Places hymeneinstein Wants to Go

According to the locals, the sands of this secluded Norway beach are infused with gemstone particles.

A symbolic graveyard for the villages that perished during the Nazi invasion of Belarus.

Specimens collected by the author of "Lolita" and self-taught lepidopterist are exhibited in his childhood home.

A scale model of Russia so big visitors are offered binoculars to rent so they can see the whole thing.

A decommissioned Soviet airplane has been used as a movie theater and a cultural center.

A model village fit for an emperor.

The USSR’s Conquest of Nature lead to the domestication of many moose—no squirrel.

Secret Soviet city once home to Russian cosmonauts and space training facilities.

The laboratory where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.

Immortal combat in a Moscow museum.

A sculpture park of the tossed aside relics of the USSR, from Stalin to a massive Soviet emblem.

Back in the tiny USSR.

A Marxist summer camp full of fantastical statues lies tucked away and forgotten in the forests of Moscow.

Wars fought and wars won are remembered by these abandoned bunker ruins.

This open-air museum was originally a World War II testing ground for German missiles and rockets.

This abandoned fighter jet launch center is now a haunting street racing course.

Once standing on solid ground, this slender beacon is a victim of the very shoreline it was charged with announcing.

The secret cells in the basement of the KGB's Estonian "Grey House" have been preserved as a grim Cold War museum.

A historic scientific breakthrough that crosses nine borders.

First point in the Struve Geodetic Arc, a 19th century undertaking to measure the Earth's size and shape.

Mysterious craters may have been home to an ancient cult.

This peculiar border irregularity is the only way to legally enter Russia without a visa.

"There's nothing there," and other lies the KGB told us.

A striking Soviet memorial commemorates the liberation of Belarus from the Nazis.