Blogs from Centre, Russia, Europe - page 2

Day 12 We were supposed to be in the lobby to meet our tour group at 8 AM. We had breakfast at the hotel, which was fine except there is something weird about coffee in Russia. Maybe chicory? It was so bad that even with a ton of sugar, neither of us could drink it. During breakfast I kept looking around the dining room for couples thinking I would see other people on the tour, but I only saw 1 woman. I dashed out in the rain to get a sim card for our phone but had to turn around before finding the shop. When I got to the lobby, Jack was standing there with the guide, the driver and one other couple which is close to a private tour. The couple are a neo-natologist and ... read more

This entry consists of three parts: the story about Vyazma, a couple of sentences and several photos from my hometown Birsk, and a short description of Petersburg’s Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery. I combine them all here for convenience and to make the entry more informative and varied. The central story is about Vyazma, the other two simply add to my previous experiences of two most frequently visited places in my life (Birsk and St. Petersburg). ****************************************************************************** There are several ways to choose the best Russian cities to visit. The first would be to check out the list of UNESCO world heritage sites in Russia, which includes such places as Moscow’s Kremlin, St. Petersburg (its whole centre and lots of places in the environs), Kazan’s Kremlin, Velikiy Novgorod, Suzdal and Vladimir, the wooden churches of Kizhi etc. That ... read more

Sergiyev Posad... read more

Rostov Vikeli... read more

Kaluga is situated on the banks of Oka 160 km away from Moscow. Kaluga is first and foremost famous due to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the outstanding inventor and theorist of cosmonautics, who lived there from 1892 till 1935. Nowadays Kaluga is a major transport hub, one of the scientific, cultural, economic and spiritual centres of the Central Federal District of Russia. And it has a lot of sights! My train from Yanaul to Moscow arrived in the morning at 5.38. I have spent three days in Moscow with my wife at her friends’ place; we stayed in the Kommunarka settlement just outside the MKAD, visited the Vorobyovy Gory viewing platform, where nothing could be seen due to the fog, and walked a little along the embankment), then I spent nine days in my hometown. My companion for ... read more