Russia! Part 1

Landon Hacker
Nov 6, 2017
6 min read

As part of my study abroad program, we took an 8 day trip into Russia. We visited Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was a truly wonderful time. This post will focus on our time in Moscow.

Our journey began when we left for Riga Latvia, the location we would catch our train, at 9 am. The bus ride was a total of 4 hours. On the bus ride we stopped at the Hill Of Crosses in Lithuania. This place was destroyed 3 times by the Soviets, but the crosses kept coming.

In addition, we stopped at what has been unofficially deemed the best restaurant in the Baltic, LIDO. It is a huge, pay-per-item buffet. The program provided 9 euros to spend ( about 10 dollars). It was plenty. The buffet is huge and has so much delicious food. I got some chicken cordon blue and some greasy, delicious potatoes. We arrived fat and full at the train station ready to catch our 4pm train. This was my first ever long haul, overnight train ride. We had beds on the train. There were seven little 'sectors' on each train car. Each sector had 6 beds and 2 tables. The first part of the sector had two seats with a small table in between with a window. This table collapsed and turned to a bed while the second bed would fall from above the seats. Then an aisle seperated this small sector from the larger sector with two benches, a table, a window, and two bunk beds above. I had a bunk, it was very small and hard to get into. Good thing I'm skinny! The only negative parts of this experience was the warm temperature of the train car and stopping at boarder control in the middle of the night. The customs workers would just come in, punch each of our passport information into a computer and move on. During the train ride we just talked, played card games and slept.

Found a friend on the train!

Off to Moscow

The larger area with bunks and benches

Me pensively looking out the window

Pretty Cramped

Us laughing over some face swaps!

Here is a face swap of me and my friend Karen

The many passports of the study abroad group. Pictured here is the US, Lithuania (pink), Russian (red), Vietnam (green), we also have people with Indonesian and Korean Passports. They were not part of this picture.

Once we woke up in the morning our final approach into the Moscow region had begun. Moscow is a huge city. It's official population is 13 million, but about 15 million people live in the whole region considered Moscow. As our train approached, we saw hundreds of high rise apartment buildings. We then arrived to our hostel and began our day.

We first bought 3-day metro tickets then headed to the гум mall (pronounced goom). As we were walking to the гум we approached the entrance to the famous Red Square. I was oblivious that the гум was in Red Square. I was just walking happily, then all of the sudden we approached an archway, and perfectly framed within the arch is the iconic St. Basil's cathedral! It was really amazing. When we got into Red Square I immediately fell in love with it. It was so cool to be in such a historic place.

There it is... beautiful

as you can see the panoramic isnt perfect, but it gives you an idea of Red Square

The гум is the left building.

Inside the гум. It was 3 levels

We then embarked on a 3 hour tour inside the walls of the Kremlin. The Kremlin is essentially the political center of Russia. I did not realize that it was more of a walled fortress ( that was its original purpose ) with many buildings inside. I always thought it was a singular building, much like the White House. Within the walls of the Kremlin is the "White House" of Russia. Lenin and Stalin worked within this building, and obviously Putin does too. It was cool to see. Also within the walls of the Kremlin are 10 churches. This was slightly surprising to me. The churches were built for different purposes, some to commemorate victories in the days of the Russian Tzars and others were made so a particular Tsar could pray by himself. There was also a large museum in the Kremlin, it had a lot of artifacts from the Tsarist period of Russia's history.

The "White House" of Russia

A huge cannon 22 tones

One of the many churches in the Kremlin

this bell is 220 tones

Another beautiful church in the Kremlin

One of the towers of the Kremlin

After the Kremlin tour we went to a circus! It was really cool. It lasted about 3 hours and consisted of various acts from acrobatic performances from teams from Tanzania and North Korea to knife throwers, a trained Rhino, white tigers, and people simultaneously riding and dancing horses.

Heading to the circus

The white tigers

Some crazy tight rope walkers

A dancer dancing while riding horseback

acrobats from Tanzania

After the circus, we headed back to Red Square to see everything at night. Despite the clouds, we were not disappointed. St. Basil's was looking as it always does, amazing. The гум was so pretty along with a museum at the far end of the Square and the walls of the Kremlin.

St. Basil's

The wall and tower of the Kremlin with this beautiful museum

From Left to right, the Kremlin, the Museum, The гум

Same view from the other side

The building behind the wall is the white house of Russia. I should probably figure out what its actual name is

The гум with St. Basil's

That was just the first day! The second day we visited the inside of St. Basil's Cathedral. I was expecting some nice large sanctuary, but the church felt like a labyrinth rather than a grand cathedral. It was completed in 1560 and managed to not be destroyed by the Soviets. In the main sanctuary area there was a quartet singing, it was really pretty.

The view from St. Basil's

Part of the inside

There is the quartet. (Look for the video on Facebook)

Jesus looking down

inside again

We also went to Christ the Savior Cathedral. It was very large, as you can tell from the pictures. The church was rebuilt in only 5 years after it was destroyed in WWII. This amazed me. There were essentially 2 main sanctuaries. They were full of intricate paintings of many icons and other beautiful things. To have this detail in such a massive building that was built in such a short time was incredible. I didn't take any pictures because we were not supposed to, however someone else took some (Katie Wells), so here are a few of her smuggled pictures.

The inside was huge this is the main sanctuary

I loved this painting on the ceiling, the beams of light radiating from God were amazingly realistic

The second sanctuary

We spent Halloween in Moscow and celebrated this spooky time of year by a creepy encounter with the dead body of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, the communist movement in Russia. His body has been in this tomb for 87 years, seeing the body was very appropriate for Halloween. After passing through a metal detector we entered into the granite tomb. The no video/picture policy was very strict. In the entrance you could go either left or right, we were told by a guard to go left. We turned a corner, under the watchful eye of a guard and descended down a flight of steps where there was another guard to greet us. One more right turn at the bottom of these steps and we entered the large room where Lenin was. This room was of course monitored by 4 guards as well. Lenin's body was in a kind of fancy glass box, and illuminated with lights. We walked around the perimeter of the room to see the body. We had to keep moving so we only saw him for about 15-20 seconds. Let me tell you, he looked pretty fake. It is estimated that there is only about 20% of the original Lenin there, due to the constant need to preserve him. He was not able to be properly preserved due to an autopsy that was performed on him shortly after he died. This means that he needs more upkeep than your regular dead body. Therefore, they often need to reapply make up and fix his skin, the result is a pretty fake looking body. Regardless, it was a great Halloween activity!

Here is Lenin's tomb, in Red Square

Throughout the trip in Moscow, we used the Metro extensively. We stopped at some of the iconic Moscow metro stations to see their beauty. Many of the materials to make these gaudy stations were taken from churches the Soviets destroyed.

Here are some of the most beautiful stations

The rest of the Moscow trip consisted of a visit to a chocolate fondue place, which was amazingly delicious, the Russian Cosmonautics Museum, and a trip to a souvenir market. The market was fun because bartering was acceptable and the Cosmonautics Museum was cool to see a Russian perspective on the Space Race.

Just outside the Cosmonautics Museum