Field Trip #1: Glinka Museum of Music.

Today after class we had our first of two planned "field trips" -- basically other excursions, but these count towards our classroom time. I guess we need 56 hours of classroom time in total to make this course count as a full semester's credit, but with class 5 hours a day for 10 days, we were 6 hours short. So, Alla L'vovna planned, instead of making a couple of extra excruciatingly long classroom days, two field trips -- 3 hours each -- to two different museums in Moscow. Tomorrow we go to the Mayakovskii Museum, but today we went to the Glinka Museum of Music which is only a "7 minute walk" away from our dorm and RGGU.

The museum is deceivingly enormous and has two full floors of rooms. We viewed the third floor first which had an exhibit in chronological order of "three centuries of Russian music." It started with Glinka and went on through Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovitch, Rimskii-Korsokov, Stravinsky, and then Soviet music. Aisling's favorite part was seeing the photographs of David Oistrakh, a famous 20th century violinist, with Shostakovitch or performing for the masses.

The second floor consists of their collection of old and rare musical instruments from Yakutia to Kazakstan to Italy. Most famously, was the Stradivarius violin that belonged to Oistrakh. E.B. especially enjoyed learning the difference between a "bayan" and a "garmonika" -- both of which are translated into English as simply "accordion." Do some Googling and see if you can figure out the different for yourself.

The babushki there were wonderfully informative, but also fairly strict about the no-picture-taking policy. Therefore, this is the only photo I was able to sneak:


It is of an elaborately decorated grand piano, all done with wooden inlay, made in St. Petersburg in the 1800s.

We ended the excursion with coffee in the café and a discussion about why only older women work as "security guards" in museums (most of their husbands have died and they need to supplement their income) and why Rimskii-Korsokov had a hyphenated last name (both of his parents came fro aristocratic families, and his mother was the last of her line, so it was in order to preserve her name.)

Tonight, Aisling, E.B. + Galina, ate dinner at a Ukranian version of the Russian restaurant "Yolki-Palki" i.e. the most kitschy place you could imagine. The waiters and waitresses had to wear authentic costumes and looked absolutely ecstatic about it. Ukrainian foods consumed included: fried carrot patties (called "oladi") and verenki (dumplings) with mushrooms and a Ukrainian beer, of course. Once again we found ourselves surrounded by lots of young Russian couples on awkward dates, always great people-watching in this city.

That's it for today!

-- E.B. & Aisling