October | 2009 | English Russia

Categories History, Photos, Russian Art, Russian People

In Rostov city Russia an epic forty-thirty years old ceramic tiles artwork has been found in the underground passages. It tells various stories from World War 2 in ultra realistic

style. Probably that's one of a kind in the whole world, I doubt somewhere else there are places where this material was used to describe the war happenings.

Categories Culture, Photos, Russian People, Society

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “windows”? Of course, you recollect Bill Gates, his Microsoft guys and their perpetration. Only after that you might remember some wood-and-glass, PVC

or fiberglass hole in the wall behind your back. Or might not. Anyway, today I want to mull over these, traditional windows, or as they are called sometimes, “the eyes of the house”.

Categories Culture, Other, Photos, Russian Art, Russian People

The other day, while browsing the Web, I came across a nice article on matte painting. A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create illusions of an environment that would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit. The thing is matte painting is a quite old technique in film-making with more than one hundred years of history. Although the term itself is not too popular among

laymen, we come across various instances of this technique almost every time when we decide to watch another newfangled movie or play a fancy computer game. Surprised? So was I. And if you see somewhere – in a movie, on a photo some unusual, unreal scene or background, be sure that you deal with this very matte painting. Of course, digital matte painting came to practice only a while ago, but is widely used in modern cinematography.

Categories Funny

A singing class, Moscow, 1960s This is our third post devoted to Marc Riboud, an outstanding French photographer, who traveled

extensively throughout the Soviet Union. His images captured an array of everyday life episodes from the lives of the Soviet people.

Categories Culture, History, Photos, russian army, Russian People

By a broken Soviet helicopter. Ashmar, province Khunar, 18 January, 1980. This photo with this cutline appeared in a well-known to many comrades famous Russian

Live Journal about two years ago. And it won’t be a kind of surprise if it appears again, because an anniversary date (30 years) is on the doorstep.

Categories Funny, Photos, Russian Art, Russian People

Never let it be said that Russians are not creative or romantic – for proof, take a look at

this collection of amazing Russian wedding cakes. Enjoy, and don’t drool.

Categories Funny, Russian Nature, Russian People

This is an amusement park in the Ural region in Russia. Like a lot of awesome things in Russia, it is made of

wood and they like to claim that “Our wooden Disneyland is much cooler than their Western one!”

Categories Law, Photos, Russian People, Video

Crazy story happened in the Russian city of Perm a few days ago: a city bus lost control of its brakes at the top of a hill and careened down a busy street smashing cars, kiosks and generally wreaking a path

of destruction. Fortunately (for us) a street camera caught some of it on tape. Check out the video to see what happens when bus meets pedestrian. Does he live?? Watch and see.

Categories History, Photos

Here is a darkly beautiful set of photographs taken in Chernobyl, Ukraine, the sight of the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history. As these

relics have barely been touched in the 23 years since the accident, they provide a rare glimpse of original USSR architecture and artifacts.

Categories Funny, History, Photos, Russian People

So to continue today’s “Dude, where is…?” theme, we have a story about a particular Russian “babushka”. What makes her really remarkable is her date of birth: as marked in her passport it reads July 1, 1890, making her 119 years old. According to the Guinness Book of World Records the oldest woman living now on Earth is a Japanese lady who is 114 years old. But why, you might ask, can’t this Chelyabinsk granny beat her and take her rightful place in the Earthlings printed hall of fame? Well, for one, she can’t prove it; and second, she just doesn’t care. Her relatives of course were pretty enthusiastic about the idea until they realized that it’s not a simple matter of a lost birth certificate. The fact is, a hundred and

nineteen years ago, formal birth registration procedures were not a high priority. Moreover, such procedures were generally carried out by the church—but this babushka was raised in an Islamic tradition. The one document she owns is a gift card sent to her on her thirtieth birthday, and that postcard is almost ninety years old! So while her numerous relatives - and there really are a lot of them - like 67 grand children, 40 great grandchildren and even 17 great great grandchildren - are occupied with getting more info on her birth, she is spending her days sitting near the house and watching people pass by, her own time to hustle long past. Here’s to a hundred and twenty, Za Vas!

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