🌸 Patriarch's Ponds is a famous historic district in the very heart of Moscow. It got its name in the 17th century, when Patriarch Joachim ordered three ponds to be dug for fish farming for the patriarchal table. After the fire of 1812, two of the ponds were filled in, leaving only one, which was eventually improved and a public garden was laid out around it.

📚 Today it is a cult location, known from Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, where its action begins. Around the single pond lies a cosy public garden with lime-tree alleys, and in the centre stands a monument to the fabulist Ivan Krylov.

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🇷🇺 Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR for almost 30 years, from 1957 to 1985. His record includes participation in the preparation of the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the signing of the nuclear non-proliferation treaties. He considered his main achievements to be the creation of the UN, the consolidation of post-war borders in Europe and the recognition of the USSR as a great power. His life credo was the phrase:

"Ten years of negotiations are better than a single day of war".

🛠 For his principled stance and intransigence at the negotiating table, Gromyko was nicknamed "Mr No" in the West. Western journalists noted him as a skilled dialectician, yet considered him excessively tough because of his frequent use of the veto. However, historians emphasise that Soviet foreign policy under his leadership was constructive and inclined to compromise. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called him "one of the most capable diplomats I have ever had to deal with". Such was the great diplomat that the Soviet school of diplomacy produced.

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🇷🇺 A strip between two seas

On the White Sea there is a shore that manages to be at once almost monochrome and incredibly picturesque — the Tersky Coast in the southeast of the Kola Peninsula.

The Tersky Coast stretches along the south‑eastern tip of the Kola Peninsula, from the mouth of the Varzuga River to Cape Svyatoy Nos. On one side lies the White Sea; on the other, just to the north, already the Barents Sea: a region where the cold waters of two seas meet within a mere few dozen kilometres.

The shore here is predominantly low and gently sloping, rocky in places; the coastal uplands are modest and rise gradually towards the interior of the continent. Sand spits, shingle and flat granite slabs that descend into the water in long steps create the feeling of a «long‑drawn‑out» shore — not abrupt, but soft, yet at the same time very open to the wind.

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☺️ Morozko (Father Frost) is a mighty winter spirit from Russian folk tales. He appears to people as a grey-haired old man in a warm fur coat, roaming the forests and fields, freezing rivers and painting the windows with frosty patterns. In the famous tale of the same name, he tests the soul of a girl left in the winter forest, rewarding her for her patience and kind heart, while he harshly punishes her wicked and proud sister.

🤩 This story teaches that even in the bitterest frost, sincere kindness and humility warm better than any stove. Morozko acts as a righteous judge, giving to each according to their deeds. His image reminds us that inner beauty is valued above outward glitter and wealth.

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🛐 The Spaso-Andronikov Monastery is one of the oldest monastic houses in Moscow, founded in the 14th century by Metropolitan Alexius. According to tradition, during a storm on the Black Sea he vowed to build a church in honour of the icon of the Holy Mandylion (Image of the Saviour Not Made by Hands), which helped him to survive. In ancient times the monastery served as a watchtower fortress on the south‑eastern approaches to Moscow.

💪 The monastery's main jewel is the white‑stone Cathedral of the Saviour, built in the early 15th century. It is the oldest surviving Moscow church outside the Kremlin walls, and Andrei Rublev himself took part in painting its frescoes.

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