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The Upper Bathhouse Pavilion  
   

The Upper Bathhouse Pavilion

1777-1779
RUSSIA: Tsarkoye Selo...go ye to a nunnery

November 14th 2019
My lasting memory of Russia is a hand washing plate of Catherine the Great in the Patriarch's Palace and Church of the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles of the Moscow Kremlin that of the 29 Aussies we were probably the only ones to see...'cos they let Denise & I to slip in without tickets. Twas the most elaborately carved, jewel encrusted gift to her Greatness...vertical sides...about 4 cm deep... ... read more
Europe » Russia » Northwest » Saint Petersburg

Russian Flag Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy, was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities. In the early 17th century, a new Romanov Dynas... ... read more
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15th November 2019

We've beaten the Russians too, you know?
I'd like to point out that the Swedish army from time to time beat the c**p out of the Russians and we have also been known to take thousands of POW:s. And in recent years we regularly beat the Russians in ice hockey. Btw, thanks for telling me that we can't take photos in the Amber Room. I've been thinking about going to St Petersburg just to see it. I would have been disappointed if I had gone there and not known about the no photo policy. So, what happened to the original Amber Room? Nobody knows. Most likely it was sent to Germany on a train. In the chaos of war time Europe the information on which train it was sent with got lost. The train with the amber room got bombed and burned up and there was no trace of the Amber Room once the fire was put out. That's the boring answer. But what we all really want is that the train car holding the amber room actually reached its destination. We want the crates to have been offloaded and put deep inside an abandoned mine that was later sealed. We all want the legendary Amber Room to still be in that mine today waiting for us to rediscover it. Don't we? /Ake
15th November 2019

We've beaten the Russians too, you know?
The Swedes were also the dominant power in the Northern Baltic for three or four hundred years before the 21 year Northern 18th Century War, Ake. And a major power in Europe from at least the beginning of the 16th Century when my hero Gustavus Adolphus led the Protestant armies to crush the Catholic armies in the 30 Years War thus shifting cultural and religious balance in Europe. I've got a bit of Swedish in my blood too!
15th November 2019

The Amber Room
Thanks for the extra info Ake. I stated in my blog, "In 1942 the Nazis stripped the amber decoration from the walls and transported them to Konigsberg where in 1945 they disappeared without trace." Now I know the train that may have been carrying the amber stripped from the Catherine Palace was blown up, I wanna know where. If the pieces are not held in underground vaults, how cool would it be to collect fragments from the side of train tracks where the train was blown up. There would be millions of pieces to choose from! Still worth the visit even if you can't take photos in the Amber Room. The room has an aura of reverence and the admiration one feels for the restorers by just being in there, is overwhelming.

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