Out and About in Barnaul

There is a small amusement park (a dozen or so rides/activities for kids) just down the street from us. We walk through it often on our way to the zone leader's apartment. It's tucked into a small area on the corner of two fairly busy streets and has apartments and condominiums all around it. We've had fun watching kids enjoy the simple rides. парк (on the sign) is pronounced park.
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One of our favorites things to watch there is a new attraction. It starts with a large water-filled pool. To that they add a huge plastic ball with a zipper, and a child. The kids love it, even though it looks like it would be frustrating because it's so hard to walk in it. We also think it would get awfully hot inside the ball, but it doesn't seem to bother the kids.

We wondered how the ball kept its shape when they unzipped it, so we watched. After a child has been in it for a while, the worker pulls on a cord attached to the ball and slowly draws it back to the pad, unzips and lets the child climb out. The ball starts deflating. Then another child climbs in and the zipper is zipped almost closed. We thought it was strange that the boy immediately covered his ears. Then we saw this:

They stick the nozzle of a leaf blower in and blow it up again, finish zipping and push it out into the pool.

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The little kids don't have trikes like the ones in the U.S. They have these. The tall handle on the back is to make it easy on the parents. Usually the parents are pushing; we've seldom seen kids pedaling themselves. This is a row of them for sale, not a kiddie parking lot.
One P-day a member took us on a walking tour around Barnaul. The have a beautiful fountain in a park in the middle of . . . nothing much. Kind of a business/industrial/junky area.

Barnaul Elders at the time (l-r) Elder Ortner, Elder Bowler, Elder Hansen, Elder Prokoptsev, Elder Liljenquist, Elder Fitzgerald

In the center of town is a BIG war memorial. This is a very small part of it.
















Barnaul seems to enjoy statues of all shapes and sizes. Of course there are the requisite ones of Stalin (on the left) and Pushkin (poet, below), but there are some of lesser known characters as well. We haven't gotten pictures of all of them either because we didn't have the camera with us at the time or because we've seen them as we were zipping by on a bus, but we see lots ALL over town!

Your guess is as good as mine what this is about

The middle of a sidewalk is a perfectly logical spot for a wooly mammothSome of the many matroyshka dolls around, but I don't think these stack

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We've seen lots of pretty flower beds around town.











They love to paint things. All we can figure is that they want color. Some things they've painted that seem a little strange to us are cement fences, even the fancy molded ones; used tires in the gardens as sculptures; curbs (the one by our apartment has alternating red, green and yellow in some places and plain white in others); swing sets and sand piles--they don't bother to clean the sand off the sides first, so the paint doesn't stay on long, and besides, we think it's water-based paint.

Tire swan sculpture and other painted tire accessories

Caught in the act--painting the swings and sand pile

Russianism:

On P-day we went hat shopping at a Reenick (outdoor market). All eight of us in the zone found winter hats. We bought them in August, because they get more expensive the colder it gets. Then when it's really cold and you can't do without a hat any longer, they're no longer available.

Our zone presently consists of Elder Peterson, Elder Hansen, Elder Bowler, Elder Liljenquist, Sister Holbrook, Elder Fitzgerald (way in the back), Elder Holbrook and Elder Ortner