Chapter 1 Background and Preparation. September 2019.
In August 2018, my wife Monique discovered an amazing Russian baritone singer called Dmitri Hvorostovsky. You can see more on Dimitry at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Hvorostovsky You can listen to some of his songs at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1kzblUElY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SwumVFUMBg She was fascinated by his singing and downloaded all his songs to her tablet. Daily she would listen to his powerful voice singing opera and Russian traditional songs. This fascination led me to suggest that we visit Russia by taking the Transiberian train. Monique's only condition was that we should visit the gravesites of Dimitri in Moscow and Krasnoyarsk. Dimitri died in 2017 at the age of 54 of brain cancer. His legacy lives on and his singing is still very moving. We decided that we would make the trip one year from then, which meant September 2019. This meant that I had 1 year to organize the trip and one year to learn enough Russian to converse with