A quieter day today. Ivan gave us a very informative two hour tour of the town's monuments. The war memorial with its eternal flame was first.
The town lost many soldiers fighting Japanese in WW2. Russia lost more soldiers than Germany in that war. We had a tour of three orthodox churches.
One church had a married couple of saints who were visited in statue form by newlyweds.
We found a statue of the two-headed eagle that often appeared in print as a symbol of Russia.
Ivan showed us the buildings built during Communist rule and deplored their poor architecture. He told us about the struggle of the churches to resurrect the buildings that had been converted to other uses. He assured us that freedom of political speech is universal now. The statue of a Cossack is well respected
but no one is wanting to pull down a statue of Lenin
or change the name of the main street- Lenin. Stalin is rarely mentioned. He showed us the statue of Yuri Gargarin and told us the sad story of his career and unfortunate death in a plane crash piloting a plane he did not have enough experience with.
That is the top of the spacesuit but it could be seen that the authorities had his head on a plate and took advantage of his youthful idealism.
We looked at the city fountain in the middle of the Angara River. We stated earlier that this is the only outlet for the world's largest lake (Baikal) and we were surprised to see how fast it was flowing. It was a very difficult river to swim across.
He showed us some more early wooden houses with lacy window trims and took us back to the hotel. In the afternoon we were free to wander so we headed to the collection of log houses that were being erected and resurrected.
At this stage we started noticing Friday wedding parties and counted the brides, but finally lost count. We think there were 15, breaking our record in Yekaterinburg. Russian weddings are prolific just now.
We entered the Lucky People restaurant tentatively because English is not common here but we were greeted immediately by a beautiful young waitress who sat us down and used her basic English to help us work our way through one of the best meals we have had. We told her we would put "highly recommended" on our blog for the Lucky People. We walked through a large park which was quite neglected and came out at the markets area which had hundreds of stalls selling clothes and food. The crowds and the touting were too much for Malcolm so Lyn returned with him to the hotel. Pam and Ken went further meanwhile to the main city markets. Near the hotel we fell in love with this young man who represents the essential backpacker.
One church had a married couple of saints who were visited in statue form by newlyweds.
We found a statue of the two-headed eagle that often appeared in print as a symbol of Russia.
Ivan showed us the buildings built during Communist rule and deplored their poor architecture. He told us about the struggle of the churches to resurrect the buildings that had been converted to other uses. He assured us that freedom of political speech is universal now. The statue of a Cossack is well respected
but no one is wanting to pull down a statue of Lenin
or change the name of the main street- Lenin. Stalin is rarely mentioned. He showed us the statue of Yuri Gargarin and told us the sad story of his career and unfortunate death in a plane crash piloting a plane he did not have enough experience with.
We looked at the city fountain in the middle of the Angara River. We stated earlier that this is the only outlet for the world's largest lake (Baikal) and we were surprised to see how fast it was flowing. It was a very difficult river to swim across.
We entered the Lucky People restaurant tentatively because English is not common here but we were greeted immediately by a beautiful young waitress who sat us down and used her basic English to help us work our way through one of the best meals we have had. We told her we would put "highly recommended" on our blog for the Lucky People. We walked through a large park which was quite neglected and came out at the markets area which had hundreds of stalls selling clothes and food. The crowds and the touting were too much for Malcolm so Lyn returned with him to the hotel. Pam and Ken went further meanwhile to the main city markets. Near the hotel we fell in love with this young man who represents the essential backpacker.
No comments:
Post a Comment