January 28, 2016

Best Destinations of 2015


Best Destinations of 2015
Lake Bled, Slovenia taken by Jillian Schneeman

MIR Corporation – the name means "peace" and "world" in Russian – is an award-winning tour company that has been specializing in creative, culturally immersive small group, custom and private journeys along the Silk Route, the Trans-Siberian Railway, to Russia and beyond, since 1986. This article originally appeared on their blog

Mir shared their nine best Instagram photos from their fascinating destinations. We wanted to share them with you.

The “2015bestnine” includes these photos taken in Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, LatviaChina, Kyrgyzstan and Russia:

  1. Krka waterfalls in Croatia
  2. Dubrovnik rooftops in Croatia 
  3. Lake Bled in Slovenia
  4. A cloudy day in Istanbul, Turkey 
  5. Lake Bled in Slovenia (another view)
  6. Sunrise in Riga, Latvia
  7. The Forbidden City in Beijing, China
  8. Yurt builder in Kyrgyzstan
  9. Winter wonderland in Suzdal, Russia

For a daily dose of more photos, follow Mir at mir_corporation. Be sure to like and share their photos via your smartphone, and also like Mir on Facebook, to check out what’s new and noteworthy in their fantastic destinations.

The cream of the Instagram crop.<br> Photographers Top Row: Martin Klimenta, Peter Guttman<br> Second Row: Jered Gorman, Jillian Schneeman, Peter Guttman<br> Third Row: Jake Smith, Vlad Ushakov, Jonathan Irish The cream of the Instagram crop.
Photographers – First Row: Martin Klimenta, Peter Guttman
Second Row: Jered Gorman, Jillian Schneeman, Peter Guttman
Third Row: Jake Smith, Vlad Ushakov, Jonathan Irish

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Some of Our Books

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.

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