What's there to see in Novosibirsk

In Listvyanka a French man told me there was nothing to see in Novosibirsk. He was wrong!

The capital of Siberia is built on the Ob river. It really only began when in 1895 when the trans Siberian railway made it that far. Before then there had been a way station on the trans Siberian track. And before that, much like the rest of Siberia it was taiga, tundra and a lot of mosquitoes. 

The city only got it's present name in the 1950s, but it had been built to be grand. The opera house is the biggest in Russia...a massive concrete dome which dominates the central square. The Lenin statue is huge -a fabulous piece of socialist (not quite) realist sculpture. 

In Siberia no one seems to have noticed that the Soviet era is over.

And nowhere is this more evident than the Museum of the CCCP. My host had recommended this museum as "hands on" and the only thing the eccentric curator could say in English was "you can touch everything". And I did!

Each room has a theme...a child's schoolroom...with books, toys, posters. The office of an important official, with road maps, copies of the complete works of Lenin, a living room - with packaging, household goods, a covetable teaset. 

Propaganda posters and busts of Lenin as far as the eye can see. And a few pictures of Uncle Joe (Stalin that is) as well. 

It was a little overwhelming. I squealed when I found the front page of Pravda announcing perestroika. All this history and politics, alive and real and tangible.

Tangible because it is the artefacts of people's lived experience. Magazines, albums of popular music, fashionable clothes, children's books, curling irons, kitchen equipment, stereos, video games. The things of everyday life. 

To say I would travel to the middle of Siberia again just to revisit this museum is not an overstatement. I could have spent all day looking through the albums, reading children's exercise books, poring over knitting patterns. And next time, with more Russian, I will. 

The French man then was wrong. There are hundreds of things to see in Novosibirsk...and many of them are to be found in a little museum, run by two very eccentric men in a side street off Lenin square.