russia: tver

Another weekend, another trip. Tver was originally on the calendar for another weekend, but due to my laziness we switched the plan.

Getting to Tver was easy, fast, and cheap. We took an express suburban train, called a lastochka. The price worked out to about $8USD, the ride was about 90 minutes.

It was snowing when we arrived, which we weren't ready for mentally. All three of us had been checking the weather all week, and hadn't seen word one about snow. Oh well.

After a bit of hanging out inside, we walked into the center of town. I'd booked us a place to stay, but we couldn't check in until 1400, so we had some time to kill. Right around then we saw a giant mosaic mural on a wall near a school, which was really eye catching.

Also nearby was a Baskin Robbins ice cream store. We figured we hadn't taken an ice cream selfie in a while, and we had the time, so why not.

After ice cream we walked through a park. We saw people cross country skiing on several paths of the park, which looked fun. I've always wanted to try it, but I bet on the first try I'd last only about ten minutes. Anywho.

In the middle of the park is what is called the Veterans Pantheon, a war memorial. There was an 'eternal flame' in the middle of it all, but in this case it wasn't eternal. The spot where the flame would normally be was completely covered by snow.

After going through the park we were back on the closest main road, conveniently only a block or so from our accomodation. Checking in took about 3 minutes, after which we relaxed in our flat for a while.

Upon walking back outside we headed in the direction of our first real sight of the day: a statue of Lenin. This one was a little different from many of the others we've seen in that his name was written near the bottom of the pedestal. 

Most of the time I guess the people who put up the Lenin statue in a town assume you know who he was.

After taking a team photo at the statue we walked up a pedestrian street to our next sight, a goat museum. A goat museum!!!

The museum was small, only 3 rooms in total. It was basically a really really big collection of all things goat. There were some kitchen tools with goat legs as the handles, glass goats, stuffed goats, etc...

There was a giant display case with a fake mountain in the middle, with small goats all around. One of the docents told us we could count all the goats and enter a contest, but we didn't take the time to do so.

We learned a bit about the way goats are part of many cultures around the world. According to this museum, (the docent, anywho,) the people of Tver are nicknamed goats. I've never heard that before, but since I'm not a Russian speaker that wouldn't be random knowledge that simply gets absorbed.

It didn't take us long to see the entire museum, we were in there only 30 minutes or so. After the museum we walked back in the general direction of our flat, picking up sushi and breakfast food along the way.

The next morning we were pretty proud of ourselves for checking out and leaving the flat before 1100. A long walk took us back along the pedestrian street from the day before, over to a main artery through town, and over a bridge.

While crossing the bridge we spent a lot of time looking at the river below. It was covered in snow, and looked frozen, but we also noticed spots that looked rather melted. As we watched, we saw a couple people ice fishing, and three others crossing the river on foot. I have no idea how people had the confidence to do that, since the air temperature was over freezing, and we could see soft and completely melted spots.

Anywho, on the other side of the river we climbed down stairs to the embankment and walked along it for a while. The path was a mix of soft snow, hard pack, and ice, so it wasn't always easy to walk. We weren't the only people out, but the path wasn't exactly crowded.

Eventually we got to a corner of sorts. There was a big city name sign at this corner, perfect for a team photo.

After the team photo we walked back along the embankment. We walked under the bridge and continued along the other side, staying near the river. This side looked the same as the other, in that there were some soft spots, but it also looked frozen. Either way, we stayed on the embankment, not going anywhere near the river/ice.

We eventually came to another bridge, the modern version of the first bridge tying together the two sides of the river. 

The sign said the first bridge was several centuries ago, and had originally been a pontoon bridge.

Back over on the first side of the river we came followed the road to the entrance of the Imperial Palace. The palace was built in the 18^th century as a place for Catherine to Great to rest during her travels from St. Petersburg to Moscow. It is now a beautiful art museum.

We checked our coats and bags, and put on our shoe covers. I hate the sound these shoe covers make, but it wasn't an option. When we went to the ticket counter we read the price list and got our money ready, only to be told that the price was twice as high as we thought.

The ticket lady said 'foreign price.' We took a closer look at the price list, and over on one side of the paper, written in Russian, it did indeed list a price for foreign citizens.

Since we've been through this before we immediately pulled out our passports and registrations to prove that we live in Russia, and didn't want to pay the fee for foreign citizens.

The lady let us pay the 'local' fee, though this left a bad taste in our mouths. I hate when foreigners are charged more to enter a place, and it was even worse that it was only written in Russian. It's so sneaky. We only knew because we looked carefully, how often are other visitors surprised?

The museum turned out to be awesome. We didn't go through the entire thing, but we enjoyed the part we did see quite a bit. Each room was well organized and looked slightly different. There was a docent in every other room or so. A few of the rooms were very very grand, to the point that I whispered 'whoa' while walking in. Beautiful rooms, absolutely beautiful. I should also mention that Angela notcied a marble sculpture titled "Eva." Of course I took a photo with myself.

From the palace we walked back toward the pedestrian street, stopping to pick up food along the way. We also got more ice cream, just because we wanted to, and had the time to do so. From there we hopped a bus to the train station.

Buying tickets to get back to Moscow was easy, as was finding and boarding our train. 90 minutes after departure we were back in Moscow. Here's to another successful weekend.