Out and about in Moscow

These were taken out and around Moscow, the first few pictures where taken when I was out on a bike ride along the rive.

 These next pictures were taken on a walk Jolene and I took in the Southern part of the city.  First up: Tzar Alexei's Palace.  This is a 700,000,000 Ruble (approx $2.2 million) reconstruction of what was once called the 8th wonder of the world.  I have pictures of the inside on the online Picasa album.

Below is John the Baptist Church at Dyakovo and the surrounding grounds.  This church was built in the mid 16th century, commissioned by Ivan the Terrible

Click on the picture... how many crosses do you see?

... and around the corner, down the path, then down a few stairs...

And then up a similar stairway...

To the Ascension Church, built in 1532 to mark the birth of Tzar Vasily III son, Ivan.  Better known as Ivan the Terrible

 You can't see it here but there is a throne on the balcony that allows for a view of the river and the country side.

Not far away is the blue-domed Church of Our Lady of Kazan

and a short jaunt through the woods will take you to Peter the Great's log cabin.

I should have offered to buy that painting right then...

Oh well maybe some other time...

Spring Is Here

Okay it's official Spring is here and we are really enjoying it.  Jolene and I took a walk down through Gorky Park and here are some pics from there...

This is one of the entrances to Gorky Park

Fountains

There were several places with hammocks or swings that people just kicked back and relaxed.

The Russian Shuttle that never went to space

Okay this is one of my favorites.  To the left is the a bridge, and the blue sign on the side of the building is the street sign.... Lot of good it does there.  This is how most of the street names are posted in Moscow.  You have to look very closely at the buildings.

So after Gorky park, we walked across the street to the left, actually we walked under the street in one of the переход, pronounced "perihoot"  (literal translation is "transition").  These are crosswalks, tunnels or bridges over roads.  They are also the transfer points at train and metro stations.  Anyway, this particular переход, was lined with art for sale.  Some good some bad, and some really good, guess there was some really bad stuff to, but hey it's art so it's probably good to someone right?

So on the other side of the street we wound up in a sculpture garden/area.  Lots of cool art here too...

There are many more pictures out on our online photo gallery click on the St Basil's Cathedral Picture on the top right of the blog.

So continuing on our walk around the city, we came on this big ship like statue thing... best way to describe it is to post the pic...

And finally after that we made our way to Christ the Savior Cathedral.  Unfortunately we are not allowed to take pictures in churches here.  I think I need to order a little spy cam pen or something so we can show everyone the beautiful art and architecture.  But here's the outside.

and the side garden.

Well that concludes our little tour this time around.  Good Night.

River Cruise

So recently Jolene and I went of a river cruise on the Moscow River.  Yes it is the middle of winter so yep we were on an ice breaker ship.  It was pretty cool, no pun intend.. okay well maybe it was.  Anyway we had a good time.

This was the type of boat we were on.

The cruise was about two hours long, substantially shorter than the summer cruises, but breaking ice takes a bit more time so the trip isn't as far as the others.  As the boats break the ice, the water starts to freeze again and a low fog also forms above the river.  The effect is pretty cool.

The beer selection was not all that great so I went with a local Russian beer.  Kinda reminded me of Budweiser.  Oh well I was there for the experience, not the beer.  The experience was pretty cool  We plan on taking the cruise again at night when it's warmer.  Looking forward to getting some pictures of the city then.

Is it me or is she looking more Russian?

As we approached Gorky Park, we turned around and headed back.  You can see how thick the fog had gotten.  If you look close you can see the Russian Buran (shuttle).  This is in Gorky Park.  I still need to make it there, but we're going to wait till it gets warmer and nicer out.

We actually went with a group of other first or second tour diplomats, some from other embassies.

And as the cruise headed back you can see the sun trying to peak through the heavy cloud cover.  Just another winter wonderland weekend in Moscow.

False Start

Okay a couple weeks ago, the skies were grey and snow was falling, everything was white with a light coating of snow.  I though this was the beginning of those cold snowy Russian winters everyone teased me about when I told them we were going to Russia for two years.  But we've lived in Iowa for the last eight years and in upstate New York for a few years before that.  Cold snowy winters were nothing new to us.  We made sure we had all our scarfs, gloves, snow pants, etc.  We were ready as we could be.  Jolene was waiting on a long coat, but that's another story...  It really is beautiful here and when the virgin snow is on everything it's doubly so.  We were told that they really didn't get big snow storms here but more of a constant accumulation of snow from day after day snow showers.

BUT what we got was snow showers at night and mid 30's during the day.  So needless to say, the snow was there in the morning, but after work, it had melted away.  And now the last two days have been nothing but rain.  Needless to say the beauty of the white snow was replaced by grey/black water that makes all cars filthy and gets tracked in when you come home.  Anyway, we're still waiting for winter to come.  We are still officially in autumn so we'll see what winter actually brings.

As grey and dismal it is and the lack of sunlight can be a bit depressing, but it still is very awesome to experience this new land.  I'm really looking forward to getting pictures of Red Square covered in snow.  Hope I get the chance.

Let see, I started this blog talking about the trials and tribulations of applying to the Foreign Service.  So I'm sure an update on work is long over due.  Let see I love my job and my co-workers are pretty cool too.  Now that we've been in country for just over 3 months you may wonder if I have any regrets.  Well just one, I wish I did this 10 years ago!  The work is challenging at times and there are some long hours.  But working at the embassy is pretty cool.  And to be in a country when historic event happen are kinda humbling.  The election protests here are peaceful enough but to be so close to everything is awesome.

Well till next time.   До свидания!

More Tours

Okay I've got a couple of tours to report on.  On Thanksgiving day, Crystal had school, so Jolene and I took the opportunity to visit a chocolate factory.  Here we got to see a bit about the history of chocolate, some chocolate works of art, and more importantly we got to visit the production area and sample warm chocolates right off the line.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in the production area, but needless to say it was pretty cool and the samples were Oh So Good! 

So you can see we had to wear lab coats and hair nets and the nice yellow slippers over our shoes.  Speaking of those yellow slippers, you find those all over the place here.  They like to keep their floors clean so the have slippers you slip on over your shoes as you enter the building.

A sample of the chocolate sculptures around.  You can see the rest of our pics from the tour here: ChocolateFactory Pics

The most recent tour we took was of a bunker Joseph Stalin had made in WWII.  Here is a view from Google Maps.  The stadium was only built to cover the fact that a bunker was being built.  The bunker is about 1,000,000 square feet so a construction project that big requires a big cover story.  The entrance to the bunker that we used was added after the bunker, well part of it was turned into a museum.  Before this area was connected to the Kremlin through a 17km tunnel.

The architecture inside the bunker was really cool, and all of it was built by prisoners.  Stalin didn't want his secret bunker known so he had prisoners build it and once the construction was done, work on the stadium stopped and the prisoners were sent to another project in some other part of the country.

From the center of the tables, the ceiling is arched similar to that of a satellite dish.  The effect of this made the speaker in the middle much louder without the use of microphones.  It also focused sound from around the table to the middle.  Joseph Stalin was a very soft spoken man and wanted the acoustics to make himself sound louder and avoid the use of electronics.

Stalin's desk was simple, but he had 3 phones, one to call the Kremlin, one to call the Generals in the field and one his Aids could call him on.  In the top left corner is a replica of his pipe.  Stalin also smoke very heavily.  After our tour of the bunker, we headed to an outdoor bazaar in Izmaylovo.  Then a short 30 minute metro ride home.  Here are the rest of our pictures.

Staying in touch

I gotta say it's great being able to stay in touch with friends and loved ones.  Last night I was able to Skype with my mom for an hour and a half.  Video chat brings a bit more "closeness" than just talking on the phone.  After that I was able to talk with my grandparents and aunt in California.  Again it's so awesome to be able to stay in touch that way.  I think it's good to use different mediums to keep in touch, but you have to find a balance.  Right now we have this blog, Facebook, telephone, and Skype.  Those are our main methods of keeping in touch with friends and family.  Oh and now I'm using Picasa to post my pictures to the web.  (By the way here is the link to my Web Albums https://picasaweb.google.com/mwalls88).  I think I'll add it to the margin area to make it easier to get to. 

So whats new?  Tomorrow we should receive our HHE (House Hold Effects)  This is all the crap... I mean our belongings we shipped here from Iowa.  It's not everything, we put a lot in storage, but it is the rest of  our stuff we planned on having here.  It will be nice to have all our pots and pans and sheets and blankets and our Bed!  We haven't been going without, the Embassy actually furnishes the houses and we have what's called a welcome kit.  In the kit there is towels, sheets, dishes, pots and pans and a lot of the items you need.  It's almost like all the belonging you had in your very first apartment, you have pots and pans, but the quality is not quite the same.  So I get to take Monday off and show the movers where to put all the boxes, then we get to start the arduous process of unpacking.  It's gonna be a little like Christmas, because I don't remember everything we shipped here.  Once we figure out what we have we'll venture out to get what we forgot.  I do know we need to get a TV, our old ones went to storage.  Now we need to get a Multi-System TV that will work in the different parts of the world we could wind up in.  Right now we are using a borrowed TV, but we watch most of the shows we like online. 

Well enough chattering for now, I'll post some unboxing pix so you can share in the fun and excitement of unpacking.... I wish it was easier to convey sarcasm in writing.....

До свидания!

Finally getting out and about

Well, first off we finally have Internet access at home!  Only a month long process to get all the I's crossed and the T's dotted... So now we have no excuse for slacking on the blog postings, unless we're just slacking.  Lets see last week we took a tour of interesting sights within walking distance of the Embassy.  Our tour guide was awesome and showed us a lot of great places and told us a lot about the local history and about famous Russians that lived in the area.  Considering that the city of Moscow is over 700 years old, and I suck at history I'm not even going to try to recount the Who's and When.  But I will just leave you with the photo's of the beautiful buildings, and oddities that we came across while trotting around.  I will put a few pictures in the blog here, but the bulk (and I mean BULK) of the pictures are on our Picasa web album and I'll throw a link here at the end.

 

This is one of the Seven Sisters.  There were supposed to be 8 but the last one has not even broken ground.  This is Stalin era building, and the picture does not do it justice.  The sheer size and detail of the building is amazing.

This is a shrine to Michael Jackson.  There's even a Star in the sidewalk for him.

This is one of my favorite pictures and it's an example of, "If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk!"  Many Moscovites didn't have cars 25 years ago.  Driving was for the well to do and important.  So the roads were not designed for the volume of traffic that exists today.  And parking well the sidewalks are very wide so they've become the parking lot for many buildings.

The album has lots of pictures from this tour.  We did tour a museum of some famous Russian, but I have not idea of who he was.  The craftsmanship of the house is just awesome. 
PICASA Album "Around the Embassy".

Well enjoy and we'll be writing soon.