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 :)

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: a little of this, a little of that

This weekend was the first weekend of March. Claire was working at a branch of our school where this was the first weekend of her March holidays, so she flew to another country. Angela worked at a branch that didn't have these holidays at all, and my branch had them a week later, so Ang and I were still in Moscow, and decided to get together.

We met at a mall, I wanted to take a few photos in a space lined with mirrors. The way the mirrors were set up, they reflected each other, so it always looked like there were heaps of people walking through, even if there was just one person.

After taking the photos we walked through the mall, the stores weren't open yet. It's probably good the stores weren't open, because I could see chocolate I wanted, and Angela could see makeup she wanted.

After the mall we got on the metro, I wanted to see the TV tower of Moscow. It's in an area called Ostankino, it seemed easy enough to get to. The walk after the metro ride was a lot longer than I expected, but oh well. The weather was fantastic, so I was happy, and Angela followed along as always.

We walked the long way around to get to an entrance gate to the land on which the tower is located, security just to get on the property was pretty intense. 

I had a water bottle with me, but that wasn't allowed, so I had to put it in a locker. We also had to put our purses through an x-ray machine and walk through metal detectors.

It is possible to go up the tower, there is a restaurant up there and an observation deck. The price for this is 1000 rubles, and you have to have your passport as identification. It didn't seem worth it, especially without Claire, so we opted to wait for another day.

We took photos of the tower, with a lovely snow-covered foreground, then left. Maybe we'll come back as a team?

From the TV tower property I could see onion domes, so I knew there was a church not too far away. I used my phone to figure out where it was, and we started walking again. The church ended up being quite nice inside, especially because there was light visibly streaming through the windows.

At that point both of us were hungry, so I dragged Ang to a place serving 'Asian' food for giant bowls of pho. So good, and pretty cheap. This cafe is part of a store selling Asian food, there are sooo many goodies I miss from living in Seoul.

The next morning Angela and I met up again, though it was almost noon by the time we got together. We decided to see the holiday decorations in Manezhnaya Square, which were lovely. It was the season of Maslenitsa, which is a cultural holiday saying goodbye winter, hello spring.

There was still plenty of snow on the ground, so spring wasn't very visible, but it was fun to take a few photos.

I wanted a snack, so I told Angela we were going to a nearby cafe so I could get a whoopie cookie. The cafe is called I Love Cake, and it's beautiful.

The display case is full of gorgeous cakes. I'm not sure how good all of them are, but they're aesthetically appealing, and I am always happy with the whoopie cookies.

When we'd bought tickets to the instagram museums I'd seen one listed that was basically a big ball pit. Claire had absolutely no interest in this one, but Angela was willing to go, so we chose this weekend while Claire was out of town :)

The ball pit was fun, but much more of a workout than either of us expected. It was easy to jump in, but getting back out was a challenge, to say the least. Let's just say I'm glad I used to be an athlete. I knew I'd be sore in a couple days.

After burning plenty of calories in the ball pit we decided we wanted food. We went back to a place offering Georgian food, and proceeded to order way too much food. Since at least half of what we ordered had cheese in it we also probably were waaaay past the amount of sodium one should have in a day. So good.

A good weekend :)

russia: moscow: instagram museums

Not too long ago the girls and I bought tickets to a series of 'museums,' five in total. At the time we decided to do one that day, then spread the other four out over the next few months.

Instead of going for a walk and seeing a sight in my free afternoon after school, I stayed at school and did a lot of work, then met up with the girls.

On this Wednesday we decided to do another one, called the Mirror Maze. We met up near a metro station, then walked to Old Arbat street. A number of the museums are in one building, so it was easy to find.

The museums are on several levels, each level has a separate bag and coat check area, making everything convenient. We put all our stuff away, then started to walk into the mirrored area.

As we walked in, the guy at the ticket desk said we had to wear plastic gloves on our hands. We didn't want to, and asked if it was necessary, he said it was. Sigh. I know I sound whiny here, but living in Moscow has me putting on shoe covers what feels like every day, I hate to see all the waste created by these things. 

As soon as we moved past the first mirror pane, we realized why we had to wear the hand coverings. There were so many mirrors, and no path was very long, you have to put your hands on the mirrors quite a bit to figure out where it is open to walk. We realized if everyone touched all the mirrors without their hands covered, everything would be covered in fingerprints and hand oils, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

At some point I realized I had no idea where I was, if I was moving in the right direction, it was a bit scary. You see all kinds of reflections, but you don't know if you're looking at the right thing, or just a reflection. It was hard to keep track of Angela and Claire too, I know they lost me too.

Since I'm writing this, we obviously made it out. Lots of fun, I'm glad I did it.

We went to a new (to us,) restaurant for dinner, it was just across the street from the 'museum.' I don't know the name, it was an imitation of an old school diner in the states.

I ate too much, but oh well. It was worth it, and I'd make the same changes again :)

A little over a week later we three met up again to do another one of these museums. This time we chose one called the 'Giant's House.' It was located in the same building as the Mirror Maze, so we knew exactly where to go, and how it all worked.

A different guy marked our choice off our tickets, and in we went.

This one wasn't as much fun, as all the GIANT pieces of 'furniture' were crammed together. There wasn't enough space to take good photos of many of the items without getting other items in the frame.

We liked the kitchen sink, and the clothes washer. We liked the Forbes magazine cover, and the giant clock. As much as I love having photos taken of myself, I only have a set number of poses, I need to work on that. ;)

There was one item I didn't like, a pack of cigarettes. They're not healthy, I feel like that isn't a funny picture, and shouldn't have been an option. Okay, now I'm off my soapbox.

We went to the same place for dinner, the diner across the street. I ordered less food, and appreciated all of it this time. I'm sure we'll return, for the desserts if nothing else.

We still have two more 'museums' to 'see.'