Tula and Yasnaya Polyana

Alright, after spending an hour uploading pictures,arranging them, and typing up my thoughts on this trip only to have the little window from hell that says "Microsoft Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and will now close" pop up, I had to stay away from this site for a few days. By the way, that stupid little window is easily recognizable in Russian as well as English, and it is just as depressing...

In any case, here is a recount of the excessively long trip to a city that is not even 300 miles from Voronezh. It began with a few cadets meeting up at the main university building at 10pm on Friday night and being placed in the way back of a "ghetto" Russian version of a tour bus. We settled in for what we'd been told would be a seven hour trip. Why, you might ask, is a journey of less than 300 miles going to take seven hours? Well, that was my question as well. I quickly found out that it is very easy for a "short" distance to become a long and dragged out adventure when the bus driver stops every hour and waits for a whole hour at just about every rest / parking area!

So we arrived at the vokzal (train station) in the city of Tula somewhere around 5am, but we didn't leave until well after 8 because nothing in Russia opens before 9am (except for the gym I go to...). So with the three hours of free time, I ventured into the vokzal in search of breakfast and then retreated back to the bus for some much needed extra sleep. I woke up well after the tour guide began her rambling about all the monuments and history of the city, took a couple photos of the cool stuff (like a tank, and a really tall statue of Lenin), and went back to sleep, kind of. We finally got to the prianiki museum to find out all I could ever want to know about the first of Tula's three "famous for" items: prianiki. This museum had tons of prianiki on shelves behind glass--any kind you can imagine. It had soviet prianiki, Yasnaya Polyana prianiki, "dien pobiedi" (day of victory, to commemorate the victory in WWII) prianiki, prianiki commemorating the city's 400th year in existence, and many, many more. So, what, exactly are prianiki? Why, spice cakes, of course!

Sovietski prianiki
Yasnaya Polyana prianiki
Dien Pobiedi prianiki

After this wonderful experience, we actually did get to eat some of this wonderful treat with which the Russians complement their tea, at which time we also viewed the second object Tula is "famous for." Samovars. Um, that would be the self-boiler tea brewer thing that looks excessively ornate and flashy. So here we have two very important things that have truly placed Tula on the map.

We then took a detour to the house of one of Russia's favorite writers, Leo Tolstoy. I've decided that it was called "Yasnaya Polyana" for a reason. Literally, the name means "serene / peaceful clearing," and it was amazing. As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly why Tolstoy would have wanted to come back and live there. A little history: Tolstoy became very interested in the lives of peasants and renounced his "aristocracy," much to his wife's dismay. He thought it unnecessary and superfluously arrogant to live extravagantly. This actually led to many bitter arguments with his wife, who wanted money to raise their 13 children (it may have been more; I've forgotten the exact number...) and to lavish on herself as well, and in his last days, Tolstoy actually went to the local train station and refused his wife entry until after he died there.



Me messing up a lovely view of Yasnaya Polyana and its aptly-named "Bolshoy Prud" (big pond)...I think the other lady messed up my picture, though...

In any case, this place quite fit Tolstoy's late life philosophy (other than the fact that it was huge and actually kind of extravagant in its own right...), as it was peaceful, open, and would allow him to "get back to nature" and plow his fields or ride his horses all he wanted. We actually saw a runaway horse while we were there, which was amazing. When I told my hozyain, Vladimir, about the trip, he suggested that perhaps Tolstoy wanted to go for a ride and that he was riding the horse, which is ludicrous, of course, but it is a nice thought, I suppose.



Even his grave was fitting for his wishes--simple, away from everything, no markers but covered with pine boughs in its own little clearing in the forest.



Finally, we made our final stop in the city of Tula at the Tulski Kreml (Kremlin of Tula), at which they have a weapons museum. Wasn't it obvious that a city known for its teapots and cakes would be a big weapons city as well? In any case, it was pretty cool, but I didn't take any pictures because I didn't particularly care to put an extra $4 into the Russian economy so that I could take pictures of guns and swords which look much like many other guns and swords I've seen in my life, although some of the aviation and tank guns were pretty big. I just took pictures of the outside.



The outside of the kreml literally says "Museum, Kremlin of Tula"



A view from the inside of the gateway



The church inside the kreml (which actually housed the arms museum)

By this time, it was already 4:30, and the arms museum was closing, but we weren't scheduled to leave the city until 10:30 that night. So...what to do for six hours? The international students formed a relatively large group and wandered the city, of course! ...after just about everything interesting had closed. However, we did stop to buy some amazingly good samsa s lukom i miasom (croissant-type bread filled with onions (luk) and meat (miasa)). They only cost 18 rubles each, which was a pretty good deal for how amazingly good they were. We then proceeded to watch kids skateboard, bike, and rollerblade in front of Tula's Lenin Square (I'm pretty sure every Russian city has a Ploshad Lenina...) because there was really not much else to do. Around 9, we headed back to the bus, all the time wondering why we didn't just leave after the weapons museum...had we left then, we'd have been back in Voronezh by midnight. But no, we left at 10:30 pm and stopped a million times again, to return home somewhere around 6am.

I gave myself a break and slept for four hours before I finally got up and went running.

Yes, it was excessively long, and the Russian style of "organization," "waiting in line," and "hurrying up" would never fly in the United States in general, let alone at West Point; however, it was a good trip, and I'm not exactly sure I'd have spent my weekend doing anything more productive than what I got out of this "excursion."