Tuesday’s itinerary was to introduce us to people at the university and to become more familiar with the Rostov. We first went to give presentations about our university to a group of students at the Southern Federal University, which is our partner university. The presentation went well and was well attended by several students.
After our presentation we went to lunch. At lunch I had a great conversation with some of the other students about the variety of ethnic groups that live here in Rostov. Because this is an historic border area there are several people groups living here and it has been under the control of Turks and Greeks in the past. There seem to be a good number of Armenians that live here and people always mention the Don Cossaks, who claim a mixture of many ethnicities. I didn’t expect to see so much diversity in the population, but it has been a great surprise.
We then took a walking tour of the city. It was so great to get out on a nice warm spring day after spending 24 hours in planes and other types of transportation yesterday. We walked along the main street Sodovaya (garden street) and saw many wonderful parks and monuments. The old fortress of the city was along our route, but it doesn’t exist anymore. There was a statue of Queen Elizabeta, who helped push Russian imperial borders this far south by establishing the fortress in Rostov. There was a beautiful rebuilt church. Many of you know that churches were targets for destruction during the Soviet period and there has been a flurry of rebuilding since the fall of the Soviet Union. We then continued down the street to the World War II memorial. Rostov was captured by Germans twice and so it was all the more meaningful than the several I’d seen in other places in the interior of the former Soviet Union. The world war II memorial is across from Revolution park, commemorating the Soviet Revolution of 1917. We then headed to visit the statue of Karl Marx. So we had a great snapshot of Russian history just on one avenue. We then headed to the bank of the river Don, which is built up into a pedestrian walkway with several trees and flowers, cafes and other things for people to enjoy as they walk along the river.
The final stop of the night was the Russian version of Walmart “okey.” To stock up on drinking water and snacks. It was an interesting trip, especially since I’m used to shopping for all those good in open air markets.
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