I had a really big weekend of traveling, and now I'm totally exhausted. My friend Slava had his birthday party in the little town of Zaraisk on Saturday night, and I headed there for the evening. The trouble is that it takes basically a full day to get to Zaraisk from Vladimir and basically a full day to get back. I left my apartment at 7:00am on Saturday morning, went to the bus station in Vladimir, and caught the 7:45 bus to Ryazan. I would normally travel through Moscow to get to Zaraisk, but I figured I would try something new and go a different way. The bus to Ryazan was a big old rattling thing, and it was packed when we left Vladimir. We stopped at pretty much every little bus stop along the 150-mile road between the two cities, and I did a lot of sleeping, but actually it was kind of a cool trip. Most of the country between these two cities is deep, dark forest with not a house or town anywhere around, and it was snowing the whole time. The forest was amazingly beautiful, and I was imagining what it was like to travel that road a hundred or two hundred years ago when, in place of a rusty old bus, people made the journey on a sleigh.
I arrived in Ryazan around 12:30, and I had a few hours to kill before my bus to Zaraisk left. So I found the historic kremlin in Ryazan and wandered around inside it and went to an exhibit about role that Ryazan played in the history of ancient Rus and how that role changed through the centuries (Ryazan was a much more important city than Moscow until about the 13th Century).
After my kremlin excursion, I caught the bus to Zaraisk and arrived around 6pm. The birthday celebration was already under way when I showed up, and it was a full-out Russian affair with a magnanimous spread of food, jovial company, singing and dancing, and lots of toasts, which of course were followed by shots of vodka.
After all that revelry, however, I had to hit the road early in order to get back to Vladimir at a reasonable time. I took the 9:00am bus to Moscow (I slept quite a bit on that bus), and then I wandered around some historic neighborhoods of central Moscow and got lunch before catching my train to Vladimir at 2:30pm. I finally got back to my apartment at 6:30pm. What a trip!
I have lots of funny stories about things that happened on my travels, but I'll save those for another day. Here are some pictures:
I arrived in Ryazan around 12:30, and I had a few hours to kill before my bus to Zaraisk left. So I found the historic kremlin in Ryazan and wandered around inside it and went to an exhibit about role that Ryazan played in the history of ancient Rus and how that role changed through the centuries (Ryazan was a much more important city than Moscow until about the 13th Century).
After my kremlin excursion, I caught the bus to Zaraisk and arrived around 6pm. The birthday celebration was already under way when I showed up, and it was a full-out Russian affair with a magnanimous spread of food, jovial company, singing and dancing, and lots of toasts, which of course were followed by shots of vodka.
After all that revelry, however, I had to hit the road early in order to get back to Vladimir at a reasonable time. I took the 9:00am bus to Moscow (I slept quite a bit on that bus), and then I wandered around some historic neighborhoods of central Moscow and got lunch before catching my train to Vladimir at 2:30pm. I finally got back to my apartment at 6:30pm. What a trip!
I have lots of funny stories about things that happened on my travels, but I'll save those for another day. Here are some pictures:
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