Another Slow Boat Docks

We recently received the painting we bought of the Golden Horn harbor in Vladivostok, the last little bit of our household belongings that had yet to arrive in Dushanbe. It had been kept out of the main shipment because of customs formalities, but was sent UPS to us by the company that packed and initiated our shipments from Vlad.

If it seemed like our main shipment took the long way around, going first to the US State Department's transport hub in Belgium, and then down to Central Asia, check out the (actually much quicker) route the UPS box took:


For those of you keeping score at home, that's

• Vladivostok
• Seoul
• Shanghai
• Philippines
• Dubai
• Hong Kong
• Mumbai
• Cologne
• Malmo, Sweden
• Moscow
• Dushanbe

Why it took all those stops in between Vlad and Moscow I really cannot say.

We're working on getting the painting hung now (concrete walls have nearly ruined a drill bit or two, so we need to order up some picture-hanging time from the embassy's facilities management section...).