Hello again, all! I apologize for the tardiness of this email but I have encountered several issues that I will discuss later in this post. Also, I apologize for the length that this post is, but since my break was awesome, I feel the need to recount it to all of you. :)
So this whole past week was our break and here is the day by day break down:
Friday: We took an overnight train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. This was a super cool experience, trains in the US aren't a big deal at all but here, they are how most people travel from city to city. We got to go second class, which means that we were in a room with three other people (my former suite reunited). We got to Moscow at 8 on Saturday morning.
Saturday: When we first got there, we stopped for a quick breakfast at a cafe and then had our grand Moscow city tour! Among places we got to see were: Red Square, Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Bolshoi Theatre (Болшой театр), and a cemetery where lots of famous Russians are buried. But first, Red Square. Home to some of the most famous landmarks in Russia this square has St. Basil's Cathedral on one side (this is arguably the most recognizable monument in Russia to Americans), on another side of the square was ГУМ (GUM), a massive upscale mall, third side was the State Historical Museum, and the last side was the Kremlin and Lenin's Mausoleum.
The next stop was to Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the biggest church in Eastern Europe. It was quite large.
And here was Bolshoi Theatre, where they have all of the famous ballets. I believe it is reopening in a couple weeks after having been closed around 5 years.
The cemetery we went to was home to the graves of many famous people including famous Russian composers, writers, and political figures. The graves were all very elaborate and among those buried there are Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Gorbachev's wife, Josef Stalin's wife (who committed suicide, by the way), Boris Yeltsin, and Nikita Khruschev.
Boris Yeltsin's elaborate grave, the Russian flag the physical geography of Russia
After that we went to the Circus, which was an awesome event. I had never been to the circus before, which apparently is quite strange. Anyway it was awesome, they had comedy mime acts, acts with various animals including walruses, poodles, bears, horses, among others, balancing acts, juggling acts, and tightrope acts. The coolest act I thought was the act with the poodles seen here:
Krasnaya ploschad (Red Square)
St. Basil's Cathedral
Kyle, me, Kelly in front of St. Basil's Cathedral at night
One of my favorite pictures: GUM lit up like Christmas at night
The Kremlin at night, but it was under construction
State Historical Museum (day)
State Historical Museum (night)
Just outside of Red Square, got a bit of the Kremlin (left), Gum (center) and St. Basil's Cathedral (right)
Also, just as a side note, the hotel we got to stay in was awesome and may have had the most comfortable bed I've ever slept on.
Sunday: We went to the Kremlin, twice. The first time was to see the museum inside the Kremlin which I thought was pretty cool. We got to see a lot of things including, teapots (samovars as they are called here, although a samovar is a special type of teapot, I suggest you look it up, they are pretty cool) and other various trinkets, that many were made out of gold, silver or anything else that would display wealth as lavishly (is that even the right word? Sorry, I have many moments these days where I can't think of the word I want to say in English anymore, also in Russian...) as possible. We also got to see the coronation dresses or the Tsarinas as well as the Coronation carriages, which was awesome.
After that, we saw Vladimir Lenin's mausoleum, which was super cool. Lenin is basically viewed as a saint even though I think many Russians also associate the Soviet era as a time of hardships. It was super cool though, we saw his actual preserved body. Security was super tight as a result and you couldn't so much as have change in your pockets. Therefore we had to check our bags. That was an adventure in itself. Normally, well always if they do it properly, they give you a tag when you check something so that when you want it bag, you just exchange the tag for the bag. Well I never got my tag and when I went bag to just ask for my bag back, she wouldn't let me without my tag. I started attempting to argue with the not very nice in my broken Russian and it didn't work, finally our Russian tour guide came with me to help out but she still wouldn't budge. At last, one of my friends came running up saying that she had gotten my tag by accident, so all was well. But by that time, I had missed going through the mausoleum. Fortunately, we had about a half an hour of free time after and I went through then instead.
After that, we went back to the Kremlin where we got our tour of the Kremlin itself, not the museum. It was all beautiful except for one building that was made of concrete that was built in the 70s, which kind of spoiled the whole picture. Other than that, we saw the buildings where Medvedev and Putin work, but weren't allowed to go by. However, we saw all of the cool churches in there. A few pictures:
For the rest of the day, a couple of friends along with myself went exploring. First, we went inside St. Basil's Cathedral. This was awesome. Apparently it used to like 9 chapels, so it was filled with corridors and had tons of small rooms. Also, there was a choir in there singing, they had amazing voices and were able to show off the amazing acoustics of the cathedral. Here are a few of my favorites from St. Basils:
After that, I went to the Museum of Fallen monuments where you could find a lot of busts and statues of the Soviet leaders, also very cool, and of course there were a lot more statues and busts of Lenin than anyone else. Here is a picture of the main thing we saw there:
Monday: I didn't do much. Kelly and I left the hotel and found our hostel, which was conveniently located very near the center of Moscow. As we were both pretty tired, we had a low day and all we did was buy our train tickets to Novgorod.
Tuesday: I am pretty sure we saw all the luxurious malls of Moscow. An were they ever luxurious. We went in one, which was an underground mall right by Red Square. Another was right next to the skyline, which we also went to visit. The last one, and my favorite, was near Kievskiy Vokzal (Kiev Train Station). This had super luxurious fountains, elevators, and best of all, had a skating rink on the top floor. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my skates with me on the trip. :(
Wednesday: We decided to go try to find the US embassy. We saw the building and didn't actually think it was anything too exciting. However, we talked to an American lady who told us that you can get a nanny job for rich Muscovites to teach their children English and you get paid very well and they make take you all over the world, which sounded appealing to me. :) It turned out though that the building we saw used to be the embassy but was now the US citizens center. We didn't actually see the embassy which was a little disappointing but oh well. We also saw a whole bunch of other embassies, however, including the Brazilian, Nigerian, Laotian, and Moroccan embassy. For my last hurrah in Moscow, I went into the State Historical Museum. They had a 5000 year old boat in there but the top floor, where they had the Soviet history, was the coolest. They had a few space helmets that they wore during the space race, a huge flag of the USSR, and a whole bunch of paintings, mostly of Lenin and Stalin. Some of them were really famous. Does this painting look at all familiar?
Wednesday night, we boarded the train and headed off to Novgorod.
Thursday: Got in early, but certainly not bright. It was about 6:10 when we got in and didn't get light until 8. Again, we were super tired so the first thing we did was take a nap. I also had to put my Russian to the test, since Kelly is a total beginner in Russian and Novgorod, being significantly smaller than Moscow and Petersburg, has very few people who speak any English. All we did that day was walk around the Kremlin however it was cold and rainy so we went to the hostel pretty early.
Friday: We explored the various museums of Novgorod, including the Fine Arts Museum right next to the Kremlin. Normally I am not a huge fan of art, but I really liked this museum, especially the room dedicated to the sights of Novgorod, especially what it looked like during World War II. We also went to a museum inside the Kremlin where they had a lot about Ancient Novgorodian history and paintings from all over Russia about the Russian Orthodox church.
Saturday: Cold and beautiful. The puddles from the rain had iced over and there was frost on the ground which made me happy. This was fortunate that it was such a nice day as this was the day we planned to go outdoors. We hopped on the bus to go just out of town to the Urevsky Monastery and the Museum of Wooden Architecture. As I believe I mentioned when I first went to Novgorod, the Museum of Wooden Architecture shows how peasants used to live in earlier centuries. It reminds me of when we would go on field trips in New York to places like Old Genesee Village or the Farmer's Village in Cooperstown. The monastery was also really cool, but almost everything was not open to the public so we didn't end up spending much time there. This was also the day that my charger completely stopped working. I still haven't gotten a new charger yet, but I am due for my new one any day now. However, since I have been having to mooch charges off of people, I have not had time to update, and I deeply apologize.
Sunday: woke up at 5:30 to come back to Petersburg by train. I talked to, or tried to, a lady on the train. Most people see we are foreign and just try to talk to someone else but she actually talked to me which I appreciated because it always helps me improve my Russian. :)
Overall an awesome trip, despite a few mishaps. I will try to get around to updating you about my trip to Finland and Estonia as well as my goings on here in Petersburg as soon as possible. Until then, пока!
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