In Episode 1, we followed the Ambassadors on their winter voyage up the Baltic Sea from Lubeck to Riga, and then overland to Narva in a convoy of horse-drawn sleds. We pick up the story as Adam Olearius and his companions are waiting for Tsar Mikhail I to authorize their entry into Russia. It is now January 1634, and as the company waits to get moving, I will introduce the ambassadors chosen for the journey by Frederick, Duke of Holstein.