Montag, 10. Januar 2011

Volgograd


First of all, I have to apologise for not keeping my blog up to date in the last months. This was due to several trips to other cities and the fact that I moved to another flat in Moscow. In early December all volunteers of my organisation who work in Russia had their first country seminar in Volgograd, which was in former times called Stalingrad. All volunteers, except the volunteer working in Volgograd, met in Moscow to take the night train to Volgograd. During the more than 19 hour train journey we ate all the food we had prepared in advance and talked a lot about our experiences in out projects. When we arrived, our country coordinator was already waiting for us to take the bus to our final destination at a German Protestant congregation. This was the first time we noticed the unbelievable dimension of this city. Volgograd extends itself along the river Volga and is therefore extremely long (80 kilometres). I heard that it is the second longest city in Russia (only Ekaterinenburg is longer). On the other hand however, Volgograd is not very wide but rather like a long stripe. Therefore, it took us always more than 40 minutes from our accommodation at the protestant congregation to the city centre of Volgograd.

During our seminar we spoke about our experiences and problems at work, about Russian history, but the biggest part of the seminar was devoted to the exploration of the city and its immense historical importance for Russian history. All over Russia one can find traces of World War II and Russia’s big victory against the Germans. One of the most crucial victories took place in the battle of Stalingrad. Thus, there are hundreds of monuments remembering this big victory in Volgograd today. These monuments, however, do not make Volograd a very beautiful city in my opinion, although the museums and monuments were very interesting (if not a little bit too patriotic and war-glorifying). We had a very good guide through Volograd, unfortunately, it was very very cold and wet so everyone was freezing, especially because we stayed outside for a very long time. Furthermore, it was very dizzy on that day so we couldn’t fully see the beauty of the most important sight in Volgograd - the impressive Rodina Mat (Mother of the father land) which calls the Russian people for the war against the German troops. Although we we were standing directly in front of the statue, which is bigger than the statue of liberty in New York, we could only see her feet and the silhouette. At the end of the tour we visited a soldier grave yard with German and Soviet soldiers. It was the first time for me to see a grave yard with German soldiers and one could see that Germany had given much more money for the German grave yard than the Russian side. On several stones the names of soldiers were engraved who fell during the battle. Among others I also found a soldier with my surname. On the next day we visited a very old ethnic German lady who lives in Russia (like many other ethinc Germans in the Volgaregion do) and talked with her about her life, we sang songs and she read out poems.

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