I'm daydreaming about travelling

by moseying about on Google Earth... I keep reading things about the far north of Norway and really want to travel by boat up to see the Northern Lights. But then when I get to Kirkenes I'd have to go across to Russia to check that out too.... In fact, I'd love to travel round the entire coast of Russia. Ever since I read one of those adventure books (you know the type - if you want to make 'x' decision turn to page 127, if you want to make 'y' decision turn to page 450) based in the USSR - and Vladivostock in particular - at the age of about 12 I've been fascinated by what it must be like. Flying over Siberia on my way from Japan back to the UK a few years ago just made me want to be on the ground even more - hundreds and hundreds of miles of nothing, punctuated by foreboding concrete buildings in the middle of nowhere... I'm not normally accused of having the most active imagination, but every childhood daydream and romantic notion I have about far flung spots seems rooted in the remote wilderness of Siberia. Conveniently there is also a range of active volcanoes down near the Chinese border, so with my lovely girlfriend in tow it is marginally more likely to happen than it has been in the past. Marginally.