Another month has come to a close, and I am still working on getting my mojo back. However, there are some flashes of light at the end of the tunnel: I barely plugged into work over winter break, January was properly snowy and frosty, I went skiing!!!!!, which was a bit of a clumsy fiasco, and…
So, this didn’t go according to plan. My very ambitious blogging, photo-taking, walking-around-Moscow and other creative plans for the last few months of 2015 totally went out of the window — and then some. In a totally unexpected turn of events, my job was to blame. And even though the BIG THING that had me…
Yesterday I had the honor of being a part of the 3 million-large Immortal Regiment that marched across Russia. Relatives and friends of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War carried their portraits through more than a dozen Russian cities. Around 400,000 people are estimated to have walked as part of the Immortal Regiment in…
What? Maslenitsa (“butter week”) is a half-Christian, half-Slavic pagan celebration of the soon-to-come end of winter that takes place for a week before Lent. Think Mardi Gras, or carnivals of Rio de Janeiro and Venice, but instead of ball gowns, beads and nudity you get traditional Russian games, folk music and dance concerts, a lot…
Oh, were you expecting some words? Ok then. This is the ice sculpture garden that went up over winter holidays in Moscow’s Hermitage Garden, which is literally across the street from my apartment. I didn’t even know it was there until I showed up to take some MORE pictures of Moscow’s snow-covered parks (this winter…
The magic is still going strong, and is best appreciated after dark.
Russia’s Golden Autumn always passes far too quickly, and then the Endless Winter sets in. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you probably have picked up on the fact that my biggest grumble with Russian winters isn’t the weather — or the cold, to be more specific. It’s the oppressing grayness. In…
Victory Day is the most unifying holiday in Russia, because there is hardly a family in the entire country that was not personally touched by the tragedy of the Second World War. The day is filled with joy, gratitude and celebration of veterans — of all wars, but especially The Greatest Generation. There are parades,…
Spring has been slow to come to Moscow this year. In fact, most of March and the first half of April looked and felt like like preceding December and February (we got a couple of weeks of proper frosts and a dusting of snow in January): temperatures in single digits Celsius, grey skies, wilted green-ish…
Today Russians celebrate the New Year. 2014. All over again. It’s called the Old New Year, because it’s the new year according to Russia’s old calendar which was Julian vs today’s Gregorian, or Gregorian vs today’s Julian…the point is, I cannot keep up and if you want to know for sure, you should probably check…
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