About Sputnik Guides
About the Guides
In Russian, a "sputnik" is a traveling companion. It also means satellite, in the sense that a satellite travels with a planet. Sputnik guides are your traveling companion.
Sputnik Guides are for travelers of all ages, the only requirement is curiosity about the city you are visiting. Sputnik Guides allow you to get many of the benefits of a guided tour, but to do so at no cost, and at your own pace, so that you can slow down and explore the things you are interested in.
Sputnik Guides was launched in August, 2009. It is still a work in progress and we are adding more tours constantly.
About the Authors
My name is Emily Liedel, and I am the main author for all of the Sputnik Guides tours. I have been traveling since I was 14, when I took my first month long trip to Germany on a school exchange program. I was hooked on travel, and a year later I went to Basel, Switzerland on a year long academic exchange program. I returned to the United States to study international relations and Russian, and spent my junior year abroad again, this time in St. Petersburg, Russia.
After graduation, I headed back to my hometown, Portland, Oregon to work for a year, and met Frank, my partner and collaborator on Sputnik Guides. Together we decided to move to Madrid, Spain, where we ended up spending two years. While living in Spain we traveled extensively in Europe, and it was on one of our trips to Rome in 2008 that the idea for Sputnik Guides was born.
We now live in New York City, where I have been working as a tour guide and writing tours for Sputnik Guides while Frank pursues his career as an artist.
About the Information
We do our best to provide accurate information in all of our guides. The sources include travel videos, guidebooks, guided tours and personal experiences. However, when dealing with urban history, it is not uncommon to find two equally credible sources that have completely different versions of events. In these cases, we do our best to determine which of the versions is most likely to have occurred, but if you do hear something that you believe to be incorrect, please let us know.
