During the navigation period on the Neva (from April to November) 22 bridges across the river and main canals are drawn at night to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea and right through the city of Saint Petersburg. To know this is important for a number of reasons. It is a... Continue Reading →
The first time I arrived in Ufa, after a quick 27-hour train trip from Moscow, it was about 30 below, with a heavy snowstorm and strong winds. Not the best weather to fall in love with the place and definitely horrendous conditions to take pictures, as visibility was almost nil. Conditions only improved on the... Continue Reading →
The headquarters of the Russian Defence Ministry is one of the most square and symmetrical buildings you are likely to ever see. Built by Soviet architect Led Rudnev (a leading practitioner of Stalinist architecture and also the creator of the Main building of Moscow State University), with its burly, squat, squared impression and size, I think it immediately... Continue Reading →
Peter the 1st was a visionary ruler, without a doubt one of Russia's most influential tzar/emperors of all times. It is not by coincidence that he is commonly referred to as Peter the Great. There are a lot of people who dislike the idea of buying and wearing used clothes. Some can afford to be... Continue Reading →
The New Jerusalem Monastery, also known as the Voskresensky (Resurrection) Monastery, is a male monastery, located in the town of Istra, about 70 km East-Northeast of Moscow. To get there takes about one hour (plus traffic) in a car, or about twice as long wit a train from the capital (including a good half-hour walk... Continue Reading →
The center of Vladimir, like that of many Russian towns and cities, is graced by a statue of Lenin. As per tradition, the inscription on the statue's base read that the monument is by and for the workers and the farmers. According to both Wikipedia and my direct experience, there is a very, very limited... Continue Reading →
About 200 kilometres (120 mi) north west of Moscow, in Tver Oblast you can find lake Udomlya (named like the nearby town), a lake that never completely freezes, not even when the temperature drops to -30 or below. The reason is simple, but interesting. On the shores of Lake Udomlya sits the Kalinin Nuclear Power Station, which uses... Continue Reading →
There is certainly no shortage of museums in Moscow, but the largest and most visited of them all is almost never in the museum lists... The Moscow Metro is pretty awesome. Its numbers are mind boggling, for starters. Over 400 km of track and close to 250 stations, served by over 10.500 trains for close... Continue Reading →
As I wrote yesterday, a good picture should always tell a story. So, in this respect, today's picture in not a good photo, as it does not tell much of a story on its own. But this time it comes with a real story. And I think it's a story that deserves to be told... Continue Reading →
Russia Through The Lens 