Wednesday September 25^th

We were up early today to catch a flight from Khanty-Mansiysk back to Moscow. There is a two hour time difference so we lost two hours in the change. The travel was without incident … and then we became all too familiar with Moscow traffic!  OY … that is traffic like I have NEVER seen.  It took us so long to get to the hotel.  We arrived and then immediately jumped back into the traffic jam to head downtown and visit the Tretyakov Museum.  We say the most BEAUTIFUL works of Russian art. I think that one of the most striking was of Ivan the Terrible holding his son (Ivan) after having hit and killed him in a fit of rage.  Ivan was ‘no joke’.  Our host and guide Marina referred to that as an ‘anger stroke’.  Marina also told us the story of how Ivan the Terrible blinded the architects of St. Basil’s Cathedral (colorful and beautiful like no other cathedral in the world) so that they could not build anything as beautiful anywhere else in the world.  See the photo below of a portrait of Ivan as well as the outside of this wonderful museum.  Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow 

 

 

 

After the museum we walked through the streets of Moscow and saw some more famous sites.  We walked along the river bank where we saw an enormous statute of a ship and a sailor.  We were told that this was originally designed as St. Columbus and offered as a gift to the United Nations in NYC.  They politely declined the gift. It was then repurposed and now stands to pay homage to Peter the Great … who apparently, although living in a different century, sailed on a similar ship (???? How can this be???). Well that was what we were told anyway. 

We got to our final destination of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. This breathtaking Cathedral was once destroyed-an order of Stalin.  It was going to be the site of a grand building called the Palace of Russia.  There were detailed plans created and preconstruction work completed, however when Stalin died the project apparently died with him.  In its place, the government built a swimming pool.  Yep … a swimming pool.  That remained until the early 1990s when the community decided to rebuild the original Cathedral in exact replication.  You can clearly see why Moscow wanted to have this amazing Cathedral back in their city. 

After returning to the hotel we said goodbye to our colleagues from IHS in Ohio and APSAC.  They flew out on Thursday morning.  After making plans for continued collaboration and future projects (this is the stuff Traci L. is FAMOUS for J ) we fell into bed!