russia: moscow oblast: lobnya

After nearly a month straight of traveling I decided to spend a weekend in Moscow. I chose to spend Saturday doing very very little. My fitbit tells me I took less than 500 steps, if that tells you anything.

Sunday I had another lay in, then took my sweet time getting moving. Eventually I got out the door, and hopped on the metro. In the last year Moscow has opened two new metro lines. They go further into the suburbs than previous lines, which is awesome.

A suburb called Lobnya had been on my list of places to go, since I saw that it had a specific spot in the history of Moscow and WW2. According to many historians Lobnya is the place closest to Moscow that the Germans occupied during the war. This was while the town was known as Krasnaya Polyana; I don't know why the name was changed, or when it happened.

Wikipedia tells me the town was founded in 1902, and was granted town status in 1961. There are currently 75,000 residents.

It only took me an hour or so to get to Lobnya, and cost less than $1USD. I'll repeat it again and again, I love public transport :)

I didn't see everything in town that I wanted to see, but knowing how easy it is to get there, I know I can go back to see the rest.

I started by walking down ulitsa Lenina (Lenin Street,) which is the main street in town. The weather hadn't improved since last weekend, it could be considered even worse. It had snowed a couple times during the week, but not a lot. After each snow it had warmed up to a degree or two above freezing, meaning the snow melted and ended up as slush and mud. Yuck.

Lenin Street wasn't that exciting, it didn't feel like much of anything. Many of the apartment buildings were painted various shades of yellow, which I find horrid. One of the buildings had a mural of the fighting in WW2 on the side, which was.... interesting.

I didn't walk through the city park, mostly because I didn't want to deal with the slush and mud I knew would be everywhere. I'll definitely explore the park the next time I go back.

Eventually I got to a bus stop where I caught the next marshrutka to a specific war memorial called the Moscow defensive line. It ended up being really small, and hardly noticeable. The stop was just across the street from the memorial, it was actually the end of the line for several bus/marshrutka lines.

The memorial consisted of a billboard, a couple 'snowflakes' of metal pieces (I don't know the right word to name or describe them) and a plaque.

From there I walked to another memorial, in Krasnopolyana Square. It was a 'basic' WW2 memorial, with a big statue and plaques listing the names of those from the area who died. 

This square was more of a small park, there were no benches or anything to encourage people to hang out for a while.

I walked to a supermarket I'd seen earlier, to get something to drink, and snacks. From there it was an easy marshrutka ride back to the train station, then another train back to central Moscow.

I'll be back, as I know there are a couple memorials I missed, and I want to see the city park when it looks better :)

Even though Lobnya isn't terribly well known, I realized there were some spots in the city that I hadn't yet seen, so I went back for another half day visit a few weeks after my first visit. The weather was somewhat better in that it wasn't raining or snowing, and the ground was mostly dry, but the sky didn't look any better.

I went out there the same way I did during my first visit, using one of the new commuter metro lines Moscow has opened this year. Easy and quick.

Since Lobnya is pretty small, I barely had to pull out my phone to check where I was going. My first stop was in the city park, a small platz with a pair of war memorials. The one that was particularly memorable was dedicated to the kids who suffered during the war. They didn't have a say in anything that was happening, and had no opportunity to speak up.

It was easy to walk out the other side of the park, and as I did so, I noticed a cute 'animal' statue just outside the fence: a pair of pandas. I'm not sure why the city chose to have them there, as they're not local to the area. Hmmm.

My next sight was another set of war memorials, the walk to get there was a lot longer. Along the way I saw a memorial I didn't expect: a helicopter. It didn't have a sign that I could see, but it was placed right along the main road, not too far from colourful apartment buildings. I've seen a lot of tanks as war memorials, at least the helicopter was a little different.

When I got to the place I wanted to see, I realized the set of war memorials were spread out on each of the three sides of the intersection (it was a T-junction.) One was a mural painted on one side of a small building. Another was a tank, and the third was an obelisk. None of them were particularly memorable or unique.

After that I felt like I wanted to see something that was not a war memorial, so I headed to the one church I'd noticed on the map. The Church of the Holy Face in Kiowa was not any different from other churches I'd seen previously.

I wanted to see the interior, but when I opened the door I heard and saw a service taking place, so I only stood at the back of the room for a few minutes, then stepped back out. While I was in there someone else left, so I wasn't doing anything disruptive. I liked what I could see, as there were nice frescoes all over, and the chandelier was bright.

From there it was an easy walk back to the train station, with a quick stop at a pond on the way. Last year Claire and Angela used to tease me about wanting to see anything marked in blue (water,) on a map, I guess I still do that :)

russia: moscow oblast: gorki leninskie

Not only does Moscow have plenty to see and do within city limits, there are gazillions of places to go and see nearby. Since all three of us are interested in Lenin, we decided to go see Gorky Leninskie, the family estate where Lenin lived out his last few years.

Gorky Leninskie (which has a heap of different spellings, I'll probably use a few of them during this post.) is only 10 km south of Moscow city limits now, though I suppose that distance was a lot bigger back when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanovsk) was living.

Obviously, the estate didn't always belong to Lenin's family. Gorki originally belonged to different noblemen and their families, no one in particular held onto it for very long. When the Soviet government officially moved to Moscow in 1918, it nationalized the property, and declared it to be Lenin's dacha.

Lenin himself spent a lot of time on the estate as he healed from an assasination attempt, then became a full time resident as his health got worse in his last few years. After he died, (in 1924,) it was officially renamed Gorki Leninskie, and became one of many museums dedicated to Lenin.

To get to the area, we chose to take the elektrichka, which let us off at a station called Leninskaya. This station was built for the express purpose of transporting Lenin's body from the estate just after he died.

We got off the train, and tried to go inside the station, only to discover it was locked, and seemed to be abandoned. There was a ticket booth on one side of the building, and that was open, but the main part of the station was completely closed. I wonder when this happened, and why it isn't kept open as a place to visit for Lenin enthusiasts.

We peeked in through windows, and saw a statue of the main man in the middle, with an otherwise decrepit interior. I was able to take a good photo through the window, but I really wish we'd been able to go inside. I wonder if that is ever possible? Someone must have the key....

From there we walked. By this point Angela and Claire were long since resigned to following me down random roads and highways, this was another one of those days. One of the gates to the property was off a wide road, though I think the only traffic this road gets is people coming to visit this property. 

The road is lined by trees, which looked good even without leaves.

We got to the entry gate and paid the fee to get into the grounds. Not too far away was the first of several Lenin statues on the property. Also not far from that particular entrance was the first museum of the day.

The first museum we visited on the property was a copy of the offices and apartment Lenin had in the Kremlin. We were surprised to learn that one of Lenin's sisters lived in the flat with him, she lived with him for most of his life.

Seeing this museum required joining a tour, which was (of course,) in Russian. We told our guide that we didn't speak or understand Russian, but that didn't stop her from starting out with her normal spiel in each room. We tried to understand for about 5 minutes, then gave up. We started wandering around each room and taking the photos that interested us, basically ignoring the guide.

She figured out that we truly didn't know what she was saying by the second room, so she started giving us three or four simple sentences of information for each room, then standing back and waiting for our photography to finish. 

This ended up being a great way of visiting the museum, though she did try to get us moving along faster than we wanted to go.

We saw a copy of Stalin's conference room, maps in use back then, a library of sorts, a kitchen and dining room, etc... It was actually a well done museum.

The next building on the estate was the grand house in which the family lived. I'm guessing this is what the government said was a dacha. In my head, the word dacha translates to cottage, and this most definitely was not a cottage.

We had to pay another entrance fee, and join another (Russian) tour. We weren't the only ones on this tour, but we were the only non Russian speakers, so we did the same thing we'd done before: ignore the guide and take the photos we wanted to take.

The house was quite big. It was neat to see the different rooms, decorations, and furniture. It was while going through this home that we truly understood that Lenin was not a man of the people, not at all. His family was upper middle class at the very least. Such a disappointment.

Part of the tour of this manor was the chance to look into the garage, where the (in)famous Rolls Royce Phantom is kept. This particular car was on skis!

After the manor we walked all the way to the last museum on the estate, only to find that it also required a tour to visit, and the next tour wasn't for another 90 minutes. I really wanted to see the main entry stairs, with a statue of Lenin and Soviet seals and such, but just that wasn't worth the wait. Sigh. If I go back, I'll plan a visit around tour times for this museum. 

Instead we walked the grounds right next to this building. There were a bunch of statues outside, but they were all covered with plastic to protect them from the upcoming winter weather. I really need to go back when the statues are uncovered.

We found one more Lenin statue, which was good for another team photo, then exited the grounds. This was basically the opposite side of the grounds from where we'd entered, but it was the more inhabited side of the estate. It was easy to find a bus and make our way back to Moscow.

A great day trip, and educational in ways we hadn't expected.