Elena Komleva Blog: September 2014

My Trip to Russia. Part VII Ekaterinburg

The House of Music

The estate of the richest merchant in Ekaterinburg. He loved to party and drink, they said during the parties there fortunes were lost gambling and drunk merchants washed their horses with champagne

Popov, the inventor of the radio!

Residence of Vladimir Putin in Ekaterinburg

Iset river

The Damb (on Iset river. The centre of the city).

I forgot the significance of this building, but one of the things that makes it unique is its architectural style...

Cathedral "On the Blood", at the place where the last Russian emperor Nikolay II and his family lived and were killed.

The last walk of Nicholas II and his family as they descend the stairs to the dungeons where they were shot.

Prince Alexis, the son of Nicholas II, and his mother Alexandra Feodorovna

The exact place where the last emperor of Russia Nikolay II and his family was killed. The little wooden chapel at that spot.

Fountain "Planet Earth"

City Administration Building

Vladimir Lenin

Old Airport building

New Airport buildings
(Koltsovo)

My Trip to Russia PartVI

Russian Countryside

-Kotelnich-

Up next is Kotelnich. A small town-slash-village where my grandparents lived for some time and where I used to go during summer when I was a child. This is also where my best friend used to live. She came back there from Novgorod where she lives now to meet me.

I am taking a train.

The journey from Ekaterinburg to Kotelnich takes about 24 hours. It is in a different time zone as well ( Moscow time )

Nice view out the window of the train.

Descending the Ural Mountains, now it is the flatlands of the European part of Russia.

After 24 hours I am here. It's Kotelnich Station!

Россия, Вятка, Котельнич: country: Russia; region: Vyatka; town: Kotelnich

--and all their emblems:

One of the nice paintings that are on the walls of the hotel I am staying at...

Cheburashka & Gena the Crocodile --

Only this Cheburashka looks kind of strange...

Gena the Crocodile and Cheburashka are both well-known characters from a good old Russian cartoon...

And this is what happens to little girls who walk alone in the forest :)

(Masha and the Bear)

The creepy version below --

Right besides, the golden stork and the pink princess --

They say children are brought by storks...

More characters from national Russian fairytales: These ones are from a fairytale about a hen who laid a golden egg. The Hen's owners (old man and woman) did not know what to do with this golden egg, then the mouse ran across their table and knocked it off. The old couple was still very upset about the loss, but the hen promised and laid them another, this time normal egg, so they could eat it.

Wooden Hedgehog...

Cobblestone was used to make roads more than a century ago, before the pavement was invented. The roads in some small towns and villages in Russia still remain cobbled!

The Brook.

This was my favourite place whenever I went to Kotelnich as a child during the summertime, the main reason I loved it so much was an array of interesting insects and other small animals there!

---was, and still is! :)

Challenge: find the little frog!

Here it is!

Water Striders...

Goat attack!

Beautiful endless Russian field!

Beautiful electric blue flowers...

Bird Homes ...

--And red clay roads ...

Not sure when this happened...

And more interesting characters on the streets!

These are characters from a well-known Russian story "Grandfather Mazai and the Hares" which is about an old man by the name Mazai who saved hares during a flood by letting them all climb into his boat. (Still not sure by the way if that story is about real events or not...)

Another well-known fairytale, this one is called Masha and (this time--) Three Bears --

A fairytale of a Fisherman and a Golden Fish. This one talks about how counter-productive vanity is ;)

-more hares...

-and bears--

-and other things --

-like crocodiles...

Anyway, so..

Driving for another hour away from Kotelnich now, on the way to a village called "the Rat Village" (Крысичи); it consists of only about six houses. Beautiful landscapes are on the way...

-and a pond!

And more beautiful flatland landscapes of the European plate. Though I was born in mountainous region, I like plains just as much as mountains, or maybe even more!

This plant you are not supposed to touch. It is a big toxic, poisonous plant that surrounds the road and the village. If you touch the leaves or any other part of this plant, its sap gets onto your skin and, reacting in sunlight, produces a poisonous compound that burns through your skin, creating boils and marks that are red as Borsch ( the red Russian soup) and that remain for up to two years. This is one of the explanation why this plant is called "Borschevik" in Russian.