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…
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…
I had many an ambitious day-tripping plan for my Winter Hols. Arkhangelskoye — a comparatively modest country estate that over the course of the 17th-20th centuries had passed through the hands of several prominent aristocratic families of Imperial Russia — was not on that list. In fact, I had never heard about it and found…
Having missed the once-in-three-hours train to the Tula region this morning by literally two minutes, my sister and I decided to not let the 30C-weather, and packed swimsuits and a picnic go to waste, and make it a beach day. By the virtue of being situated on the Moscow River, Moscow has several decent, public…
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