Trinity Church, St. Stefans Monastery....cool because it was rebuilt by members of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989 after being destroyed, along with thousands of monks, by the Soviets beginning the the early century.  Strange and powerful how long a religion can be repressed, then return.  

Old canal in downtown Perm.  The locks are placed on the fence by newly married couples.  hmmmm!

Perm was a "closed" city from the 1930's until 1989 and I had no idea what that meant until I got here.  Closed means what it sounds like.  Nobody was allowed to come in and nobody was allowed to leave because there was a huge Soviet weapons factory here.  This is a very cool outdoor museum of some of the really nasty weapons.

This is Ekaterina the gracious tour guide/historian who showed me around the city....and more of those nasty rockets.

How could I come here and not eat borsh.

Wooden church with the Orthodox onion dome, also made of wood (Aspen) in Perm.  Cool because it is where, in 1694, the Virgin Mary made her Russian Apparition, to a native Tartar man....so Pa, now I have seen Guadalupe, Lourdes, Perm.

Same sign, one in English and one in Cyrillic.   This is outside the dorm where I am staying.

Quite a few Lenin statues and monuments....Stalin not so many.  The former Soviet Union influence is really, really strong here and the wonderful people I am meeting seem quite willing to talk about it.  Perm was a powerful player in the Cold War as it was a central regional capital, closed, and a weapons center.  There is not a chance, I was told, that I could have visited here less than 25 years ago.

The people I meet are wonderful.   It is a large industrial city that is up and running, but still in the transition for Soviet life.  Just a whole different world than anything I know.