Monuments to Cyril Who Created Cyrillic Used in Russia and other countries

Where is Cyrillic used?






Who was Cyril?
Cyril and Methodius were Orthodox Christian priests.
They devised the alphabet based on Greek. Peter the Great of Russia introduced the Reversed r, familar to us from the logo of Toys r us.


Earlier Logo





Later Logo




Was Cyril the older or younger brother?

Monuments to Cyril and Methodius and Cyrillic

1 Bulgaria
Statue of Cyril and Methodius outside the library named after them in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria.

CaptionsEdit

English

The Monument to the Cyrillic Script erected under a joint Bulgarian-Mongolian project at the Bulgarian base in Antarctica on 3 March 2018

Summary[edit]

Description	Български: The Monument to the Cyrillic Script erected under a joint Bulgarian-Mongolian project at the Bulgarian base in Antarctica on 3 March 2018
Date	20 March 2019, 16:28:10
Source	Own work
Author	Inoceramid bivalves

Now, where would you expect to find monuments to Cyril and Methodius?
Russia
Bulgaria
Greece


Where can I learn Cyrillic?

Russia

Bulgaria

Useful Websides
Duolingo

Post being written. See also previous posts on Cyrillic, Bulgarian, Bulgaria.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger, author, speaker, teacher of English and other languages.

Cities And Sights To See In Russia: Moscow, St Petersburg

Problem
What to see first in Russia?
I tried to copy a map from Wikipedia but it comes out without the cities marked which is useless. So I went to Wikitravel which is where you should go for copying or printing out maps to plot your travels. If you are not using a map for commercial use (to sell it to others) you could instead take a screen shot of a map with your camera on your phone and load it up onto your laptop.

Map of Russia from Wikitravel showing Cities.

Russia is the largest country in the world, bigger than the USA. Bigger than Canada.
Most of the population lives in the Western half, towards Europe. St Peterburg is in the north, on the sea.

My Story
As a schoolgirl in the 1960s I visited the Baltic states and St Petersburg on a school cruise ship.

Later, in the late 1960s, I was postgraduate student at University College, London, and I won a place on a trip to Japan, paying only for the fare by plane and train via Russia onto a ferry across the Sea of Japan to Japan. (In Japan we stayed with families from the local chambers of commerce in each city, who wanted to practise English. In other cities we stayed in youth hostels. We were shown around the city in a group or by the Japanese families with whom we stayed.)

On the way out, we crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian railway for days, listening to endless Russian music, ending up in a station where we got off surrounded by signs in Cyrillic.
"Where are we? Are we there yet?"

Somebody read: "Volg-ga-grad?" We had never heard of Volgograd.

An older boy, tall, thin, left-wing, our self-styled student leader, who had studied history, politics and economics, picked up a local tourist brochure in English and read to us, "It says, 'Everybody has heard of Volgograd, worldwide.' Do any of you know it?"

We all shrugged and raised our eyebrows.

He continued, declaiming loudly, "It says, 'Everybody has heard of the famous siege of Volgograd? In WWII.' I haven't!"

Somebody else murmured, "I've only heard of the siege of Stalingrad ... "

"That's it! They've changed the name. We're in STALINGRAD!"

Stalingrad means Stalin's city. Leningrad means Lenin's city.

I now know that the Volga is the river. Grad means town or city.

Next time I visit Russia I'll be better prepared, knowing a bit about the history of each major city and what I want to see there.

MOSCOW
Moscow, Russia's capital, with 13 million people, biggest city population in Europe, is on the Moskva river.

Shortlist of top sights to see:
Red Square.
Lenin's Mausoleum.
Tomb of the unknown soldier.
The Kremlin. (Russian Parliament.)
Kremlin Hill. Mountaintop panorama with a large cannon and large bell.
St Basil's Cathedral.

Gum Mall.
Bolshoi theatre.
Statues of famous Russians.
Amazing luxury city centre railway stations.
Dog statues in stations.

Victory Park and Victory Park metro station (In Cyrillic: Park Pobedy).
The Park celebrates the Patriotic War (WWII) with numerous fountains and monuments, lit at night, a museum, mosque and synagogue, tanks and guns, monument with army dog used to find injured or trapped soldiers. Victory Day is May 9th.

Dostoevsky Museum on Dostoevsky Street near Dostoevsky metro station.
His father worked at the next door hospital. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky^[11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881),^[b] sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky.  His most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). 

Two Pushkin Museums. 
Pushkin wrote Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin, and other works which inspired operas and orchestral music.

St PETERSBURG

Pushkin Statue, Arts Square, in St Petersburg, 'The Venice of the North', Russia.

St Petersburg
(Previously called Petrograd in WWI and renamed Leningrad). Russia's second city has a population of 5 million. The city is on the Baltic Sea.
The Venice of the North, named after Peter The Great. Peter founded the city and made it his capital. He executed would be assassins and those who plotted coups including his own son. He is buried in St Peter and Paul fortress.
He was keen on modernizing Russia, copying the West, and ordered men to be clean-shaven, with fines for wearing beards.
Sights to See:
Chapel in St Peter and Paul fortress containing the remains of the Romanovs (shot in the basement of a house in Ekaterina in 1918.)
The Hermitage. (Part of the Fortress.)

Cathedral on Spilled Blood, in St Petersburg, Russia's 'Venice of the North'. Photo from Wiki. by WangWei.

Cathedral of the Spilled Blood.
Built over the spot where the reforming tsar was assassinated in 1881, which led to his son getting tough on the plotters and people demanding reforms, potential trouble-makers, and he passed the restrictive May laws and encouraged pogroms (riots massacring areas where he thought potential trouble makers and Jews lived) which sent emigrants to America.
Luxury city centre railway stations.
Pushkin Museum.
Dostoevsky is buried in St Petersburg.

Pushkin statue.

Rasputin Museum, St Petersburg.

Visiting St Petersburg - Travel
Flight £121 to St Petersburg was on the screen. I went back next day and it had gone - possibly last cheap ticket sold out. The deal was 3 nights in Moscow and 3 night in St Petersburg.

Ekaterina
Ekaterina or Yekaterina city.
Ekaterina means Catherine in Russian. It is named after Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great (for whom St Petersburg is named.) I used to struggle with the spelling. At first I could recognize it if I saw it, but not remember it well enough to type it into my computer screen search box. Then I tried to focus on the letters and relate them to English words. Like Katherine with a K. I think of EE! Katerina. Or E(e)k/ Kat(h)er(e) in a (h!). Or Ye Kate r in a. (Sounds like 'a Shakespearean character saying, 'You, Kate, are in a  ...?' Or Ye-katerina.

Sights To See
QWERTY monument, Ekaterina city, Russia. Stepping stones in the form of a Qwerty keyboard.

Church on the Blood, Ekaterina city, Russia. Built on the site where Emperor Nicholas II and his family, the Romanovs, including daughter Anastasia, were held captive in a house and assassinated in the basement in 1918.
A secondary church and small museum are on site.

The church on the blood, Ekaterina city.

A few miles away the bodies were hidden down a mine. (Later dug up and taken for burial in St Petersburg.) A chapel commemorating each victim was made on this mine.

Mafia Cemetery, Shirokorechenskoye Kladbishche Cemetery, Ekaterina city, Russia. Has upright tombstones engraved with mafia figures.

Volvograd (Previously called Stalingrad 1925-1961)
Wikitravel says:

• Mamayev Kurgan — the site of one of the twentieth century's most important battles: Battle of Stalingrad. This huge memorial is located on top of a large hill overlooking Volgograd and the Volga River. The name derives from the hill's supposed status as the grave of Mamai, a famous Tatar Khan and general (kurgan is a Tatar word meaning burial mound).

Panorama Museum
Houses a painting of the battle of Stalingrad.

Suggested Flights
One City Spring, Autumn or Summer Stops
My preference is avoiding winter. Snows start late October or November and can continue as late as March to May.

Bearing in mind that winters are cold and snowy and flights could be cancelled. Remember how Napoleon's marching army got stuck in the snow and his army had to turn back.
Return flight to Moscow. Do St Peterburg or Ekaterina the following year or a later trip.

Stopovers and Multi-Centres
Take a stopover in Russia on a flight further, for example between American or England or Europe via Russia to Asia or Australia.
stopover at Moscow and / or St Petersburg.

Fly to Moscow and train to St Peterburg, returning from St Petersburg.
Trains from Paris to Moscow, Paris-Moscow Express, not as fast nor frequent as one might think, once a week express takes 2 nights.
Train from Moscow to St Peterburg, only four hours.

www.airbaltic.com
www.skyscanner.net
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/russia
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Tourism-g298484-Moscow_Central_Russia-Vacations
http://www.visitrussia.org.uk
http://students.sras.org/a-guide-to-jewish-moscow/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

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.

Where's the statue? What's the Story? Sherlock Holmes, find me Paddington Bear and Dalida.

Chopin Statue

Problem
Where's the statue? Heroes and heroines, famous and fictional characters, their statues decorate cities and inform us about history all over the world.

Answers
UK Airports tend to have statues of planes but London's railway stations are good places to see statues of people.

London
Paddington Bear is in Paddington Station, London, England. A fictional character travelling, the little lost bear, lost in large Paddington station, who is easily found, is fun for children.

Also in Paddington see the state of Brunel, wearing a top hat. Why on Paddington? Because he was the pioneer who built the railway going west to Wales, building bridges, literally and the ship to take travellers on to the USA. Brunel University in NW London is named after him.

Nelson, elevated on his column in Trafalgar Square, looks out over the heads of visitors. If you are into history, pop into the nearby National Portrait Gallery.
Oscar Wilde is reclining, near Trafalgar Square. You can stand or sit beside him for a selfie.

Beau Brummel, the dandy, stands near Fortnum and Mason department store. You are surrounded by smart clothes shops, upmarket He looks very dapper, in the West End, where you are amongst food shops and places to eat.

If you like literature, and it is a sunny day and you want to walk, the statue of Peter Pan is in a park where you can have a picnic. James Barrie and his supporters put the little statue in a public place without permission, but when the authorities tried to take it away, popular pressure persuaded them to leave it for the enjoyment of all then and today.

If it's raining, in London, and you have a the time and money for seeing sights, Westminster Abbey features poet's corner.

If you'd rather see people looking more colourful and lifelike, there's Madame Tussauds, next to Baker Street station. Outside Baker Street station stands a statue of Sherlock Holmes wearing his deerstalker hat.

Story of My Sherlock Statue Photo
If you don't have the money or time to queue for ever popular Madame Tussaud's, take a selfie with Sherlock's statue. I nearly lost my impatient family and ended up divorced because I stopped to wait for a group of giggling Japanese girls to finish photographing. After I obtained my essential photo, I popped into the extensive shop in the nearby Sherlock Holmes Museum.

Dozens more:
Euston station has the map maker who mapped Australia, with his cat.
Speaking of cats, two more cats are featured in London. Dick Whittington's cat, companion to a former mayor of London is a popular subject for Dick Whittington pantomimes in London at Christmas time.

Statues of famous people stand in squares or look down from niches all over London and Britain. Kings, queens, busts on buildings, equestrian (horseback) statues, and war memorials, in city squares, beside art galleries, in the middle of busy streets. Soldiers, and nurses. Florence Nightingale.

Literature fans will like Shakespeare. Musicians might opt for Handel. Or Amy Winehouse in Camden.

Which do you prefer, sculpture or painting? Combine both. If you are into art, there's a statue of an artist with his paintbrush and palette on Waterloo station. What's he doing on the station? He was commissioned by the railways to paint their stations and trains. One has to earn a living, something practical, science, travel. Can't be painting and sculpting kings, queens and rich pop stars all the time.

The British Museum has statues from Greeks, Romans, Egyptians. If it's raining, or you want a little light relief, try the nearby cartoon museum which holds events for children, adults and the elderly to learn more about drawing their own cartoons and characters.

VICTORIA AND OTHERS
Queen Victoria is near Buckingham Palace. (You'll see her all over the world, Australia, Singapore.)
See busts of Kennedy, Mandela and many more including a statue of Russian Yuri Gagarin, first man to look down on earth from space.

Years ago I bought a book of statues in London, and since then many more statues have been added.
Churchill and Disraeli are near the Houses of Parliament and PM Mrs Thatcher's statue is inside.
If you are prepared to take a trip out of the centre of the city, Karl Marx has a huge bust in Highgate Cemetery where you can take a tour.

In London you can take bus and walking tours following famous figures or including them, everybody from Shakespeare and Dickens to the Beatles. Houses of famous people in Britain include London homes as museums to Dickens and Keats, more on Dickens around Britain, plus the Brontes up in Yorkshire. You can buy books on literary trails around Britain (and other parts of the world) which usually take you past a statue or two, as shown in the books. Look in libraries and on Amazon.

Going North, Beatrix Potter's statue is in the lovely Lake district.

Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland's capital, has a famous dog which supposedly stayed devotedly by its master's grave for years. In recent years, some people have cynically said that the dog only hung around because it was fed daily by the cemetery keeper, and admired by visitors. The more humorous and easy going of us would smile and say, 'Why let the truth get in the way of a good story!'

EUROPE
FRANCE
Taking the train from London to Paris, prepare for more statues. In London's St Paul's cathedral the son of architect Sir Christopher Wren installed a p l a q u e (spaces inserted to foil spell checker) which reads, (I've remembered it in colloquial modern English) 'If you want to see my monument, look around you'. Likewise, in Paris, I cannot recall a statue to Eiffel, but I certainly remember his tower. You can't miss it, as they say.

In Paris the two cemeteries which draw tourists are Père Lachaise and Montmartre. Three notable ladies honoured in France by statues are Joan of Arc, actress Sarah Bernhardt, and singer Dalida.

The person from modern times is Dalida. Her name is adapted from Delilah. You can see her white statue against a black background in Montmartre cemetery. A square is named after her and you can see her statue near her house in Paris.

The sexy singer and dancer had Italian parents, was born in Cairo, and lived in France, and sang in French and Italian, Arabic and Hebrew, Japanese and many other languages. She was able to sing in several languages and address and converse with fans in several languages. She won many awards. You can see her website and watch her on YouTube. Her fiancé shot himself after losing a competition and later she committed suicide.

(And the moral is? Don't get depressed by the jury. Keep dancing and singing because you are loved by your fans. There's always somebody, somewhere, family or friend, fan or stranger, now or later, who wants you to live, as long as possible.) You can take a Dalida walking tour.

RUSSIA
Moscow, named after the Moskva river, has a statue of Peter the Great, who founded the navy. He stands amid the sailing ship, surrounded by water. The water is a suitable setting for a statue featuring a ship and a man who founded the navy.

Water has the added benefit of protecting the statue from crowds obscuring it so you can get a better photograph. A water barrier protects the statue from damage, whether deliberate or the indentations of the hands of admirers.

SUMMARY
UK
LONDON
Bear, Paddington
Beau Brummel
Brunel
Cats: Whittington's cat; cat and mapmaker, Euston.
Charlie Chaplin
Churchill
Eros
Freud
Marx
Napoleon
Spike Milligan, Finchley
Nelson
Paddington Bear
Peter Pan
Shakespeare
Thatcher
Oscar Wilde
Victoria
Wren
ENGLAND
The Beatles, Liverpool
Les Dawson, Lytham St Anne's
Eric Morecambe, Morecambe
Norman Wisdom, Sefton Hotel, Douglas, Isle of Man

WALES
Tommy Cooper, Caerphilly.

SCOTLAND
Dog, Edinburgh.

USA, NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA, ISLANDS & REGION
NEW YORK
Charging Bull, Wall Street, New York city, NY state.
George M Cohan, Times Square.
Statue of Liberty
WASHINGTON
President Lincoln

OTHER
Presidents, Mount Rushmore
Christopher Columbus, Puerto Rico
Christ the Redeemer, Rio?
Horse, Virginia.
Will Rogers, Oklahoma, USA

AUSTRIA
General Radetsky, Vienna (Radetsky was the man for whom the march was written.)

BELGIUM
Mannequin Pis, Brussels.

BULGARIA
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in front of the House of Humour and Satire, Gabrovo.
 Charlie Chaplin statue stand outside in the Park of Humour and inside are two Cat statues.
CHINA
Sun Yat-Sen.

CZECH REPUBLIC
Wenceslas, Prague.

DENMARK
The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen.

FRANCE
Bernhardt
Dalida
Eiffel
Joan of Arc

ITALY
David (biblical)
Puccini

NETHERLANDS
Anne Frank, Amsterdam

POLAND
Chopin, Warsaw

RUSSIA
Nikolai Gogol.
Peter the Great, Moscow

SINGAPORE
Raffles. Bust in Raffles Hotel. Statue on waterfront.

SWITZERLAND
Charlie Chaplin, Vevey.

AUSTRALASIA
Captain Cook.
Dame Edna Everage, Melbourne, Australia.
Sir John Monash, Melbourne (WWI Commander; Monash University of in Australia and other countries.)

Tips
See Wikipedia for lists of statues by country, tallest statues in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equestrian_statues_in_the_United_Kingdom#Scotland
My top trip to see statues and a museum is the museum of humour in Bulgaria.s
http://www.humorhouse.bg/engl/book.html

I have only given you a brief glimpse of the statues to see worldwide, but enough to entertain you with their stories, inspire you to seek them out to see statues and research more.
-ends-
Author Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several other posts about statues in London and elsewhere. Please share links to posts.