from Russia with Love

The Kremlin – Goodbye Russia – December 19

Written by

Caleb

in

My last day in Mother Russia. The last Russian morning I would see; the last egg sandwich I would eat fried on a Russian stove; the last time I would wake up with a small back ache from my Russian bed. Today was Kremlin time. I hoped it wasn’t randomly closed, a common occurrence with things in Russia. Grabbing my iPod for the metro ride, I plugged in my earphones and enjoyed the ride. Peter Luts’s “What A Feeling” began bumping through my monitors, and what a feeling indeed: a beautiful day and I was about to go see the Moscow Kremlin. I like to save the best for last; although, this “putting-off” could have been caused by the mentality of how when a person lives in a place for a long time, they sometimes forget to visit the wonders nearby and instead travel far away to see others as there’s always later. But today there’s not later.

I’ve included the track “What A Feeling” here because it is a great song and it’s pretty much how I felt after my finals ended and how I felt riding the metro to the Kremlin.

I’ll map it out for you:

1:00 – preview of the melodic riff. This is where I try to grab the riff with my mind like a rope and let the riff control my consciousness. (You have until 2:28). This is Phase 1.

2:28 – Floating Melody no drums, multiphonic singing creating harmonies. I call it Phase 2.

3:43 – When everything plays at once. Love the riff phasing in and out, hypnotic. Phase 3.

4:28 – A break before the final return.

4:58 – Phase 3 modified. Little change in riff.

5:42 – Beginning of the fadeout, chillax time. Kind of like the cooldown after a workout (cooldown phase).

But one can’t jump to these parts without listening to the previous ones or else the effect is nullified. The way the bass and treble mix together create a very pleasing synthesis. I wonder if MBE would consider music a drug.

Back to Moscow.

I made it to the Kremlin and bought my student ticket. Once inside I made my way to Cathedral Square. There were about 6 cathedrals in a 300m radius. It was amazing.

To the left, we have Ivan the Great’s Bell Tower Complex. Inside, they had an exhibition with artifacts from old Russia.
The Assumption Cathedral. I think this cathedral is the most beautiful out of them all. I really like the cobblestone look. A man from Virginia was nice enough to take a photo of me after I took his family’s photo.
The towers in the background are from the Terem palace and churches. I wasn’t able to get much closer to these.
The Church of Laying our Lady’s Holy Robe. This was a quaint church with a traditional interior that I had seen in the other Russian churches.
Looking back across the square at Archangel Cathedral.

At about this time my feet started to freeze and so I spaced out my visits to the inside of each cathedral. They were all very pretty and my favorite inside was definitely the Assumption Cathedral. It was the most open and it had 5 copulas.

The Patriarch’s Palace
The Tsar Cannon. This beast is huge. Some American walked by and said, “This thing is so impractical.” I laughed at him and silently remarked, “maybe, but it sure would hurt to get hit by a cannon ball that big.”
The Senate Building across the square. The cannon points to this building.
The Tsar Bell. Apparently, Tsar means big, maybe.
The path to the ‘Secret Gardens’ was blocked so I couldn’t go to them. Not that they were secret anyway. They were on the map.
One of these is the Tsar Tower. These towers overlook Red Square. The map showed the leftmost tower was the Tsar tower but that didn’t make much sense as everything else with the Tsar title was larger than normal.
The Clock Tower, to the left of the other three towers above.
On the other side of the Kremlin stood the Arsenal, with cannons lining the outside.
Tower on the opposite side of Red Square that I walked underneath to exit the Kremlin quarters.
One last look back into the Kremlin before leaving.
The bridge from the tower to the entrance on the other side of what might have once been a moat gave me this view of one last incredible Moscow sunset.

I took the metro to Old Arbat where I stopped one last time to pick up some last minute gifts. Luckily, I was able to find some. And I noticed the wall that everyone writes on, as stated by our Russian Language teachers:

Kino – a band representing the culture and ideology of Russians in my generation.

I headed home listening to the metro’s warning that the next station was mine for the last time:

I figured Mongolia, or Maggie’s deserved to be here. This was the first store I visited in Moscow. Ira took me at 530 in the morning when I first arrived at the dorm. It’s just down the block. I remember this walk seeming so far away and being totally lost walking with her. And now, it seems right next to our dorm and I could walk there in my sleep. The store is really called Magnolia, and the word to the right is “produkti,” literally meaning products. This word is still the most common word we’ve found that uses the least amount of Roman letter rules. And because of that, I’ve memorized the look of this word so that it’s the fastest word I can read in Russian.
Ira met me one last time for ice cream at the cafe near my dorm to say goodbye. She was the girl who escorted me from the airport and into the taxi and helped me out that first night in Moscow.

I spent the rest of the night packing for a few hours as I hadn’t really done much yet. Then Lenny and I feasted on a last Russian dinner together. Then the Russians started coming by to say goodbye and we partied for a bit. Tanya Timofeeva took this next photo and she didn’t mind not being in it as she went on a lot of excursions with me, and I have photos with her too.

Everyone saying goodbye as the gentleman next to me, Lenny, and the man in blue on the right, Austin, were about to leave as it was close to 230 am, their departure time. We have me, Lenny, Katya (R), Yuliya (R), Karrina (R), Will, Kyreel (R), Austin, and down in front the gangsta from Philly: Chris; nah, he talks big but couldn’t hurt a fly, but a mosquito yes.

I would like to take this time right now to state my least favorite thing about Russia, in fact my most disliked thing:

Avatar, possibly the greatest film of our time, I don’t know I haven’t seen it yet because of this->, is DUBBED in every single possible theatre in Moscow. Not one theatre, not even the English speaking theatre is playing it in English with Russian subtitles. I mean come on, who wants to watch a dubbed film anyway; it’s horrible. I would much rather read subtitles and see the mouths move to the actual words. This is possibly Russia’s biggest fail, and my most disliked aspect of Russia. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me explain.

Avatar is James Cameron’s Sci-Fi Epic that cost over $300 million to make and has been on his mind since his success with Titanic, the last film he directed. It stars Sam Worthington, a talented actor who has picked up many new roles after stealing the show from Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation. But as pictures say a thousand words, so a video must equal the integral over a time domain where the function is defined as the amount of pictures combined to create a frame (a continuous function no doubt), here is the trailer, which I watch everyday, sometimes more than once. I think I’m going to watch it again: www.avatarmovie.com. And honestly, the least we could do is support this film enough so that it surpasses the lame excuse for a film written by some lady about a girl and a vampire and a werewolf and something about not wanting to kill her centered about the time in between daylight and darkness that for some reason, must have been a fluke, won some sort of box office award it definitely did not deserve.

Anyway, to contrast this,

“These are a few of my favorite things…” dum dadada dumdumdum dum da da dum dum.

Russia was fascinating. Moscow a never ending mystery to explore. I could have stayed there for over 2 years and still not seen everything I would like to see. This means that I will definitely have to go back. Even if I do not participate in the math program again, which was challenging and helped me as a mathematician, I would like to return to Moscow. I would especially like to see towns outside Moscow: northern Russia, and as far east as Vladivostok. The experience was extremely rewarding and I’m very glad I decided to do such a thing.

But now, I’m off to Switzerland to spend Christmas with the Bosshards where I will continue to post my experiences there and afterward Berlin and other places.

On a side note, it was interesting spending my first day there with only 1 hour sleep on the plane staying up my last night in Moscow. I almost didn’t make it, drifting off around dinner time with Desiree having to prod me to wake me up.

Comments

3 responses to “The Kremlin – Goodbye Russia – December 19”

  1. danielle v Avatar
    danielle v

    every post just makes me smile and feel like i was there a little bit with you

    honestly great job !

  2. LebCa Avatar
    LebCa

    I’m glad you enjoy. I think once I come back I’m going to go through and read it all.

  3. LebCa Avatar
    LebCa

    Sorry for the delayed response. This is the first time I’ve logged on since I returned home. But, thank you, I’m glad you find enjoyment in my site as I definitely enjoyed adding to it. May I ask how your mom learned of it?

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