russia trip

Well, I'm back in the USA after my trip to Russia.  I shot over 600 photos, and there are way too many thoughts to even begin to convey, so here are just a few photos and comments for now.

 The large central couryard between the regional administration building and the old kremlin walls is a favorite place for skateboarding, etc.  This is one of only two remaining statues of Lenin in the city of Veliky Novgorod.

 The architectural museum is a park where examples of the old Russian houses, etc. were reconstructed and displayed.  This is the interior of a "black house", so-called because the oven/fireplace smoke discharges into the room and is then let out by a damper in the cieling, creating a layer of smoke and soot just below the cieling.  This concerves firewood.  By contrast, the "white houses" of the more well-to-do wastefully discharged the smoke up a chimney and out.

 This church, prior to being collected and reconstructed at the architectural museum, had rotted down to the level of the balcony in the photo.

 View of the walls of the kremlin at Veliky Novgorod.  The towers are 17th Century. 

 Class in the Internet High School where I gave a 40 min. talk on Historic Preservation in Mansfield.  The students in this school are specially chosen, including the best and brightest recruited from country areas who board at the school, like an English boarding school.  This school experiment is only a few years old.

Probably not too often on tour iteneraries; a Russian cemetery.