SCOTTISH TRIVIA

                                          Interesting Trivia

• The thistle has been the symbol of the country for 500 years. Legend has it that sleeping Scots were awakened by invading Vikings when they cried out after stepping on thistles in their bare feet. The Scots won the battle and the guardian thistle made it into history.
• Language originally was Celtic based with some Gaelic and a smattering of Norse dialects. By 1980 less than two percent of the population understood Gaelic. Gaelic is most popular on the Isle of Sky where 60% of the population speak the language. Accents and dialects have not developed in Scotland as they have in England.
• The Highland games started more than 1000 years ago. Bagpipe playing and dancing are always part of the games.
• After a wet harvest centuries ago, finding a way to use rain soaked barley resulted in the national whisky known as scotch. Scotch is the whisky, not the name of the people who inhabit the country. They are Scots, and the adjective is Scottish.
• All the museums in Glasgow are free.

      Big Bertha, a huge crane is now a monument to the vast and prosperous ship-building industry that the city of Glasgow was famous for. The last ship built on the Clyde was the Q E 2 in 1962. During W W II a warship a day rolled off the rails into the River Clyde. The 24-hour a day operation was incredible when 2000 ships hit the seas in a six year period. Before the war most of the ships built were passenger ships including all of the Cunard line ships. At one point the shipbuilding industry employed over 200,000 people. The ships were not only built here, but fully outfitted here as well. To say something is Clyde built means that it is quality and built to last. The River Clyde is but 78 miles long and has as much as a 20-foot tide here in the city.

      In Dornoch. We visited the 1239 Presbyterian Church where a couple of elderly docents told us this where Madonna had her son christened and that Prince Charles also had visited the church. The ladies proudly told us that the hotel across the street was once the home of Andrew Carnegie,

     They forgot to tell us that Dornoch is the area where the last witch burning in Scotland took place in 1722. An old woman was accused of turning her daughter into a pony and riding it around town. She was sentenced to be burned alive in a pot of boiling tar.

OTHER RUSSIAN MEMORIES

                                                         So Much to See

       Every time we entered our Moscow hotel we had to scan all out belongings and walk through a scanner. Just one of those things these days!

       Most Russian homes, especially in the countryside have a ‘red corner’. Originally that is where the religious icons were displayed. After the Bolshevik Revolution the religious icons were replaced with busts of Lenin and Stalin. Since the demise of the USSR in 1989 the religious icons again have a place of honor.

     Russian nesting dolls are called matryoshka. The brightly colored and decorated lacquered boxes are called palekh.

      Conflicting info was often given (bus numbers in Moscow, where things were located)

     Traffic was heavy in the big cities. Pedestrian beware!

     Infrastructure often in need of repair.

     Museums are housed in old palaces.

    In spite of Stalin destroying half of the churches there are still many many of them.

     Payment of $4-6 was required in nearly all places to use one’s own camera inside.

     Built in 1825, the Bolshoi is Moscow’s oldest and best-known theater. Its splendid external architecture sports a lavish façade with columns and large bronze horses at its peak. The theater, known for its world-famous opera and ballet companies seats 2000; only the La Scala in Italy is larger. A large granite monument of Karl Marx, looking at the Bolshoi stands in the square across the street from the theater. Unfortunately the theater was under renovation when we visited so we could not get inside---too bad!

      Because of ice on Lake Onega we were not able to make the next two scheduled stops at Petrozavodsk and Kizhi Island. We laid to waiting for an icebreaker to get us through the very southern portion of Lake Ladoga. Rain did nothing to enhance the rather drab town of Vytegrn. It was an unscheduled stop and one few tourists see. We maneuvered around mud puddles on a dirt road from the pier to the town center where we visited a church (1873) and a small but well done museum. Individual wooden houses and log cabins lined the street, and in the distant background were a couple of Stalin concrete apartments.

      Our final stop before St. Petersburg was Mandrogy. The small village is a place for the new rich Russian to escape to. The area is situated in deep dense forest. Steep metal roofs topped wooden buildings and much wood carving was used as decoration. The architecture was rather unique. After warming up a bit on a windy cold day we walked to the ferry landing to board a hand turned cable ferry for a five-minute crossing to Pushkin Island. Pushkin was a famous Russian poet of fairy tales. Walking a well-packed path through the woods we stopped every few meters to observe wood carvings illustrating Pushkin fairy tales. We were well sheltered on the island, but once across the river the wind hit us full force in the face! It was fun to get somewhere few tourists do.

      Christ Our Savior Cathedral is the largest church in Moscow. It was started in 1839 after the war of 1812 and it took 44 years and the reign of four czars to complete. The first electric lights in the city were installed in front of this church. Stalin destroyed it in 1931 and it became a city swimming pool. The pool was covered up in 1994 and in 1995, financed with private monies, construction began on this new church. It took four years to finish the exterior and two years to finish the interior. The mosaics inside are beautiful. The church has five domes with a big central and four angular turrets with 14 bells. The church is so big that the main cathedral of the Kremlin can fit inside.