Guns, More Guns and Bows and Arrows, The Circus, Random Stuff & Mexican Food

We visited the Kalashnikov Museum while in Izhevsk...Izhevsk is the city where all the firearms are manufactured and has been for a hundred years.  In World War Two they produced over 12,000 rifles a day.

I have attached pictures of manly men shooting bows and arrows and handguns.  If the picture of the hog was a real hog Zhenya would have killed him and we would be having shashlik for dinner.   

The first AK-47 was produced in 1947.  Kalashnikov was self-taught and designed many weapons during his lengthy career. He recently died at age 94.

In an effort to save money from our budget we have stayed in less fancy lodging on this last trip.  The first two nights we stayed at the circus.  Really.  Many towns have a permanent circus building and in Izhevsk we stayed in the circus building...they have about twenty rooms they rent.  We were asked if we were acrobats - pretty hard to tell just by looking at us! The next night we stayed in a place named KOMFORT.  A little place with only five rooms just a block from the branch building.  I have attached some pictures of the room and furnishings...I think we may have been in the honeymoon suite.  Again, easy to mistake us for newlyweds.

Here are two more pictures...one of the baptismal font in one of the branches. Many of the buildings have similar fonts since they are leased buildings.  We assume they move the ping pong table and the ladders on the wall before the baptism.  Probably.

The picture of the three trees was an attempt to capture the incredible beauty of the snow...which we didn't do.  The trees and fields glistened and twinkled like fields of stars. We've never seen snow that sparkled like the snow on this trip.  It was very cold and we suspect that had something to do with it.  There were forests of birches that sparkled like they were festooned with strings of diamonds.  Sparkle is really the only word that does justice to how they look.

The fields looked like that fake sparkly snow Mom used to buy for the Christmas village she put up every year.

So, we stopped at a Mexican place for lunch.  The door was locked so Zhenya called them and the manager came and unlocked the door.  Seems like they forgot to do that when they arrived that morning.  Oops.  We ordered a burrito and fajitas and chicken wings and shashlik.  I've attached a picture of my burrito...I've never seen a burrito that looked like this one!  It was really tasty.  We ordered drinks and they said they didn't have any soda but we could go next door to the grocery store (they are called magazines in Russia) so we got our sodas there. Here's a picture of Zhenya with something he ordered...tasted good but we have never seen them before, either.

I enjoyed the shashlik but it was pretty fatty so Sherry made me eat most of it.  Dang.