russia: instagram museum, kaluga, and the state history museum in Moscow

We knew we were 'only' doing a day trip on Saturday, and we had one more 'museum' left on our tickets, so we used Friday evening to check off the last museum. Our choice this time was called the upside down house. Each room was arranged as if it was a room in a house, i.e. kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. We had fun taking goofy photos, though all of us had a hard time 'seeing' how a photo would turn out. The decoration of each room wasn't always accurate, in that the 'ceilings' were wood laminate, so an upside down photo didn't look right no matter what we did. Oh well, it was fun anywho.

We went to Kaluga the next morning simply because we met a chick in a cafe who was originally from Kaluga. She didn't say anything exciting about the town, but we're always up for going somewhere new, so when we saw it was two or two and a half hours away by train, we figured why not. A quick look at a travel app told us there was plenty to see in a day.

Kaluga is a city of 325,000, and is the capital city of its own state. It was founded in the 14^th century, and wikipedia tells me the name comes from the old Russian word meaning bog, or quagmire.  
We didn't see any bogs or quagmires, but we weren't out in the areas around the city, so who knows. 
The road on which one goes from Kaluga to Moscow is the one Napoleon wanted to use in 1812 when he was retreating, but Russian troops blocked it so he had to use another road, the one leading to Smolensk. That didn't end up so well either.

In more modern history, Kaluga had a bunch of buildings that were used to house Polish POWs, after they'd been arrested near Vilno. 

Nowadays Kaluga is basically an industrial city, with auto plants, a door and window company, etc... Locals also pride themselves on a guy who grew up here, with the name of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He was a pioneer in rocket science, which means he had a lot to do with the early space program, and sending the first cosmonaut into space. The Soviet Union (and now Russia,) were and are obsessed with having been winners of the space race back in the day. 

Saturday we got up early, to catch a 0745 train to Kaluga. We arrived at 1022, exactly on time. (Which is typical for the Russian train system.) 

The outside of the train station was grand, but the interior didn't match up at all. Just out in front of the station was a monument with the letters CCCP (in English it would be written USSR,) on top.

After taking that photo we followed the street toward the town center. The street wasn't a major one, but it was still called Lenin street. (Usually Lenin street is much bigger.) Along the way we found a monument to celebrate 50 years of the Komsomol, which was the youth Communist league, back in the day.

We got to Kirov street and saw one of the memorials scattered around town that honour the Great Patriotic War, this one was a policeman with a dog.

Eventually our walk brought us to the first 'sight' of our day, a statue of Lenin. I think he had been elsewhere previously, as pictures I saw had a very different background from what we could see. We took our team photo, and as I was taking down the tripod a man asked if he could take a selfie with us. We said no. Was it because we are women? Or because we're foreigners? Who knows.

Claire saw an ice cream stand, and my watch said it was after noon, so why not? The ice cream was pretty good, and decently priced. The guy doing the scooping didn't understand that each of us wanted two scoops in one cone, each of us got two scoops, separated into two cones.

Next up was a statue of Ivan III. Angela looked him up (we end up learning a bit about Russian history during our trips because we find statues and don't know what these people have done until we look it up,) and we learned he was often called Ivan the Great. He was one of the very first leaders of Russia; while he was in charge the size of Russian land tripled and he defeated the Mongol hords. 

We made it to the park of culture and leisure, finding an I love Kaluga sign right inside the gate. In the center of the park was a giant church, Holy Trinity church. Like every other Orthodox church in Russia, it was busy on Saturday. Easter was on Sunday, which means Saturday is the day everyone brings food to church to have it blessed by the priest. Fortunately, most of the business was outside the church, not inside.

I was very impressed with the interior of the church. There were frescoes all over, and a giant cupola filled with a giant fresco of Jesus. The iconostasis was gold, the chandelier was gold, and there was a tree of saints on one wall. 

The church had been renovated recently, though the bell tower wasn't quite finished.

We made it to the next sight only to find disappointment. There was a cat museum listed in a travel app, and we found the right address, but it was closed. I don't know if it was closed permanently, or just for the day/weekend, but the door was not open and there was no signage.

A quick stop at a nearby grocery store solved me being thirsty, and from there it wasn't too much further until we got to the biggest sight of town.

The museum of cosmonautics in Kaluga is not the first space museum I've seen in Russia. The entry fee was more than reasonable, only 250 rubles. (And there was no 'foreigner tax!') The museum was great overall, as it was easy to figure out where to go, and there was some English. There were photos and information and models on display. There was also a Lenin head, and one of the capsules that has actually been in space. We saw patches from the many space programs, especially the Apollo missions.

There is a statue of Yuri Gagarin across the street from the museum, but we didn't even take photos of him because he has nothing to do with the city, just with space. We walked about 10 minutes to get to a monument to Tsiolkovsky, in the middle of a small park in the middle of a really big traffic circle. There is a skinny rocket right behind him as part of the monument.

At that point we were all really hungry, so we went to a nearby restaurant. After eating we walked straight down the street (we'd basically circled all the way around to the other end of Kirov street,) all the way to Victory Square.

Victory Square was actually a circle. In the middle, rising really tall out of a circular fountain was the Victory Statue; just in front of all this was a guy on a horse monument: General Zhukov in this case. Nearby we found another of the Great Patriotic war monuments: a veteran sitting on a bench.

From there we walked back to Lenin street, and caught a bus back to the train station. We were thirsty, so we went to a nearby grocery store, after which I checked our return tickets to make sure we were at the right place.

Unfortunately, we weren't at the right place. We'd arrived in town at Kaluga 1 train station, but we were scheduled to depart out of Kaluga 2 train station. Whoops. 

We called a taxi, and it got us to the other train station, which was on the other side of town, a bit out of town.

We arrived with minutes to spare, hopped on the train when it arrived, and made it back to Moscow as scheduled. (Note to self, double check arrival and departure stations where there are more than one station in town!)

The next day we all slept in, we didn't meet until after noon. We finally managed to visit the State History Museum in Moscow. It is a very fancy building, located on Red Square. Each time we tried to visit it previously, there had been a really long queue, as we kept choosing days when the entry was free.

We got to the ticket counter and found out that foreigners had a different entry fee from locals, and the foreigner fee depended on the time of year!! We pulled out our passports and showed that we had work visas, and should therefore be considered locals. It worked, and we only had to pay 400 rubles.

We walked into the entry hall and were stunned. The entire hall is painted, the whole thing is really impressive. There are saints all over the ceiling, and there are tall columns, also with painting. Absolutely beautiful.

Every room on the first floor of the museum was an exhibit all by itelf. Many of them had fancy ceilings, with beautiful paintings. Most of them had intricate tile mosaic patterns on the floors. My neck got a workout, spinning all around in every room.

The exhibits were organized chronologically, and laid out really well. We saw some of the geologic history of the country, as well as items from the first tribes of people that lived here. We saw more and more items as time 'moved' closer to now. Each room had a docent, most of them looked bored out of their minds.

At the end of the first floor we made sure to go into a treasure exhibit, which featured mostly religious items. Very shiny, and displayed really well. 

The ceiling in that particular area was painted as if it was the ceiling of an Orthodox church, perhaps it had been a church at one point. The ceilings in a lot of rooms were pretty incredible, I ended up with a crick in my neck from swiveling my head every which way.

The second floor of exhibits had much plainer rooms, though the exhibits were just as well laid out. This floor was much more recent items, I felt like I understood a lot more.

Toward the beginning of our visit Claire looked up some of the history of the museum. It turns out the building was actually built as a museum, but has also been a chemist store, a church, and a university at times. 

Like I said, the rooms were sometimes exhibits themselves! As we were exiting, we saw one last exhibit: a bit about Lenin. In the middle of the room was one of Lenin's calls, a Rolls Royce. For us it felt as if it was just another example of Lenin not being at all the person he called on all Russians to be. He was one of the original bourgeoisie.

After exiting the museum we all agreed that we'd loved it, and it was well worth seeing. Anyone who complains about that museum clearly hates museums in general. We also agreed that we were museumed out, and probably wouldn't return.

From there we walked to dinner, then went home.

Another amazing weekend :)