I just found out that one of my most favorite people ever is moving to London, and I couldn’t be more excited. Firstly, because that means an exponentially greater chance of meeting up with Annie again, and secondly, because with every new visit since my first excursion back in 2010 London is quickly – and quite…
Moscow City is a ghost town on weekends. It also might very well be a ghost town on weekdays too – this skyscraper city known officially as the Moscow International Business Center has entered its third decade of development, and although a number of businesses have already moved in, the complex still has a “work…
Moscow is an incredibly green city. It has 120 parks in total – 120!!! – and the whole 20% of the Central district is taken up by park spaces. A week doesn’t pass without me taking a walk in a park, no matter the time of year. With so many to choose from, there is…
The small, pedestrian Patriarch’s Bridge connects the northern crescent of the city with Bolotny (Bog) Island in the Moscow River, and offers some of the best panoramas of central Moscow. It begins right behind Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the tallest (and one of the largest) Orthodox Christian church in the world, erected to commemorate…
For many Moscovites the Old Arbat street is imbued with an almost mythical aura and a heavy dose of nostalgia. One of the most famed Russian bards, Bulat Okudzhava, even sang “oh Arbat, my Arbat, you are my Fatherland…” It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact source of this reverence. Arbat’s history is very layered. In the…
This is the second part of my long and meandering hike through Moscow. While part one was all about capital’s grandest landmarks basking in the rays of a setting sun, part two is straight-up Christmas nostalgia. I loitered around GUM shopping arcade, walked the historic Nikolskaya Street, went up to Lubyanka Square and its massive…
I feel like this winter went by so fast – especially with me spending most of its advent abroad – that I already miss its crisp, snowy days. One such day I took a fantastic 9-kilometer (5.5 mile) walk across the Moscow Center. This is Part 1, basking in the glow of a winter sunset:…
Suzdal is ALSO famous for its zodchestvo — Russia’s traditional wooden architecture. Village (deryevenskiye) houses are decorated with ornate wood carvings, particularly around the windows, and painted in bright, sometimes clashing color combinations. They are a delight to look at in any season, but they really stand out in the winter, against white snow and grayish…
Suzdal is famous for its churches. It is also famous for the sheer number of them – some 40 in a town of 10,000 folks. Back in the day Suzdal used to have one church for every 10 inhabitants! I have no idea about the cause of this phenomenon; although Suzdal is a very old…
Here are some random interesting bits from Tallinn. A Tale of Two Churches The Soviet Union was not kind to organized religion of any stripe, and thousands of churches were outright destroyed or re-purposed for other needs of the people. Old Town Tallinn has two remarkable examples of ecclesiastic architecture with equally fascinating histories. The Russian…
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