russia: tula

Tula is a city of half a million people, almost 200 kilometers south of Moscow. We added it to our travel calendar partly because it is listed in the travel guide for Russia.

Tula has been around a long time. Some historians say there is a written record dating back to the late 12^th century, but that record wasn't written until the 16^th century, no one knows for sure. The first confirmed date mentioning Tula is in 1382. Either way, it's an old city.

In 1712 Emperor Peter 1^st (sometimes known as Peter the Great,) visited Tula; during the visit he commissioned a few blacksmiths to build an armament factory. The city ended up being known for this factory and ironworks.

The arms produced by this factory helped the city fight off advancing Nazis in WW2. Some of the German tanks stopped their journeys just outside Tula city limits.

Our journey was supposed to start at 0700 on Saturday, so we met up at 0640. I figured this would be plenty of time to find our train.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. Kurskaya train station has a couple levels, it wasn't at all clear where we could buy tickets, and where to find the train we wanted. We ended up missing the 0700 train, argh. I was kicking myself for not having this sorted out ahead of time.

We ended up sitting around for three hours, it was easy enough to hop on a train at 10. The later train had us arriving in Tula at 1300, I was still kicking myself for 'wasting time.' Oh well. There was a crowd waiting at the train station, we pretended they were waiting for us. I'm not sure what or who they were waiting for.

We walked down the main street toward the city center, and our accomodation. Finding the accomodation was pretty easy, checking in was easy too. I'd been able to keep the landlady up to date on our arrival by text, which was awesome.

The flat we checked into was nice enough, though she seemed surprised that there were three of us. This was in our reservation, at least on my end, so I don't know why there was confusion. She brought in a cot as a third sleeping spot, so that was sorted out quickly.

There were a couple other rather unpleasant surprises with the flat: the smell of sewage in the stairwell and the huge number of mozzies. Though the lady was nice, we knew immediately that if we decided to return to Tula at any point in the future we would not being staying in the same flat again.

Due to the mozzies (and lack of wifi,) we went back out to start exploring faster than we normally do. 

It didn't take us long to get to our first sights: a government plaza with a giant Lenin statue in front of a giant government building. On the other side of the platz was a quirky monument, one dedicated to gingerbread. Apparently the city is known for gingerbread, though we didn't know this until we arrived in town. You can buy gingerbread all over the city, much of it in special shapes.

Next to the gingerbread monument we saw a red brick church. The onion domes were painted black, and I have to admit I didn't like the look of the outside of the church. 

The inside was a lot better, as the stairwells were painted and there were a couple small stained glass windows. You can always win me over with stained glass.

We walked a couple hundred meters to get to the walls of the kremlin. (a reminder: a kremlin is a fortress, and many Russian cities have one.) This particular kremlin has red brick walls, which are in great shape. I assume a renovation has been done at some point, though I don't know when.

Just outside the main gate into the kremlin was another quirky monument, called the Tula Alphabet. It was in the shape of a giant book.

We went through the gate into the kremlin, and were underwhelmed. There is a lavender purple church in the middle of the space, and another couple buildings, but that's about it. The church looked as if it had been painted recently, so it looked nice. One of the other buildings was supposed to be a museum, but it looked empty. Maybe we were missing something?

On the other side of the area we found a couple shops in the walls, one of them was supposed to be a gingerbread museum. 

As far as we could tell, it was just an overpriced shop selling specially shaped gingerbread. Disappointing, to say the least.

Not too far outside the walls of the kremlin we found yet another quirky monument, a hedgehog surrounded by mushrooms. Super cute, but I'm not sure what the point was.

Not too far away we found a playground for adults. I don't know if it was intended that way, but everything was adult sized, and much more fun for adults than kids.

At that point we were standing outside the walls of the other side of the kremlin, the area had been redeveloped as a nice place to hang out. 

It was pretty chilly while we were there, but I bet it's a good place in warmer weather.

From there we saw a small church, and decided to take a peek. Nothing exciting, but churches always catch my eyes. From there we wandered to a pedestrian street, which was still being developed. Cute, but empty since construction wasn't finished.

We kept walking, all the way to a bridge across the river from the arms museum. By that point it was too late to visit the museum, but we still enjoyed the reflection of the unique architecture in the river.

At that point we were tired, cold, and hungry. We found a place listed in a travel app, promising the usual menu of pizza, pasta, and sushi. It's entirely possible I ordered too much.....

The next morning we were up earlier than usual, partly because Claire and Angela were bit all night by mozzies. (The mozzies left me alone ;) We had told the landlady we planned to check out at 10, but it was 0800 and we were already ready to go, so we decided to go out, then come back at 10 to check out. 

We are never ready to go this early, but the mozzies and smell meant there was no way we wanted to hang out in the flat as would be our normal Sunday morning.

We walked to an old cemetery. The church on the property was still in good shape, but most of the cemetery looked as if it was slowly being reclaimed by nature. Trees were growing through some of the graves, and rust was doing a number on other graves. If we'd had the time, we could've wandered for at least another hour. I bet it looks stunning in winter.

On the way back to the flat we took a team photo by a big heart that said (in Russian,) I love Tula.

After giving the keys back to the landlady we headed toward our next sight: a museum. On the way we found a spot for another team photo: a giant stack of luggage. Claire (I think,) came up with the best caption for the photo: traveling light for the weekend.

The museum we wanted to see was a bit quirky: it was dedicated to samovars. A samovar is a traditional item in Russian homes, it's basically a giant tea pot. 

The museum was awesome. There were faces carved into the samovars, like that of Stalin. There were big samovars and tiny samovars, and everything in between. One of the informational posters said there used to be 50 companies producing samovars in Tula!! A few of those on display were from the last tsarist family, the Romanovs.

After the museum we found more churches as we made our way toward the arms museum. Nothing unique, but still pretty.

Outside the building of the arms museum we saw tanks and other military hardware, nothing I haven't seen before. Inside we explored three and a half floors, filled with a LOT of arms. We saw rifles and pistols and canons and more. There were flags and awards and full size dioramas. Everything was arranged chronologically, so it went back to the middle ages and moved forward. The top floor was just for programs of some kind, though the ceiling had a decoration worth looking up to see.

To get to our last sight we rode a bus toward the edge of town: we wanted to see a really big war memorial. It seems like every Russian town has one, but this one was bigger than normal. It was worth the bus ride, and easy to see. It had an eternal flame, a plane taking off and a plane crashing. The plane taking off was Soviet, the plane crashing was Nazi.

This memorial was specifically dedicated to the defenders of the motherland sky. There were plaques on the memorial, with many names of those who perished carved on the plaques. 

The plaques had multiple languages, which was unique to this memorial.

The bus we ended up taking back into the city was driven by the same bus driver as the bus we'd taken going out to the memorial. We took the bus to close to the same restaurant where we'd eaten dinner the night before, we intended to eat there again. Since we already knew the menu everything went faster this time around.

It didn't take long to walk back to the train station, even though we stopped to buy gingerbread on the way. 

Since we stopped at a regular store, it was half the price of what we'd seen in the 'museum,' so we were grateful we hadn't bought any earlier in our visit.

I did a terrible job in planning this trip in terms of the trains. When we got back to the train station we discovered the train I wanted didn't go every day. We ended up having to wait a couple hours, and taking a faster but more expensive train later on. Sigh.

Oh well, we got back to Moscow safe and sound. I'm pretty sure I don't feel the need to go back to Tula, but never say never :)