russia: mosow holiday decorations

I think I've mentioned in previous Moscow related posts that GUM, the huge state mall on one side of Red Square changes decorations for various holidays and seasons.

I love visiting the mall to see what the decorations look like, and to figure out what the theme is.

This year the New Year's theme seemed to be space, somehow combined with Christmas.

I saw multiple giant Christmas trees decorated with space ornaments. I saw multiple satellites hanging from the ceiling. I saw multiple stars hanging from the ceilings and balconies.

All the employees in the mall were wearing traditional Russian costumes, I'm not sure how happy they were to be doing so.

The next day was Tuesday, so I decided to make use of my afternoon off.

My first stop was the Museum of Moscow. I'd never heard of it before, so I'm not sure how important it is in the grand scheme of all the Moscow museums.

I walked all the way to the museum, just because I could. There were three buildings making up this museum, it wasn't immediately obvious where I should enter.

When I found an entrance I was presented with the conundrum I hate: multiple ticket options, none of which covers everything. I ended up choosing the option that let me see the history of Moscow exhibit.

Considering Moscow is nearly 1000 years old, I was less than impressed because there was only one floor's worth of items displayed. There was a path to follow through the museum, which made it slightly more convenient.

There were some religious stone carvings. There were some displays of jewelry from I don't know who. There was an old map showing Moscow as a fortified city. There were a few old books, with gold on the edges of the pages.

There was also an extra exhibit, talking about the waters of Moscow.

It started with the 20^th century, and continued through the 22^nd century. Neat to see how someone things the waters of Moscow might be in another 100 years.

After leaving the museum I walked to the House of Photography, free entrance on the day I visited. I didn't know why and hadn't known about that ahead of time, but it was a nice surprise.

Probably because of the free entry, this photography/art gallery was pretty crowded. The architecture of the interior is very modern, and easy to walk through.

As always happens with art, I liked some of the pieces, didn't like others, and had no reaction to some. 

As always happens in a gallery/museum, some people pay attention to the other visitors, others do not.

russia: moscow with a visitor

I like having visitors, particularly those who are already independent travelers in their own right. This is important because visitors need to be able to entertain themselves during the day while I'm at work.

Sometime in early summer my friend Rachel messaged me asking about potentially coming to Russia. She'd found dates with cheap flights, and was keen to come. I was thrilled, as Rachel has lived in numerous countries as well, as well as having done lots of other international traveler.

It wasn't hard to get the paperwork she needed for her visa, and we got the dates set, and life was good. Rachel's flight arrived Monday evening, it was easy for me to meet her at the airport after school finished for the day.

The next morning Rachel slept in a bit while I worked, then met met at lunch. We had lunch with a couple other teachers, everyone got along well. After lunch we walked to Red Square. I've been there plenty of times, but I'm always willing to go back.

Every visitor to Moscow should see Red Square, it's one of the iconic spots in the city. It seems to me that many international media broadcasts about Russia are done from in or near Red Square. The photos of St Basil's cathedral at one end are well known, everyone takes one.

We also checked out GUM, the state department store on one side of the square. The mall is always decorated for the season or holiday, I like seeing what the current decorations look like.

After GUM we walked to Zaryadye Park, one of the newest parks in the city. Fun to wander around, partly to people watch and partly just to walk. Much of the park is carefully landscaped, and there are regular decorations put in, so it's always interesting to see.

After leaving the park we walked toward Christ the Saviour Cathedral, which is big and has gold domes on top. It's a fairly new church, though there is a long religious history in the actual location. I don't know why, but the doors were locked when we got there, argh. Oh well.

The next day Rachel did a bike tour around the city while I worked all day. Thursday night we had drinks at a bar near work, then went to a diner for dinner. Yum.

That weekend we took the train up to St Petersburg, arriving back in Moscow Monday morning. Dinner Monday night was at Cafe Soup. This place does have 'real' food on the menu, but the focus is the 44 different types of soup. They even have the option of a 'soup flight' like you can get a beer flight at a brewery.

I'm happy to admit I liked my dessert soup even more than my main course soup, which was already pretty good.Tuesday I did my normal teaching in the morning, then met Rachel again for lunch. We went to an Asian restaurant I like, enjoying huge bowls of pho.

From there we hopped back on the metro, going out to Izmailovo. I've been there enough times that I'm not a huge fan anymore, but I do think it's a neat place for visitors to explore. Izmailovo has a great market for souvenirs, though since the weather wasn't great while we were there, and it was low season, there weren't as many vendors as usual.

Far better than the market area is the park, which is basically across the road. (Thought you have to go a long way around to get into the property.) It was still raining, but I Rachel was okay with walking in the rain if I was, and I didn't want to hold her back on her last day in Russia.

We walked around the island in the middle of Izmailovo park, and ended up with a decent sunset looking back over Izmailovo market.

From there we went to another great dinner at a place called Lepim i Varim. Rachel loves researching places to eat when she travels, while I don't give it as much thought. Since the soup place had been so awesome I had no trouble following her to what she'd picked out for this last dinner.

Lepim i Varim specializes in pelmeni, basically Russian dumplings. I'm not a huge fan, because most of those I've had in Russia have been from a place where the smell is always slightly off. Going to this restaurant totally changed my mind.

Both of us ordered two main course bowls of pelmeni, and a dessert bowl of pelmeni. YUM. (And Instagram worthy, hee hee.)

The next morning I was sad to put Rachel in a taxi to the airport. Since her visa is good for three years, I hope to see her again in Russia before I move out of the country.

russia: moscow and borodino

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 3^rd or 4^th 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 :)

russia: moscow but not the way we planned

When we planned our year of traveling, we left a few weekends for exploring Moscow. This weekend we planned to see a couple major sights in the city, but it didn't turn out the way we expected.

Claire, Angela, and I met up at a metro station then made our way up to ground level. 

Our first planned sight was St Basil's Cathedral. This might be the most recognized sight in the entire city, and of the city around the world. Legend says the man who designed it was later blinded so he could never create anything so amazing again. This probably isn't true, since he is credited with other architectural work around the country.

We got to the edge of Red Square to discover it was completely blocked off, and empty. We weren't the only people surprised by the closing, argh. We had no way of figuring out why it was closed, or when it might open again.

Hoping that St Basil's might be open by another entry, we made our way through GUM, the former state department store. Unfortunately, as we walked out the other side, we found Red Square blocked off on that side as well. The other side of St Basil's was also fenced off. None of us know enough Russian to ask why it was all closed, or when it might open again.

Even though we wanted to be on the square and in the church, we took advantage of the empty square to take a couple photos, since it is quite rare that it is totally empty.

To get back to where we wanted to go, we went through the mall again, and decided to take part in an old Russian tradition: eating ice cream. We're pretty sure the cones had been scooped out while a while ago, but the taste wasn't too bad. It was another example of the Russian disregard for queues, we saw people coming to the window of the ice cream stall from several different directions.

After our ice cream we tried to get to our next destination, but were foiled again. The entrance to the state history museum is just inside the gates to Red Square, and they were closed. Argh.

After some discussion, we decided to walk to Lubyanka Square. The name Lubyanka struck fear into the hearts of Soviets for decades, because the building was the home of the NKVD/KBG, and now the FSB. All were secret police organizations, with no public transparency. There was a lot of fear that if your loved one disappeared, they had been taken to the basement of Lubyanka, which meant you weren't going to see them again.

In the middle of a small park on one side of the square is a large stone. This stone came from the Solevetsky Islands, it is a memorial to those who died in the Gulag system; the first such camp was in the Solevetsky Islands. It's a small memorial, put there in the 90s. (Side note, there is another such memorial in St Petersburg, which is a lot closer to the islands.)

While we were taking our photos Claire was google-ing and wikipedia-ing, and found out that one of the world's worst serial killers used to live in a building on this square. When you start clicking on links you never know what you'll find!

Darya Saltykova was responsible for the death of more than 70 people! This is definitely not widely known Russian history, for obvious reasons.

Since our original plans for the day had already completely changed, we came up with something new to do for the next few hours: seeing more of the city's metro system. I convinced the girls to ride the southern half of the dark green line, getting off at each stop just to see what the station looked like.

The most interesting station turned out to be the very last station, Alma Atinskaya. The station is pretty new, it was opened in 2012. 

The original name of the station was Brateyevo, the neighborhood in which it is located. The name was changed for reasons of international relations: Kazakstan had renamed one of it's stations in the old capital of Almaty, to Moskva, to honour relations between the two countries. Russia decided to do the same.

I liked the decoration of the station, just because it was different from other stations. The sculptures spaced along the station made me think of giant ice scrapers, like those used to scrape off the windscreen of a car.

From there, we made our way back into the city center and found a new (to us,) restaurant to try, a place with Korean BBQ. Yum.

Another successful day with friends, yahoo!!