russia: ryazan, and an ice cave in moscow

One of the 'perks' of working at my school is continuing training. Each year we have a specific day for a three hour training, and it is required that all the teachers from all three branches of the school attend. In order to make it possible for everyone to be there, the training is usually on a Sunday afternoon, as that is the only time no one is teaching. You can't have it during the week because evening classes go until 1915, and no one will stay for three hours if you don't start until 1930. You can't have it on Saturday, because the school has Saturday classes. I'm pretty sure it's obvious that none of us are thrilled to have to show up on a Sunday afternoon, but we do.

Since the training meant Claire, Angela, and I only had Saturday as an exploration day, we chose to do a day trip. I'm not sure how it came up, but Ryazan was our destination of the day.

Ryazan is about 125 miles southeast of Moscow, with half a million people living there. Like so many other Russian cities, Ryazan has a complicated history in regards to it's founding date. The first written mention of the city was in 1095, when it was known as Pereslavl. The kremlin might've been founded as early as 800, the area was attacked by a whole bunch of people during the next few centuries, including the Golden Horde of what is now Mongolia.

The Golden Horde did the most damage to Pereslavl, they completely destroyed it. So much so that the city itself was moved. The old location is now called Staraya Ryazan, and the new location was called Pereslavl-Ryazansky until 1776.

Though Ryazan was bombed by the Germans during WW2, after the war the city developed itself as an industrial, scientific, and military center. Most Americans would recognize the name of a scientist who came from Ryazan, even if they don't know where he came from. Pavlov, the guy who studied slobbering dogs ;)

We took an early morning train to Ryazan, arriving to a cold city under a bright blue sky. 

I was reminded almost immediately that touching anything metal in cold weather is not particularly fun, we ended up stepping into a cafe after only 30 minutes in the city, to warm up and prepare ourselves a bit better. We wanted to figure out specific places to visit while sitting inside instead of fumbling with our phones outside in the cold.

The first place we saw was a WW2 memorial, with an eternal flame. A group of cadets (based on how young they looked, I hope they're not fully fledged active duty military members just yet,) stood on guard. We ended up seeing the end of a changing of the guard, I wonder how often that happens?

Next we visited the family home of Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936,) the scientist who studied slobbering dogs. As we all know, when humans are hear the name of something they like, particularly a food, our saliva glands get active. Pavlov was the guy who figured this out. Obviously that wasn't all he studied, but that's all I knew about ahead of time. Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904.

We had to take a tour to visit the home, of course the tour was in Russian. We didn't understand most of the details, but it wasn't hard to figure out what each room was, then take the photos we wanted. Like other house museums around the country, we were only able to look in each room from the doorway, we weren't able to go in.

Fun fact: Pavlov's dad was an Orthodox priest. The family had money, the house was pretty nice. Some of the kids in the family had their own rooms, which was pretty impressive for that time. (He had a lot of siblings, also typical of the time.)

We were also able to take a look around the backyard of the property, which was pretty big. There was a well back there, maybe you could still draw water with a bucket if you wanted to?

We walked through the pedestrian center of the city, lined with cafes and shops. A big statue of Lenin stood here, a city employee was busy shoveling snow as we took our team photo.

Our next sight was a random sculpture in a park. A giant mushroom. I'm not sure why it was there, or what it was supposed to represent (if anything,) but it was cute.

Continuing to walk we passed near the front of the circus, which had a neon orange blow up elephant in front of the building. When in Russia......

It didn't take long to get to the major sight of the city: the kremlin. We arrived at the entry point, which goes under a bright, dark yellow, bell tower. Very eye catching to say the least. I'd have loved to climb the bell tower, but that didn't seem to be an option.

Inside the walls of the kremlin (which did not go all the way around the property,) we found a couple museums, and a couple churches. The church most listed as a place to see was not open to visitors, I'm not sure if it is used at all. 

The other church was open, was a whole lot newer, and wasn't nearly as photogenic.

We chose not to go in any of the museums, as none of them sounded all that interesting. When I look back, we didn't stay in the kremlin all that long, it just wasn't very interesting. Or maybe we were cold, which was definitely on our minds all day long.

After leaving the kremlin we walked to the pedestrian area in the city center. We wanted to warm up again, it was easy to find a cafe in which to do so. After a little while we walked to a restaurant to eat a meal, then walked to the other train station in town to catch a train back to Moscow.

I'm not sure I want to come back to Ryazan itself, but after looking into the history a bit I'm okay with coming back to the area to see the ruins of Old Ryazan.

Since we had to go to training the next afternoon, I convinced the girls to get up early and do something fun before training. Zaryadye Park is the newest park in Moscow, one of the things to see/do in the park is a so-called Ice Cave. I'd heard about it on social media, and booked tickets for as soon as it opened Sunday morning.

We got there on time, and were ready to go at 10. To go inside you have to wear a hard hat, over a hair net. I was frustrated, of course, because none of the photos I'd seen online were with people wearing these things. Argh. In fact, those photos were of people with long, styled hair, wearing flowing dresses, and standing on or touching the ice. It turns out another rule is no touching the ice. Sigh. 

The 'cave' is kept at -5C, which at the time was warmer than it was outside. Since we arrived before anyone else, we had it to ourselves for most of our visit. (You buy tickets for a specific time period, about 20 minutes.)

You enter the 'cave' through an airlock, which keeps the temperature steady and cold in the cave. 

I'm not sure if it is always like we saw it, but wasn't all that icy. I don't know how it is made, but it looked as if the 'ice' was just the frost that builds up on air conditioner and refridgerator coils. The floor was a series of black rubber mats, sigh. 

I wonder if the 'ice' builds up over winter? 

Our entry fee was just 200 rubles, so it was fun to do, and cheap. If I have any friends come to visit, and they're keen to see this, I'm willing to go again, just for kicks.