I took a trip to Moscow last week to meet up with some fellow Fulbrighters in the area. We're all finished with classes now so we took some time to see some of the sights around Moscow. There's a group of historic cities around Moscow known as the Golden Ring that I had wanted to see for a while, so it was a good opportunity. Unfortunately I only got to see one of the cities, but I was only in town for three days so it would have been pretty challenging to try and fit in any more. The town we went to, Sergiyev Posad, is famous mostly for its Trinity Monastery, the most important Russian monastery and the "spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox Church." After the requisite 30 minutes of asking random people for directions, we found the surprisingly nice coach that drove us the hour or so route to the town. There's not much to the town other than the monastery, but it alone is worth the trip.
It's still a very active monastery, home to around 300 monks. It's not uncommon to see bearded men in austere black robes walking from building to building, always with the look of utmost contemplation. The main church within the monastery contains the Trinity, one of, if not the most famous work by the medieval Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev (himself easily the most famous of all icon painters). The early works of iconography were extremely influential on later works, to the point that nearly all of them are variations based on one of two images (the Madonna and Child or the Trinity), so it was cool to see one of the originals.
The next day we decided to visit Gorki Leninskiye, a sprawling estate some five miles south of Moscow that was nationalized by the Soviets and converted to Lenin's personal getaway home. It ended up taking up nearly the entire day, as the bus that took us there wasn't really the bus we wanted (even though they had the same number and went along the same route--except for the stop we needed) and dropped us in a sleepy little suburban neighborhood. But it gave us a chance to play one of my favorite Russian games: Directions Scavenger Hunt. This is where you ask a passerby directions, which are inevitably exceedingly vague (i.e. "Go in that direction"). You go in that direction, find another person, and repeat, making your way piecemeal toward your ultimate destination. Somehow, we ended up finding the back entrance to the place, and found ourselves in the middle of the estate fields before we even realized we were on the grounds. And let me tell you, despite his proletarian ideology, Lenin was not hurting for digs.
He sure put the "vanguard" in "vanguard party."
My favorite part of the estate actually had nothing to do with the estate itself, but was a recreation og Lenin's apartment and working quarters within the Kremlin. It was clear that the place doesn't get many visitors; the extremely nice man working there locked the doors in order to give us a private tour (and all for the affordable price of about $1.30). Most impressive was Lenin's personal library, containing pretty much every imaginable subject in most of the major languages of the time. Our guide claimed Lenin read over 500 pages a day, and while I'm not sure about that, he was definitely a voracious reader.
After that, we decided to temporarily forgo the main museum in favor of the buffet at the Soviet-era museum near the front of the complex. Of course, by the time we got there, the buffet was closed, and by the time we finished our tour at that museum, the other had closed. So unfortunately we didn't get to see Lenin's wheelchair or his Rolls-Royce. But let's just pretend I took the following photo:
When the Russians winterize a car, they winterize a car, dammit.
Now I'm back in the PTZ, and coming down the home stretch. I'm leaving for Moscow on the 18th, and leaving Russia on the 19th, so I'm trying to enjoy my last two weeks here as much as possible and see everyone one last time. It still doesn't really feel like I'm leaving in 14 days, but I assume that will change as I start saying goodbyes and packing up my stuff.
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