Yesterday we went on an excursion to the Museum of the Political History of Russia. Every week our excursion groups get smaller but this one was just silly. We met downstairs on Saturday morning, and had a grand total of 5 ready to go (out of 22 who still live in the dorms)! Needless to say we proceeded out into the winter wonderland outside our door (see below) and onto the metro for our journey into the city center.
Museum of the Political History of Russia is an interesting place with as much of a past as most of its exhibits. It began in 1919 as a museum of the 1917 revolutions (there where 2) and every since it has changed name, content and editorial opinion with every new change in Russian history. As my history professor here says; “Russia is the only country on earth with an uncertain past….”
The museum itself is located in the building the Bolsheviks used as their HQ during the February revolution and is full of artifacts and stories from the entire Communist and modern phase of Russian history. There were quite a few historic items and trinkets used by or important to political leaders of Russia’s past and they even had a special exhibit of Russian and American political cartoon. Additionally our tour guide was an actual historian who works in the affiliated institution to the museum and in addition to knowing quite a bit about the exhibits, she also added plenty of editorial opinions that are uncommon from normal tour guides but where quite amusing to us.
Oh and they had this nice photo opp:
In other news: I saw my first legitimate snowfall in Russia on Friday night and most was still on the ground by midday Saturday. In fact t times it was coming down quite hard and had covered the grass, trees and cars, but oddly not on the streets. Every day since I have gotten back, it has been in the 40s during the day and the 30s or high 20s at night. But don’t worry; this CA boy has enough gloves, hats, scarves, jackets, wool socks and sweaters to stay warm. I won’t let this “winter” or “seasons” thing get to me! I also can’t believe that in 2 weeks we are going to be going to Finland and Estonia and November is almost upon us. Time is flying by; I have been in Russia for 8 weeks already!
I would be remiss to not mention that tonight is my last night as a teenager, and while I did go out and have fun to mark this occasion with my friends last night, I do wish I was home to celebrate it with old friends and family. While I am having great fun here, I of course miss everyone back home and look forward to returning home to see you all. (and to see the sun once again would be nice too)
(For the record I am still doing things here in St Petersburg, but the majority of my blogging energy has been going to catching up with my fall break adventures. Those are much more interesting then everyday life in the frozen North!)
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