem to outnumber visitors. To be fair I only counted about six other visitors in our time there, compared to the on average two stewards per twelve or more rooms in the palace. The interior showed the usual trappings of aristocratic life - balls and hunts, mostly - with the trophy room containing a collection extensive enough to drive a WWF activist to arms.

The castles might be an aristocratic aberration in a state that is arguably still in a intimate embrace with its Soviet past. But they showed who were the kind of people in control before the seven-decade-long socialist interlude. History, ably demonstrated by Timothy Snyder, reveals that identity in these parts is incredibly fluid, a far cry from the Soviet emphasis on nationality when it came to organizing their diverse population. Belarus, like Latvia, is a pretty modern concept. In the past thousand years it was variously a part of Kievan Rus, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian empire and interwar Poland.

Take the Radziwill and Sviatopolk-Mirski families for instance. Radziwill is the Polonized name of a family that is Lithuanian in origins. The years have witnessed the splitting of the family into three different branches, with power bases in different parts of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They have also adhered to different persuasions within Christianity, with both Catholics and Calvinists amongst their ranks. The Sviatopolk-Mirski's are another case in point. They claim Ukrainian descent, but are recognized to be Polish by their historical association with Poland. Some members of the family converted to Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, thus inaugurating a Russian branch of the family. Today their erstwhile palaces are in Belarus.

Nationality exists today by dint of how states are organized in the present world. But we shouldn't also let a focus on nationality and national history blind us to the richer, more diverse components of our past. Heritage shared doesn't diminish its value.

Riga Rigours

 The last time I was in Riga, I was on transit to London from Tbilisi, the day before I was due to meet Mary and Huiyun. Three odd hours was just enough for a quick sniff around the Old Town. This time we happen to be on transit again, to Minsk, with the day between flights more than enough for a saunter.

We arrived quite unprepared to a bracing -4 degrees Celsius. The biting cold drew out a few gems from Mary. The most memorable came after she admitted that, although wrapped snugly in a woolen blanket she might have looked more like a burrito, she was a teddy bear. It is so cold today, she chirped, I'm going to hibernate today. And thus dawn broke.

We didn't see the sun all day, but that only added weight to the late autumnal gloom that hung heavily from the bare branches lining the cobbled paths. A very gentle drizzle fell, which did little to hinder a very enjoyable ramble. Mary liked the Old Town a lot - the cobblestone roads, spires at every turn, shops selling all sorts of knick-knacks. She felt, in her own words, like she was in a fairy tale.

Romanticizing aside, Riga really is a neat little slice of Europe. A little history is in line here. Riga has always subsisted on trade, perched as it is on the eastern edge of the trade-route-riven Baltic Sea. The settlement began to grow during the Middle Ages, being on one of the strategic riverine trading routes which the Vikings plied between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Later, Teutonic crusaders established an outpost and eventually a bishopric here in the 1200s. Trade continued to fatten Riga, with the city joining the Hanseatic League and being drawn into the wider web of northern European history. The Teutonic domination also began a seven-century period in much of which Riga fell under foreign sway - Germanic, Polish-Lithuanian, Swedish, and finally Russian with two brief twentieth-century German interludes - and which ended only definitively in 1991.

All this was visible as we walked around town. The proliferation of churches and burgher houses attested to the growth of both ecclesiastical and mercantile influence, while Teutonic gables and Russian signs are holdovers of past Germanic and Russian influences.

Here is a worthy tale. This is the Cat House, erected at the dawn of the twentieth century. So the building was commissioned by a local merchant who was also hoping to gain entry into the Great Guild located right across the street. He was denied membership, whereupon he decided to drop two statues of angry black cats, formidable omens, on the roof of his building, with their rear ends facing the Guild. A lengthy court battle ensued in which the disenchanted merchant was eventually admitted into the Guild, in return for turning the felines away. The animals have since been adopted as a beloved municipal icon adorning a host of souvenirs from fridge magnets to bottle openers.

We enjoyed the food in Riga too, thanks to the lovely recommendations from Margharita at the Naughty Squirrel. Vilhelm's Pancakes and Delisnacks were both delectable. We liked the burrito and the Danish-style fries (basically, served with brown sauce and roasted onions) we had at the latter joint.

Seems like burritos are the new kebabs.

And on to Minsk!

Ye Olde Stomping Grounds

''Back when I was a student in the UK, in the not too distant past, the quintessential British experience for me was chomping into cod and chips while being entertained, the occasional pint in hand, by football on Sky Sports (and sometimes, simultaneously, Mick Hucknall et al on the radio). We already knew beforehand that English food isn't exactly very imaginative, but I really do miss my bangers and mash.

And Sunday brunch (so-called because earlier I made a point to have this every Sunday) - a lifetime's worth of sin, manifest in baked beans, sautéed mushrooms, sausages, bacon, eggs and hashbrowns. With a generous dash of pepper to spice things up. Godsent on an early Sunday morning before the tills opened, as we wandered about town looking to fill our stomachs. Salvation we found, or starvation we averted, at The Nag's Head in Covent Garden.

After that we rambled down memory lane - Stanfords, 'the world's largest map and travel shop', Waterstone's and then Tesco's.

There is no greater thrill than stepping into Stanfords, where bookshops are concerned. The store has been at its present premises since 1873, when it started out as its printing room. There my twin passions of History and Travel were successfully married. Yet travel in the days of empire was not without its own political agenda. Indeed, Edward Stanfords started his maps business in 1853 with an eye firmly on supporting the expansion of the British Empire. For figures like Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton who we revere today for their unwavering stoicism in the face of adversity and for whom Stanfords offered the same succour as it did for me, travel was a measure of national and imperial virility.

Today it remains, for me at least, a nerve centre of travel, a trove of valuable information and a source of inspiration - be it from the pages of a Lonely Planet guidebook, a National Geographic collection of photographs or any tomes of Colin Thurbon, Robert Byron or Ranulph Fiennes. I think travel today has happily moved on from the heady days of possessive imperialism. However, a lot of ink will still be spilled on whether such attitudes invariably remain, as cultures from both First World and Third continue to meet and come to terms with each other.

Waterstone's we visited for old time's sake, Tesco's for more than purely nostalgia.

The last time I went about London with a camera ready at hand was my very first visit - October 2006. Doing so again seven years later provided many fresh perspectives, which I never quite bothered with on hurried steps between home and school.

There were shops I passed a hundred times without ever stepping in until today, Twinings being of them.

Twinings and the founding of modern Singapore

Tea, so inextricably tied up with Englishness, yet there isn't anything English about Oolong or Lapsang Souchong, which Twinings markets successfully today. The Strand store which we stepped inside was acquired in 1717 by the founder of the company, and has been in use since then. His grandson played an instrumental role in persuade Pitt the Elder to enact the Commutation Act, which reduced the tax on tea from 119% to 12.5%. Consequently, demand for tea soared, and British merchants duly flocked to China to satiate these demands and line their pockets. Only their pockets weren't lined, as the Chinese wanted only bullion in exchange for their tea leaves. The subsequent British attempt to circumvent this drain of bullion by looking for alternative products to trade for tea eventually led Raffles to Singapore.

Of course, none of this was apparent to us when we walked into the store. There we took advantage of dozens of tea leaf samples to reinvigorate ourselves as both the day and our energy levels waned.

Our last stop was Ye Olde Cock House, which might have been what kopitiam would pass for in Middle English, which brings us back to the start of this post. I eschewed the bangers, after one too many in the morning, and the ale provided good cheer after Cardiff City's last-gasp equalizer against Manchester United. It was a bracing walk past the Maugham Library and Chancery Lane to Holborn Station, before we flopped ourselves on the bed and into a half-day's slumber.

Start of a long journey

1630, Singapore
So here we are waiting at Changi T3 to board the plane, and looking ahead not only to London, Riga, Belarus and Ukraine, but also to the miles and the years we have before us. This of course is our first trip as a married couple, and this provides the perfect platform to do something we haven't previously accomplished - start AND maintain a travel blog.

If you know us well, you'd expect that blogging on the go is revolutionary for us. It explains my chief motivation to purchase an iPad. Yes we know there are more sophisticated uses for a tablet but this constitutes a couple of Great Leaps Forward for us and we are eagerly embracing this digital future (albeit we pray it doesn't lead down the same disastrous road as its historical Chinese namesake).

2130, Riyadh

Nine hours later, and we've safely landed in King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) in Riyadh via Saudi Airlines (they've abbreviated it to the more phonetically pleasing 'Saudia'). We got the Singapore-London, transiting in Saudi Arabia both ways, return ticket at what we thought was a good bargain - just a little over a thousand bucks - but we didn't know what to expect. Any doubt we had has been momentarily dispelled by this first flight, although praise should wait to be confirmed by the subsequent connecting flight.

The ride was smooth, save a bumpy stretch when we were approaching to Sri Lanka. In-flight entertainment was adequate, although Mary's audio didn't work and we shared a single one throughout. The food was not bad - I particularly liked the Asiatic Indian Vegetarian Meal (anachronistic culinary nomenclature notwithstanding) I pre-ordered.

The flight wasn't full, so there was a lot of space, which was actually arranged very interestingly. There was a nice little space towards the back of the plane - for prayer. The last four or five central rows of seats were marked off, to minimize cleaning up afterwards I thought, thought it turned out they were reserved as makeshift beds for members of the cabin crew.

Service was friendly, perhaps because the crew had ample rest. On my way to the toilet a quick scan of the in-flight entertainment screens ahead of me revealed I wasn't the only one watching Iron Man III. A quick scan of the faces on my way back revealed passengers were not the only ones entertaining themselves.

KKIA has a modest departure area, which we fully explored in all of ten minutes. So here's hoping the above will keep us occupied for the next three odd hours. To London!