Travel Experiences
Well the last three weeks should be documented if only for posterity's sake, so bear with us while we relive it and put memories to electronic paper as it were. It's not all going to fit on one post, nor will the photos (all 1000+ of them) so I'll post in installments as I get time to go through the photos and write our adventures up. First up: Russia
Fingertip Facts on Russia:
- Russia (Russian: Россия), or the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация), is a country extending over much of northern Eurasia (Europe and Asia together). It is a semi-presidential republic comprising 83 federal subjects.
- Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counterclockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
- At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than an eighth of the Earth’s land area; with 142 million people, it is the ninth largest by population. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 11 time zones and incorporating a great range of environments and landforms.
- Russia has the world's greatest reserves of mineral and energy resources, and is considered an energy superpower. It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's unfrozen fresh water.
The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs, which emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a noble Viking warrior class and their descendants, the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century and adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was Moscow, which served as the main force in the Russian reunification process and independence struggle against the Golden Horde. Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland eastward to the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. Russia established worldwide power and influence from the times of the Russian Empire to being the largest and leading constituent of the Soviet Union, the world's first and largest constitutionally socialist state and a recognized superpower. The nation can boast a long tradition of excellence in every aspect of the arts and sciences.
The Russian Federation was founded following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, but is recognized as the continuing legal personality of the Soviet Union. It has one of the world's fastest growing major economies and has the world's eighth largest GDP by nominal GDP or seventh largest by purchasing power parity with the fifth largest military budget. It is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the G8, APEC and the SCO, and is a leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Pretty interesting, huh?!
1 April 2009 saw us on a flight bound for Moscow from Hong Kong. As our destination grew ever closer I started to get that uncomfortable pit of dread in the bottom of my stomach. What if the authorities didn't accept our paid for paperwork? What if we got into legal trouble and they just decided to throw us in jail?
Yeah I'm really good about risky holidays, what can I say, it's a gift. Andrew saw the fear on my face and tried to comfort me the best he could away from my imagined Russian jail, but I couldn't be convinced until we made it through immigration without a hitch and the inspector didn't even bother looking at our paperwork! Of course that was when Andrew told me the paperwork was really for the OVIR (Office of Visas and Registration) we'd have to do the following morning!
So we moved on, collected our luggage and off to find the train station that would take us from the airport into Moscow city. We went past miles and miles of thick green forests, no doubt full of ravenous wolves and other such Siberian creatures :)
past hundreds of summer dacha's where most Russians grow the vegetables they'll preserve and eat over the long winter.
past frozen rivers and lakes (oh yeah did I forget to mention it was 0 degrees C?) Springtime was still in hibernation, maybe she'd been eaten by those ravenous wolves :)
and onto and into the typical surburban city landscape of soviet tenement buildings
2 April 2009 found us at the OVIR Registration office with Irina, don't we look happy! Fortunately our papers, passports and visas passed inspection, and we were out of there in about 2 hours - I hear that's good, sometimes they can make you wait all day! Helps to have a local on your side :)
Outside Irina's apartment building (typical 5-story soviet-style "Khruschev" apt building, with 3 foot thick walls, high ceilings and no elevators) but otherwise warm and comfortable.
Irina offered to let us use her apartment as our base for our entire stay in Russia, which was very generous of her seeing as she has a 2 bedroomed apartment and has three daughters and her mother living with her! Irina was our Russian mother and always insisted we eat a full breakfast or lunch or whatever before leaving the apartment. Each meal usually consists of a vegetable soup and bread, followed by meat and rice or blini, maybe a yoghurt, fruit, and of course tea (fruit of course), and a sweet. Considering some nights in HK we just have a salad, bread and cheese and call it good, I left every meal feeling like I didn't need to eat for the rest of the day! You soon realise you need that kind of intake to keep your body going in the cold, cold, coldness - very effective.
Unfortunately all that food did nothing to stop my nose running from the cold, so this became a common sight of me avec tissue for the entire trip there.
From Irin'a house we walked to the subway and hopped a train to Red Sqaure. This was halfway down one of the longest escalators to the platforms, all the stations include some kind of soviet era art or statue regardless of whether the stations are modern or not,
as we can see here...I find it lends a very unique feel to the place
Here we are outside the Kremlin, and near the tomb of the unknown soldier, it's pretty cold.
Coming up to Red Square, Saint Basil's Cathedral spires in the background
St Basil's is smaller than you think, bite-sized really...
you could practically hold it in your hands
Because I wasn't the one in charge of photos this trip we got a fair amount of me in the shots (for a change, I usually prefer to be on the other side) and we also made sure to get some of us together in front of the famous stuff just to prove to our kids that we actually did fun and cool stuff together before they came along.
These locals had two little monkeys dressed up in kids clothes and on small dog leashes hanging around for tourists to have their picture taken with, or you could opt for the eagle on the outstretched arm look if that's more your type of thing.
Funny story: just as we're walking off towards the underground mall to warm up (remember it's 0 degrees C outside) the guys are chatting to each other and the eagle tries to fly off! He succeeds in raising the metal bar he's perched on about 2 feet off the ground before he realises he's strapped to it, it drags him back to earth and he's not going anywhere... poor thing.
"I'm freeeeeee.....d'oh!"
Don't worry big guy, we've all had days like that. Bite through the rope next time!
That evening we were taking an overnight train to Nizhny Novgorod so we didn't do too much before heading back to the apartment and getting our stuff ready to go. We decided to take a local gypsy cab to the train station but that's a whole other story, which I'll save for the next post! :)
