Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Trans-Siberian Railway PBS Documentary (1996)

I stumbled upon this 2 hour documentary on youtube. It is divided into a dozen 10 minute segments. It's a little dated but is very informative. The film starts in Moscow and crosses into China via Zaudinsky. The Trans-Manchurian branch then ends in Beijing. The journey continues to Datong and ends in Ulan Baatar via the Trans-Mongolian. The only shortcoming is that it does not cover the Russian Far East portion to Vladivostok. Nevertheless, I highly recommend watching it.

CKY

4 comments:

Edvin said...

That looks fascinating.

I'd like to recommend the series "The Silk Road", if you're not familiar with it. It's a very interesting Japanese travel/history documentary from the early 80's, with great music by Kitaro. Here's a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30_kqCOZXSI
http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Silk_Road_(NHK)

I really recommend it, if you can find it somewhere. Pretty expensive at Amazon.

Edvin said...

Just another interesting site about The Silk Road: http://www.nhk.or.jp/digitalmuseum/nhk50years_en/history/p20/index.html

Maxichamp said...

Hi Edvin, I hope you are doing well.

If you have the time, I highly recommend watching the Trans-Siberian documentary on youtube. It's divided into 10 minute segments so it's easier to watch. It took me two days to watch it, when I had time.

I totally forgot about The Silk Road series. I rented it and watched it many years ago (I think it's 600 minutes!). I'm going to rent it and watch it again.

Cheers!

Edvin said...

Hi, thanks and same to you as well.

I've watched four parts now and it's very interesting, although I think it'd be quite different in today's world. Certainly very different from Theroux's Great railway bazaar.

I really should ride the train some day, since I can just hop on it in my home city and ride all the way to Vladivostok. Or maybe drive/ride like McGregor.