Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Novosibirsk Part 3 : Akadem Gorodok......

or Academic City in English is the region that we lived in.  In the late 50's, Stalin established Akadem Gorodok as the scientific hub of Russia.  About 65,000 scientists were sent there and established 35 scientific institutes.  Several of our neighbors were scientists who worked at the various institutes.  Our language teacher's husband was actually a brilliant mathematician who authored a ton of math textbooks.  They both lived in a beautiful and huge home in the forest near the institutes that was owned by the government.  She told us that the elite scientists lived in these homes "free of charge".

One of the institutes but I can't make out the name.  Most 
of them were on the main street and since we only took
public transport we never stopped to take pictures of all
the various institutes, now I wish we had!


This is an awful picture but our neighbor Nadia would bring
one of us along to concerts at the Hall of Culture.  This time
Jon went to see a quartet, I got to see my first ballet there.  
Russians love their art and they are extremely talented.


This was our favorite place to eat at.  We would try to go 
at least once a week if we could.  The center of Akadem
Gorodok was not too far but having to take transport and
a baby was never very easy!

This was during the holidays and the main shopping center
was decked out with ice sculptures.  You can only see
Jojo's eyes.  It must have been pretty cold that day.


I just had to put this in there.  This was a woman's clothing
store in the main shopping center!  What were they thinking?





1 comment:

rick said...

That last photo... HAHA!