Introduction - Why Russia?



Mass grave marker in Piskaryovske Cemetery - Leningrad, Russia, USSR

Also, I was a history geek for sure, and I was fascinated by the history of World War II. My father and uncles had served in that war, as did the fathers and uncles (and some of the mothers and aunts) of many of my friends. The brutal, life and death struggle between the Soviet Union and Germany in World War II was a horrifying but compelling story, to my mind.

So, for a lot of reasons, traveling to the Soviet Union appealed to me.