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My Trip to Russia: Retrospective & Pictures
10 years ago
Prelude:
So, my trip wound up getting quite busy and hectic. As the trip progressed, I simply found myself utterly without time to stop and continue writing journals to record each passing day. Moreover, the little downtime I did have I mostly spent relaxing and recharging the proverbial batteries.
My trip as of yesterday came to an end as I flew back to the United States from Moskva. It was a nonstop flight of roughly 10 hours in length, and I was exhausted, I woke up this morning after a long, luxurious sleep that was much needed after the flight.
And as of this morning, I have compiled an exhaustive album of all of the photographs I took on the trip.
During the trip, we visited three destinations:
-Saint-Petersburg (or Peter as the locals call it)
-Yasnaya Polyana (in the Tula Oblast, it is the ancestral home of Leo Tolstoy, and is also right near the city of Tula, one of the Hero-Cities of the Second World War)
-Moskva (Moscow in Anglicized form)
Highlights:
-A dizzying variety of delicious meals from a wide variety of different cuisines: Georgian (the nation, not the US State), Azeri, Uzbek, Russian, and more!
-Sampling semi-sweet Georgian wine (utterly delicious, at that), as well as a very nice Crimean white wine (and, of course, toasting "Крым Наш" to commemorate the occasion)
-A day's journey to Peterhof, the famous estate of Tsar Peter the Great
-Consuming exceptionally delicious Russian black teas on a daily basis
-A river tour of Saint-Petersburg
-A visit to Lenin's Mausoleum
-Seeing one of the classic "Moscow Evenings" and finally coming to personally appreciate the roots of one of Russia's most treasured and well-known folk songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLf1_kQjlwk
-And much, much more!
The Pictures:
Here is the Dropbox Album I have created with all of my pictures of the trip.
Please let me know if you have questions, comments, or have any technical issues viewing the images.
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/2hvkhccn.....jRX7kTjHfMDOla
So, my trip wound up getting quite busy and hectic. As the trip progressed, I simply found myself utterly without time to stop and continue writing journals to record each passing day. Moreover, the little downtime I did have I mostly spent relaxing and recharging the proverbial batteries.
My trip as of yesterday came to an end as I flew back to the United States from Moskva. It was a nonstop flight of roughly 10 hours in length, and I was exhausted, I woke up this morning after a long, luxurious sleep that was much needed after the flight.
And as of this morning, I have compiled an exhaustive album of all of the photographs I took on the trip.
During the trip, we visited three destinations:
-Saint-Petersburg (or Peter as the locals call it)
-Yasnaya Polyana (in the Tula Oblast, it is the ancestral home of Leo Tolstoy, and is also right near the city of Tula, one of the Hero-Cities of the Second World War)
-Moskva (Moscow in Anglicized form)
Highlights:
-A dizzying variety of delicious meals from a wide variety of different cuisines: Georgian (the nation, not the US State), Azeri, Uzbek, Russian, and more!
-Sampling semi-sweet Georgian wine (utterly delicious, at that), as well as a very nice Crimean white wine (and, of course, toasting "Крым Наш" to commemorate the occasion)
-A day's journey to Peterhof, the famous estate of Tsar Peter the Great
-Consuming exceptionally delicious Russian black teas on a daily basis
-A river tour of Saint-Petersburg
-A visit to Lenin's Mausoleum
-Seeing one of the classic "Moscow Evenings" and finally coming to personally appreciate the roots of one of Russia's most treasured and well-known folk songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLf1_kQjlwk
-And much, much more!
The Pictures:
Here is the Dropbox Album I have created with all of my pictures of the trip.
Please let me know if you have questions, comments, or have any technical issues viewing the images.
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/2hvkhccn.....jRX7kTjHfMDOla
Looks like it was a kickass trip.
Frankly, the politics behind the situation are really complex, but it's safe to say that the majority of the Crimea's population, which is majority-Russian, supported and continues to support the annexation of the Crimea. The Ukrainian government with its unflattering declarations towards the "traitors" in the Crimea has probably more or less sealed its fate with regards to ever having any chance of getting the Crimea back.
Crimea was a part of the Russian SFSR during the Soviet days up until shortly after Krushschev took over from Stalin in the 50s, if I recall correctly.
The place was, frankly, always an issue after the collapse of the USSR because, like many other Russian-speaking communities, it wound up on the other side of the border after the collapse and was subject to the whims and policies of the state that ruled them.
Places like the Ferghana Valley and Nagorno-Karabakh... could very easily go very hot very quickly, especially the Nagorno-Karabakh.
Lovely pictures btw. Some of that food I swear I could smell through them. And its made me very hungry for a nice hearty meal.
And "Peter" looks like a beautiful city. One thing I have noticed though with a lot of Russian cities is a lot of the older Russian architecture seems to be expressed through the churches and public buildings, whereas a lot of the older apartment buildings seem to look more European.
Putin is really, really popular in Russia. They sell a ton of souvenirs with Putin on them, but they aren't just for tourists since I saw a fair amount of Russians wearing t-shirts with his picture on them and all.
And yeah, Peter is very truly continental, much more European than Moskva (that was the intention behind building it really, Peter the Great utterly *despised* the old, medieval Russia and wanted to bring it into the modern, Western age). St. Petersburg is fundamentally a city of a different era (i.e. the Enlightenment) than Moskva which is a medieval city.
That said, despite the fact that Moskva is a way older city, it has a lot of newer buildings because quite a fair amount of them were built during the Soviet Era. Saint-Petersburg never saw the same widespread urban development projects (nor the same kind of ferocious destruction of things such as Orthodox churches as happened during the Stalin Era).
Yeah if I remember correctly even St. Basils was considered to be demolished. Hard to believe looking at Moscow now. I don't think anyone could picture it without that cathedral. I've heard they're rebuilding a lot of them now though.
I am curious though, are there any cities or neighborhoods with a lot of surviving medieval Russian architecture?
Yeah, Stalin wanted to build a rather garish and outlandish monument to Soviet power in its place known as the Palace of the Soviets:
http://russiatrek.org/blog/wp-conte.....-soviets-3.jpg
You really can't make this stuff up. Fortunately, the project never came to fruition.