Kyzyl, capital of the Tuva Republic
1 July 2015 | Author/Destination: Russia / Russland | Rubric: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time: 5 minutes Kyzyl is the capital city of the Tuva Republic in southern Siberia. The name of the city means “red” in Tuvan (as well as in many other Turkic languages) with a population of 110,000. The population of Tuva is at 308,000. Forests, mountains, and steppe make up a large part of the geography. Tos-Bulak is the area of open fields and mineral springs which lies immediately south of Kyzyl. It is the location of the Naadam festival (15 August), the Tuvan Republic Day, where various competitions such as horseriding and khuresh (wrestling) are held. read more…Theme Week Russia
14 April 2015 | Author/Destination: Russia / Russland | Rubric: General, Bon voyage, Theme Weeks, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time: 583 minutes Russia is a country in Eastern Europe with a vast expanse of territory that stretches across Northern Asia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), it is the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, spanning eleven time zones, and bordering 18 sovereign nations. About 146.79 million people live in the country’s 85 federal subjects (including the disputed Crimea and Sevastapol) as of 2019, making Russia the ninth most populous nation in the world and the most populous nation in Europe. Russia’s capital and largest city is Moscow; other major urban areas include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Chelyabinsk. read more…Volgograd in southern Russia
13 April 2015 | Author/Destination: Russia / Russland | Rubric: General Reading Time: 6 minutes Volgograd, formerly Tsaritsyn, 1589–1925, and Stalingrad, 1925–1961, is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast. It is 80 kilometers (50 mi) long, north to south. It is situated on the western bank of the Volga River. The population is 1,021,000. read more…Theme Week Russia – Murmansk on the Arctic Circle
16 January 2015 | Author/Destination: Russia / Russland | Rubric: General Reading Time: 6 minutes Murmansk is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, an inlet of the Barents Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, close to the Russia’s borders with Norway and Finland. Despite its extreme northern location above the Arctic Circle, Murmansk tends to be nearly the same as any other Russian city of its size, featuring highway and railway access to the rest of Europe, a railway station, and the northernmost trolleybus system on Earth. read more…Theme Week Moscow – The Seven Sisters
3 January 2015 | Author/Destination: Russia / Russland | Rubric: General, Architecture, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time: 13 minutesThe Seven Sisters are a group of seven skyscrapers in Moscow designed in the Stalinist style. The term “Seven Sisters” is neither used nor understood by the local population, Muscovites call them Vysotki or Stalinskie Vysotki, meaning “(Stalin’s) high-rises” (or “Stalinist skyscrapers”). They were built from 1947 to 1953, in an elaborate combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles, and the technology used in building American skyscrapers.
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