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When it comes to the "Invasion of Ded Morozy and Snegurachki" event that took place in Millennium Park earlier today, two of my mom's saying comes to mind ( Read more... )

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As 2017 drew closer and closer to the end, I kept hearing people talking about how awful 2017 was, and how they couldn't wait for it to be over.

And I kept thinking that I just couldn't agree with that.

( Seriously - hear me out )

So Livejournal created this thing to mark the end of 2017. A year in review sort of thing



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We don’t celebrate Christmas in Russia - at least not the way Americans do.

To start with, because Russian Orthodox Church didn’t recognize the Gregorian calendar (because that change was imposed by the very Catholic Pope, whose authority it  obviously didn't recognize), Russian Christmas gradually shifted from December 25 to January 7 as Julian ( Read more... )

This is one of those things that have been in the queue for a while, to the point where, if I don't post this now, it will become completely irrelevant.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year and other winter holidays, Amtrak put together a nice video.

Click to view

But what gets me about this is that, around the same time, Via Rail ( Read more... )

Yesterday, almost on a whim, I stopped by Chicago Union Station, the city's busiest train terminal and the city's only Amtrak station. I've been curious what the station looks like on major holidays, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and, well, New Year's Eve. But I've never actually done it (usually because I was, you know, celebrating them) until last ( Read more... )

After my last post, it was kind of fitting to see this come across my friend feed.

Over at ru_railway, e_strannik (yes, another Strannik :) ) wrote about a holiday train on Moscow's suburban commuter train linesFor those who aren't familiar with Russian culture, a bit of background. In Motherland, Christmas is firmly a religious holiday that's celebrated on January 7 ( Read more... )