Railfans in North Korea

A Pecha Kucha that I've stopped giving because people kept crying at the end.

Transcript

1. Helmut Uttenthaler is my hero because he loves trains. His hobby and profession: the Austrian Federal Railways He is a railfan. His first hobby is trains, (then travel, nature, hiking, “and so on.”)
2. Railfan, rail buff (American English), railway enthusiast, railway buff (Australian/British English), or trainspotter a person interested in a recreational capacity in rail transport.
3. A trainfan, like Helmut and his swiss friend Oliver, will travel from Vienna to North Korea. North Korea: brutal, belligerent, totalitarian, military dictatorship with a personality cult.
4. Brutal, belligerent, totalitarian, military dictatorship with a personality cult around: Great Leader, Eternal President, Kim Il-Sung Formerly at war with the United Nations (especially the US, UK, Japan, and South Korean “puppet government”)
5. Got a NK visa. Look as official as Indian driver’s licenses. A Korean man in jogging clothes and slippers let me in, gave passport, application, photo and 10 euro. He disappeared, came back 5 minutes later, returned passport with a visa, and wished my a nice trip.
6. Depart Vienna Departing Vienna
7. Arriving in Moscow
8. Departing Moscow
9. Who thinks of Siberia as an arctic wasteland? Me too.
10. I tried to pick the best photos.
11. Arrive in Irkutsk With 10272 km the Moscow - Pyongyang sleeping car is now the longest direct train connection in the world. Total travel time from Moscow to Pyongyang is 211 hours
12. The Russian / Korean border. Helmutt almost didn’t get though! But the Russian border agents harassed the North Korean border agents until they let him across.
13. Unrestricted access to Korea. CIA agents would gnaw their mother’s arms off for this opportunity.
14. First Day
15. Ran into a military train
18. Got into Pyongyang. First photo he took was of a train bridge.
19. The mass games. A field of 80,000 gymnists and a wall of 30,000 children— each one a pixel.
20. We have the option to follow our dreams. No matter how weird.