Moscow-Istanbul: a jump to new life

Every girl dreams about a perfect wedding. But not me. I never wanted to get married and my friends can proove that I was against any weddings in my life. But I just met a right person, who changed my mind. And without any special preparation or efforts we got a perfect red-letter day on 14th of September. We choose a restaurant quite fast, we picked our rings and honeymoon destination without thinking. But the only one I wanted the most, apart from my husband, was a car. Once I saw it in one Moscow’s street I desired it for our important event. It was an old (designed in 1988) Russian mini-car called Oka. Yes, the one with only 2 doors. But that one was covered with colorful knitted blanket, that reminded me some kind of fairy tale. And I wanted to have it in our own story.

Traveline: behind the scenes

Long years of travel, diffucult shots, inetresting interviews, friendly people and happy moments resulted in our travel documentaries ‘Traveline’ and ’24 Hours‘. After I found our series on 2 Russian channels (Телепутешествия and Телепутешествия HD) I decided that this is time to reveal some secrets of our work. Our program “24 Hours” (episodes: Copenhagen, Bergen, Tallinn, Porto, Valencia, Valletta) as of today is being broadcast in Russia, at 4 PM and 4 AM you can watch them on mentioned channels. We are happy to share our small victory and huge happiness with you! Here are our 3 years of filming, which already became a history.

The New York Times.

I thought it is impossible to win the contest by The New York Times. But today it was clear that I was mistaken. More than a month ago they announced a contest “A World at 7 Billion” dedicated to the 31.10.11 – a date when the 7th billion person was born. The aim of the competition was to gather the best photographs from all over the world for displaying to that lucky kid and all the population how our world looked like that days.

I heard about this contest due to Maxim (my boyfriend). He also was the one who checked the web-page today and informed me about the final results. The New York Times published my photo!

But before we were viewing every picture (about 390) and didn’t see the one I made. Normally I am quite skeptical about any victory in such a scale contest. Especially when millions of people are participating. I lost any hopes after second (and the last) page of the photos-winners. But suddenly I saw it!!! After the first wave of happiness I saw it even in the main cover of the news – it was my photo (in the middle) with other 19th pics they choose as a face of the event. In the end I was totally surprised: I wanted to share it in the facebook and the pic was in the thumbnail of the link of The New York Times. Thank you for this!!!

And here is the picture. I made it in Istanbul – a really unique town, inside Hagia Sophia. Being inside you can feel the power of religion and history together. It was build in ancient Constantinople 15 centuries ago. I would say it was a temple for Christianity, also the mosque later. But its just incredible how many people from different centuries and religions stepped inside the building! I think that Sophia will still remain at 7th, 8th or 20th billion. But still it will keep steps of civilizations. And you can leave your step there too. I made my together with Maxim, so this is our personal victory!

Hello world, I’m your word.

      It’s [00:38], 10th of September 2011…

…A date when I start my blog. My passion of traveling turned into my work and a way of life. Just a year ago (10.09.10) I quited hospitality industry in Kiev and went to Venice Film Festival the next day. Than I traveled for 1,5 months, moved to Saint-Petersburg and became Independent Journalist. This year resulted in 7 travel documentaries, 17 visited countries, 33 published articles and 36 flights. And now, time for this blog to come to life –  sharing my travel tips with public. It’s my words about our World. You are Welcome! 🙂