The Adventures of Pelmini Making

(Another back-logged post)

Well, its Saturday night. Susan and I were heading out when we ran into Francesca. She was having a bad day and wanted to see some art to cheer herself up, so we abandoned the idea of Gorky-House Museum and headed off to the Pushkin Museum. Officially known as the Museum of Private Collections, it is right across the street from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and diagonal from the Church of Christ the Saviour. It was actually pretty cool. They had a lot of pieces from Monet, Picasso, and other really famous artists and actually had a lot of famous pieces. However, unlike the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Tretyakov Museums, all the very famous pieces are the small ones tucked away in corners. Francesca has a great love for art and was our own personal tour guide for the afternoon.

It's really quite nice because I am starting to understand art. I was never really that interested in poems or art and always did terrible in my Humanities classes, but all that has changed since I've been here. I am buying poetry right and left and learning all that I can (both in Russian and English. I have recently discovered a Frost poem which I think has become my favorite...). And now I am starting to understand art. I was standing in the middle of a room filled with Picasso art and it started to make since. I could see the progression in his painting styles. The blue period and the green period. How in 1909 his style started to change so that by 1912 his painting was Cubanist in nature. Art I used to just think was weird I am now starting to understand the meaning and art that I used to think was just pretty I am now understanding the method and stylistic devices (yes, yes, that sentence had bad grammar, I know). It's COOL!

But I digress. After the museum we headed off to, finally, see the inside of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. It was very beautiful, as always. The church was destroyed during 1933 by Stalin to make was for a Palace of the Soviets which would have a statue of Stalin at its pinnacle. But an unsteady foundation made it fall into the river. In the 1990s it was rebuilt and now stands as one of the leading landmarks in Moscow. Unlike many of the other cathedrals, it does not feel so much like a mausoleum. It has high ceilings and a very airy feel which is a nice change. But, like most other churches, there are little shops inside the actual church where you can buy candles, icons, and other church souvenirs. Hmmm, I think I read something about that in the Bible... We came during a church service, so we stayed awhile for that. It was very nice and there were actually women in the choir (gasp!). Overall, I think I liked it much better than the Danilov Monastery.
We got back and I decided to make pelmini (the Russian version of pirogis). I bought some last week and put them in my window, but it hasn't been cold enough to keep them frozen. Thus, they stuck together and it was a big mess. But they didn't taste that bad so Susan, Francesca, and I ate them anyways. It's a nice change from cafeteria food in any case. So, that was today. I am off to go make plans for tomorrow. And thus continueth Hannah's Moscow Adventures...