Bering

S6, E13: In 1698, Peter the Great is crowned Tsar of the Russian Empire. He wants to open his country towards the east and the west. That’s why his heraldic animal, the two-headed eagle, looks into both cardinal directions from the residence in St. Petersburg. Peter the Great knows Europe quite well, since he has travelled it before. But in the East there’s Siberia, “the sleeping land”, and only the migrant birds, so it is said, know how far the land reaches. The young Dane Vitus Bering is summoned to appear at the court of the Tsar. He receives the mission to explore the land in the east. It would last two years for Bering to reach the Siberian coast. Finally, he will prove that there’s a sea gate which separates Alaska from Siberia…