Museum of Cosmonautics and VDNK

Sorry it's been such a long time coming, but finally, here are some new pictures of my adventures at Metro Station VDNK, named after the year-round exhibition center nearby. VDNK is an abbreviation (in Russian: ВДНХ) for "all-Russian exhibition center."

I started off at the Museum of Cosmonautics, which featured some pretty cool exhibits, including a life-size replica of part of space station Mir that you could walk into. There were some old Soviet spacesuits and models of satellites and rockets, as well as a couple of stuffed dogs that they shot into orbit.

Here's a couple of pictures of the exterior of the Museum of Cosmonautics:



This row of statues led up to the giant monument that sits atop the site of the museum. The statues featured the likenesses of notable cosmonauts.



Here is a very Soviet-looking mural depicting some of the heroes of the Soviet space program, as well as a very "subtle" representation of Lenin.



And here is the aforementioned monument to the accomplishments of the Soviet space program. The Russians are still proud of their achievements. They had the first satellite in orbit, the first animal in space, as well as the first human being in orbit: Yuri Gagarin, who is the Russian equivalent of Neil Armstrong. The monument is really pretty cool and more impressive in person.



I also visited the grounds of VDNK, which I must say, was awfully like a weird dream you would have about Russia. The front gate is more modern and features some of the renovated pavilions. As you go deeper into fairgrounds, you feel like Alice, falling into the rabbit hole. I had to turn around because it started to feel very surreal and creepy.

Each pavilion seemed to have a theme. Several countries had pavilions, where native goods were sold from the respective countries. There was a gardening pavilion, a cat pavilion, and an electronics pavilion. Most of the renovated buildings were really nice-looking, but deeper into the park, it was a little bit scary.

Here are the pictures, actually in reverse order, and with no explanations, since I really didn't take time to figure out what everything was exactly:














And a couple of pictures of my new apartment at Savelovskaya:






And I had a lovely birthday. Thanks for all of the warm wishes. But unfortunately, I lost my wallet, which has since been recovered, albeit minus a few thousand rubles.