russia: gagarin

12 April 1961 is a date every Russian learns while growing up. This is the day the Soviets won the human space race, when Yuri Gagarin became the first person ever to orbit the planet in space.

Gagarin was born in 1934 in the village of Klushino, in Smolensk oblast; his parents worked on a collective farm. Yuri was the 3^rd of four children, he had an older brother and sister, as well as a younger brother. During WW2 the Nazis took over his house, but they 'let' the family build a mud hut in the backyard; the family lived in this shack for almost two years. After the war, the family moved to the nearby city of Gzhatsk, which is where Yuri received his secondary eduation.

Back in those days, standard education was a bit different. At age 16 Gagarin became an apprentice at a steel plant in Moscow, where he also took classes for the 7^th grade in the evening. He continued working as well as learning for years, eventually graduating from a technical school in 1955. After this he was drafted into the Soviet Army. He went to piloting school in Orenburg, and became an officer in the Soviet Air Force in 1957.

To make a long story short, Gagarin spent the next 4 years working, training, and learning in different schools and programs. 12 April 1961 was the day he became the first person to orbit the planet in space. He was sent into space on a Vostok rocket, and spent around 90 minutes orbiting the earth once.
It goes without saying that he was celebrated when he came back to Earth. The videos of the reactions of Soviets celebrating are pretty intense. There will never be another accomplishment like that one, partly because there is a limit to frontiers that have not yet been explored.

Over the following years he met Soviet and foreign leaders, but also continued working in the Soviet space program. Sadly, he never went back into space, as the government was loath to risk losing such a hero. He received a lot of awards, statues of him were erected, and things named after him.

Gagarin died in 1968, when a jet he was test piloting crashed. After this time, the city of Gzhatsk changed its name to Gagarin. The family home was given to the city/state by his family, it is now a museum.

We decided to do a day trip to Gagarin, after discovering it was less than two hours away by train. We arrived around 0900 Saturday morning, and went straight into the train station. It isn't terribly big, but celebrates the one person/reason the town gets any visitors. There were paintings on each wall of Gagarin or space in general.

We walked up the street named after him, eventually getting to a monument to him in the middle of a big traffic circle. Obviously, we took photos of and with him.

On another side of the traffic circle there was a pink church, we went in. The interior of the church wasn't at all exciting. Entering and exiting wasn't much fun either, because of the group of women begging very aggressively. They definitely weren't part of the church, and we got the impression that the people of the church weren't happy the women were there.

We saw a sign pointing to a museum, and thought we were following it by walking up the street. We didn't find what we were looking for, and thought the sign was wrong. Since I'm writing this after the day was finished, I know the museum we thought the sign referred to was the wrong museum.
After going up the street a bit and not seeing what we were looking for, we turned around, and walked back to the traffic circle. We took a different street from there, Lenin street. After seeing a simple memorial to soldiers and a monument to Peter the Great, we crossed a bridge and finally saw the museum we had wanted to visit.

The Joint Memorial Museum has that name because the building in Gagarin is a museum in tandem with the home in which he grew up in Klushino. The museum in Gagarin exists there only because the man lived in Gagarin for a while, the city itself has no other link to space. As far as we could tell, the city doesn't have anything else of note.

The entry fee to the museum was 150 rubles for each of us, and there was a photo fee of 100 rubles. For our group of three we only had to pay one photo fee, yahoo!! We hung up our coats and snack bags, put on foot covers, and started to explore.

There were machines used in the space program, I'm not exactly sure what they were. There was also a training capsule in which Gagarin spent several days, I'm guessing he was 'trained' to deal with the conditions of space. How to eat, how to sit, etc... (At least we think that's what this thing was. It could've been a place he spent time after returning to Earth for all I know.) On this first floor there were a couple cardboard cutouts of astronauts with places for visitors to put their faces and have photos taken. Cute.

We took the stairs up to the third floor, (the second floor was only for staff,) to see more. The whole room was designed really well, the aesthetics of everything were lovely. Someone designed a gorgeous exhibition, even though the items themselves weren't anything spectacular.

There were photos of Gagarin in different parts of his life, reproductions of his space suit and military uniforms. There were reproductions of various parts of his space flight, as well we some history of the space program. There were photos of the dogs sent into space before his flight, and a giant globe.

After leaving the museum we followed Lenin street a bit further, hoping we'd find a statue of Lenin. Gagarin seems to be one of the few cities in Russia that doesn't have a statue of the man, at least not one that we found. We didn't find the man, but we did find a school Gagarin attended for a while.

We saw the onion domes of a church, I couldn't resist peeking inside. We could see two churches right next to each other, one of them abandoned/under renovation. The open church wasn't very exciting inside, with just a small iconostasis and very little else. 
As we walked in, we noticed a baptism/christening taking place. I wonder if the other building will ever be finished, and what the interior of that church is like.

We went back over the river, noting the name, Gzhat. Obviously, the city was originally named after the river. It's a small river, at least what we could see of it. We followed the river for a couple blocks, then wound our way through a residential area back to Gagarin street.

A bit further up the street we found the museum the street sign referred to. This was the home in which the family lived when they first moved to the city, and we got to see the car Gagarin was given as a prize for his accomplishment. Go to space, get this car.

Entry into the family house was 70 rubles each, plus another photo fee. The house was really small, it was hard to imagine 6 people living in there. The house had been divided into a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a living room, none of them big. 
The bedrooms were tiny, even if just one person was sleeping in each of them. Let's just say privacy wasn't a thing in that house. At all.

After the house we decided we were done exploring Gagarin. There really wasn't anything left to see. We found a cute cafe for lunch, then found another cute cafe for dessert. Yours truly might've had two pieces of cake, yum.

After killing time in both places, we walked through a park with another war memorial on our way back to the train station. There was a layer of snow throughout the park, but it was at the dirty stage where it wasn't pretty, and the mud underneath wasn't any better.

We got back to the train station and sat outside on a bench for a while, enjoying the weather. When it got cold we went inside for the last hour of waiting. During this waiting we realized that at least one person was spending their time watching us, and not hiding it. Creepy. 

The train arrived at the station on time, departed on time, and we arrived back in Moscow on time. Yay for day trips!

russia: dubosekovo and volokolamsk

I'd been back in Moscow just a bit over a week before taking off for my first day trip of the year. I met Angela the first weekend in town, then this second weekend she joined Claire and I in the day trip. If you haven't figured it out by now, traveling is really important to me, I needed to know if she would fit in well with the travel style Claire and I had developed the year before.

The three of us met up early Saturday morning, it was easy enough to catch a local train (called elektrichka,) to our first destination.

I'd first heard about a giant war memorial in a small village called Dubosekovo last year when a friend posted a photo on social media. I looked up the location and was excited to see that public transport would get me there easily enough.

The train 'station' at Dubosekovo wasn't really a station, it was more of a platform. It wasn't difficult to figure out where to go, as there was just one street. The war memorial I wanted to see consisted of several HUGE statues, memorializing the officers who were part of a group often called Panfilov's Men.

Panfilov's men were a group of soldiers from a rifle division in the Soviet Army that were involved with the defense of Moscow in WW2. According to official Soviet history, (which is sometimes debated, though I don't know enough to get involved in the debate,) this group was killed in action on 16 November 1941, after destroying 18 German tanks, and stopping the enemy advance with those tanks.

Apparently there was an investigation by Soviet authorities was carried out in 1948, the results of which showed that the 'official' story was a lie. 

The German casualties weren't confirmed by either side, and not all 28 soldiers in the group died; in fact six of them survived. Why a provably false narrative is part of official history is beyond me.

History gets even better after the war: one of the survivors was arrested and charged with treason for voluntarily surrendering to German troops, then later becoming a German police officer!! This second bit was kept secret for a long time as well. I'm not sure how much of the truth is known by the general Russian public. 

There is a movie about the events and people of that day, it was released in 2016; I haven't watched it. I don't know what version of events it follows, though I am curious.

We looked at the huge statues and wreaths laid at their feet, but skipped the museum. Then we started walking.

When I read the information board, it said the distance to Volokolamsk was not so far away. I can't remember the exact number, but I do remember thinking it wouldn't take long at all.

I was wrong. It took us at least two hours to walk to Volokolamsk, whoops. Much of the walk was along a highway, in the bright sun. I didn't mind getting more sun, but Claire and Angela were both very fair skinned and not prepared for that much time in direct sun.

Volokolamsk is a city of approximately 23,000 people, on the Gorodenka River. It has a long history, it was first mentioned in history in 1135. Like other Russian cities it was later burned down and rebuilt, and was part of several different principalities over time.

The Soviet government set up authority in Volokolamsk in 1917, and the city was under seige by Germany for a little over a month during late 1941. This was part of the battle in which the 'heroes' were trying to destroy German tanks.

We found the kremlin, which turned out to be one of the smallest we'd ever seen. As kremlins often do, it sits on a hill, visible from different areas of the city. We found several churches inside the brick walls, as well as a museum, and a bell tower. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say it took us about 10 minutes to explore the entire area.

When we came back down the hill we found a bust of Lenin, of course we took a photo.

Not too far away we found a WW2 memorial, it was quite large for a small town. On the other hand, this is Russia, and you're not a real town/city if you don't have a big WW2 memorial.

We tried to find a couple other things in the city, but they weren't marked correctly on the map so it didn't happen. Not surprisingly, one of the things we tried to find was another smaller war memorial. (Every Russian town has a big one, and many have a smaller one as well.)

When I looked to see how far we had to walk to get to the train station, it said one hour. At that point we felt as if we'd already walked enough for the day, so we opted to take a taxi instead. Go figure, yandex (the uber of Russia,) didn't have any taxis in Volokolamsk. We had to flag down a taxi, which I haven't done in quite a while.

We got to the train station just in time, as we were able to buy tickets without waiting in a queue. We hopped on the train straightaway, it departed just a few minutes later.

Yay for starting off another year with excellent travel adventures :)

russia: abramtsevo

As long as I live in Russia I want to continue exploring the country, especially the areas near where I'm living. I asked my traveling girls who was up for a day trip to Abramtsevo, Claire and Caroline were happy to come along.

We met on a metro platform and made our way up to the commuter train area of one of the main train stations in Moscow. When we bought our tickets we double and triple checked to make sure they were round trip as we didn't want to make the same mistake we'd made when going to Sergiev Posad.

Our electrichka train arrived about 90 minutes later at Abramtsevo. There is no town here, it's just an old estate that later became an artists colony, and is now an open air museum reserve. The stopping point for the train was more of a platform than a station.

The train platform is basically in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't immediately obvious how to get to the museum area. Fortunately we found a couple signs with maps geared toward visitors, showing us where to go. (Thank goodness, as Google maps wasn't at all helpful either.)

We followed the path through the trees, it was lovely. At one point we heard piped in elevator music, which seemed a bit odd and very out of place. At another point we heard a woodpecker, which was a lot neater to hear.

We crossed water, and noticed an area of the water that was FULL of tadpoles. I've never seen that many all in one place at one time. Squirming around, ick.

Not too much later we got to the entry gates of Abramtsevo. Figuring out which entry ticket to buy wasn't completely straightforward. There was no ticket that covered everything, at least not so far as we could tell. 

One option allowed us onto the property, but nothing else. Another allowed us into the grand house if we joined a tour. A third allowed us into five buildings on the property, but not the grand house. Another option was a photography ticket, if we wanted to take photos inside. Since the tour of the grand house was in russian, we opted to skip that, and just look into five buildings. We also opted not to buy the photography ticket.

Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike extra tickets for photography permission? It's just an excuse to charge more money, why not just put it in the basic ticket and add another 5-10% to the entry fee? 

In some Asian countries they do this and the only people checked to see if they have the extra photography ticket are obvious foreigners, argh.

The first building we entered had originally been the kitchen of the main house. I don't remember why it was separate. The next building had a display of art, most of which was under glass/plastic covers, standing on columns. Even so, the docent in this building asked us to put our purses in lockers so we didn't accidentally knock anything over. (Sometimes I think Russians assume that any foreigner is an idiot.)

Just outside this building was a bench, covered in mosaic design. Very very pretty. Unfortunately we couldn't sit on the bench, as the whole thing was surrounded by a glass case. I suppose that's one way to protect it, but it was originally there so people could sit and enjoy the view; I wish we could've done the same.

We walked down a hill, enjoying the views back up the hill toward the main house. At the bottom of the hill was a big pond, which was still very quiet, and free of other visitors. Obviously, the perfect place to take a team photo. We noticed that one of the trees around the pond had been chewed on by a beaver, to the point that it was getting close to falling over. 

I didn't see other evidence of a beaver, but there must have been something.

After a bit we went back up the hill, to what had originally been a bathhouse for the estate. I would never have guessed this, based on how it was decorated, but the decor was quite nice. There was a lot of carved wood inside, as well as around the gable on the roof. Beautiful artisanship. I think it was all supposed to be typical middle class decoration?

The next building we saw wasn't anything that had been used regularly, at least not that we could tell. 

Called the house on chicken legs, it was a small building on stilts. It didn't really look like chicken legs, but we could see where the name had come from. It wasn't open, and was surrounded by a fence. I'm not sure what the purpose was for this building, if there even was one.

Not far from the house on chicken legs was a church. Since the estate was quite old, it wasn't surprising that a church was on the property. During Communist times I imagine the church wasn't used for religious purposes, but I don't know. 

They gave us an information sheet telling information on each painting in the iconostasis, but it was too much for me to read all at once.

After the church, we realized we'd seen everything there was to see on the property, except the main house. We sat on a bench for a while, having a snack and appreciating being out in nature. On the way out we spotted a small shop selling souvenirs, which was the perfect place to buy a magnet.

We exited the property and walked down the street, but didn't find anything other than a hotel.

I can't imagine booking a room in this hotel, as there was nothing in the area other than this museum reserve. Oh well.

We walked back down the elevator music path back to the train platform, another train came along within 20 minutes. You can't get better than Russian public transport for day trips :)

russia: sergiev posad

My first day trip in Russia, yahoo!! I looked at my guidebook, Sergiev Posad seemed like it was close enough to Moscow, with something worth seeing.

I met up with two women, one of whom works at another branch of my school, and one who works in my school. We met at Komsomolskaya metro station, (one of my favourites, one that never fails to amaze me every time I see it,) then went to find the suburban train station. It didn't take long, and the cashier even asked in English whether we wanted one way or round trip tickets.

We answered round trip, and were surprised at the ticket price, in that it was super cheap.

The train we wanted left in just fifteen minutes, which was awesome. It was an electric train, called an electrichka in Russian. It seemed as though we stopped every few minutes along the way, but the ride was smooth so I can't complain. Less than two hours later we arrived in Sergiev Posad.

The train station in Sergiev Posad was not big, it was basically just a platform. After getting ourselves oriented, we started walking. Not too far away we saw the bus station, I asked Caroline and Claire to stop and take a selfie with me. 

I wanted to have us in the photo with the city name, which was on the front of the bus station.

We kept going, heading in the direction of the main sight in town. On the way there, we stopped at a mostly frozen pond, it looked as if it would be perfect to play hockey when totally frozen. The area that wasn't frozen was full of ducks going every which way.

From the small bridge going over the water we could see a 'tree' with lots of padlocks. It was an interesting take on the idea of a bridge of locks. Every time I see one of these things, I wonder how many of the couples who closed a lock together are still together.

Near this 'tree' was a pair of statues, of Peter and Fevronia. (I had to look up the names, as Fevronia isn't exactly a name that rolls off your tongue or sticks in your memory.)

Then we arrived at the main sight of Sergiev Posad, the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius. It was founded in 1337, when St Sergius built a wooden hut. Obviously, over the years other buildings were built. The way in which this monastery was built was copied many times over the years, to create other monasteries around the country.

We approached the monastery from the side, so we had to walk along the walls for a bit. 

While walking we passed a WW2 memorial, complete with eternal flame.

Outside the grounds of the monastery we found two small churches, we entered both. Neither one of them was noteworthy. Perhaps the most noteworthy part was a stroller parked outside one of them, as it had skis instead of wheels. It also had hand warmers attached to the hand rail. Genius!

We got to the entrance of the monastery and walked right in. As far as we could tell, there was no entry ticket to buy. Entry is through a gate in the bottom of a bell tower, the gate was painted with frescoes.

As soon as we walked in, I realized each building in the complex was painted differently. One of them was actually painted with a geometric pattern of sorts, definitely not what I would ever expect to see on the outside of a church. Very photogenic, to say the least.

The geometric church was the first building we entered, the inside was painted as well. The ceiling was covered in frescoes, though they weren't very brightly coloured.

The next church we entered was more of a memorial chapel. We learned that there is a 24 hour a day memorial taking place in one corner.

The memorial is for the man for whom the monastery is named, St Sergius. There was a queue of people waiting to kiss the coffin. We did not join the queue, we watched for a few minutes then walked out.

All these churches are gathered around a small central platz. In the middle of the platz was a small fountain, I presume it runs on holy water. Since we were visiting in December, it was not running.

On another side of the platz was a big blue church, I presume it was the main church of the monastery. We walked in and loved the interior.

The whole thing was painted with brightly coloured frescoes. Love love love.

At this point we felt as if we'd seen everything there was to see. We walked out of the same bell tower through which we'd entered, and went looking for a cafe. There weren't many options, we ended up settling for one nearby. I ended up having the best tasting fruit tea I've ever had.

From the cafe we walked around the block, just to see another part of the town. We ended up seeing another church, the interior of which smelled like wet dog, probably from the wet wool clothing worn by various parishioners. 

We also saw a few government looking buildings, one of which had a big mosaic as decoration on the front facade.

Yet another section of town had newer looking buildings, including a couple souvenir shops. We found magnets in one of these :)

From there we walked up the main street, hoping to visit the toy museum. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong day, as it ended up being closed when we arrived. What kind of toy museum is closed on a Sunday? We hoped it was just a one off, and we were just unlucky. I always thought the typical day for museums to be closed is Monday. 

That was the end of our day, so we walked back to the train station. We boarded the train, thinking we were all good. Unfortunately, we weren't. Even though we were sure we'd bought round trip tickets when leaving Moscow, we hadn't. (We never figured out how the mix up happened, since the lady in Moscow had asked in English, not Russian.) We each had to buy another ticket, plus pay a 'penalty' for buying tickets on the train. Sigh, lesson learned. Fortunately, that was the worst thing that happened during the day. Yay for day trips!

usa: indiana: west baden springs and columbus

The next day was Saturday. We didn't have anything specific planned, but Dad was up for my idea of a day trip to West Baden Springs hotel. I'd never been there, but I knew he had, as had other family members. Every photo I'd of the place looked pretty amazing.

We stopped for lunch at a fast food place along the way, nothing exciting. As we drove I made note of the petrol prices, as they were considerably lower than what was available in Bloomington. (I hate the way people in Bloomington pay higher prices for rent, mortgage, petrol, etc... because we're a captive audience.)

Indiana is mostly made up of small towns, we drove through a number of them. Life in rural towns isn't great economically these days, and you can see that when you drive through. What I also noticed was that petrol prices were considerably cheaper than in Bloomington.

West Baden Springs hotel was built when you could take a train from Chicago all the way to southern Indiana. I'm pretty sure that isn't possible anymore. The town of West Baden Springs was originally developed by Germans (hence the name) and was known for natural springs.

The hotel itself is pretty amazing. The grounds are huge, no matter which approach you use. The atrium you walk into is stunning. The roof of the atrium is giant, and the whole thing is a skylight. The hotel was originally built at the beginning of the 20^th century, and after a while fell into disrepair. At some point Jesuits used it as a monastery, and darn them they capped off the springs. I think renovations started in the late 80s or 90s, something like that? The renovations were done really well, the place looks fantastic, and looks just the old photos from way back.

We walked through the atrium, unable to miss the GIANT skylight letting in a huge amount of natural light to the room. The engineering of the whole thing is really impressive. There are couches and chairs set in groups throughout the room, it's a great place to hang out with your friends and family.
We also walked through the hallway that encircles the atrium. We also checked out the porch, which had plenty of rocking chairs. If it hadn't felt like a sauna outside I would've been super keen to sit on one of the chairs and read for a couple hours.
The last area we explored was an area of landscaped gardens. Two of the old springs (also capped by the Jesuits when they 'owned' the property, argh,) were on the edge of these gardens. A pretty area, but too darn hot to dawdle in the sun.

Even though I'd brought water with me, and grabbed a couple bottles from a cooler, I was still feeling the heat. Instead of going to another sight in southern Indiana I told Dad I was ready to go home. We got home mid evening, so it was probably good that we didn't go anywhere else.

Of course, if we'd planned the day ahead of time and gotten moving a bit earlier, we could've done more. Oh well.
Three days later, I did a road trip with my sister.
Just like everyone else in my immediate family, my sister has lived abroad at least twice. Though she now lives in Bloomington, she and her husband (and now my nephew) still travel, but it's domestic travel. They've done an amazing job of finding places in and around Indiana, places I didn't know anything about before receiving a postcard from Hana.

We wanted to spend time together again, and decided to do it by going on a day long road trip, to a nearby city called Columbus, Indiana.
On the way there I asked her to stop so I could take a photo of myself with the city sign for Gnaw Bone. Yes, there is a town called Gnaw Bone in Indiana. Not surprisingly, it is not a giant metropolis.

I'd been to Columbus more times than I can count or remember, but every previous visit was while I was a competitive swimmer. I remember many an early morning driving through the quiet streets of Columbus, not really knowing the city at all.

There are two high schools in the city, I've swum at both of them. There is also a swim club that had a summer meet and a winter meet, adding to the number of Columbus visits every year. This time I wanted to see what Columbus is known for, it's architecture. Buildings all around the city are unique.

We started by going to the visitors center. I was excited when Hana told me the glass sculptures were made by Chihuly, because I've seen photos of those sculptures from around the country and they're always beautiful. It was a really nice visitors center.

From there we walked. I suppose that's all we did, but it was nice. The weather was reasonable, which made a huge difference.

I took a lot of photos, of course. I took one of the old armory. I took one of a church. I took several of various sculptures. I took several inside the play area inside a mall.
I took pictures of the bridge you are likely to cross if you're coming in from Bloomington. I took pictures of the courthouse, and the nearby veterans memorial.
I took more than a few pictures of my nephew as he took in the world around him.

I did not take a picture of lunch, as it wasn't anything to get excited about. After the main part of lunch (soup, salad, sandwich,) we stopped into an old time ice cream shop. It looked great, they've done a good job staying with the style of places back then. The ice cream was so so, I doubt I would go back for more.

After eating, we drove a little, to Mill Race Park. There is a nice walking trail around the park, and the best part is the covered bridge. Cars still drive through the covered bridge, so when I convinced Hana to take a photo with me, we had to keep an eye out for any traffic.

We probably would've walked through more of the park, but the weather wasn't so pleasant anymore, becoming more and more humid. It's not much fun to walk around when you feel like you're in a sauna.

After the park we felt like we were done for a while. I can always walk around any town for hours, but my nephew was done for the day, and we had one more stop to make.

There is a series of outlet stores in a town called Edinburgh, not far from Columbus. Hana likes one of them in particular, so we went shopping.

I found one thing I liked, but it looked awful on me, so my wallet was spared, hee hee.

My nephew was tired of course, but like most babies, did not want to go to sleep. He screamed for a while, then fell asleep, just as we knew he would.

I love spending time with my sister.