The Nizhny Novgorod Cableway is a 3660 metres long gondola lift cable car link across the Volga River in Russia connecting the city of Nizhny Novgorod with the town of Bor, inaugurated in February 2012. It is part of the city's public transport system, so you can ride it for a very low price (around 1.5 Euros or USD for a round-trip). Compare that, for... Continue Reading →
Inside the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin you can see a display (like an open-air museum) of WWII military vehicles. Amongst them, the famous Katyusha rocket launcher, a series of guns, trucks, tanks and even a Lavochkin La-7 fighter plane and the sail of Soviet submarine S-13. What struck me most are not the vehicles themselves, but rather the "photo mosaics"... Continue Reading →
Coming from the warmer climate of Italy, my native country, I am still very much fascinated by the frozen rivers of Russia. Especially the large and very large ones, like the Volga, which turn completely white in winter once they are covered in snow.
If you've been reading this blog, you also know I am deeply intrigued by the possibility of visiting Russian cities and regions that were once completely off-limits to foreigners (and to most Russians, as well) under Soviet Union law. The picture above combines both of this element and maybe that is why it means a lot to me.
Originally the staircase, which is has over 1.500 steps, was simply "Volga Staircase" but it was soon renamed Chkalov Staircase, after the world-famous test pilot and hero of the Soviet Union Valery Chkalov, the first man to fly from Moscow, to Vancouver, Washington, in the United States via the North Pole on an Tupolev ANT-25 plane, a non-stop distance of 8,811 kilometres (5,475 mi).
There are a lot of things I like about this image. I shot it from the Kremlin of Nizhny Novgorod, overlooking the frozen Volga. The white expanse is actually the river, frozen and covered in snow. The little black dots on it are ice fishermen. They are a bit hard to see at this resolution, but... Continue Reading →
Russia Through The Lens 