Happy Belated Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and were able to spend time with loved ones. Because of a family emergency, we were able to return from Russia on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and spent the holidays with our families. It was really a wonderful time and we are glad we were finally able to be here for at least one holiday! We will be heading out again shortly, but more on that in another post!

A Little Lesson in Aviation History

Throughout modern history there have been many famous Russian aviators. Two such pilots have hailed from Nizhny Novgorod. On our tour of Nizhny a few weeks back our translator taught us a little bit about these two famous men.

The first is Pyotr Nesterov. Nesterov was a pioneer in the area of in flight acrobatics. In 1913 he was the first person to ever perform a 360-degree loop in an airplane. To this day, when pilots perform a loop it is known as a Nesterov loop. But that is not the end of Mr. Nesterov's fame. He was also the first pilot to destroy another aircraft in flight. During World War I Nesterov was a pilot for the Russian military. While in flight he came across an enemy spy plane. At the time planes were not armed, so Nesterov had no way to stop this enemy plane. Instead of allowing the plane into Russian territory, Nesterov rammed the plane with his own plane, causing the spy plane to crash. It is believed that he intended to ram the plane with his landing gear, but instead Nesterov hit it with his propeller, causing his plane to crash also. Both pilots died in the crash. While Nesterov did not survive this first attempted at ramming an enemy aircraft, his idea was perfected over the years and was used frequently and successfully by Russian pilots during World War II. There are several monuments and plaques honoring Nesterov throughout Nizhny. These are a few that we found and took pictures of.

A replica of the plane Nesterov flew when he rammed the spy plane

The largest monument to Nesterov

A close up of the same monument (you can actually see the snow falling in this one!)

I have no idea what this says or stands for, but I can read that it says Nesterov

The second famous aviator from Nizhny is Valery Chkalov. Chkalov was the first pilot to fly non-stop from Russia to the United States flying over the North Pole. The nearly 5,500 mile flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington took place in 1937 and lasted 63 hours. Chkalov too has a huge monument in Nizhny (as well as several in Washington state). Here are a few pictures we took of the monument.

Jeff and I in front of the monument

The monument is in front of the Kremlin (notice what a difference a week makes in terms of the weather!)

Close up of the base of the monument, which has a map of the historic flight

Happy National Unity Day

Today, November 4th, is a huge holiday here in Russia: National Unity Day. The day is similar to the Fourth of July in the US, as it celebrates the Russian victory over the Polish which lead to the unification of Russia as a state. The holiday was celebrated from 1613 until 1916. However, in 1917, following the Bolshevik Revolution, the holiday was abandoned and replaced on November 7th by the Day of Accord and Conciliation (which celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution instead). The Great October Socialist Revolution (another name for the Bolshevik Revolution) was celebrated as a national holiday until 2005 when President Vladimir Putin eliminated it and reinstated National Unity Day on November 4th. We are told that there are groups throughout Russia that still celebrate November 7th, but they are a minority.

The day is particularly important here in Nizhny Novgorod because the cavalry of troops that came to Moscow and defeated the Polish originated in Nizhny Novgorod. If any of you have ever been to the Red Square in Moscow, you surely saw this monument in front of St. Basil's Cathedral (we took this picture last time we were here in Russia).

When we saw this monument we really didn't understand what it stood for, as the plaque is written in Russian. However, last weekend while touring the city with our translator we learned that it was a monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. Minin was a common merchant from Nizhny who was called upon to arm and organize the volunteer forces that would march to Moscow. During the battle he was Prince Pozharsky's "right-hand man." Prince Pozharsky was the man who actually lead the troops in the liberation battle. When the monument was originally produced it was supposed to lie in the Kremlin here in Nizhny, but apparently Moscow requested it come to the capitol and reside in the Moscow Kremlin instead. Nizhny did not want to be deprived of the monument's beauty and significance, so an exact replica sits in front of a cathedral just outside of the Nizhny Kremlin's lower gates.

Late last week Jeff received an email alert from his company reminding us of the holiday weekend. It warned us that there would be large public gatherings and a lot of drinking. As in the US, any time you have the combination of drinking and large groups of people, there is a slight chance for criminal activity, so we were advised to shy away from the celebrations. However, we did walk to the grocery store during the afternoon and observed some of the interesting preparations for the evening's celebration. First, like Fourth of July in Chicago, many of the major streets were closed (and regulated by traffic police) to accommodate the increase in pedestrian traffic. Second, and I think most interesting, liquor was not being sold during the day. We are guessing this is to cut down on over indulgence and the violence that can often accompany it. We are not sure if this was city wide, or just at our grocery store which is near the Kremlin, but in any case the aisles of liquor were blocked off and all displays were covered in plastic wrap.

Later in the evening, as we were preparing to watch the Packer's game, Jeff and I started hearing extremely loud bangs outside of our hotel room. At first we figured it was just cars backfiring (that happens here ALL the time), but when we looked out our window we realized there was a huge fireworks display! Though we weren't out on the streets, we felt like we were part of the celebration, as we think they were being shot off just a few blocks from our hotel. We took a few pictures and the following video.