Beautiful Ceilings

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The State Historical Museum stands at one end of Red Square, beside the Resurrection Gate and houses a large collection of items. The rooms are worth the price of admission even if there were no exhibits in the rooms. They were designed by very famous Russian architects and often are copies of rooms in other extremelybeautiful Russian buildings. As we moved from room to room, we were continually awed by the beautiful ceilings. We hope you enjoy the photos of several of them. We will try to publish pictures of some of the exhibits in the building in another blog entry but we need an excuse to share just the ceilings!

This museum was a lot of fun for us since we decided to use it for a rainy day tourist destination. The day wasn't rainy but was a little gloomy so we sought an interesting experience and certainly found it. The history of Russia according to this museum also included the scientific theory of evolution and some of the evidence in fossils and other geological data to support evolution. So geographical history was presented as well as human history. We couldn't read any of the captions on the various
Beautiful ceiling
scientific exhibits but things were laid out in a way that it was quite clear what was going on in the displays. Later in the museum some of the human history exhibits had both Russian and English captions. We think it is quite wonderful that we were born into the language that has become, for all general purposes, the language of the entire world today. How easy it is for most Americans to enjoy museums and other things in countries outside the USA since governments and private groups both are supplying so many texts in both the local language and in English. I do hate to be so ignorant of other languages but how lovely, how lovely it is to be able to find that people from all over consider English their second language and thus things like museums can use "my' language and know that Germans, Japanese, Egyptians, Chinese, Brazilians, etc. can read and know what is going on. Lucky, lucky me. I did, at Alexander's urging, learn how to pronounce the Cyrillic alphabet so I would have a chance to try to read signs, etc. It was fun to notice how often when I struggled through the pronunciation
Beautiful ceiling
of a word that I found I had just said a word in English. The first example was when we bought 'milk' at the grocery store. When we got back to the seminary and I got it out to put it into the refrigerator, I tried to say the word on the box. I realized in a second that we had, instead, bought Kefir, one of our favorite things to use with cereal. It was a good thing we knew and liked Kefir or I know we would have thought we bought spoiled milk. We never did buy milk after that but got the delicious Kefir each time. Many English words, written in Cyrillic, seem to have entered the Russian language. Also, since I had worked HARD for 5 weeks to learn a little Russian, I would sound out a word and discover to my joy that I actually knew that word. My favorite of those discoveries was on the subway. I was looking at a small box beside the door across from me. I puzzled out the word and then realized it was the word for 'you speak'. Then I looked at the box and realized by its shape,
Beautiful ceiling
the word and the various knobs, etc. that it was obviously a speaker for communicating with the driver of the subway in case of emergency. The 'you speak' seemed to be right where you would talk to be heard. How I wished I had known for sure that we were going to get our visas and that I had started to try to learn a little Russian months and months ago. Knowing how to ask Where and When and etc. and about 50 other words was fine and dandy but knowing what the person answered in return would have been priceless. I think time spent learning enough of a language to communicate basic questions is time well spent even if you only plan to be somewhere for 5 weeks or so. The MOST frustrating day for me in all the days was the day I found I was in the midst of a group of deaf Russians busily signing away to each other. Since I used to interpret for deaf Americans, I knew how wonderful it would be if I knew Russian sign language and could have a nice chat with them. That was perhaps much more frustrating than not
Beautiful ceiling
being able to speak aloud. Maybe...........

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Comments

[Jameson Lewis III]

Greetings!
I just wanted to thank you both for this tour of this wondrous city of my mother's birth. You are both truly a blessing. I am seeing the things I'd always so hoped to see, but never will, through your eyes. Somehow, genetically, half of me is still anchored in the Russia of Tchaikovsky's day and you have taken me there. Thanks again.