Emma Fick

An illustrated travelogue that brilliantly captures artist and illustrator's Emma Fick's epic train journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway--from Beijing through Mongolia to Moscow--including more than 200 watercolor illustrations and handwritten text that includes cultural and historical information as well as invaluable travel tips. In May 2015, on a trip through the Baltics and Scandinavia, artist and illustrator Emma Fick and her boyfriend (now husband) Helvio discovered a worn copy of the Trans-Siberian Handbook at a secondhand shop in Helsinki. Many travelers from around the globe had used the guide to journey on the longest train ride in the world. Emma and Helvio took their find as a sign to embark on their own adventure on the legendary railway that has captured the imaginations and curiosities of many travelers and explorers since its construction a century ago. A year and a half later, with Trans-Siberian Handbook in hand, they boarded the train in Beijing. Their odyssey was just beginning. Border Crossings is the chronicle of their unforgettable 26-day, 8-city journey across Asia to Moscow. Emma offers a concise history of the railway and in vivid, visual language, takes you across a vast landscape of rural villages and bustling urban centers, through open food markets brimming with delicacies and a snowy mountain wilderness dotted with clusters of gers--nomadic homes. Emma's detailed observations and lush descriptions, accompanied by detailed colorful illustrations, bring this remarkable journey of discovery and adventure--the landscapes, food, people and cultures--to life. Experience drinking salty milk tea, eating shoe sole cake (fried cakes shaped like shoe soles piled high and topped with milk curds and hard candies), and riding camels in Mongolia. In Russia, wander through a snow-draped countryside filled with stands of birch trees, explore the wonders of freshwater Lake Baikal--the source of omul, a ubiquitous and beloved fish delicacy--go ice fishing, and take a self-guided tour of Moscow. With its hand-drawn maps, its wealth of illustrations of every aspect of the experience--from sleeping quarters on a train to the highlights of a monastery or the details of a memorable meal, Border Crossings is an invitation to experience new destinations and cultures first-hand--to travel the Trans-Siberian Railway as never before, whether you're a nomad looking for a new vacation destination, an armchair traveler, or just culturally curious.

A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway

Border Crossings

An illustrated travelogue that brilliantly captures artist and illustrator Emma Fick’s epic train journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway—from Beijing through Mongolia to Moscow—including more than 200 watercolor illustrations and handwritten text that includes cultural and historical information as well as invaluable travel tips. In May 2015, on a trip through the Baltics and Scandinavia, artist and illustrator Emma Fick and her boyfriend (now husband) Helvio discovered a worn copy of the Trans-Siberian Handbook at a secondhand shop in Helsinki. Many travelers from around the globe had used the guide to journey on the longest train ride in the world. Emma and Helvio took their find as a sign to embark on their own adventure on the legendary railway that has captured the imaginations and curiosities of many travelers and explorers since its construction a century ago. A year and a half later, with Trans-Siberian Handbook in hand, they boarded the train in Beijing. Their odyssey was just beginning. Border Crossings is the chronicle of their unforgettable 26-day, 8-city journey across Asia to Moscow. Emma offers a concise history of the railway and in vivid, visual language, takes you across a vast landscape of rural villages and bustling urban centers, through open food markets brimming with delicacies and a snowy mountain wilderness dotted with clusters of gers—nomadic homes. Emma’s detailed observations and lush descriptions, accompanied by detailed colorful illustrations, bring this remarkable journey of discovery and adventure—the landscapes, food, people and cultures—to life. Experience drinking salty milk tea, eating shoe sole cake (fried cakes shaped like shoe soles piled high and topped with milk curds and hard candies), and riding camels in Mongolia. In Russia, wander through a snow-draped countryside filled with stands of birch trees, explore the wonders of freshwater Lake Baikal—the source of omul, a ubiquitous and beloved fish delicacy—go ice fishing, and take a self-guided tour of Moscow. With its hand-drawn maps, its wealth of illustrations of every aspect of the experience—from sleeping quarters on a train to the highlights of a monastery or the details of a memorable meal, Border Crossings is an invitation to experience new destinations and cultures first-hand—to travel the Trans-Siberian Railway as never before, whether you’re a nomad looking for a new vacation destination, an armchair traveler, or just culturally curious.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Snippets are fragments of things. They are people observed, foods consumed, ornaments spotted: a man on a streetcar, crawfish shells on the sidewalk, an ornate cornstalk-shaped fence. I believe that to immerse oneself in a place means to try and hold all its elements, past and present, grandiose and mundane, in a single plane of vision. This is, of course, impossible. The result is fragments, vignettes. In Jackson Square, for example: a vision of the first French settlers coming up the Mississippi alongside the sight of a garishly painted street performer harassing passers-by. If we cannot hold all facets of a place in our mind at once, I think the next best thing is to honor our fragmented understanding, to see in "Snippets." I learned and re-learned a lot of things making this book. I learned that even in my "home" in Louisiana I feel I am an outsider peering into a window. I re-learned how beautiful and bizarre New Orleans is, how every street has a distinct personality. . . . I re-learned that I know very little about anything, and that the more I learn the more I realize how little I know. I learned that asking for entry into people's personal lives is complicated and requires a lot of mental and ethical somersaults. This book is my most earnest and honest reflection of New Orleans: triumphant and tragic, gaudy and gritty, elegant and ugly, rich and poor, a city that embodies all these and other polar opposites with a perverse kind of grace. My account is flawed and incomplete in the way all our experiences are flawed and incomplete: there are always vistas left to see, flavors left to try, stories left to hear; there are assumptions made, words misunderstood, histories distorted. May this book communicate the New Orleans I know, and may you weave your own New Orleans truth between the pages. - Emma Fick

Emma Fick

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