In a prior post I'm
pretty sure I've mentioned some of the 'Instagram' museums we
visited. We had one more visit left on our ticket, so we chose to go
on Friday night. One of the options was for throwing plates, which
sounded like a great stress reliever.
The ticket to this
museum allows you to throw three plates at a wall and watch them
break. There is a marker available, if you want to label your plates
with a particular stress, but we skipped that. Throwing plates just
feels good!
If it had been
allowed, we each could've thrown stacks and stacks of plates. It was
fun and just felt good.
Afterward we had
dinner at the diner down the road.
The next morning
all three of us had to be up pretty early to catch an elektrichka at
0715. Catching a train that early means getting there around 0650 to
buy tickets and find the train. Doing that means leaving my flat
around 0630, which means waking up at 0600, on a Saturday. Sigh.
Fortunately I almost always think a day trip is worth waking up
early.
The train was a bit
over 2 hours, arriving at 0930. The train station in Borodino was
quite small, with a low ceiling.
The outside of the station looked
far better than the inside, as it memorialized what happened in
Borodino in 1812.
The battle of
Borodino was fought on 7 September 1812, between Russia and France
during the Napoleonic Wars. Wikipedia tells me 250,000 troops were
involved, with 70,000 casualties. It was the deadliest day of the
Napoleonic Wars, indicating just how bad it was.
The French won this
particular battle, but it didn't mean much in the end, as they were
unable to hold Moscow for very long.
Visiting this area
is best done with your own car/transport, but we didn't have that
option. Instead we walked. A LOT. We walked and walked and walked.
Visiting this area
means looking at a lot of war memorials. Nearly all of them are very
specific, dedicated to specific companies and battalions and such.
The specific groups didn't mean much to me, but honouring those who
fought did.
Some of the
memorials are quite close to the road, others sit back further into
the fields. Some have paths leading directly to them, others involve
walking through the grass.
The very first
memorial was just outside the front of the train station. It wasn't
very interesting aesthetically, so none of us took a photo of that
one. Some of the memorials were more interesting aesthetically,
others not so much.
The biggest
memorial was to Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration. He was of Georgian
origin, and died on the battlefield of Borodino, as a general.
We also visited a
convent in the area, called Spaso Borodinsky monastery/convent. It
was founded in 1839, by the Maria Tuchkova, the widow of one of the
men who had died during the battle of Borodino.
She raised funds,
getting some financial help from the widow of Emperor Paul.
Work on the first
church began in 1818, after she bought the land. The Saviour
Miraculous Image church was finished in 1820. Other life
circumstances for Mrs. Tuchkova brought her to living in a cottage on
the field, and founding a religious community, being joined by other
war widows.
In 1838 she became
a nun, in 1839 she founded the convent, later becoming Mother
Superior. The state closed the convent during Soviet times, but it
was returned to the church in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet
Union.
There are several
churches in the complex, though I couldn't tell you the names of any
of them. We only went inside one of them, it was nice. They were
careful to make sure we covered our heads and added wraparound skirts
over our pants.
A couple of the
buildings on the property are now museums, but we didn't visit them.
It was enough to step inside the church and honour the reasons it was
built for a few minutes.
Not long after
leaving the convent we realized we needed to walk pretty fast in
order to get back to the train station in time to catch the train we
wanted. There is nothing like speedwalking that far, whoops!
Thankfully we did catch the train, each of us went to her own flat
when we got back to Moscow.
Sunday morning all
three of us met up again, a bit later this time :)
Our original plan
was to visit the state history museum, on Red Square. When we got
there we found really long queues, so we figured it must be free
museum weekend again.
We would've loved to see the museum for free,
but had zero desire to share the space with that many people. Sigh.
This was the 3rd or 4th time we'd tried to see
the museum, foiled again!
Instead we walked
through GUM, the state department store on another side of Red
Square. We opted to do something else very traditional, that is to
get ice cream in this mall. Not amazing, not awful.
From there we
walked all the way to another mall, this one much more modern. It was
a two hour walk, but the weather was quite nice, so we didn't mind.
Afimall is in the
area known as Moscow City, the main business district of Moscow. When
we got there we met up with our friend Rayne, who wanted to visit a
coffee festival.
I'm not sure why we
decided to go to the fest, since none of us (except Rayne,) drink
coffee, but it was fun to meet up with her. I love the smell and
atmosphere of coffee, just not the taste. Somehow there were
competitions at the festival, I'm not sure what there is to compete
for in coffee, but it happens.
Since we didn't
consume anything at the coffee festival we walked to another metro
station, then went to our third mall of the day. The top floor of
this mall had a food court, one of the restaurants had Asian food.
Yum.
And that is the
story of our weekend :)
