In December, Russia’s Museum of World Oceans was set to unveil a new building, “Depth,” which includes one of the world’s largest sperm whale skeletons, plus myriad pieces of deep-sea equipment and, among other things, the Mir-1 submersible used in filming Titanic.
Developed in the late 1980s for scientific research, Mir vessels have traveled the globe and been used on dives in Lake Baikal, on rescue operations (including for the Kursk submarine), and even to plant the Russian flag on the Arctic shelf. To include the submersible in the building, the museum had to install industrial-strength floors and enormous exterior doors, so that the Mir can exit its new home to travel on research missions.
The Museum of World Oceans in Kaliningrad includes several buildings, as well as a full-sized submarine and ship. Tickets cost 400R for adults and are free to children under 16. world-ocean.ru
Russia has opened its largest casino, The Tigre de Cristal. Located in the Far East and aimed at Asian tourists, it is in an official gambling zone near Vladivostok, one of several such zones created after authorities banned gambling in Russian cities.
The $2 billion, 600-hectare project was underwritten by investors from Hong Kong and will eventually include several casinos, theme parks and hotels. For its opening night, the casino invited dignitaries from several Asian countries, but managed to infuriate locals when it included a heavily drugged Amur tiger cub in its festivities and photo shoot. The extremely rare animal, a five-month old female, was borrowed from a Russian zoo and was glassy-eyed during the posh event.
Russia’s Hermitage Museum is building a satellite museum in Moscow, located in the capital’s old ZiL factory, famous for making Soviet limousines.
The building was designed by Asymptote Architecture’s Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture and will showcase contemporary art inside a porous, white, boxy structure.
The new museum will open in 2019 and be the heart of a new cultural hub that Moscow city planners want to create at the ZiL factory, an enormous space south of the city center, to be served by a new stop on the capital’s huge subway network.
A new and improved museum dedicated to Russian poet Yevgeny Baratynsky opened in Kazan, after moving to the expanded premises of a house where his family lived.
Baratynsky was a nineteenth-century poet acclaimed in literary circles, including by Alexander Pushkin. He wrote several collections, but faded into obscurity after the unsuccessful Decembrist uprising in 1825. His sudden death in 1844, when he was just 44, is still shrouded in mystery.
The poet was born in Tambov Province and lived throughout Russia and abroad, but this is the only museum dedicated to him in Russia. The wooden building is one of the few remaining late eighteenth-century houses left in Kazan. The museum will host poetry evenings and has several items belonging to the Baratynsky family; it is decorated in the manner of a typical manor house.
Russia’s budget airline Pobeda began making foreign flights in December.
At press time, the rapidly expanding carrier was planning flights to Vienna in late December, as well as selling tickets to several Italian locations.
Pobeda, launched in 2014 as a subsidiary of Aeroflot, flies to over 30 cities from Moscow, but some of its quirks, like fees for carry-on baggage (lest boxy suitcases scratch the cabin’s interior) and a ban on chewing gum, have raised travellers’ eyebrows.
It is not the first attempt to launch a low cost carrier in Russia; both SkyExpress and Avianova flopped in the past few years. Meanwhile, foreign budget carriers are cutting their flights to Russia as the combination of sanctions, conflict, and the crashing ruble cut into passenger numbers (down 70% since the crisis began), especially of Russians traveling to Europe.
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