A 1-stop Siberian Subway

I wrote this in 2020, but just found it in my drafts. I think it is still interesting!

From 2019: A Russian transit app made a satirical update by adding a map of Omsk, a Siberian city around 1,400 miles from Moscow. The map showed an icon for the local airport, along with a train station on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Interestingly, it also showed a single red dot to mark a local Metro stop. There were no lines connecting it to nearby stations, and information about buying a ticket was nowhere to be found..." [continue reading on Atlas Obscura (from December 18, 2019 post)]. 

So, what's the story? (and there are updates!)

Omsk Metro (Russian: О́мский метрополите́н, Omskiy metropoliten) is a cancelled rapid transit line that underwent various phases of construction from 1992 to 2018 in Omsk, Russia. It was to become Siberia's second metropolitan underground railway system after the Novosibirsk Metro which opened in the mid 1980s. The opening date for the first line was pushed back four times, from 2008 to 2010, then 2015, then 2016. There have been recent announcements in 2022 as well.

• 1960's: Central planners in Moscow first identified Omsk as a metro-eligible city during the 1960s, due to its length along the Irtysh River and its relatively narrow streets. But after the plan was approved and financed, the planners decided to build an express tram instead, and the money allocated to Omsk was given to Chelyabinsk.
• 1979: In 1979, a Gosplan commission rejected a plan to build an express tram system since it was predicted to be unable to handle projected passenger flows without severely discomforting riders.
• 1986: In 1986, metro plans were revisited and financing began, along with the demolition of residential buildings to make way for tracks and a yard.
• 1992: Construction began in 1992 between the stations Tupolevskaya (Russian: Туполевская) and Rabochaya (Russian: Рабочая ~ Workers' Station). The initial plans involved opening the section between the stations Marshala Zhukova and Rabochaya on the right bank of the Irtysh River to connect downtown to the manufacturing district, and then later to connect the line to the opposite bank of the Irtysh.
• 2003: Due to poor financial circumstances, by 2003 just the section between Tupolevskaya and Rabochaya was completed (with no intermediate stations). At that time the plans changed and the authorities decided to connect the two banks of the Irtsh with a metro bridge, going between one station on the right bank and three on the left bank.
• 2005: The combined metro (lower level) and motor-vehicle (upper level) bridge was built and opened to vehicular traffic in 2005. The current phase of construction involves four stations: Biblioteka Imeni Pushkina (Библиотека имени Пушкина – Pushkin Library) Zarechnaya (Заречная – Over the River) Kristall (Кристалл) Sobornaya (Соборная – Cathedral Station) This section is 6.1 kilometers (3.8 mi) in length. The average speed is expected to be 36 km/h and travel time along the entire route is expected to be 10 minutes 12 seconds. Daily ridership is projected at 190,000 passengers and yearly ridership at 69 million.
• 2014: Since 2014, construction on the system had stalled, but an 84.6 million Ruble contract was awarded to the Russian firm Sibmost to carry out detailed design studies on completing the 7.5-kilometer (4.7 mi) light metro line, from Biblioteka Pushkina to Prospekt Rokossovskogo, with five stations.
• 2015: On September 9, 2015, it was announced that the construction will continue, in view of the high cost of preserving and maintaining the core structural features of the metro.
• Construction was suspended by the government of the Omsk Oblast in May 2018.
• May 2022: the governor of the Omsk region announced: construction works that will enable the use of unfinished objects of the Omsk metro and include them in the tram network of the city may begin in 2024
• October 2022: the regional government announced that they would try to integrate the unfinished system into the city's tram network
• Today: only one station is open and serves as a pedestrian subway

This Siberian Subway System Has Just One, Non-Functional Station - Atlas Obscura

The world’s shortest metro line is in Russia: it has just one station - Russia Beyond

In Omsk, Construction Of The Metro May Resume In 2024 - Big Asia Russia
Omsk Metro - official website

What's in a name?

Ceci n’est pas une rue.
Brussels honours artist René Magritte with a new street name.

Interesting stuff, from 2018...

"If you could name a street in your hometown, what would you choose? Belgian citizens had the opportunity to mull just that question as part of an initiative to name 28 streets, squares, and walkways in the Belgian capital’s Tour & Taxis district*. The city crowdsourced the names as part of an ongoing regeneration project in the Tour & Taxis district—a formerly industrial area now set to become one of the city’s cultural and residential meccas. After receiving nearly 1,400 suggestions from the public, the final list was chosen by a jury of city officials, historians, and the site’s property developer, Extena...""[read more on Quartz]. 

*The district is named after the famous Thurn and Taxis, a German noble family that was a key player in European postal services until the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.

Street name signs in Brussels are in Flemish and French.
There have been more going up lately.

"Once a railway station and inland port, the district was a maze of warehouses, customs buildings and post and telegraph offices. By the early 1990s the area had fallen on hard times: lorry transport had rendered rail freight lines obsolete, while the introduction of a European customs union and harmonisation of standards drastically reduced incoming goods..." [read more on The Guardian].

"Did you know that the site once served as the largest freight station of Europe? The historic buildings were years ahead of the rest of Europe. The architects and engineers combined beautiful Belgian architecture with the most innovative technologies of the time. The result? Buildings that still have all modern facilities with an attractive, historic flavour..."read more on the official website].

"The eclectic mix of new names chosen by Brussels residents range from Passage de la Kriek, named after a famous Belgian cherry beer, to Ceci n’est pas une rue (This is not a street), inspired by the art of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte. “To give a street a name, it gives it a certain identity,” Kris Verhellen, CEO of the Extensa development group which owns the former transport hub in the north of the city..." [read more on Reuters].

The new Brussels street names - and what they mean

• Allée des Douanes: Customs Alley
• Ceci n’est pas une rue: This is not a street (honouring Belgian artist René Magritte)
• Chemin du Bonheur: Path to Happiness
• Chemin d’Un Monde Meilleur: Path to a Better World
• Drève des Rêves: Drive of Dreams
• Drève du Parc: Park Drive
• Drève Maritime: Maritime Drive
• Drève von Thurn und Tassis: Tour and Taxis Drive
• Mer des Pavés: Sea of Cobblestones
• Passage de la Caricole: Passage of the Caricole
• Passage de la Frite: Passage of the fries
• Passage de la Praline: Passage of the Praline
• Passage de la Kriek: Passage of the Kriek (Belgian beer)
• Passage du Chicon: Passage of Chicon (a Belgian cheese and endive dish)
• Passage du Cuberdon: Passage of Cuberdon (a Belgian candy)
• Passage du Speculoos: Passage of the Speculoos (a Belgian spiced cookie)
• Passage du Stoemp: Passage of the Stoemp (a Belgian vegetable dish)
• Place de la Musique: Place of Music
• Place des Choukes: Place of Choukes (a Belgian term of endearment)
• Place des Grands Hommes Place of Great People
• Quai des Brumes: Quay of the Mists
• Rue Chantal Akerman: Chantal Akerman Street (a famous Belgian feminist and avant-garde filmmaker)
• Rue des Entrepôts: Warehouse Street
• Rue du Méandre: Meander Street
• Rue Isala Van Diest: Isala Van Diest Street (Belguim's first female medical doctor)
• Voie 1: Way 1
• Voie 2: Way 2

The Brussels city flag

To learn more
Tour & Taxis District - official website
Belgians chose “This is not a street” as one of 28 new Brussels street names - Quartz
Beer, chips and historic women inspire new Brussels street names
New names of the Tour & Taxis streets - Brussels city website
Ceci n’est pas une rue: Brussels to adopt whimsical new street names - The Guardian
Brussels Honors René Magritte & Other Painters With Bizarre Street Names - The Travel

This post was published previously on my citytravelbug blog

Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City

Interesting stuff from my reading of Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City, by Edmund Richardson, and a discussion with one of my book groups. My big ah ha: Alexander established many cities named Alexandria!

Charles Masson (1800–1853) was the pseudonym of James Lewis, a British East India Company soldier and reporter, independent explorer and pioneering archaeologist and numismatist. He was the first European to discover the ruins of Harappa near Sahiwal in Punjab, now in Pakistan. He found the ancient city of Alexandria in the Caucasus (modern Begram) dating to Alexander the Great. He unlocked the now-extinct language known as Kharoshthi.

The first book-length biography was published in 2021, Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City, by Edmund Richardson.

Through his wide-ranging travels, Masson built up an extraordinary collection of artefacts largely (although not exclusively) from the modern states of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Numbering about 9,000 objects, they are now held by the British Museum. 

The Fugitive Who Conned His Way Into The Footsteps OfAlexander The Great – And The Quest For His Lost Cities - article about the book

List of cities founded by Alexander the Great

Chronology of the expedition of Alexander the Great into Asia

Great image below - click to enlarge it!

A Moveable Feast

I've been reading a lot of Hemingway lately, as well as biographies about him, so I really enjoyed reading A Moveable Feast for a book club.

A Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir belles-lettres by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. 

In November 1956, Hemingway recovered two small steamer trunks that he had stored in March 1928 in the basement of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. The trunks contained notebooks he had filled during the 1920s. Having recovered his trunks, Hemingway had the notebooks transcribed, and then began working them up into the memoir that would eventually become A Moveable Feast.

The memoir was published posthumously in 1964, three years after Hemingway's death, by his fourth wife and widow, Mary Hemingway, based upon his original manuscripts and notes. An edition altered and revised by his grandson, Seán Hemingway, was published in 2009.

The book details Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and his associations with other cultural figures of the Lost Generation in Interwar France.

The memoir consists of various personal accounts by Hemingway and involves many notable figures of the time, such as Sylvia Beach, Hilaire Belloc, Bror von Blixen-Finecke, Aleister Crowley, John Dos Passos, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Pascin, Ezra Pound, Evan Shipman, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Hermann von Wedderkop. The work also references the addresses of specific locations such as bars, cafes, and hotels, many of which can still be found in Paris today.

The title of A Moveable Feast (a play on words for the term used for a holy day for which the date is not fixed) was suggested by Hemingway's friend and biographer A. E. Hotchner, who remembered Hemingway using the term in 1950.

A Moveable Feast is a play on words for the term used for a holy day for which the date is not fixed.

I have always been curious about the phrase A Moveable Feast... and had long discussions about the origins of this term with a friend, so I was glad to find this last tidbit!