In the Kremlin armory, there’s an ornately crafted Faberge egg, given by Nicholas II to his wife Alexandra. It celebrates the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was a project under Nicholas’s leadership when he was Tsarevich. Inside the egg is a minute replica of the royal train. While the real train wasn’t made out of silver, I’m […]
For our neighborhood, we (Julia Preston and Maya Costales) chose Patriarch Ponds. We visited the area a total of four times together over the course of the term. We chose Patriarch Ponds because we’d read about it in The Master and Margarita and we were curious what the area was like today in comparison to […]
Picture this: a nature center on the shores of Lake Baikal. The fifteen of us sitting in rows, expectantly awaiting a video on the Trans-Siberian railroad and the icebreaker ferries that brought trains full of people and goods across Baikal started at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The video starts. A voiceover […]
Perhaps the most famous attraction in St. Petersburg is the Hermitage, a sprawling complex of art museums centered around the Winter Palace, the former residence of Russian tsars. Built by the Italian architect Rastrelli for Empress Elizabeth in the first half of the 18th century, the palace is a dizzyingly ornate Rococo confection of marble, […]
Two weeks ago, several of us got the chance to travel to Murom, a small city about a 4-hour train ride from Moscow, in order to teach a class to English students at the university there. In order to go, we had to create a presentation on an aspect of American culture. Since I’m interested […]
Suzdal, located about two and a half hours outside of Moscow, prides itself on its history and its ancient architecture. After all, it must—with only about 10,000 full-time residents, it welcomes around a million visitors a year, and tourism is the town’s lifeblood. The early medieval architecture on display in Suzdal is magnificent, from the […]
When I arrived from the airport and first saw Moscow State University’s campus, a little more than two weeks ago, I was thrilled by the sheer size of the main building, looming above the gate, emblazoned with lights in the darkness. Coming from a small liberal arts school in a small town, I knew that […]