The title of today's post is the question I get after nearly every one of my meals at home. Strictly translated, it means "Will you be of tea?" Fortunately, Russian is an accommodating language, with a complexly inflected grammar system, which allows questions like "Will you be drinking a little bit of tea (after the meal/now/etc . . .)," become the two words you see above. That is, "Ты/Мы будешь/будем попить чаю?" becomes, "Будешь/Будем чаю?" and there are no problems with understanding. It is for this reason that both Latin and Russian are frequently cited as some of the hardest languages in the world to learn - although in my opinion it's simply because English grammar rules have been so completely oversimplified after years of input from different language families (the rules being simplified each time to accommodate Germanic languages and then Romantic inputs). Inflection actually makes a whole lot more sense grammatically than the strange system of word order that we use.
Today, however, we did the tourist thing. Our first of a series of excursions. We had a bus tour of various places in the city (in Russian), many of which I was surprised I still hadn't been to, but that I'll definitely be going back to. Park Pobedy was the first. It's a huge plaza in the South-East of the city. There are a bunch of different monuments there, but the largest is the one that the Soviets built (of course) after the Second World War (Вторая Мировая Война). The focal point of this is a HUGE bronze obelisk. For those of you who have seen the obelisks in Rome, multiply the typical one by about three and you'll get this monstrosity. It's also reminiscent of the Greco-Roman world in two other ways. The first is a statue of Nike (Goddess of Victory) and two small Gods hanging off the top of the obelisk. The second is a progression of battles that the Russians were involved in that goes gradually up the obelisk - like the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, only not in a ribbon around, but straight up the side.
I also FINALLY went inside the Church of Christ the Saviour. This place really has no parallel in the world that I know of. As soon as we entered the sanctuary, I got the same chilly feeling that got upon entering the Cathedral of Maria degli Angeli (formerly the Baths of Diocletian) in Rome, only this time that feeling lasted almost as long as we were in there. It really was amazing, and it blows my mind that Stalin and his cronies would even think of destroying such a building, nevermind actually doing it. Photographs were forbidden, but even if they hadn't been, I wouldn't have taken any. I'm always uncomfortable taking pictures of sacred areas and tend not to do it. I did however take some nice ones outside (to be posted later, when I have a little more time).
Otherwise, I don't have a whole lot more today. Spending the rest of the night watching football.
UPDATE:
The obelisk at Park Pobedy. Sorry, I didn't get any of the details on it. There's a museum there that I may return to, in which case I'll re-photograph.
Panorama from the plaza at Park Pobedy. MGU is visible on the left (the large "wedding cake" with a large stile on top. One of these days I'll write an entry about the seven sisters - hopefully after photographing them all).
This is a monument called something along the lines of "Children are the Victims of the Vices of Adults." The name is much shorter in Russian (because of inflection). I actually really like this bit of art for some reason - it was pretty impressive and I could probably do a whole entry on it at another time.
And finally, what I've been talking about ever since I got here - Кафедральный Храм Христа Спасителя. Now you can see what I've been talking about, and why it's so awesome. The statues on the outside are plastic. The bronzes from the original are in America of all places and a few are in the Donskoj Monastery across the block from my apartment here. When they rebuilt the church, they did the statues in plastic because bronze and marble would disintegrate fairly quickly in Moscow (in addition to being insanely expensive).
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