Flowerdk4 said:
...About cemeteries. This is quite funny. Here in Copenhagen we have a huge cemetery where they have many strange and old trees. There people go in the summer time and picnic. You would lay on the lawns and enjoy yourself. The graves of H.C. Andersen and Kierkegaard is there, to name a few you might know. This is a special place and we dont go to our cemeteries normally like this. But I like the place as its peacefull and have many beautiful trees and not at all scary or with a negative energy. So maybe our cultures have more in common than I thought! Copenhagen also have a lot of water, just on a smaller scale. We do have canals and bridges and the little mermaid.
You know, our old cemeteries are usually more like a forest with big trees then lawns. When we come to visit graves of our relatives - we usually take with us some food and drinks (very often Vodka). Some of that is usually left on the graves - for the birds or even for the homeless people to join in the eating. And people who come just to look on the graves of the famous people usually are not picnicing there. I cannot remember anybody who thought that a cemetery could be scary or having negative energy... Sad - yes, but not bad, as the people who lie there were and are loved by those who is alive so far...
Flowerdk4 said:
When you talk about sites and gardening, were you referring to this Summer Garden, I think it was called?
The most well-known place near SPb is Petergoff.
Flowerdk4 said:
I have just checked some travelling agents to see what the price was to go to St. Petersburg. If I had a boat it wouldnt be that far away if you look on a map, but I would prefer to fly. The prices are not that bad. Some agents have tours where you also get to go to a town in the country. I think that may be a good idea. Anyway I have to start saving up for a holieday now.
I usually get there by air. Airport Pulkovo is just about half an hour from the city center.
Flowerdk4 said:
Speaking of culture differences. I watched a documentary a couple of nights ago about homeless children, very small chilren from the age of 5 to 14 years old. They were living at a Station in Moscow I believe it was. It was heartbreaking to see those children trying to cope with life and not knowing where to get food or a safe place to sleep. Some of them even went with old men to their appartments giving sex, for some money and to get some food and a shower. All the childrens eyes were just so deep and you could tell they were lost souls. One thing, which puzzled me, was the fact that the police beat them up. This I did not understand. Plus, why there were no parents looking for them. I know that there are homeless people all over the world, so its not meant as thing I only think you have in Russian. I just simply could not understand how so small children could walk the streets and nobody really cared. Some people gave them carity clothes but that was it really. I was thinking that maybe, you have another culture about children in your country? How do I explain this without sounding ..bad. Here in Denmark you would never find a child walking the streets without people caring for the child, asking it where is your mother etc. and the police would take care of the child or the social board. I am aware of the fact that I live in a country with a high social standard, so seeing children like the ones in the film, is very heartbreaking for me.
You know, Flower, not everything they tell us on TV is in proportion with reality. Yes, we have homeless people and even children. Yes, we have in our government a lot of people I would have never invited to my home. Yes, our police more often cares about themselves than about our citizens. But I doubt that there is a place on Earth where everything is good and just, and everybody is happy. There is about 12 - 15 millions of people living in Moscow, including several millions of people who had to flee from their lands... So, naturally, in so vast a pot there inevitably would be found all kinds of unhappy, mentally unstable, crushed by the circumstances and even criminal people. You know, after some allegedly Islamic maniacs tried to bomb London - the place where Muslims live maybe better than in any other place, including all the arabic states, - I cannot think that there could be peaceful places on Earth.
And again about children: my own brother used to take far trips from the age of 6. Of course we tried to make him understand that we worry over it, that it could be dangerous for him... But OK, should we had him locked? No, I do not think so. So I would say that he could be considered homeless for one or two week each year for several years... I liked to live in the open very much myself - and I walked some sizable part of Crimea and Caucasus over a period of several years... (up to a month at a time, though). Of course some lands near Moscow too...
So, what I am telling you - it is natural for people to want to feel themselves "in the open" from time to time, and in many cases to be homeless is a free choice of the person. Same about "giving sex".
So. All in all, homeless people etc. is a bad thing. But this problem has not been effectively solved in any country in the world, so I do not think we are much different from all the civilized world with our problems.
Flowerdk4 said:
I would be glad if you could tell me about your family life, how do you socialise, and take care of each other?
Errr... My family life is not very interesting at the moment, with most of my time consumed by my work... And most of what is left I spend on our piece of land, making it liveable and enjoyable... So there is almost no time left for socialising this year...
Really, I think that I've written something that could be interesting to you in the Members Introductions thread. There is much about life in Russia there...
Flowerdk4 said:
Now a completely other thing. I have started to read Dostojevsky. And I could picture St. Petersburg before I saw all the beautiful photos of the town. I guess its because I had a picture that it would look a bit like the old part of Copenhagen and I was not far off base. Not that we have those beautiful churches. I somehow connect these churches with something from the middle east. I went to Egypt and that was a mixture of Africa and the middle east and they had the same kind of churces/mosques. In Cairo I went to a christen part of town and it was like being in a european town. The buildings and the energy was very european. Would you agree that russia is a mixture of christen europe and the middle east? I also think of the way you make patterns inside the churches and I have seen some decorative plates with patterns and they reminded me of something arabic.
Surely we are a mixture, as we had absorbed the mighty Chingiz Khan army along with many others who hoped to conquer us and wound up living among us... And our Christianity started in Byzantium, so it is the most Eastern branch of it that we have...
Really, as I think Russians are all the peoples that live in Russia and consider
themselves Russians (and that could be not only Russians, Ukrainians, Bielorussians and Jews, but also Tatars, Abkhazians, Osetins, Azerbayjanis, Armenians, Tajiks, Turkmens, Chechens and many-many others, most of them Muslims...), so our population is less than half Christian...
