Yaroslavl

Hello there!

The last few days have been busy and i don't think that writing about administrative stuff etc is fun to write/fun to read haha :D Well, we have not only taken care of registration and getting the paperwork done here, we have also had some time to do something fun. Like a trip to Yaroslavl!

Since we had 2 days off between the orientation week and the start of the courses (actually we might have more in the near future but more about that later) we decided to travel to Yaroslavl. It's about 250 km northeast from Moscow and it's reached within 4 hours by train. (Attention! The trains in Russia follow the Muscovite time so you need to be careful when travelling to destinations that are in the different time zone than Moscow. So when the train leaves at 2 pm it means 2 pm Muscovite time).

We left early in the morning and we had a lack of sleep due to the pub crawl on Saturday and the Military fest on Sunday) so we slept more or less all the way to Yaroslavl :D Well, some of us had stayed awake for a bit but apparently the views had not been very unique: forest, forest and more forest.

When we got to Yaroslavl we noticed that we had arrived in Russia*. It is a very stereotypical Russian city :D Some very pretty old houses that had seen their years of glory a while ago, old cars and bumpy roads. The city center is actually a Unesco World Heritage Site and there were some very pretty houses! Unfortunately most of the buildings had not been renovated for a while...

We decided to walk around the city on the first day since it was a nice weather but it would rain on the next. We actually walked a lot and eg climbed up to a church tower. From there you could see 10 (!) other churches standing at one point. Yup, Yaroslavl is full of pretty churches!

Volga river meets another river (can't remember the name :D)

After climbing up the stairs I could still smile :D

    

Earlier that day we had seen a bus full of Moscow Dynamo players so after our long walk around the city, climbing up hundreds of stairs and having a nice (and cheap!) lunch at a traditional Russian lunch place (warm meal, tea and salad only for 3,4e - and very delicious!) me and the other Finnish girl wanted to go and watch a game. The other two girls decided to go to a jazz concert. Well.. we ordered a taxi (with poor Russian skills but at least they understood us) but then we waited. And waited. And waited. We ended up waiting for a taxi to the stadium for almost an hour in the reception of our hotel so we decided to give up. The staff at our hotel (who ordered the taxi for us and called the taxi many times) said it is impossible to get a taxi now that the whole city goes crazy about the game. Well, we ended up going to the jazz club instead. Some of the artists were very young and a bit rusty but it was an interesting event anyway :)

The next day we decided to go to two museums, which were closed that day. Well, we went to a third one instead :D And a Volga cruise (less than 1e/person for 2 hours :D), visited many of the churches and had a great dinner at a Russian restaurant.

Samovar museum :)

The entrance to one of the churches

Tea and JAM for dessert

This huge portion with salmon and veggies for only 6e!

Since our train left at around midnight we had a drink in a bar before heading back to Moscow with the night train, which was a very interesting experience... We had the cheaper tickets so we slept in the part that was one big cabin: beds on both sides of the corridor :D The smell was horrible (later on we discovered that the train has left from southeast Siberia so some passengers had been travelling for DAYS without taking a shower...) but the beds were quite ok so at least I slept well! We arrived back "home" at 5 am and since we have been doing a lot of things here during this past week so tonight I'm going to take it easy and SLEEP!

More about the Military concert, that was quickly mentioned in this post, later.

Lotta

*before I left to Moscow I heard that Moscow does not equal to Russia. There is Moscow and there is Russia.