Kazan - Tatar capital, Ivan The Terrible's conquest

We arrived in Kazan at about 2 pm after a pretty comfortable ride in a coupé. It was shared by a Tatar girl, not particularly smart, and a guy from St. Petersburg, who was a pleasure to talk to and a great insight once again into the opinions and views of the Russian people. He lost a few points temporarily when saying that america was behind the protests in Algeria and Lybia, but partially got them back when he admitted that it's what they say on the news.

Which reminds me about a story I forgot to mention in my Piter blog: apparently there is a rumor going around that Medvedev is secretly a Jew and uses all the money from corruption to give out to random jews.. If thats true, where the hell this place at where I can collect a part of that!?!

Sooo, I'll make the next entries short so you can read them without complaining :D

Kazan is a very beautiful town. Unique because it's kremlin has both a mosque (reconstructed after it's destruction by the russians but almost the same as the original tatar mosque) and an orthodox church built by Ivan the Terrible.

Some buildings were impressively modern and keeping their traditional architecture.

Their main pedestrian street, Baumana, is filled with jewelry shops and cafes. We chose a cheap cafeteria which made the BEST triagolnichkis with ground meat!

**COOL STORY ALERT**
Medvedev might be following us.. We saw him and his gang as they closed down half the city in St. Petersburg, and NOW he arrived in Kazan..SAME DAY... Coincidence? I think not! Maybe ill be being that Jew money after all!! Funny thing, is that he crashed into the crowd with his car! While driving it himself..check it out on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM5tqJi1YaA

And enjoy the pictures:

Inside kremiln:

Tatar restored mosque: Kul Sharif

interrior

Russian orthodox church: Annunciation Cathedral: built in 1554-62, the only 16th-century Russian church to have six piers and five apses.

View down from the kremlin onto the city

The building you see above, is the same you see below :D

The modern houses in traditional architecture I wrote about earlier

The not so modern Tatar village

Walking around the Kremlin, we found this :D

The main street, which is a pedestrian only zone... fascinating contrast of beauty and poverty: Baumana Street
exactly across the street from the picture above

The view of the street