Circus

So I went to the circus! And I took my camera! Here are the results:

This was the trapeze artist, who was really cool. I was expecting more trapeze work from the circus (IT'S THE RUSSIAN CIRCUS!) but she was really cool.



Clowns! Their routine was that of a bad magician. He was making a rabbit disappear by handing the entire scarf, with the rabbit in the scarf, to his assistant, while she ran away.

This was just before he balanced the chairs off his cigar!

They had lots of animal acts... but the bears made me kind of sad. Training dogs and foxes and rabbits and sea lions is one thing (dogs are domesticated, and seal lions seem pretty trainable), but bears aren't supposed to walk on their back legs. Anything that you have to put a muzzle on to keep it from biting you shouldn't be trained to ride a bicycle.

Tight-rope walker. Also very cool. I wanted there to be more of this.

Poodles!

The itty-bitty poodle jumping over two bigger poodles!

Hoola-hoop lady.

Revenge for women all over Russia.

Ok, so this was pretty racist. All of the performers were white, except for the final group, which runs out to tribal African music, where their entire act is climbing this pole that has a banana at the top of it. By pretty racist, I mean it was REALLY racist. Cool, but racist.

This was the emcee... or the host... or whatever he's called. He reminded me of the guy from Mario Party.

Sergiev Posad

This past weekend, a group of six of us took a train out to a Moscow suburb called Sergiev Posad. The town itself only exists because of the temple that was built there, and as I've seen my fair share of cathedrals and churches and temples in Russia, the town itself wasn't super exciting. But it was nice to get out of Moscow, and it was also our first time taking a train outside of Moscow by ourselves. (Plus, the round-trip tickets on the train only cost four bucks! You can't beat that.)

The trip may not have been amazing, but it was so easy that we will probably try to make more of these day trips outside of Moscow.

Here are some pictures.

Bunker-42

This past Friday we didn't have class (National Russian Unity Day! Go be Russian nationalists!) and we had an excursion to Bunker-42, which was built 60m below Taganskaya metro station in Moscow under Stalin. It was one of the bunkers built to withstand an atomic explosion, and while it wasn't the bunker that was built for Stalin, it did have access to launch atomic weapons from it (and would have housed Stalin had something happened to his personal bunker). It's no longer actually owned by the government (it was auctioned off, and was turned into a museum). It's location is still fairly stealthily hidden (the Russians that I've talked to about it have never heard of it, and didn't know where it was, even though they have friends that live one block away).

This is a scale model of the station.


НЕ БОЛТАЙ! Do not talk!

I don't know if this was authentic, or made by the museum, but I thought it was pretty cool.

The museum simulates what would happen if a nuclear attack occurred on the surface. It involved flashing red lights, sirens, and darkness. This was how it looked afterwards.

So many tunnels.

And I played dress up.

Better Late Than Never

My excuse for not posting in far too long: my computer is running low on memory, so I've been having to save photos from my computer onto "the cloud" so I can get new pictures from my camera. I think it's valid.

Anyway, a while back (two weeks ago, now) I was in St. Petersburg, which was awesome. We took a night train that left Moscow around Midnight and arrive in Petes at about 8, and then had four days (three nights) in Petersburg. A tiny amount of history: in 1701 Peter looked out at a swamp and said, "I want a city to be here." Three years later, there was a city. Within ten years, it was the capital of Russia. He wanted it to be like the cities he'd seen in Europe, and so Petersburg has wide avenues, European architecture, etc. Walking the streets, I was really struck by the fact that the city only existed because one man said he wanted it to be there. It was gorgeous. The worst thing about it was that almost all the signs were written in both Russian and English (seriously, I'm not working so hard to learn this language for them to just put signs in both languages!)

I spent 4 to 5 hours in the Hermitage, which is a building that really deserves at least 30 hours to be really appreciated (seriously, I'm not exaggerating). It is this MASSIVE art museum. They had paintings by Leanardo da Vinci, by Raphael, (but no Michelangelo or Donatello; below is a Raphael's Madonna and Child):

a bunch of van Dykes

but then the stuff that I really liked was their collection of Impressionisms. Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse (who was my favorite).

Oh, and, you know, they had some Picasso, too.

It's worth a visit, if you're ever in the area.

During our stay we were in a hotel that was just about a 5 minute walk from Nevsky Prospect, which is the main street in Petersburg (Nikolai Gogol wrote a short story just describing this famous street (note: Petersburg has changed since Gogol was writing about it)). In Moscow, I've been staying in a more residential part of the city, and it takes a good 30 minute metro ride to get downtown (with a 20 minute walk to the metro station in my neighborhood on top), so it was really nice to be right downtown. Being on Nevsky Prospect gives you a good dose of the history that this young city has had. For instance, there is still a sign spray painted on a wall on one side of the street from the Siege of Leningrad (back when St. Petersburg was called Leningrad; this is not to be confused with the short stint when it was called Petrograd). The sign warns that that side of the street was within reach of German artillery, and suggested you use the other side of the street. The siege lasted 900 days. Devastation.

Then, I saw Peter and Paul Fortress, which was pretty cool, but nothing spectacular. It was cool, because it's where Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and the last of the Romanov family (and all the Tsars in between) are buried. And yet, with that being said, it's just another church, and some tombs. Neat. Important. But let's just say that I haven't used the limited space I have on my hard drive to download those photos just yet.

Then we had a free day, and so I went with a group out to Tsarskoye Selo. It's a palace. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Ballroom.

The white walls with gold ornamentation is literally how 95% of the rooms were decorated. It actually became monotonous. I think the blue ceramic thing is a furnace.

This is the Amber Room. I wasn't supposed to take a picture in here (and I wasn't looking when I took the picture, which is why it's slanted funny and not the best picture in the world), but the entire room is covered in small amber stones. BEAUTIFUL. The stones range from a sunny yellow to a crimson red. Here's a link to wikipedia's photo of the room, which gives a better representation: amber room
The outside. This is only about half of the palace (it goes on in the opposite direction, too).

The dog house.

(okay, I don't actually know what this building is for.)

Oh, and the trip out to Tsarskoye Selo was fun. We rode Marshrutka, which are 15 passenger vans that have set routes, like buses. Our group ended up having to split up onto two marshrutkas, because the first was already half full, and the second group never made it. They ended up staying on for too long and missing the palace. They got to walk the Russian countryside. They made it back to Moscow safe and sound, though. Don't worry.

I think that's all. I think that's enough. Sorry this was so long, but the length is also why I've been putting off typing this for so long.

1 square, 2 square, Red Square, blue square,

Moscow is doing this new thing called the Circle of Light (Круг Света) where they hold a light show at different parts of the city, and it's going on this weekend. The big show was Friday night, and while I'd planned on going, I got held up by some of my Russian friends (they kept offering me tea and I didn't know how to leave without being rude!). But I went last night, to make up for it! The Friday show was easily the better one (they had live bands and it was a full concert) while mine was just a light show, but I got some good pictures. So here they are!

The Kremlin Clock tower, all lit up.

Red Square was turned all blue! You can see St. Basil's behind this guy.

It was pretty chilly, and this guy made a hat out of newspaper to keep the heat in. It had been a really warm day, so I had warn my lighter coat and my tennis-shoes (instead of my heavy coat and boots and wool socks, etc.). When I'd set out for the day, I hadn't planned on being gone all day, and I paid for it that night. My face was fine (what with my beard and all), but my hands were freezing.

State Historical Museum.
State Historical Museum again, but all polka-dotted.
A Russian couple being a couple. This is by far the most tame PDA that Russians believe in. While they are very reserved in public, if you have them with their spouse / boyfriend / girlfriend, it frequently turns into a flat-out make-out session. I have another photo of such behavior (that I'm not posting). I thought this couple was cute, though.

Prettyyyyyy!

But, speaking of the Russians that I was hanging out with, they're a couple of students who go to the university I'm studying at. I met them at lunch, and then they invited me to a club meeting on campus, and it was that meeting that kept me from the light show on Friday.

They've also offered to act as tour guides outside of Moscow, which is awesome. Once I'm back from Petersburg (which is where I'll this week!!!!) I'm going to talk to them about getting a trip out to see some Russian countryside. So that should be fun. Also, they want get a game of soccer in, which will be fun.

Then, some other American students met a Russian who is a stage actor at the Pushkin Theater, and he's been able to get us some free tickets. I wasn't able to see the first show (there were a limited number of tickets and such), but then this past Tuesday there was another show that I was invited to. It was Много шума из ничего, or, as you might know better, Much Ado About Nothing (the Russian title literally translates to Much Noise From Nothing). I haven't seen the English version, nor have I read it, and the Russian language that they use was either more archaic or at least elevate and literary, and so I wasn't able to get much of the dialogue, but I was able to keep up with what the main plot was. From what I could gather, the play is about two couples. One starts off very much in love and is tricked into not loving each other, and the other starts off less enthusiastic, and is tricked into marriage. But both couples get married at the end, and it's happy. I think.

But it was a lot of fun. The theater itself is fairly small, but is REALLY nice. It's right across from the Chekov Theater, which is one of the more famous theater's in moscow (besides the Bolshoi and Malie). I hope to be able to go again.

And then, because I went to the theater after having been at the Tretyakov Gallery earlier, I was up much of the night finishing homework. Again, it's like they want me to study while I'm here or something.

I TOOK SOME PHOTOS!

Ok, I'm a lazy blogger. Whatever.

But today I took my camera and took some pictures, so here are those. I might catch you up on the past soon. But I might not. But here's today.

We were trying to find Sculpture Park, but did a really good job of going the wrong direction from the metro station (even though it's a really easy place to find). Anyway, we went to Gorky Park instead, which is literally just across the street from Sculpture Park. Anyway, here's the entrance of Gorky Park.

This is still the entrance of Gorky Park.

Then we realized our mistake, and crossed the street. This isn't actually in Sculpture Park, but it's part of an open area that has lots of statues and things in it that looks a lot like Sculpture Park. But the park costs 20 rubles to get into, and this part was still free. But still, there was some pretty stuff.

This is now actually in Sculpture Park. This is part of the monument to Dzerzhersky, with the graffiti on it evident. To help explain a little about why there's graffiti (although I'm not entirely sure this is related), the park was formed when the USSR fell and many of the statues of Soviet leaders (and other statues of workers and peasants) were taken to where the park is now and left without being put back together. Because of this, the park is often called Fallen Monument Park in English. The statues were later put back together, and then other, more modern, sculptures were added. Anyway, the first photo is of graffiti.

One of the more modern monuments.

While Stalin's grave continues to have flowers put on it, I'm happy that at least the nose of his statue here has been broken off.

This is a close up of the monument that you can see better in the next photo. It's a series of stone heads, and then each head has a name and a year etched into it.

While this Stalin may have his nose, if you look closely you can see they've had to replace this one's nose.
And this is just a picture of a cute kid that was at the park collecting leaves.