russia: volgograd

As I said in an earlier post, when Bo planned his visit he planned to come during a time when he would be able to see Moscow, as well as travel to several other Russian cities. I had my May holiday break, so we chose to hop on a train and head south.

We decided to start our trip by visiting Volgograd, which has a centuries long history. It was known as Tsaritsyn from 1589-1925, then known as Stalingrad from 1925-1961. The name was changed to Volgograd in 1961. I've heard and read that some people want to change the name back to Stalingrad, but I have no idea if that will happen.

We left on a Thursday evening, the train to Volgograd was loooong. Very very looong. 21 hours long. Bo and I shared a kupe with 2 Russian men, they were keen to share their buffet and alcohol with Bo. (They offered the vodka to me as well, but I had to say no because of my allergy to alcohol.) It was quite funny for me to watch, and very traditional behaviour.

Surprisingly, this train was late in arriving in Volgograd, 25 minutes late!! When you think about it, that's not a lot of time considering how long the train ride was, but for the Russian train system, that's unacceptable. 

When we arrived we discovered the main train station in the city was partly under renovation, which meant there was dust everywhere, and piles of construction materials. Not fun. Plus I wasn't able to take a nice photo of the front of the station.

The late arrival was hard for me because the landlord of the apartment I had booked called me, asking where I was. Since we had arrived late, and it was a new (to me,) city, I had no idea where we were, I just knew we were making our way to the flat. To get there we used the city tram system, and some walking. 

I'm a sucker for public transport.

We finally got to the flat and checked in, then rested for a bit. I'm not sure why we rested, given that we'd just spent nearly a full day sitting/sleeping on a train. When we went out we found a supermarket to get food, since we had a kitchen to use for a couple nights.

The next morning we made a tentative plan for the day, then started walking. A travel app I use had a few sights listed within walking distance, we aimed for those. Only a couple of them were where the map said they would be, a couple large war memorials.

We learned very quickly that Volgograd is a city FULL of memorials. The city was basically blown to smithereens during WW2, everything was flattened. If I understand correctly, more than a million people died in the battle of Stalingrad, some numbers go up to nearly 1.8 million. It was one of the biggest battles of the entire war, and lasted almost 6 months.

To make a lot of wandering around a shorter story, we ended up walking all the way to Mamaev Kurgan, a hill in the city. On the hill is the giant war memorial complex people recognize from around the world. 

The big statue (called The Motherland Calls,) is 53 meters tall, 83 meters tall if you go all the way to the tip of the sword. She sits on a hill, one of the highest points of the city. When she was built in 1967 she was the largest free standing sculpture in the world; as of 2016 she is the tallest statue of a woman in the world.

There are a number of specific war memorials on the way up the hill, all of them big as well.

There is a reflection pool as well, though it wasn't very clean while we were there; the water was a bit green. 

There were vendors selling magnets and ice cream, I wish they'd been just outside the whole memorial area, not right in the middle.

Under Mamaev Kurgan is a memorial hall. It doesn't stand out as much as the other memorials, but when you step inside the building you're probably going to say 'whoa,' under your breath. It is a large circular room, with an eternal flame in the middle. Two soldiers stand guard near the flame, and there are wreaths and flowers there as well.

Around the edge of the room is a walkway that slants up so you walk out on the second level. On the walls of the room are names of some of those who lost their lives during the battle. It's really really impressive.

There is a chapel on the hill as well, though it isn't nearly as impressive as some Orthodox chapels/churches I've seen. The main focus of this hill is honouring and memorializing the war, and those who were involved.

We left the area by walking down the hill. We kept walking, ending up at the train station.

During the day we'd talked about where we would go during this trip, and thought we had a good plan. Talking to the people at the train station and checking options online made it clear that our plan wasn't going to happen. We ended up leaving the train station without buying tickets, and going to the bus station instead. We bought tickets for the next morning, going to a smaller town.

After getting that sorted, we realized we were hungry, and chose doner sandwiches. Yum.

Just before sunset we arrived at a big statue of Lenin. He is a commanding presence (as always,) with a half circle of large columns behind him.

A couple blocks behind Lenin was our last sight for the day, the ruins of a mill. If I remember correctly, it is the last remaining building standing as it was at the end of the war. Anything else that looked like this mill (not much, the whole city was flattened,) was destroyed and built again.

Right next to the old mill (you don't get to go inside,) is another war museum. We didn't visit, but did appreciate the circular architecture.

The next day we went to Elista, read about that in a different post.

We arrived back in Volgograd from Elista late afternoon two days later. We checked into a hotel, relaxed for a bit, then went for a walk. The purpose of the walk was mostly to find dinner, and see the train station when it was lit up at night.

The city of Volgograd is mostly spread out along the banks of the Volga River, the first days in the city we'd mostly seen one half of the city. This time we decided to walk in the other direction along the river.

We found the front of a theatre, and a smaller statue of Lenin. We found a second theatre with a fountain in front, I liked it better. We also found a university with medallions of Lenin on top of the front facade of the building. Near a major intersection we found a statue that didn't have anything to do with war. (A rarity in this city.) It was dedicated to the founders of the city, back in the 16^th century.

We kept going, finally coming to another large memorial. This one was dedicated to the sailors of Severomorsk. (I don't know who or what that is.)

It's a big statue, which wouldn't be much of a difference in this (or any Russian) city; the difference is because there are huge words spelled out on top of the building behind the statue. It is really impressive.

At that point we felt as if we'd gone far enough in that direction, so we walked back toward the city center. After a supermarket stop for snacks, we found the Alley of Heroes. It was a large pedestrian area, which blocks of stone dedicated to specific groups. The alley sits at the top of a big set of steps, which lead down to the riverbank.

At one level of the steps is a set of gates that I think are supposed to represent gates to the city. If we had been able to see it from the middle of the river, or from the other side, I'm guessing the view would be quite impressive.

In a platz near the alley, at the top of the steps were letters spelling out the name of the city. I love these signs. Bo pretended the first two letters were just for his name ;)

We found dinner nearby, then went back to the hotel to pick up our bags. It didn't take us long to walk to the train station, where we boarded rather quickly and departed on time. Yay for the Russian train system.

I liked Volgograd, and I think there are other cities in the area that I'd be happy to visit. In other words, I might return to this part of Russia.

russia: elista

One of the massive benefits of moving to Russia has been traveling the country, and learning about places I'd never heard of before. When Bo and I planned this trip, we hadn't done much ahead of time other than buying train tickets to our first destination. When we got to Volgograd, I realized we were in a city another friend of mine had visited back in March. I also knew where she'd gone next, and I had no problem with copying that part of her itinerary.

Elista is the capital of the Republic of Kalmykia, and was first founded in the 19^th century. 

While Stalin was in charge, collectivization was a big thing, so many Kalmyks moved to the city, leaving behind their traditional nomadic lifestyles. (Thanks Wikipedia.)

At one point the government thought the locals were collaborating with the Germans, so ALL of them were exiled, and native Russians brought in to take their places. At the same time, the name of the city was changed to Stepnoy, which didn't change until 1957 when the exiles were allowed to return. I'm sure there were issues with who owned what property, etc...

Elista is unique in Russia, in that it is a Buddhist area. This is why I wanted to visit, as Buddhist temples and traditions are very different from Orthodox everything.

Our bus arrived in Elista mid afternoon, presenting us with our first challenge of the trip: we had no accomodations booked ahead of time. After buying bus tickets I'd searched online, and I could find no available rooms in the city. We got off the bus at the bus station (inconveniently located on the very edge of town,) and approached a taxi driver, I asked him if he knew of a hotel with a room available. 

Thankfully, he did.

The hotel turned out to have a junior suite available, which was more expensive than we wanted, but since it was all we knew of, we accepted. If nothing else, at least breakfast was included in the price. We took a few minutes to relax in our rooms, then made our way out of the hotel.

Our first sight was a giant Buddhist temple. It's huge, and serene. There are prayer flags all over one of the massive gates allowing entry onto the grounds. There was no entry fee, which was awesome. There also weren't too many other visitors. 

We circled the temple twice, at ground level and again slightly higher up, turning prayer wheels each time we passed them. It is a beautiful building.

You're not supposed to take photos inside, and you're supposed to keep the noise down too. We followed both of those rules, and were annoyed by the tour group that didn't keep quiet. Argh. There is a giant Buddha on one of the walls of the inside, with prayer mats/pillows in lines in front. We sat quietly inside, just soaking up the atmosphere, more so after the loud tour group left.

We walked further into the city center, our next stop was at a seven layered pagoda. The pagoda was in the middle of a platz, and was surrounded by kids and adults everywhere. I liked the dragons hanging off each corner, and loved watching all the people. There was a sign on one edge of the platz that said I Love Elista. While I wouldn't go that far, I did like the city.

Since Elista isn't a traditional Russian city, and really isn't that old, there aren't many sights in the city. I found something listed on a travel app, a big, gold statue, called the Golden Rider or Golden Horseman. 

We'd seen it while we were in the bus coming into town, it seemed worth going back to get a little closer.

While walking toward the statue we saw several buildings decorated with large mosaic murals on their sides. We walked through part of a park too.

We arrived at the statue just after sunset, so the lighting for photos wasn't very good. Still, it was neat to see, partly because it was different from other statues around Russia. We also saw a statue of a military looking guy, he looked more 'Asian,' than 'Russian.' The people of Elista definitely look more 'Asian,' than 'Russian,' we got a lot of stares while we were there because we are white.

On the way back to our hotel we passed the Buddhist temple again, it was now closed. We were able to look through the gates and see the building slightly lit up for night, but also totally quiet.

When we got back to our hotel we tried to figure out transportation for where we wanted to go next, but it didn't work out. After trying several different options, we ended up booking a shared van back to Volgograd.

Breakfast was included with our room rate, so it was nice to have a decent meal the next morning. That being said, I ordered muesli and it was served warm to me. Hmmm. Warm oatmeal is delicious, but warm milk over muesli, not so much.

We packed our bags and checked out, asking the front desk to hold onto our bags for us. We decided to go back to the Golden Rider statue, since we wanted to see it when the sun made it very shiny. The walk was long, the weather was great, and it was a perfect way to spend a last few hours in town. As much as I loved visiting, I can't imagine coming back to Elista, as there is nothing else to do. Maybe I could come back in another season?

russia: moscow in april

As with February and March, I didn't spend too much weekend time in Moscow during April.

On Easter Sunday I met up with Claire and Caroline, we wanted to get outside and enjoy the city. The weather was amazing that day, which meant the entire city was out walking with us. Not only was the weather great, it was the first great weather in quite a while.

The three of us met at Mayakovskaya station, one of the best stations in the Moscow metro system. On the green line platform, we looked up at the ceiling, there are a number of mini cupolas, each with a different mosaic design. Love it.

We went up to street level, and found sets of adult sized swings on a platz. Too bad all of them were being used at the moment.

We walked to an area called Patriarch's Ponds, a nice area of Moscow. All around the pond are restaurants and cafes, and more expensive apartments. I still haven't figured out what makes these ponds so important, but it was nice to walk around them.

After the ponds we kept walking, stopping for a quick treat from a French bakery along the way. We walked up a street that took us to Pushkin Square, which I think of as Pushkin Platz. Since it was Easter weekend, we saw decorations, including giant eggs. 

There were trees decorated with mini eggs too.

Not long after we got to Pushkin Platz Caroline had to leave, so Claire and I walked down Tverskaya street to Manezhnaya Square. Like everywhere else, it was covered in Easter/spring decorations. It was also covered in people taking photos.

We ended up leaving because we were annoyed with people trying to take photos everywhere, and went to dinner at a Korean restaurant. Yum.

The next day Claire was sick, so I met up with Caroline at a metro station and we walked to Red Square. 

We joined the queue for the Lenin mausoleum. Even though we got there before the time it opened there was a queue, nearly all of Chinese tourists.

Once the mausoleum opened, the queue started moving, and moved quickly. When I visited the mausoleum in 2003 I remember you weren't allowed to bring anything in with you. You're now allowed to bring your purse, but you're still not allowed to take photos. There are soldiers stationed approximately every 2 meters, you're not going to be able to sneak photos.

As we walked through, one of the soldiers shushed a group of people who were speaking. 

It is a place where total silence is demanded. It's a dark room, except for the body, which is lit up. Intense. I wonder how long they'll keep him there. I read somewhere that he is re-embalmed every 18 months or so, and the scientists in charge of him check on him every 2-3 days.

After exiting the mausoleum we looked at all the memorials along the walls of the Kremlin. Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space is among the people buried there.

We walked out the other side of Red Square to see a 'new' park, Zaryadye Park. There isn't a lot of green space exactly, but it is a park. 

There is also a walkway that goes out over the river, it is the defining part of the park. Nice view over the river and back toward the Kremlin.

After enjoying the views for a while, we started walking again, our next stop was at a candy store. I have a hard time saying no in this kind of store, ooops. I ended up buying gummies with chili spice, gummy strawberries, and ginger infused chocolate. (The chocolate turned out to be the spiciest.)

We meandered along a bunch of streets, going whicheva way struck our fancy. We saw the so called Clean Ponds, which didn't look so great at that time of year. 

April isn't a pretty month in Moscow, it's the end of winter more than spring.

We stopped at a place that called itself a french bakery, though the items for sale didn't seem terribly French. Oh well, it was nice to try a new place. Our next 'sight' was just an architecturally interesting building, called the Egg House. It really does look like a giant egg. I think it's an apartment building, but I don't know.

We went to the nearest metro station, and made our way out to a part of town called VDNKh. I'm pretty sure I've described it previously, or at least tried to do so. Like other parts of the city, it was under massive renovation, hopefully to be done in time before the World Cup football tournament starts. We walked all the way through the area, the entire middle looked like the apocolypse had just happened. Construction mess everywhere.

Even though April isn't a pretty month here, everything got a little better day by day as the month went on. May is bound to be gorgeous!!

russia: nizhny novgorod and bor

The first time I heard of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, was in August of 2011. I signed a contract to work for a school that has branches in Kyiv, Ukraine, Moscow, Russia, and Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. (At the time there was also a branch in St Petersburg, but that has since closed.) I always wondered why Nizhny Novgorod has a branch of the school, I have never gotten an answer from anyone, and after this weekend, I was even more uncertain.

We chose to visit Nizhny Novgorod for two reasons: one, because our school has a branch there, and two, it was selected as one of the World Cup host cities.

Nizhny Novgorod (usually shortened to Nizhny,) was founded in 1221, it isn't a new city. It was founded by the same people who founded many other cities in early Russia, one of the princes of Vladimir. From 1932 to 1990 it was known as Gorky, because the famous writer Maxim Gorky was born there. For a time Nizhny was an important industrial center of Russia, it was even called the Detroit of Russia. During the years it was known as Gorky it was a closed city, (that is, closed to foreigners,) to make sure no one could access the Soviet military research and production facilities.

Claire and I met as we usually do, on a metro platform, then went to find the correct train. The ride to Nizhny was only five hours or so, we arrived at 0430. Not a terribly convenient time to arrive anywhere, we found seats in the train station and just hung out for a couple hours. Despite having previously been so important to the country, this was another city with a less than impressive train station. I was starting to give up on finding/seeing the type of grand stations I loved so much in Ukraine.

When it got light enough, we started walking. First impressions of the city were not great, nothing looked very new, or very clean. Google maps didn't help, as it had us climb what we called the icy hill of death to get to our hotel. Obviously, it wasn't really an icy hill of death, but it certainly felt that way. There was a (not so) lovely mixture of snow/ice/slush all over the city, which is what happens at the end of winter in every part of the country. Nothing is clean, and all the melting just reveals more dirt and rubbish.

We also had to cross a bridge over a river, we somehow managed to avoid being blown off the bridge by the crazy cold wind. 

Before our trip someone told me the city was windy, but I'd forgotten; as soon as we felt the wind on the bridge, I remembered. Being built on a hill, with a river at the bottom pretty much guaranteed awful wind the whole time.

We arrived at our hotel and were initially told our room was not ready. That was fine with us, we sat on the couches for a moment to get ourselves sorted and leave our packs at the hotel during the day. Magically, our room was ready about five minutes later. We put all our stuff in the room, warmed up for a bit, then started walking.

Our first sight of the day was closer to the edge of town, a monastery. It took us a while to walk there, partly because we kept stopping to take photos. (Totally typical for me wheneva I travel.) The Pechersky Ascension monastery is old, having been founded in the 14^th century. It's fairly big, surrounded by white walls.

We walked in the main gate and found a small garden off to the side. There were a bunch of busts of previous leaders stood. Interesting to see the differences in styles of how they were 'dressed.'

The biggest church appeared to be closed, but we took plenty of photos of the exterior. I thought the decoration around the windows looked like rainbows, which is not something I expected. We were able to go in a smaller church, which had lovely frescoes all over. We had to borrow wraparound skirts, as both of us were wearing pants. (I've never figured out why a skirt on top of pants is so important for some churches/monasteries, but others don't care as long as you're not showing too much skin. They all expect women to cover their heads, whether with a hat, or a scarf.)

After exploring everything we could, we left the property and climbed back up the hill. While walking in the general direction of the city center we noticed a cable car that went across the river, and made a note to come back the next day.

There was a mosque nearby, and while the gates weren't open, we did admire it from the outside.

Also while walking Claire got in touch with one of the teachers of the school branch in Nizhny, we arranged to meet up for dinner. Figuring out where to meet was a challenge, as it turned out this teacher didn't know the city at all, despite having lived there for nearly eight months by that point.

We ended up meeting on Gorky Square. At one end of the square there is a statue of Gorky, at the other end of the square is a sign that says I love Nizhny Novgorod. We didn't really feel that way, but we took a photo anywho.

We ended up having dinner at a burger place, and were pleasantly surprised to find prices about half of what we'd normally pay in Moscow. Good food, and it was fun to find out what was going on in the school in Nizhny.

The next morning we took our sweet time getting moving. We left the hotel right around noon, they stored our bags for the day. 

We first walked to the cable car we'd seen the day before, and bought a ticket for a ride over the river. From reading the ticket prices, I figured out that some people use the cable car as a form of public transport. For us, a single ride was 100 rubles, it took 15 minutes to cross the river. While in our little car, we liked looking out over the area, taking note of the people ice fishing on the river.

The arrival area on the other side of the river wasn't any great shakes. (Then again, we weren't impressed so far with Nizhny, either.) The name of the town on the other side of the river was Bor, which didn't inspire confidence in the location.

We were about to leave when we noticed the 'shop of wonders.' As we got close, we could see that it sold souvenirs of the town of Bor. They even had coffee mugs!!! After seeing the magnets and mugs we figured we should wander around at least a little, just to be able to say we'd seen the city.

After walking about 3 minutes we found the city center. There was a statue of Lenin, and a couple minutes past that we found the WW2 memorial. Our visit took place about a week after the mall fire in a town in Siberia, and the whole country was still morning, so there were fresh flowers and stuffed animals laid on the WW2 memorial.

In this general area we noticed that some of the fences had the town name as part of the fence. It might be the worst name ever, but we loved the fences.

Walking down a random street showed us the water/slush/ice/snow had affected Bor just as badly. Some cars plowing through threw up what I'd almost call walls of water.

About 30 minutes later we walked back to the cable car, bought another 100 ruble ticket and crossed back over the river. From there we walked to the main sight of Nizhny Novgorod, the kremlin. Entry into the kremlin was free, yahoo!!

We walked through the gate, and immediately realized that the interior of the kremlin wasn't very exciting. There were big, Soviet style government buildings inside, which took away from the feeling of 'old kremlin.'

The walls of the kremlin were red brick, and went all the way around, even going down the hill. Either the walls have been renovated or maintained well, but they still looked good to us. The walls ended up being the only part of the kremlin that we liked.

Inside the kremlin we found a couple churches, one of them just a small chapel. We also found a WW2 memorial, complete with eternal flame and more stuffed animals as we saw in Bor.

We walked down the switchback streets (inside the kremlin,) exiting at the bottom of the hill. We continued following the streets, getting ourselves all the way to the embankment on the river. 

It seemed to be under renovation, and given how the entire city appeared to us at that point, we didn't have a lot of faith that everything would be completed in time to host football games.

Walking along the river was cold and windy, not so fun. We basically followed the walls of the kremlin, until we got to another corner. (Along the way we passed a statue of Peter 1^st, one of the great tsars of Russian history.) There was a giant set of stairs (called the Chkalov steps,) parallel to this side of the kremlin, I wanted to climb all the way up.

We didn't climb in one straight shot, as there were a lot of steps, and neither of us was in shape to do such a thing. At the top of the steps was a Russia2018 sign, just like the one I'd seen in Ekaterinburg. There was also a statue of Chkalov, for whom the steps were named. He was an aircraft test pilot, and an official Hero of the Soviet Union.

At that point we felt like were done exploring Nizhny, there wasn't anything left that we wanted to see. (Not only that, but the weather wasn't great, and we thought the city was pretty disappointing overall.) We made our way to a cafe and killed time until dinner by filling up on dessert.

We had another good, cheap dinner, again with the teacher. After eating, we went back to our hotel to pick up our bag, then rode the metro to the train station. The metro station at which we started our journey was decorated quite nicely, the train station metro wasn't nearly as nice.

The train ride back to Moscow was easy, departing and arriving on time.

I have zero desire to repeat this trip, ever.

russia: march in Moscow

I spent about as much time in Moscow in March as I did in February.

The only real exploratory thing I did was continue my mission to see every metro station. There are over 240, so seeing them all is no small feat. 

I had seen a photo of one of the stations on line 8, the yellow line on the eastern side of the city. (There is also a line 8a, on the southwest side of the city. Someone once told me they'll eventually be connected, but I have no idea if this is true; if it is, I imagine that will be years down the road.)

This particular photo was pretty awesome, I wanted to see if it looked that way in real life. It turns out, it does. The name of the station is a mouthful (to non native Russian speakers,) so it took some practicing for me to say it correctly. Aviamotornaya.

The station looks quite modern to me, but Wikipedia tells me it first opened at the very end of 1979. I imagine the architecture was quite a shock back then. The same Wikipedia entry also tells me the story of an escalator accident in the station in 1982 that killed at least 8 people. I'm surprised that sort of information is available online!

Another station of a little note on the east side yellow line is a combination station, Rimskaya and Ploshchad Illyad. The reason this one is a little noteworthy is because there is a fountain between the two stations. That being said, the fountain is rather lame.

 During March I also saw online that the yellow line on the southwest side of Moscow was opening a few new stations. One day after school I stopped at all of those. I definitely wasn't the only one there taking photos, social media is everything in Moscow.

 Toward the end of the month I had an adventure on the metro I could've done without. As I was getting off the train one day, I dropped my kindle down onto the tracks. (That whole "mind the gap" announcement made in the tube in London popped into my head.) I ended up having to come back the next day to get the Kindle; to do so they guided me into the super secret office in the station. I'm grateful for the help of these employees!!