Whenever I go to an unfamiliar city, I enjoy just walking down random streets and being surprised at what I find. We spent the last couple of days in the village of Listvyanka, on the shores of Lake Baikal (beautiful...... but more about that in another blog) where I walked for miles along the back streets. Cows walking across my path.... the community well where they still pull their drinking water up with a bucket.... women working in their vegetable gardens and tending their chickens, wildflowers, butterflies..... I "discovered" a quaint church (Church of St Nicholas) by a stream. It was an absolutely beautiful day.
Well, I have been in Russia for a whopping 10 days now and there is much to report. So much in fact that I am going to be breaking up my thoughts into several entries. (Hopefully I will be able to make more regular blog postings from now on.) Anyway, I shall naturally begin with the first city of Russia: Moscow.
We heard that we got the best train in all of Russia. Our car is a pleasant pastel green, moderately comfortable to sleep in with 4 bunks. Our fourth bunkmate, Alec speaks some German. Aaron also speaks some German, though both speak very little. Even so, this made the awkwardness of such a small space MUCH more pleasant. Also, Alec had a friend, Alex who spoke some English as well and told us much about the "real Russia.";
First impressions: Green. Vast. Largely undeveloped land. So many trees! The greenest grass. My dad would probably kill for that kind of lawn. The temperature is high 70s with a nice breeze. Really heavenly, despite some random torrential downpours that have occured. In general, Moscow is not very tourist friendly compared to other countries I've visited, but even just walking around Red Square or riding a boat along the Moscow river has been great. There is such beautiful and whimsical architecture.
