On the edge of Abkhazia, a resort built to dazzle has become a ghost town. Futuristic ruins, three thousand years of history, and the idea of a port that, perhaps, is finally about to become real.

Somewhere past the last roundabout in Zugdidi, the road stops being what I would normally call a road. The asphalt frays into patches and potholes before giving way to stretches of packed earth. As I drove, I gripped the wheel a little tighter every time the car dropped into an unexpected dip. Soon, I find myself enjoying this process and becoming more and more skilled at it. This is how you enter Mingrelia: slowly negotiating the ground itself, rather than passing through a

A Georgian proverb says, 'A guest is a gift from God.' I had already experienced its truth before this visit — two autumns ago in Tbilisi, when visiting Georgii's cousin and his family, and a few years earlier, during my first visit to Georgia with my family. But Easter week in Zugdidi took that truth to its fullest expression: a house was always open, a table that was always full, and a family who treated me less like a visitor and more like a family member. What follows is

Saint Petersburg, January 2026 — a cinema with no Hollywood The cold in Saint Petersburg in winter is total. It settles into the streets, into the light, into the pace of people walking. The Neva is frozen, the palaces glow amber. And on one of the first evenings of January, looking for somewhere warm, we ended up in a cinema. The listings gave me nothing I recognised. Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, all major Hollywood studios pulled out of Russia. What remai

Before leaving for Saint Petersburg, the hometown of my boyfriend Georgii, I had created a long Google Maps list of places I wanted to visit. Far more than I would realistically have time for in one week. Among them, on Georgii’s recommendation, was the Fabergé Museum. I expected to admire the famous jewelled eggs. What I did not expect was how much the museum would reveal about Imperial Russia, about ritual and domesticity, and about the objects people preserve through time.

This past winter, my family gathered in Chamonix for a week of ski touring and a couple of days on the slopes. it was a return, the last time we had all been here together was around 2010, over Easter. I remember the huge amount of snow, the heaviest snowfalls I had ever experienced at the time and probably still among the most impressive today. We were not quite as lucky with the conditions this year, but that uncertainty has become part of our annual Christmas ski touring w

I had been wanting to make this journey for a long time. This past New Year’s Eve finally gave me the occasion: visiting my boyfriend’s hometown, Saint Petersburg. Winter 2025. Visa arranged in less than a week, flights booked from Munich via Istanbul, one of the few viable routes. A slightly complicated journey, but perhaps fitting for a destination that had, for a long time, felt just out of reach. 29 December 2025 I land late at night at Pulkovo Airport (Пулково). In my ba