See Statues of Gagarin in Greenwich, London, Belgrade, or Moscow, and tips on photographing statues

Gagarin in Greenwich, London. Wikipedia photo and phtographer details.

Statue of Gagarin, Moscow. Photo and photographer details in Wikipedia.

Problem
The latest Gagarin monument in Belgrade, Servia, lovely, but - locals don't like it. You have to stand on tiptoe if you are tiny to see it and photograph it. It's so high up your camera will get it distorted.

Answers
On the other hand, I have now learned that the capital of Belgrade is Serbia. This is not news to anybody living in Serbia, but I am sure the tourist board will be initially horrified that some people still don't know, but gratified that they are back on the map inside people's brains. All publicity is good publicity.

Those extenders for smartphones, mostly used for holding in front of you for selfies, are also useful to capture high up statues.

When photographing a statue, I take it from all four directions, kneeling down, standing on tiptoe, then pressed against a nearby lamp-post or another solid item to prevent camera shake.

It's also worthwhile taking a photograph of a statue, or any object, at three times of the day. You can have the light on the features and the face, a cast shadow, or a silhouette at night.

Statue List
Now, added to my list of statues to see:
1 Yuri Gagarin, Belgrade, capital of Serbia.
2 Yuri Gagarin statue, Greenwich, London, England
3 Statue of Yuri Gagarin, Moscow, Russia
PHotos in Wikipedia

Useful websites
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-43701570 (News on Gagarin in Belgrade. Apr 11 2018)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
PS Silhouette - another word to add to my list of French words. See previous post for quiz on French words.

Kalashnikov and Ten Statues And Monuments To See In Moscow

A giant statue of Kalashnikov, 9 metres tall, standing on a plinth, cradling his AK-47, has been inaugurated in Moscow, September 19th 2017, with a ceremony including a military band and his family including the weapon designer's daughter.

Problem
What to see first? Who's your favourite? Just make a list and see them as you come to them. Learning about the statues will take you on a tour through Russia's achievements and history.

Answers

Military and Mighty, Patriotic Russia
1 Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - near Red Square

2 Kalashnikov - holding the weapon he designed
Wiki says:

• "I was in the hospital, and a soldier in the bed beside me asked: ‘Why do our soldiers have only one rifle for two or three of our men, when the Germans have automatics?’ So I designed one. I was a soldier, and I created a machine gun for a soldier. It was called an Avtomat Kalashnikova, the automatic weapon of Kalashnikov—AK—and it carried the date of its first manufacture, 1947." ^[40]
• "Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer ... I always wanted to construct agriculture machinery."^[12]
• "When a young man, I read somewhere the following: God the Almighty said, 'All that is too complex is unnecessary, and it is simple that is needed' ... So this has been my lifetime motto – I have been creating weapons to defend the borders of my fatherland, to be simple and reliable."^[18]
• "I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists ... I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawn mower."^[11][19]
• "I created a weapon to defend the borders of my motherland. It's not my fault that it's being used where it shouldn't be. The politicians are more to blame for this."^{[7][8][9][16][19]}
• "I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence."^[41]

Space Heroes
3 Monument to Heroes of Space Travel

4 Yuri Gagarin, astronaut - oops, the Russian word is a cosmonaut?

Historical Figures
5 Peter the Great monument
 The 15c gigantic ship, which you can see from your smaller vehicle on passing river cruise, has the heroic figure guiding it. He was apparently originally intended to be Christopher Columbus.

However, no American buyer was interested so a bit of thought about marketing led to a nifty change of heads and the sculpture was sold as Peter the Great to the Russians. (I am reminded of the story we have heard in Britain about London bridge being sold to Americans who thought it was Tower Bridge.)

6 Pushkin statue.
Do a complete Pushkin tour. See the Pushkin statue, the plaque on his house and Pushkin museum.

7 The Creators of the Cyrillic Alphabet

8 Bulat Okudzhava
Singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. Well-known in Russia, his poems read at school by Russian children. Less known to me. I could not understand the songs when I heard him singing on YouTUbe. So I looked him up on the internet. What a tragic life he led. When Bulat was a schoolboy his father was shot in a purge, his mother was banished. He went into the army. He married and was not still not welcome in Moscow. His first child died at birth. The next became a drug addict and died before the father. Bulat is bald, with a moustache and looks a bit like Gandhi. I found his music pleasant enough, but it's the words which grab you. Songs like the poignant Goodbye Boys to youngsters going off to join the army. The one I enjoyed in translation is Paper Soldiers.

9 Dostoevsky

10 Alexander II
Bust of Alexander II near the courts and University of Justice. He was known for reforms including the rights of prisoners to complain about guards. His assassination led to the draconian measures by his successor and son who banished the Jews starting their exodus to the USA (which h
you see in the fil Fiddler On The Roof.

Moscow has many more statues including Lenin and Marx.

Tips
8 Bulat
See the life story of Bulat in Wikipedia and Russiapedia; videos on YouTube: translations of the songs and poems.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41367394

Kalashnikove statue updated.

Update
(See my later post about Kalashnikov which I wrote on September 23rd. 2017)

To plan a trip, check the National Tourist Board for Russia:
https://www.visitrussia.org.uk

More information from:
https://wikitravel.org/en/Moscow

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please see my other posts on languages including Russian and destinations worldwide. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Finding Famous Statues, Graves, Memorials: Jeremy Beadle in Find A Grave Photos, Brunel, Marx, Nelson, Shakespeare, Wilde,

Jeremy Beadle (1948 - 2008) - Find A Grave Photos

I was looking on Find A Grave for the grave of Jeremy Bentham, a founder of University College London, whose waxwork body was displayed in a glass cabinet in the 1960s when I was studying Philosophy as an undergraduate.

By chance I came across the name of Jeremy Beadle, who I remember watching on TV. I loved his comedy programmes including You've Been Framed.

I like his gravestone with the books. As an author and book reader, the idea of books on a grave appeals to me. I then set off on an internet search, which took more than three hours, looking for graves and statues around the world, plus my posts from the past.

What would you want to see in London? Highgate cemetery is best known for its giant sculpture of the head of Karl Marx which looms above visitors on a plinth. Guided tours of the cemetery take you around the graves of famous and infamous people.

Famous Historical Figures Visits
UK

1 CEMETERY & GRAVES
If you want to see the people of the past in London, visit Highgate Cemetery.

2 ART GALLERIES
National Portrait Gallery, and
National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, England. Easier to reach than Highgate Cemetery.

Photo of Elizabeth I statue on the wall of Harrow School in NW London. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

3 STATUES, LONDON & UK
Statues of famous people in London.
Polish off seeing several statues in one place at Parliament Square where you can see Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
PM Mrs Thatcher statue stands in the Houses of Parliament.
Oscar Wilde, reclining, is my favourite.
Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, probably the highest.
Florence Nightingale stands in front of the hospital.
Shakespeare in Leicester Square, London.
Shakespeare (and other poets) in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey, London.
Another of Shakespeare in the London church where he is buried.

Around the London suburbs
Queen Elizabeth I statue on the wall of Harrow school (walk uphill from station Harrow on the hill, Met line).
See my previous posts and pictures of statues easy to find at London stations including

Sherlock Holmes, outside Baker Street Station, near Madam Tussauds to the left and Sherlock Holmes museum to the right.
Brunel's statue at Paddington station. He built the railway, bridges, tunnels and a ship.
Matthew Whitaker at Euston station, the statue of the map-maker and his cat. He mapped Australia.
Robert Stevenson, railway engineer, at Euston station. Not to be confused with
Robert Louis Stevenson, author, statue in Edinburgh.
Queen Victoria. Numerous.

UK
Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, in the garden of Brontë parsonage Museum, Haworth, England.

WALES
Tommy Cooper, comedian, statue, Caerphilly.

4 FAMOUS HOMES NOW MUSEUMS
 Homes of the famous in London include:
Charles Dickens, author;
Jimmy Hendrix, modern musician; next door is a museum to an earlier musician, Handel.
Keats, poet, house in historic hilly Hampstead;
Benjamin Franklin house museum, American politician and inventor of the lightning conductor and bifocals.

Worldwide statues and memorials include:
AUSTRALIA
Captain Cook.
Queen Victoria.

CHINA
Sun Yat-Sen, many museums and statues in China.

CZECH REPUBLIC
Kafka statue in Prague.

EIRE (Ireland)
Lots of statues in Trinity College, Dublin, and Stephen's Green, Dublin.

Brendan Behan, Royal Canal. (Autobiography Borstal Boy.)

James Joyce, St Stephen's Green. (Novelist. Author of Ulysses.)

Oliver Goldsmith (author of She Stoops To Conquer; The Vicar of Wakefield)

Edmund Burke, Trinity College. Quote:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
FRANCE
Pere La Chaise cemetery in Paris has many graves. See my previous posts.
Proust statue, life size will be in the forthcoming museum in Cyborg, in 2019.

GERMANY
Karl Marx statues in Chemnitz, Berlin and Trier (the latter statue donated by China).

ITALY
Moses by Michelangelo in Rome.
David by Michelangelo in Florence.
Puccini statue in Lucca, Tuscany, opera composer in Italy, statue in his house/museum.
St Francis of Assisi. Birthplace and Burial place - tomb in basilica in Assisi; churches, paintings, murals, museums, all over Umbria. (Umbria is next door to Tuscany.)

NETHERLANDS
Anne Frank in Amsterdam in front of Anne Frank House museum.

NEW ZEALAND
Cook station in Victoria Square, Christchurch, New Zealand.

POLAND
Chopin statue, Warsaw.
Arthur Rubinstein playing a piano, Piotrkowska Street (the main street), Lodz, Poland.

RUSSIA
Karl Marx, several statues.
Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut, Moscow.

SINGAPORE
Raffles statues and busts, in Raffles hotel and on the waterfront.
Queen Victoria.

SPAIN
Maimoides, Jewish physician who wrote in Arabic in Moorish era, revered by Jews, Muslims, Spaniards and speakers of Arabic, in Cordoba.
Multiple figures in the human tower, Tarragona.

UKRAINE
Babel in Odessa.
Zamenhof who created Esperanto, in Odessa.

UK
N Ireland
C S Lewis, The Searcher (with wardrobe) statue in Belfast.

USA
Charles Dickens statue im Philadelphia.

Lincoln memorial, Washington DC.
Martin Luther King Jnr, Washington DC.

Shakespeare statue in Central Park, New York, USA.

Webster who wrote the dictionary in the USA. Home and museum.

Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, four Presidents:George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.


Montgomery - Life-size statue of Hank Williams holding his guitar opposite (Americans say across from) the Municipal Auditorium (now offices) where his funeral was held for 2,750 mourners, with an estimated 20,000 standing outside in the cold.

St Francis of Assisi, cathedral in Santa Fe, new Mexico
(Photo by Chris Light Talk in Wikipedia)

St Francis surrounded by saints, painted in a church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. See his birthplace and burial place in Assisi in Umbria, Italy.

Follow a famous person:
Queen Victoria in London; Singapore; and Australia.
Captain Cook in : The Mall in central London; Greenwich in South London; New Zealand Christchurch; Sydney, Australia.
Karl Marx statues in Berlin and Trier, Germany, and several in Russia.

I am now off to look for Jeremy Bentham and other freethinkers who founded University College.

Websites
AUSTRALIA
http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/discovery/display/23207-captain-james-cook---/photo/2

GERMANY
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g187275-Activities-c47-t26-Germany.html (Marx)

ITALY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi#/media/File:Tomb_of_Saint_Francis_-_Basilica_di_San_Francesco_-_Assisi_2016.jpg
umbriatourism.it

RUSSIA
https://hague6185.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/top-10-statues-of-russia-and-former-ussr/ (Gagarin)

SPAIN
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g187427-Activities-c47-t26-Spain.html (Human tower pic)

UK
ENGLAND
Jeremy Beadle (1948 - 2008) - Find A Grave Photos
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/george-frederic-handel

SCOTLAND
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/robert-louis-stevenson-edinburgh-statue-unveiled

WALES
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g186425-Activities-c47-t26-Wales.html

NORTHERN IRELAND
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g186469-Activities-c47-t26-Northern_Ireland.html (CS Lewis)

USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_tallest_statues_in_the_United_States (Martin Luther King Jnr)

Queen Victoria worldwide: Canada, South Africa and many more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statues_of_Queen_Victoria
More ideas about statues to see in the next post.

Author
Angela Lansbury, author and speaker. See my other posts such as top ten statues in London.
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