Confusion with the Russian psyche...

Our Metro stop 'Hunter's Row' - pronounced 'Okhotny Ryad'

I admit to some confusion when it comes to understanding the Russian mind set. Having explored the wonders of the Tsars, then experienced a Stalinist park in celebration of communism and then watching a banned communist rally from my window, I feel unable to narrow these people down. They have lived through many types of government and yet it would seem that at this moment in time they are teetering on the edge of a world of lost identity. Where do the people of Russia today belong? If you get rid of your history, banish it to a corner then you must be careful of what will take its place (Putin..?!). I find it weird that people here would hold up a picture of Stalin in adoration and yet for some people, those times were the most certain that they had experienced for a long time and they felt looked after by the communist state so they are willing to forget an atrocity or two. Heh, it's not that simple and the Russian is a complex beast so I judge not - but because I'm English, I like to put things in neat boxes and label people as our history and government is fairly straight forward with few extremes....well, I just want to know more about your typical Ruskie....my curiosity is on high alert. I have asked many long term expats and also a few Russians to try and explain the Russian psyche but no one is able - it is a mystical beast that you can only guess at and most have told me that by the time I leave I will still not have a grasp of this elusive thing. I shall keep searching though....

Good old Communist Rally!

On the subject of our good old mucker Stalin, there is a building being renovated next to Red Square - it is from a design that was signed off by Stalin when he was still leader and has a very funny story (funny now, not so funny then...) attached to it. The architects gave Stalin two designs for him to choose but he didn't realise and so signed off on both of them. The architects and designers were too frightened to tell Stalin that he had made a mistake and so they built the building with one design used on one half and the other design on the other half! I hope that you can see the different halves in my picture - 

Left and right sides different designs....

Most of the main streets have Stalinist buildings where the older buildings were demolished. There are still some beautiful older buildings down the side streets which I much prefer -

I have started my Russian Lessons with Olga - I did spend the first hour and a half thinking of ways to throw myself from the window as it dawned on me how similar Russian is to Latin. I remember in my first Latin lesson at Uni, the teacher said that Latin was like a mathematical crossword puzzle and thinking  - 'oh well, that's me done for then' - anything being similar to Maths is just not going to get past the guards in my head. I felt like I was back in class at the age of 13, reading out bad Cyrillic and getting flustered by letters and words that the day before I knew fine but now in a test situation my mind had gone blank. I do understand the way the language is constructed though because of Latin and so she commented that I was already very knowledgeable and this seemed to excite her but made me tremble in horror as the grammar is so complex that I think I will spend every lesson trying to remember what has to agree with the subject, the object and what ending the adverb has - holy cow. Graeme and I are having separate lessons and Olga is teaching us completely differently. As I have studied many languages before, I have a need to start with grammar and then to build on top of this - unfortunately, learning this way does hinder the amount you are able to speak in every day conversations. Graeme on the other hand is being taught useful sentences to memorise and has been told that they will try and avoid complex grammatical situations! I think that Graeme will probably be babbling away much sooner than I as I'm such a stickler for detail in Grammar which will no doubt be my undoing! I'll be trying to conjugate verbs at the shop and the shop keeper would have served 40 people by the time I remember the right ending. Anyway, at least we are trying and I did enjoy my lesson and using my rather cobweb filled brain! Graeme was sitting in bed trying to learn his homework last night and so I called him a teachers pet to which he replied ' If you are going to do something then you must try and be the best you can at it'  - oh blah blah blah, turn the light off GEEK! I get the feeling Olga is going to prefer the 'Committed Graeme ' to the ' Lazy Chloe'.

Arthur is well, growing taller by the second and causing chaos around the house - he's decided that going to sleep at 7pm is too late and so he usually goes to bed at 6.30pm and then sleeps until 7am! Children go to bed quite late here, in fact you still find children in the parks at 10pm and so I think people think we are a bit strange for Arthur's early bedtime but I can't keep him awake any longer! He has a good hour and a half sleep at lunchtime so I think he has taken after his mother in his love for bed. Good lad! His art and music classes at nursery are going well - the head teacher was impressed that he can concentrate on a puzzle for up to 20 minutes by himself - unlike his mother who has the attention span of a gnat. He is still just babbling words - we realised the other day that he was saying a Russian word but because we didn't know it we thought he was just talking jibberish. I think his brain is slowly trying to distinguish the two languages and I am awfully jealous of the fact that he will speak Russian like a native and will not have moments wondering what endings go where. I declared out loud to Graeme yesterday that I thought Arthur would grow up and then get recruited as a spy because of his fluency in Russian and then he would never be able to tell us and then he would get shot and we would never know all the brave and wonderful things he had done in the name of Great Britain! Yes, my friends, I have the ability to go from 0 to 100 when my brain gets going! I'm watching two spy related programmes at the moment and reading a spy thriller - hence my spiral into crazy land. I always wanted to be a spy - yeah, yeah to all the people that know me and are now laughing hysterically at the thought of big mouth Guthrie actually managing to keep something secret. You don't know, I might have always been a spy and this is a double bluff...errrr, no I don't think so. As soon as anyone threatened torture i'd be  - ' So, those secrets I said I knew nothing about...well, if you pass me a computer i'll give you the codes of how to blow up Britain with one button. Now, where can I get a nice cup of tea.'

I'll finish with a few videos and pictures of Arefei (supposedly the Russian equivalent of Arthur ) and wish you all well and good day....

Art Class with Daddy again...

He has found a new place to sit and contemplate the complex differences of Russian and English...

We've decided that tucking the jumper into the tights is the way forward....

Bath time always fun...

Especially fun when we balance pots on our head....

Animals are all well - think we may have to buy Alice a jacket soon. Temperature is to drop to -21 on Monday so we must get miss Alice some boots!

Doing what we do best...sleeping!

Alice, it's called sharing.....

Sleeping chuckle brothers....

And to finish, a picture of a little snow in Red Square....

Like icing on a cake!

National Unity day holiday and an overdose of culture.....

Inside the Kremlin walls - Kremlin Palace ahead.

Well what a busy weekend we have had! Thursday was national unity day and so everyone has Thursday and Friday off so that they can go away for a long weekend. The Friday isn't actually a holiday and so everyone has to work next Saturday to make the work back...go figure. So we planned a very busy few days and boy, we haven't stopped. On Thursday we attempted to see Lenin for the 80th time but yet again our plans were scuppered by Religious parades in Red Square for Unity day and so we just had a walk around and then ended up in TGI Fridays having hamburgers and beer...how did that happen?! We have tried to see Lenin so many times but every time something happens - I don't think the old crusty wants us there. Anyway, we had a good walk around the back streets and came across this fabulous door - 

Door we found in a back street

This was actually a door to a restaurant but what it was in the past, I have no idea.  Rather special though. It was raining which was a bit grotty although Arthur enjoyed the puddles - 

As you can see, Arthur will follow anyone for a balloon...

On the Friday Graeme and I ventured to the Armoury in the Kremlin. You can buy tickets for all the different parts that you want to see but we were just interested in this area although it meant we couldn't walk around the whole of the inside of the Kremlin. Whilst we were in the queue for the Armoury, Putin drove past in a massive cascade of cars with the prime ministers flag on the front of his car. It's amazing because cars drive ahead and stop all the traffic along the roads he needs to drive down so that he can drive through the Moscow traffic as if it wasn't there....lucky Putin - not even the Queen gets that treatment. Anyway, we can now say that we have been within 5 metres of Putin - well, it's a little bit exciting...okay, not exciting at all. 

So, The Armoury - AMAZING! Sadly you are not allowed to take photos - although I sneaked one - 

Horse in Armour in Background

It was extremely interesting and I don't think I have ever seen so many jewels - the first section is a display of Religious artefacts and then the largest collection of Silver in the world - there were plates and tea sets used by Catherine the Great, a dinner service given to the Tsars from Napoleon depicting scenes from Olympus, Armour used by the Tsars, presents given to the Tsars from ambassadors around the world - I particularly liked the presents from the British (not biased) which included a set of silver snow leopards which the audio guide said were unrivalled for their beauty. Seeing as we're all struggling a little in Britain, maybe we should ask for them back and melt them down to pay off the deficit...can you take back such presents? Maybe I'll ask next time i'm in. There was also a large selection of guns and swords laden with diamonds and rubies. Even the blankets for the horses were made out of golden thread with ivory saddles. There was a collection of thrones, the throne of Ivan the Terrible was made out of Ivory and there was a throne there given to a Tsar from the Armenians that had 900 diamonds on alone and that doesn't include the sapphires and emeralds. There was a room full of carriages which were magnificent - one was a wooden sleigh that carried one of the Tsars daughters from St. Petersburg to Moscow in three days in the middle of winter - it had something like 30 horses pulling it - incredible! There was a fabulous collection of clothing from different centuries. There were also coronation gowns and crowns - there was one crown that was only used for the coronations and was supposed to represent the seat of all Russian power - it was about 600 years old and was edged in fur with beautiful jewels around the rim and on the top. There were also some dresses of Catherine the Great - one was her coronation gown and boy, the lady was obviously a bit of a heffer cause all her dresses were huge...Peter the Great's boots were massive too - he must have been a bloody giant. Anyway, it was a feast of aristocratic indulgence and was extremely interesting. Graeme and I both commented on the fact that it's no surprise that the Russian working man revolted if the aristocracy were prancing around in all these jewels in golden carriages on Ivory thrones... although I'm a right wing royalist so really I'm in the corner of the Tsars and not the collective.

Today we visited the opposite of Royalty, The all Russia Exhibition centre (VDNKh) created by Stalin in 1937 to display Communism's achievements in Science, agriculture, industry and technology. There was an All-Union agricultural exhibition held here in 1939 that was supposed to have been in 1937 but Stalin had killed most of the participants and so it was two years late....I don't think he really thought that one through.

The main entrance

The Triumphal Soviet Arch

It was such a weird place as it was there to celebrate communism and there were these beautiful buildings and pavilions which when you entered were just crammed full of cheap and nasty shops and stalls - selling anything from cameras to shoelaces - I think Stalin must be turning in his grave - which is not such a bad thing!

House of The Peoples of Russia

Another statue of Lenin...

I took some photos of the inside of the building to show how tacky it is. Supposedly it used to have an illuminated map of the USSR and dioramas of Lenin's home town but now just cheap mobiles...

You can just see the original walls

Cheap stalls under beautiful architecture

It seems so sad that a beautiful building like this has been completely destroyed with tat. All a very odd mixture and experience. 

Fountain of the Friendship of Peoples

There are sixteen golden statues of maidens dressed in the national costumes of the Soviet republics. The state funding stopped for the VDNKh in 1990 and so this is why it is so run down. 

Former Coal Industry Pavilion

Pavilion dedicated to Culture

Yes that is me with my red bobble hat in front of the Stone Flower Fountain

I took a video to show how weird it was to walk around a place where the original message had been lost to the power of capitalism - maybe it is the ultimate retaliation against Stalin and all that he did to his people - 

Ukrainian Pavilion

A Vostok Rocket outside the Space Pavilion

People walking on the wing of a passenger liner...er no thanks.

After we strolled around the park we went back to The Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics which sits opposite the entrance to the park.

Space Obelisk

This monument consists of a rocket blasting 100m in the air with a tail of energy made of titanium. 

The museum was brilliant and filled with fantastic things from real moon buggies to a replica of the MIR space station. In the whole museum Arthur found a radiator on the wall the most exciting part....in fact he screamed when we tried to remove him from it - even real life rockets couldn't compare with a normal boring everyday radiator...marvellous. 

I've signed Alice up for the next moon landing.....

Check out that pure rocket....

Another rocket....

I have decided that retro soviet space gear is the way forward - 

Nice tracksuit...

I want one...

Not a good career option for someone with claustrophobia ....

They had a replica of the MIR space station or part of it - 

The toilet..beware of yellow hose....

Food storage

Steering wheel area.....?

So my lovely friends, I have been to many places this weekend from Royal crowns to Communist monuments to the moon and back.....and now i'm laying on the sofa with a glass of wine listening to my husband snore....exhaustion has hit the Ogilvies.....

Ballet anyone?

All the children wear tights here so that there is no skin showing at any point when the temperature reaches minus 1,0000000. I thought I better go and buy some and managed to get blue and grey ones for Arthur rather than pink....phew. I must say though, I am slightly alarmed by my child's legs in a pair of tights but with the poses he has been displaying I think that the tights have gone to his head and he is seriously thinking about auditioning for the ballet -

And one...

and two...

and three...

Getting ready for the opening sequence

See the raw emotion in his opening stance....

Not sure what ballet position this is?

I have also caught him rehearsing without me to some strange music on Russian radio....

I'll let you know when the tickets are available for his first performance at The Bolshoi. Don't expect freebies - seeing those legs in tights is worth gold dust I tell you, gold dust.