Some more excursions

In early October I visited the fifth Festival of Science at Moscow State.  (There were simultaneous exhibitions at other schools in Moscow and in other Russian cities.) Here is the main building at Moscow State:

Inside the main entrance we find a sign for a presumably non-scientific event, "Miss University".

Inside the new (as of 2005) scientific library were more relevant exhibits.   Outside the library is a huge statue of Mikhail Lomonosov.

Officially the school is named after him: its name is "M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University". He worked in a lot of different areas: chemistry, physics, geology, history, literature,..., although in chemistry he'd be cleaning Mendeleev's lunch bucket. 

Inside the library there was a balloon staying in place over a rotating fan

a non-Newtonian fluid (patterns formed on the top as the plate underneath it vibrated)

and a Russo-German Institute of Science and Culture which seems to be a lot more focused on the culture than the science. (Considering that the phrase German Physics has negative connotations, maybe that's for the best?)

Last week I visited an ice sculpture gallery.  It's located in one of the city parks, and from the outside looks like a big shed:

Inside when you buy a ticket, you receive a special long jacket to wear before entering the freezer (the back half of the shed) to see the sculptures.

A place to put your mail:

Or your money, I guess:

There was a log cabin made out of ice.  Here we look through the front door:

And here is a view through a window:

Check out the icon in the corner:

Elsewhere in the gallery I sat down (on a piece of fur, not directly on ice) and showed off the light blue coat which everyone is given before entering the "gallery":

In case you're wondering, we were not allowed to keep the coats.  Although I have my own winter coat on underneath, I wore it not because Moscow is actually cold, but because I knew I was going to an ice sculpture gallery.  The weather outside was hardly cold enough to merit a winter coat.  Look back at the grass outside the gallery.  A few days later, on November 10th at noon, an outdoor thermometer said the air temperature was 14 celsius (look in the lower right):

Anyone from the US who doesn't realize that 14 C is pretty warm weather for November should convert it to Farenheit at an online temperature converter.  I heard reports that several hundred kilometers to the north there was cold and sustained snow, but there has been hardly any of it in Moscow so far.

One morning in early October the sky outside the apartment had an eerie pattern in the clouds (click on the photos to see the detail better):

A friend told me those clouds meant it was the end of nice weather and snow would come soon.  Some  snow fell a few days later,

but a few days after that it was gone:

I've only worn my winter jacket about 3 times so far and my boots just once.  I get by quite well with the pullover I am wearing in earlier photos and plain shoes. Napoleon would've loved this weather.