The city of Chelyabinsk: bright on gray
How many times have I heard from the guests of the city, and the indigenous people themselves, that Chelyabinsk is gray, boring, faceless. Maybe it is, but there are bright and interesting spots on this gray canvas, and from this background they only gain and become more noticeable.
I will tell you about the most interesting, in my opinion, of them.
If you arrived in the city by air, then the road from the airport, to put it mildly, is not the most picturesque. It seems that everything, as usual, fields, trees, but in the background begin to appear the CHPP, then the pipes of plants in huge numbers, and then the gray and uninteresting outskirts of the city-industrial giant, so it is better to devote the time of travel from the air harbor to the approaches of the center of Chelyabinsk to nap and rest.
You can start acquaintance with the city from the legendary Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, where during the Great Patriotic War every third tank of the Red Army was produced, which made no small contribution to the victory.
Now the company has a museum, which presents the first tractors produced at the plant, as well as tanks, lovers of antique equipment and especially military, will be extremely interesting.
But not only the equipment was given to us by the factory, but also another victorious phenomenon - the legendary hockey school and the Tractor team. Chelyabinsk is rightfully considered the hockey mecca of the country, and I will add that the entire eastern hemisphere of the planet. And that's no exaggeration. Hockey Chelyabinsk for Russians is like Montreal for Canadians. Some ordinary Chelyabinsk fans understand this sport as well as some coaches of continental hockey league teams and this is not a joke. If you ask any Chelyabinsk citizen: “What is the tractor for you?”, then in response we will hear: “This is a hockey team,” and not agricultural equipment. So fans of this beautiful game, just need to visit the old ice palace in the area of ChTZ, where the hockey school is located, to see how the future Shuvalovs, Makarovs, Mylnikovs, Bykovs, Nazarovs, Gonchars, Semina, Kuznetsovs train...
And if you arrived in Chelyabinsk during the regular championship of the KHL, then you definitely need to go to the match "Tractor", which hosts its guests on a new, modern and very cozy ice arena, named after the famous student of Ural hockey and one of the most successful coaches of our time - Valery Konstantinovich Belousov.
We drive from east to west along the main avenue of the city, not very original bearing the name of V.I. Lenin. And we see two steles indicating that the city lies at the junction of two lithospheric plates: the Ural and Siberian. Every day thousands of people cross the border between the Urals and Siberia several times a day. You can see differences in flora, coniferous vegetation prevails on the Ural part, and Siberian deciduous vegetation. Even the soil is different, on the Ural part rocky rocks prevail, on the Siberian - black soil.
The architecture is dominated by the typical style of the Stalin era. There are a couple of nice, interesting buildings, but nothing more. The main square of the city is boring, with not the original monument to Lenin, but around it there are three objects that are simply necessary to see the guests of the city.
Behind the monument to the leader there is a square with a singing fountain, behind it a hill, and on the hill - the building of a dramatic theater - a round structure built in the early 80s of the 20th century, lined with white marble, with uneven edges, as if the flower had just begun to bloom. If I were offered to buy only one postcard depicting one of the attractions of Chelyabinsk, I would choose a drama theater without hesitation.
In general, in Chelyabinsk, which is not a theater building, but an architectural monument, I mean the Youth Theatre, located in a house built in 1903-1905, then on the northern outskirts of Chelyabinsk, and now it is located on the outskirts of the main square of the city. Beautiful, monumental, construction.
You need to see it with your own eyes, see it, maybe even go to the play, get out of it and go down to the underground passage to climb to another dimension, you will feel yourself if not at another time, so in another city for sure. The noisy city of a million people ends, and begins a cozy provincial town, as if "cut out" of a film about the wild west of the United States, with cafes, restaurants, shops, souvenir shops. You found yourself on the pedestrian part of Kirov Street, among the people - "Kirova". Most of the buildings were built at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, at that time, because of the high level of economic development, Chelyabinsk was compared with Chicago.
Chelyabinsk is still jokingly referred to as "Chikaginsk", although the city's economic boom ended with the start of the October Revolution. The "Kirovka" rests on the Miass River and the Museum of Local Lore, built in the early 21st century, on the place where, according to many historians, the guard fortress-Chelyaba was erected.
Now in the museum you can see many exhibits telling about the history of the city, one of the main ones is a sensational meteorite, or rather a small part of it.
We're going down the avenue. After the building of the public library, the square begins, under the poetic name - "Scarlet Field". There are several interesting objects in this place that are worth seeing. The first thing I will dwell on is the monument “Eagle” by the sculptor Golovnitsky. The pedestal depicts a boy with a very expressive face, and a soulful look. It is worth stopping and carefully considering. In my opinion, the best work of the author.
Then the square, and on the left outskirts there is an empty mausoleum with a bust of Lenin. Absolutely incomprehensible structure, especially since the chief Bolshevik looks at... the most beautiful temple of Alexander Nevsky. Ilyich is clearly not satisfied, either that the temple was not demolished, or that it blocks his view of the palace of pioneers named after Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, and most likely both. Oh, come on.
Here's more about the temple. The church is the creation of the famous architect A.N. Pomerantsev. The building is made of red brick, in the Russian-Byzantine style. Even the hall of organ music was finally transferred from 2013 to the Russian Orthodox Church, and soon services resumed. So on the same field, there are symbols of our history of the early 20th century.
It is time to continue our path, moving strictly to the west along the main artery of the city, again we meet the houses of Stalin’s buildings, then the typical Soviet border of the 1970s-1980s. We reach the main higher educational institution of the region - SUSU (may ChelSU forgive me), rest on the monument to the physicist Kurchatov, and behind it begins the main, in my opinion, the attraction of the city - Yuri Gagarin Park of Culture and Rest. What's so special about him?
In fact, this is a real relict coniferous forest, preserved by some miracle to our days, on the eastern outskirts of which the park itself is located, and several socially significant objects, mainly of a sports orientation, such as: the athletics stadium named after Elena Elesina, the ice palace "Ural Lightning", the Central football stadium, reminiscent of the ruins of the "Colosseum" due to its unfinishedness, an indoor athletics arena, playgrounds for workout, beach volleyball, bicycle paths.
The park is a great place for recreation, sports, hiking, picnics, located in the heart of the city, which is the lungs of the industrial giant. But in the 30s of the 20th century, on this place they were going to build an aircraft factory, but the Chelyabinsk people defended the forest, in that harsh time, which is equivalent to a feat.
When you enter the park, you are instantly transported from a noisy, bustling metropolis to a wonderful, quiet forest with majestic pines and clean air - not transmitted to the sense. The park is a great place for contemplation and reflection - perhaps that is why the clearings of the forest were chosen by local Buddhists. In general, the Urals is famous for its beautiful and unique nature, and the park, as if advertising the beauty of the Chelyabinsk region.
In Chelyabinsk, the hotel business is not poorly developed, there is a good choice where to stay. The city recently hosted major sports competitions such as the European Judo Championship, the Taekwondo World Championship.
Now the city is preparing to host the summits of the SCO and BRICS countries, which will be held in 2020. By this time, several interesting projects should be implemented.
So this is what I did on a journey through my hometown, far from complete, but I pointed out the brightest objects against a gray background. Still, the brightest attractions are outside the city, such as the mystical island of Vera on Lake Turgoyak, with megaliths of about 6000 years old, and the ancient settlement of the Bronze Age - Arkaim, and the Ilmensky Reserve, where there are huge deposits of unique minerals, of which 16(!) are discovered for the first time in the world, and of course, picturesque mountains and lakes, the latter about 3700. Recently, skiing has been actively developing in the Chelyabinsk region, several ski resorts of a good level have been built, in February 2016 the stage of the World Snowboard Cup at the Sun Valley resort was held.
Bright travel.
Author of text and photo: Mikhail Mishin