russia: yelets

Yelets is listed in the Lonely Planet Russia guidebook. That was pretty much the reason it ended up on our list of places to visit this year. We hadn't been there, and it was within reasonable traveling distance for a weekend trip, so why not? When I booked our train tickets, I made a mistake, making it so that we only had one day to explore the town. Whoops.

Yelets is almost 400 kilometers south of Moscow, now in Lipetsk oblast, and has a population of a bit over 100,000 people. It was first mentioned in historical documents in the 12^th century, when it was a fort for the princes of Ryazan.

Since Yelets is south of Moscow, and was near the edge of Russian lands, there is a lot of war in the history of the area. The Turks, the Mongols, and more had interests in the land. During WW2 the Germans captured the area for 6 days, in December of 1941.

No one we know had been there previously, even the Russians we work with had never heard of the place. (Russia is a HUGE country, this wasn't that surprising.)

Our train arrived on time in Yelets, at 0430. This is not the world's greatest time to arrive anywhere, but at least we were able to hang out in the train station for a few hours. 

I kept up my habit of finding a coffee machine and getting hot chocolate, so good and so cheap.

The train station itself wasn't big, but was nice. There were paintings along the walls of the main waiting room, and a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling. Plus, it was a good temperature, which is surprisingly important when you're just waiting and waiting.

Around 0830 we started walking. Unlike many Russian towns, the train station in Yelets does not sit at the end of a street leading to the center of town. 

We had to walk to the end of the tracks, cross over and walk a driveway of sorts to get to a street. The street took us under a bridge, and didn't have a good pavement on the side on which to walk.

Our first stop was a war memorial for the Soviet fight in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989. The memorial included tanks, and a mention of military intelligence. Oddly enough, the military intelligence part also looked like batman.

From there we walked to a main street that took us to a couple bridges going over the Bystraya Sosna River. 

The river isn't big, one of the bridges is pedestrian, the other is vehicular. At the end of the pedestrian bridge is a tank memorial, for the 150^th tank brigade in WW2. Nothing fancy, just a tank with a sign in the shape of a star.

The pedestrian bridge was lined with locks of love. As always, I wonder how many of these couples are still together, and how long ago the locks were placed on the bridge. I loved the bridge, or maybe just the geometric lines of the engineering.

On the other side of the bridge we found Victory Square. It was a WW2 memorial. There were plinths of specific people with 3D profiles looking in different directions. It wasn't a big area, but it was really respectful, and easily visible to every person who drives by.

We kept going, heading for a museum. We found the museum of lace, but we couldn't find an entry door. I read the listing online, and the sign on the gate, and found a phone number. It turns out the museum is actually a private home, or something like that, and the owner shows people around his collection when you get ahold of him. 

I sent a text to the number, but never got a response. Too bad, because the museum would've fit really well on our quirky museums list.

Just across the street was an abandoned church. At least it looked abandoned, because what we could see of it above ground was falling down. We found a door, and were able to go in. We already had our headscarves on, we had to put on wraparound skirts as well.

In what I think was the basement was a small room with an iconostasis, there was a celebration/ceremony taking place. 

Neat to see, but since we didn't understand what was being said, it wasn't super interesting. We watched for a couple minutes, then left.

Oddly enough, at the back side of this church was a bell tower that looked brand new, at least the paint job looked new. I wonder if there is a plan to eventually rebuild the full church?

A couple blocks up the street from this church was Lenin Platz. Not surprisingly, there was a statue of the man on one side of the platz, we took our standard team picture. I liked the patterning of the bricks on the square, it was at the end of a pedestrian street. 

Since it was only a little over 10am, the square was really quiet.

We found a tiny cafe/store really close by, we stopped in to try homemade donuts. Heated up and with powdered sugar on top, yum. Were any of us hungry, not at all. But they were still good and totally worth it.

We walked down the two blocks of the pedestrian street and turned right. A couple blocks away we could see the biggest church in town, Ascension Cathedral. It's really big, and perched on the side of the river, we had first seen it when we crossed the bridge.

The church was designed by the same guy who designed the kremlin in Moscow, and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, or so I'm told by my guidebook. It is yellow, with blue domes on top, and some fancy gates on the end of the property.

We entered and I was impressed from the very beginning. I am probably not right, but it seemed like there were two sections, one older and one newer. We entered into the newer section, which also had a very high ceiling and great frescoes painted everywhere. 

The older section was much the same, in that it also had beautiful frescoes and a high ceiling. The iconostasis was really fancy, and there were icons all over. We took our time walking through and exploring the church, it was really nice.

Across the street from the church was a stelae with a gold double headed eagle on top. The stelae is one you can find in each official city of military glory in Russia. Very nice.

We walked back to the pedestrian street, and back to Lenin Platz. On one side was a restaurant called tomato. 

We weren't super hungry, but we did want to kill some time. The pizza was okay, plenty big and plenty cheap.

We walked out after another hour and some, and headed to a nearby park. We saw a memorial to the civil service workers of the city, not something very common. We went up the street to another church, the Grand Ducal church of somebody and Alexander Nevsky. It was small, but the interior was lovely. The stained glass was a mix of coloured glass and paint on the clear glass. Really nice.

We bought magnets from a little press stand, then went down the street to a tall water tower.

I wonder if it is still used, or is just there because it looks nice. Further down the street was another church, this one also part new and part abandoned. Surprisingly, the abandoned part wasn't blocked off at all. There were steps going up into the bell tower, not blocked off. I wanted to go up, and I'm a risk taker for these things, but the tower did not look stable, so I didn't.

The interior of the 'new' part of the church was small, with a low ceiling. There must be another section that is bigger, or at least has higher ceilings. A fair number of Orthodox churches I've visited seem to have two 'sanctuaries,' one in the basement, and the bigger one on a second floor.

Then we started a long walk. It was supposed to be approximately 45 minutes, but with our normal photo taking stops along the way it was over an hour. We stopped at a park with an eternal flame memorial, there were also statues for other soldiers in the history of the town. There was also an 'alley' of some kind, with Lenin at the end.

The rest of our walk eventually brought us to an old plane, a Mig-25, at the edge of town. It was set up in the middle of two roads, so traffic was pretty steady. It was neat to see, I was really hoping we would be able to go inside, but that wasn't possible. At the other end of the display area was a city sign for Yelets, we took another of our standard team photos.

We tried to take a bus back into the city center, but weren't able to figure out where to catch the bus. The sun started to come out, so the walk back into town was quite nice. We saw a fire station, with a really picturesque observation tower. The guidebook says a nice firefighter might let you up the tower, but I didn't see an open door or anyone around, so that didn't happen. Oh well.

We walked back to the water tower, finding a statue of Ivan Bunin nearby. We also found a cafe, very cute. Our drinks were good, and we were enjoying our time until a nearby group pulled out a guitar and starting playing/singing. Argh.

We went back to the restaurant called Tomato, as we needed to kill more time before going back to the train station. Our food was good, but we were totally put off by the screaming and running kids all over the place. It was loud, we couldn't think, my parents never would've let me behave that way. (Not that I would've thought to do so in the first place.)

We chose to walk over the vehicular bridge to cross the river, though I regretted my decision when I stepped in a hole in the pavement on the side. Thankfully I stepped straight down, and straight back out, I didn't twist or break anything. Still, I was a bit freaked out and was very careful about every other step to get to the other side of the bridge.

The rest of the walk to the train station was uneventful, as was our wait in the train station. At one point a security guard asked to see our tickets, he was making sure we weren't using the station as a free hotel.

We boarded our return train just after midnight, and arrived back in Moscow just before 0800 on Sunday. Another lovely day/weekend trip :)

russia: moscow: dom Burganova

Walking Wednesday didn't take me very far this week. I chose to go to Dom Burganova, or Burganov's house, which is just a few blocks down the street from where I work.

Alexander Burganov was born in 1935, in Baku, Azerbaijan. He is still living, and still creating. He is a People's Artist of Russia, and a USSR State Prize laureate. In 2014 he signed a letter indicating his support of the Russian invasion of Crimea.

This museum is a series of rooms, outdoor platzes, and open areas filled with his work. Other works of his are displayed all over the city, and all over the world.

I paid my entrance fee of 200 rubles, and a fee to use my camera. I could've used just my phone for free, but I wanted to use my camera. I have no idea why there is a fee for one, and not the other, but oh well. The total together wasn't huge, so I didn't care.

The entrance into the exhibition area is lined with sculptures. Then I got to a platz, also filled with sculptures. Then I looked up, and saw more sculptures all over the balconies of a building, I could climb up to the first couple levels.

Then I went in a building, finding more sculptures in a variety of rooms. Outside the back of that building was another small platz with more sculptures.

Eventually I circled around to the first platz, and took a closer look at all the sculptures, going through the whole thing again. I loved it.

I also got to meet Mr. Burganov, which was pretty cool. His son (?) told him I speak Russian, (saying it in Russian of course,) and I had to speak up and say no, just a little. Hahaha. I've gotten pretty good at understanding when people ask my name, where I'm from, and why I'm in Moscow. My conversation skills die after that.

This is definitely one of the cooler museums in the city.

russia: moscow but not the way we planned

When we planned our year of traveling, we left a few weekends for exploring Moscow. This weekend we planned to see a couple major sights in the city, but it didn't turn out the way we expected.

Claire, Angela, and I met up at a metro station then made our way up to ground level. 

Our first planned sight was St Basil's Cathedral. This might be the most recognized sight in the entire city, and of the city around the world. Legend says the man who designed it was later blinded so he could never create anything so amazing again. This probably isn't true, since he is credited with other architectural work around the country.

We got to the edge of Red Square to discover it was completely blocked off, and empty. We weren't the only people surprised by the closing, argh. We had no way of figuring out why it was closed, or when it might open again.

Hoping that St Basil's might be open by another entry, we made our way through GUM, the former state department store. Unfortunately, as we walked out the other side, we found Red Square blocked off on that side as well. The other side of St Basil's was also fenced off. None of us know enough Russian to ask why it was all closed, or when it might open again.

Even though we wanted to be on the square and in the church, we took advantage of the empty square to take a couple photos, since it is quite rare that it is totally empty.

To get back to where we wanted to go, we went through the mall again, and decided to take part in an old Russian tradition: eating ice cream. We're pretty sure the cones had been scooped out while a while ago, but the taste wasn't too bad. It was another example of the Russian disregard for queues, we saw people coming to the window of the ice cream stall from several different directions.

After our ice cream we tried to get to our next destination, but were foiled again. The entrance to the state history museum is just inside the gates to Red Square, and they were closed. Argh.

After some discussion, we decided to walk to Lubyanka Square. The name Lubyanka struck fear into the hearts of Soviets for decades, because the building was the home of the NKVD/KBG, and now the FSB. All were secret police organizations, with no public transparency. There was a lot of fear that if your loved one disappeared, they had been taken to the basement of Lubyanka, which meant you weren't going to see them again.

In the middle of a small park on one side of the square is a large stone. This stone came from the Solevetsky Islands, it is a memorial to those who died in the Gulag system; the first such camp was in the Solevetsky Islands. It's a small memorial, put there in the 90s. (Side note, there is another such memorial in St Petersburg, which is a lot closer to the islands.)

While we were taking our photos Claire was google-ing and wikipedia-ing, and found out that one of the world's worst serial killers used to live in a building on this square. When you start clicking on links you never know what you'll find!

Darya Saltykova was responsible for the death of more than 70 people! This is definitely not widely known Russian history, for obvious reasons.

Since our original plans for the day had already completely changed, we came up with something new to do for the next few hours: seeing more of the city's metro system. I convinced the girls to ride the southern half of the dark green line, getting off at each stop just to see what the station looked like.

The most interesting station turned out to be the very last station, Alma Atinskaya. The station is pretty new, it was opened in 2012. 

The original name of the station was Brateyevo, the neighborhood in which it is located. The name was changed for reasons of international relations: Kazakstan had renamed one of it's stations in the old capital of Almaty, to Moskva, to honour relations between the two countries. Russia decided to do the same.

I liked the decoration of the station, just because it was different from other stations. The sculptures spaced along the station made me think of giant ice scrapers, like those used to scrape off the windscreen of a car.

From there, we made our way back into the city center and found a new (to us,) restaurant to try, a place with Korean BBQ. Yum.

Another successful day with friends, yahoo!!

russia: gagarin

12 April 1961 is a date every Russian learns while growing up. This is the day the Soviets won the human space race, when Yuri Gagarin became the first person ever to orbit the planet in space.

Gagarin was born in 1934 in the village of Klushino, in Smolensk oblast; his parents worked on a collective farm. Yuri was the 3^rd of four children, he had an older brother and sister, as well as a younger brother. During WW2 the Nazis took over his house, but they 'let' the family build a mud hut in the backyard; the family lived in this shack for almost two years. After the war, the family moved to the nearby city of Gzhatsk, which is where Yuri received his secondary eduation.

Back in those days, standard education was a bit different. At age 16 Gagarin became an apprentice at a steel plant in Moscow, where he also took classes for the 7^th grade in the evening. He continued working as well as learning for years, eventually graduating from a technical school in 1955. After this he was drafted into the Soviet Army. He went to piloting school in Orenburg, and became an officer in the Soviet Air Force in 1957.

To make a long story short, Gagarin spent the next 4 years working, training, and learning in different schools and programs. 12 April 1961 was the day he became the first person to orbit the planet in space. He was sent into space on a Vostok rocket, and spent around 90 minutes orbiting the earth once.
It goes without saying that he was celebrated when he came back to Earth. The videos of the reactions of Soviets celebrating are pretty intense. There will never be another accomplishment like that one, partly because there is a limit to frontiers that have not yet been explored.

Over the following years he met Soviet and foreign leaders, but also continued working in the Soviet space program. Sadly, he never went back into space, as the government was loath to risk losing such a hero. He received a lot of awards, statues of him were erected, and things named after him.

Gagarin died in 1968, when a jet he was test piloting crashed. After this time, the city of Gzhatsk changed its name to Gagarin. The family home was given to the city/state by his family, it is now a museum.

We decided to do a day trip to Gagarin, after discovering it was less than two hours away by train. We arrived around 0900 Saturday morning, and went straight into the train station. It isn't terribly big, but celebrates the one person/reason the town gets any visitors. There were paintings on each wall of Gagarin or space in general.

We walked up the street named after him, eventually getting to a monument to him in the middle of a big traffic circle. Obviously, we took photos of and with him.

On another side of the traffic circle there was a pink church, we went in. The interior of the church wasn't at all exciting. Entering and exiting wasn't much fun either, because of the group of women begging very aggressively. They definitely weren't part of the church, and we got the impression that the people of the church weren't happy the women were there.

We saw a sign pointing to a museum, and thought we were following it by walking up the street. We didn't find what we were looking for, and thought the sign was wrong. Since I'm writing this after the day was finished, I know the museum we thought the sign referred to was the wrong museum.
After going up the street a bit and not seeing what we were looking for, we turned around, and walked back to the traffic circle. We took a different street from there, Lenin street. After seeing a simple memorial to soldiers and a monument to Peter the Great, we crossed a bridge and finally saw the museum we had wanted to visit.

The Joint Memorial Museum has that name because the building in Gagarin is a museum in tandem with the home in which he grew up in Klushino. The museum in Gagarin exists there only because the man lived in Gagarin for a while, the city itself has no other link to space. As far as we could tell, the city doesn't have anything else of note.

The entry fee to the museum was 150 rubles for each of us, and there was a photo fee of 100 rubles. For our group of three we only had to pay one photo fee, yahoo!! We hung up our coats and snack bags, put on foot covers, and started to explore.

There were machines used in the space program, I'm not exactly sure what they were. There was also a training capsule in which Gagarin spent several days, I'm guessing he was 'trained' to deal with the conditions of space. How to eat, how to sit, etc... (At least we think that's what this thing was. It could've been a place he spent time after returning to Earth for all I know.) On this first floor there were a couple cardboard cutouts of astronauts with places for visitors to put their faces and have photos taken. Cute.

We took the stairs up to the third floor, (the second floor was only for staff,) to see more. The whole room was designed really well, the aesthetics of everything were lovely. Someone designed a gorgeous exhibition, even though the items themselves weren't anything spectacular.

There were photos of Gagarin in different parts of his life, reproductions of his space suit and military uniforms. There were reproductions of various parts of his space flight, as well we some history of the space program. There were photos of the dogs sent into space before his flight, and a giant globe.

After leaving the museum we followed Lenin street a bit further, hoping we'd find a statue of Lenin. Gagarin seems to be one of the few cities in Russia that doesn't have a statue of the man, at least not one that we found. We didn't find the man, but we did find a school Gagarin attended for a while.

We saw the onion domes of a church, I couldn't resist peeking inside. We could see two churches right next to each other, one of them abandoned/under renovation. The open church wasn't very exciting inside, with just a small iconostasis and very little else. 
As we walked in, we noticed a baptism/christening taking place. I wonder if the other building will ever be finished, and what the interior of that church is like.

We went back over the river, noting the name, Gzhat. Obviously, the city was originally named after the river. It's a small river, at least what we could see of it. We followed the river for a couple blocks, then wound our way through a residential area back to Gagarin street.

A bit further up the street we found the museum the street sign referred to. This was the home in which the family lived when they first moved to the city, and we got to see the car Gagarin was given as a prize for his accomplishment. Go to space, get this car.

Entry into the family house was 70 rubles each, plus another photo fee. The house was really small, it was hard to imagine 6 people living in there. The house had been divided into a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a living room, none of them big. 
The bedrooms were tiny, even if just one person was sleeping in each of them. Let's just say privacy wasn't a thing in that house. At all.

After the house we decided we were done exploring Gagarin. There really wasn't anything left to see. We found a cute cafe for lunch, then found another cute cafe for dessert. Yours truly might've had two pieces of cake, yum.

After killing time in both places, we walked through a park with another war memorial on our way back to the train station. There was a layer of snow throughout the park, but it was at the dirty stage where it wasn't pretty, and the mud underneath wasn't any better.

We got back to the train station and sat outside on a bench for a while, enjoying the weather. When it got cold we went inside for the last hour of waiting. During this waiting we realized that at least one person was spending their time watching us, and not hiding it. Creepy. 

The train arrived at the station on time, departed on time, and we arrived back in Moscow on time. Yay for day trips!

russia: moscow: state tretyakov gallery

I've lived in Moscow for over a year and a half, but the list of museums and other places to visit never seems to get any shorter. To figure out where to go each Wednesday afternoon I've been using a combination of my Moscow and Russia guidebooks, social media, and Wikitravel. At times I feel like I can never leave Moscow, because there is still so much to be seen.

This particular Wednesday afternoon I decided to go to the State Tretyakov Gallery. According to Wikipedia, the collection was started in 1856 when a Russian merchant decided to collect works from Russian contemporary artists, thinking of a future museum of art.

In 1867 Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov started the Moscow City Gallery, which displayed mostly Russian artists but also had a few international artists for viewing. In 1892 he presented his collection of over 2000 pieces of art to the Russian nation. I don't know who from the nation accepted the pieces.

The original collection was housed in a mansion bought by the Tretyakov family in 1851. As more and more art was included in the collection, it began to take over the residential part of the house. (Maybe they could've done an episode of Hoarders back in the day?) Additions to the building were made in several years to accomodate all the art.

The building in which the current gallery is hosted was finished in 1902-1904, with the front facade designed by Viktor Vasnetsov. Over the years other buildings have been used for offices and administration of the museum.

Electricity was added in 1929, something I've never thought about when visiting an old museum. How did people visit before electricity? Putting that many candles around priceless work (and your home,) sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

As museums do, the Tretyakov Gallery grew, and over the years took over the buildings nearby, including a church. (I didn't visit the church during this visit, I'm debating whether it is worth going back to see it and other areas I missed.) Wikipedia tells me the gallery now has more than 130,000 pieces.

My entry fee was 500 rubles, which I thought was more than reasonable. I checked my coat and backpack, and went about finding the entrance to the exhibits. Since I'm writing this after I left, I'm pretty sure there are at least two entrances to the exhibits, neither one of them right or wrong. Both of them have ticket checkers just after you walk through the entrance.

I wandered through the rooms for about 90 minutes, trying to make sure I went through every room. I'm pretty sure I failed in that aspect, but oh well. Not surprisingly, some of the pieces caught my eye more than others. Some are huge, some are quite small. A few sculptures were sprinkled around, but great majority of the displays were of paintings.

One thing I really enjoyed was the listing of names and materials used being in both Russian and English. I feel like that isn't as common as I want it to be. (And yes, I realize how self centered it is for me to want explanations in Russian museums to be in English.)

When I left the museum, I was full of art for the day. Even so, I definitely missed a few rooms, so it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for me to go back.

russia: novosibirsk

Getting from Tomsk to Novosibirsk didn't take long. The trip was just 4.5 hours. The train station in Novosibirsk is one of the biggest in the city, at least from the outside. There were a bunch of rooms inside, but it didn't feel very grand until I saw it from the outside.

Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia, after Moscow and St Petersburg, with more than a million and a half people. It was founded in 1893, as Novonikolayevsk, and almost immediately grew into a big transport, commercial, and industrial hub. (So says Wikipedia.) The original city name was for St Nicholas and the reigning tsar Nikolas II.

Novonikolayevsk became Novosibirsk in 1926, under Stalin.

Novosibirsk is one of several Russian cities with a metro system, I was thrilled. There are 5 stops on one line, 8 stops on the other. I knew straightaway that I wanted to ride the full length of at least one of the lines, just because it was there. Each ride was only 22 rubles, or about 30 cents USD.

There hadn't been a lot available when I booked my room in Novosibirsk, so I splurged a bit. My room was a 'normal' hotel room, which felt rather extravagant compared to the places I had been staying. A proper bed, my own bathroom, a tv, etc... Total luxury ;)

The only downside was the location. It wasn't close to much of anything, but like I said, Novosibirsk has public transit.

Not that I rode any of the public transit while getting around the city, except to see it as a sight. I love walking if at all possible, I just get to see so much more. Getting into the city center involved walking along tram tracks, as I couldn't find a sidewalk. Ooops.

My first official sight was a quirky monument: it honoured the first traffic light in the city. I'm not sure why it was made, but it was fun to see.

The monument was just a couple blocks from my second sight: the Alexander Nevsky cathedral. I don't know if I'm making things up, but it seems like a lot of Nevsky cathedrals have brick exteriors. I'm not a huge fan of brick, I don't know why. The interior of the church was lovely. High ceilings with a painted rotunda, plenty of frescoes, etc...

At this point I was on a main street of the city. More walking took me past a statue of Tsar Alexander III. Apparently Siberia is still a fan of the guy. He wasn't far from a WW2 memorial obelisk in the parkway in the middle of the street.

I wound through a couple streets until I got to an art museum, named for Roerich. Roerich was raised in St Petersburg, where he got degrees in art and law. Much of his legacy comes from his extensive travels, most often with his family.

The museum was quite big, with all of the exhibits on the second floor. Some of the works on display were copies, I don't know where the originals were, or if they still exist. Roerich did a lot of traveling, so a couple sections were devoted entirely to paintings from his central and high asian trips. Beautiful landscapes that made me want to see more of those areas.

From there I walked up the main street until I got to a huge statue of Lenin. I took my photo from the front, on the other side were kids skateboarding and generally hanging out. I was pretty cold at that point, otherwise I would've stayed and watched them for a while.

I'd found an Indian place listed online for dinner, but when I got there the doors were closed. The sign on the doors said it should be open, but it wasn't so that's that. I turned around and was happy I'd noticed another branch of the Asian place I'd visited in Tomsk while walking. The food was just as good, and I was just as full when I walked out.

Walking home wasn't fun, as it was dark and cold, but I got there and slept soundly.

It turned out that not only was my room feeling pretty fabulous, the price included breakfast delivered to my room. It wasn't amazing, but I couldn't remember the last time I'd had breakfast in bed, so I enjoyed it anywho. Mainly I wished the croissant hadn't been drowned in chocolate sauce.

Eventually I packed up and checked out, taking my pack with me. My first sight was at the furthest distance I'd walked yesterday, the Church of the Intercession. 

It didn't look all that amazing from the outside, but I loved the inside. Tall ceilings with frescoes everywhere, lots of candles, etc... There were people all over praying, I enjoyed the atmosphere for a few minutes. There were lot of windows letting in plenty of natural light, which always sucks me in.

At that point I had one more sight to see, and I was running later than I wanted to be. I hopped on the metro taking it to Karl Marx square. Nice clean trains and stations, as expected.

I walked from the station to Heroes of the Revolution Park, which was basically a park of giant war memorials. 

I found soldiers guarding an eternal flame, an old military plane, plaques with names, a tank or two, etc... And kids playing with their parents, of course.

Across the street from the park I saw another Lenin statue. This one was painted gold, I think he was in front of a government building. Ugly, but I still took the photo.

Instead of taking public transport to the airport, I used an app to call a taxi. It was a lot faster, and only $5USD, so I was thrilled. The flight back to Moscow had food, which made it feel like a luxury flight to me. Plus it departed and landed on time :)

Novosibirsk is like the other cities I visited during this trip, I'm not sure I need to see them again, but maybe there is something else to be seen in summer? Or fall?