One of my favorite things about living in/traveling to other countries is getting to know the national cuisine. Irkutsk is located right next to the (Russian) Republic of Buryatia, and as such has a large population of ethnic Buryats (they’re closely related to Mongolians). I also love cooking, though with a minimum of skill, so […]

One of my Russian friends asked me a few weeks ago what I miss about America. As I thought about it, there were the evident reasons of family and friends, but two particular foods sprang to mind as well. Peanut butter and turkey. Although the former will have to wait until my return home, I […]

There are actually a number of Jewish cemeteries in Warsaw, but the one at Okopowa street is by far the largest. At 83 acres or the size of about 63 football fields, it is also one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe and one of the few remaining Jewish cemeteries in Poland still in […]

Today there are approximately 500,000 people that identify with the largest indigenous group living in Siberia, the Buryats.  The Buryats are a group of people descendent of various Siberian and Mongolian people that inhabited the Lake Baikal area, where most of the ethnic group is still concentrated, with many continuing to engage in traditional ways […]

Dear reader, By merit of reading this piece, I assume that you have some interest in Jewish life in Moscow. I came to Moscow June 2012 to study with SRAS’s Russian as a Second Language Program at Moscow State (MGU) without any knowledge of the local community. This list represents the culmination of my observations […]

It is well known that there is a significant Korean population in Kyrgyzstan today because Stalin deported Koreans living in the Russian Far East during World War II to prevent them from cohorting with the Japanese. These post-Soviet ethnic Koreans call themselves the Koryo saram. Koryo refers to Korea from the years 918 AD to […]

Shamanism is the common name for the traditional religions of a number of native Siberian peoples; the word describes a system of beliefs in which a large number of spirits, gods, and ancestors affect daily life on earth and can be called upon and influence by specially gifted individuals called shamans. While groups such as […]