This is one of the churches at Kolomenskaya park, it is a Unesco Heritage site.
There were some big holidays recently as well. One of them was Easter. During the Soviet Union going to church was restricted and even monitored by the KGB. One of my students related to me the fact that if you wanted to be a prominent figure in your work and were caught going into a church, your career would hit the glass ceiling suddenly. But things have changed now. They have changed so much that the former head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, went to mass for Easter. The same student told me he almost laughed out loud when he saw Putin standing next to the Patriarch because 20 year previously he would have been sent packing from his post for such a thing.
This is my friend Artyom. He took me out for a ride in a boat even though I thought I would fall in.
Arytom also took me to Moscow State University, where there is a lovely park for walking.
With the church up and swinging again the Russians have brought back some old traditions. One of them is having your decorated Easter eggs and Easter cakes blessed. So hundreds of people lined up the evening before Easter Sunday and waited to have their eggs blessed. Since I was raised a protestant, the whole idea of mass and blessing were a bit beyond me. Usually in a protestant church there is enough room for all the congregation at one time but the orthodox churches are small, so people wait their turn to come in and kiss icons, light candles, get blessed, and cross themselves. I never realized how much the religions diverged.
The crowded church at Kolomenskaya.
Also, when it is warm, you can't keep a good Russian inside. They all drive out to their dachas, which should take an hour or so but because EVERYONE is driving out to their dacha, it takes about 4 hours (no kidding). Once they are there, they enjoy the fresh air and the freedom to barbecue (the national past time of Russians, they love it). So what is a dacha? They often translate it as a country home but that isn't very descriptive. It is just a house outside of the city. The house can be as simple as having no running water or electricity or as sophisticated as a normal house in American suburbia. Often the little houses are squished together, where your neighbor is 10 feet away. But no matter the kind they have, Russians relish and cherish the ability to leave the city for a few days.
On May 1st the Russians celebrated "Workers Day". During the Soviet Union this was a huge holiday and everyone was "encouraged" to march through the streets holding banners that said, "World, Peace, and Labor." This holiday originated in the US but when the Soviets took it up as well, the Americans changed their appreciated for the workers to Labor Day. Today the holiday was celebrated with about 20,000 people march through the street in support of communism. Todd and I followed the march for a ways. It was quite somber. This might be due to the fact that most of the people marching were elderly, which means the members drop dramatically each year.
Some demonstrators.
I thought the line of police looked cool.
Finally, Russia celebrated their biggest holiday of the year, Victory Day, on May 9th. This is the day that Nazi Germany finally surrendered to the Allied forces in World War II. Since Russia lost as many as 20 million people in the war, Stalin made it a huge holiday and propaganda tool. I was discussing with a British girl how both our countries never bother to remember VE-Day or even VJ-Day. So Todd and I watched the military parade through Red Square on television because the event was only for VIPs or else we would have gone in person to watch. Then we headed to Gorky Park to check out the veterans. Usually the veterans receive flowers from children as sign of respect for their efforts during the war. I was surprised to realize that a lot of the veterans are women. They were employed as snipers, pilots, and of course nurses and doctors. It was funny to see them walking around with their chests covered in metals too!
Great Citizens!
One of the veterans.
Look! The fountains have been turned on!
The America ride.
Todd heard one of his favorite songs being played while scantily clad economic students danced. Moscow is truely a great city. (Give it a moment to play through and can you tell which song it is?)
Hopefully, as spring turns into summer, there will be more interesting things to talk about from sunny Moscow!
My friends took me to the park. Zhenya, Elena, Artyom, and Olga.
