{"id":22,"date":"2009-09-11T14:13:17","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T14:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lebca.wordpress.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2016-08-16T21:01:57","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T05:01:57","slug":"1st-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/moscow\/1st-week\/","title":{"rendered":"1st Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 1, a girl from our dorm, Natasha, took us for a walk to the monument\/park that reminds me of the Washington Mall. It’s pretty close to our dorm, it takes about 15 minutes to run there and about 7 minutes to run around the circular monument (this run has become part of my weekly exercises, there’s a .25 mile stretch of dirt that’s good for intervals too).<\/p>\n

\"1944\" — the spire memorializes the Napoleonic Wars, with St. George, the Patron Saint of Moscow, protecting at the top, and then the 1944 memorial is for WWII.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"spire$
spire close up. St. George at top holding golden ring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"This$
This semi-circle stands behind the spire.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Moscow's$
Moscow’s Bday is Sept. 5-6 or something so there are many festivities this entire week. The cobblestone area here is covered with a giant tent now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Moscow$
Moscow State University is the tall building off to the distance in the far right. Going there for a BBQ tonight (Sept 11, 2009)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"The$
The front of our dorm. From the left: Mike (NY University, Cellist), Chris (Pittsburg U, a pretty cool cat) David (Miami, gets free airplane flights) Adeel (U of Maryland, Ping Pong Master), Lenny (Miami, The eldest and guitarist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Everyday$
Everyday I go to school I see this poster. Yea be jealous, I’m gonna see this again in November here. The best one I think so far.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"The$
The Math in Moscow Students of this semester. All fun people.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"I$
I said they were fun. Top row left to right and on down we have Natalie. Lenny & Mike Weiss. Will, David, John. Austin, Bill, Caleb, Mike Donatz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Because$
Because it’s my title. Some store on Little Arbat near our school.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
So Ester took us for a short tour on September 3rd around the city, walking distance from our university. We saw her favorite building, her least favorite building, the kremlin from atop an awesome bridge, and a statue of Christopher Columbus with Peter the Great’s head (I’ll explain). The city is laid out using a ring system. The center ring surrounds the Kremlin, (no pictures of Kremlin in this post, they came out bad, and I have better from later) then the Garden Ring (the buildings along this ring are my favorite, I’ll talk about this in the post for ‘next’ week, which is actually last week…I’m way behind) then the 3rd transport ring (38 miles long), and they are building the 4th transport ring around the wayyy outside. Apparently it costs the government $200 million to build a mile or something.<\/p>\n
$\"Ester's$
Ester’s favorite building in Moscow. The detail on it is phenomenal; although, it is hard to see as there are trees around it. We didn’t know what it was called though, or I forgot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Close$
Close Up of that building: painting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Bridge$
Bridge that leads away from Cathedral of Christ the Savior, one of the most amazing buildings I have seen. The Kremlin is to the left, Cathedral behind, and Columbus\/Peter the Great to the right. Cool Sky eh?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Apparently,$
Apparently, this monument was originally made in the 1990’s as Christopher Columbus with hopes of selling it to the USA. However, after our recent discovery of Columbus’s benevolence toward the American Indians we didn’t want to erect a monument for him. So the scultor decapitated Columbus and stuck Peter the Great’s head on top. This is why his head here is a wee bit small. Unfortunately, the high winds and salty air in St. Petersburg would disentegrate or push over this statue had it been placed there. So the Russians decided to put it in Moscow, with the phrase “it’s not ugly, it just looks out of place.” Note: Peter is facing away from the Kremlin towards Europe, the area he wanted to explore. (sorry lighting is bad, it’s getting close to sunset; I’ll add a better picture soon from this past weekend’s bus tour).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"This$
This is one badass building. Originally this site was to be a monument of Lenin, in size of the Colossus of Rhodes. So Stalin demolished the original Cathedral erected in Napoleon’s time. Unfortunately, Communism didn’t work too well and Stalin ran out of funds (he spent too much on killing people maybe), and so the monument was never constructed. Instead, it became the largest outdoor swimming pool. The new cathedral construction began with the fall of the Soviet Reign and was finished in the 90’s, I think 1996 (although when I went in this past weekend, the lower levels were being painted). Anyway, the mass of the dirt from the hill this cathedral stands on is exactly the mass of the cathedral. So Mother Earth wouldn’t be angry with extra weight or something (there’s probably some geological reason for this actually, but I think I stopped paying attention to the guide). But this building is absolutely massive. It’s the largest church in Russia. I’ll talk more about it when I post pictures from the bus tour, because we got to go inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
As I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the inside, check out this painting from Wikimedia Commons:<\/p>\n
This is from the 1883 original cathedral, but the reconstruction is about the same. It’s absolutely breathtaking. And even though this is Ester’s least favorite building because she is sad that some people’s faith is reduced to this huge material structure, I’m still awed by the amazing detail and enormity of this building.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"Same$
Same church, this time from underneath\/next to the cool bridge. The previous photo is of the left face of the church in this photo. In other words, if you walked to the right in the other photo (start from Dian throwing Peace up towards Ester in the right of the photo), you would eventually get to this bridge (which is what where we came from; so yeah these photos are slightly out of order).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
$\"The$
The sun set while we were on the bridge. It was quite beautiful. And as this sun sets, my eyelids are setting as well so I’m gonna go get some shut eye, after I read about what happens to Roland and Eddie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On September 1, a girl from our dorm, Natasha, took us for a walk to the monument\/park that reminds me of the Washington Mall. It’s pretty close to our dorm, it takes about 15 minutes to run there and about 7 minutes to run around the circular monument (this run has become part of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moscow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1468,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/1468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}