After a day of visiting tourist attractions and relaxing, it was time to visit the Moscow Power Engineering Institute and Skoltech. But before we left, I woke up due to the singing of my fellow Thor members for Roel’s birthday!
After this, we suited up and went to the metro to go to the Power Engineering Institute. At this Institute, they explained their power plants and a moment later they showed their generators and boilers. They were located in a huge, old, industrial hall, which are apparently pretty common in Russia. These machines, tubes and other things were very impressive to see and it is a huge difference compared to the Netherlands. The Waldur members amongst the participants were especially impressed by the institute.
After this nice excursion, we traveled straight across the entire city to visit Skoltech, an academic research and education institute. This trip was very special: we first had to go by metro and switched lines several times. Then I thought we had arrived at the university, but unfortunately we had to continue by bus. In this bus we could not use our public transport card, so we had to buy new tickets. After a while the bus driver thought that the members our group were the only people left in the bus, so he decided to bring us directly to our final station. He would skip the other stops because he already was delayed. However, there was another man in the bus who managed to get out just in time. The rest of the bus ride was over pretty quickly afterwards. When we had finally arrived at Skoltech, I was happily surprised. The building was very nice, modern and beautiful, which is very unusual in Russia. Moreover, this was only a temporary building! They are currently constructing an entirely new campus. Skoltech is an university which offers a lot of English programmes, which is very unique in Russia. This is due to their close connection to MIT. They are mainly focused on master and PhD students, but they also have possibilities for bachelor students. They also have several labs which we were allowed to visit: for example a robotics lab and a nanotechnology lab.
After this day, it was time for free time and dinner. The group splitted up and I went with a group to Legendy. This was a super awesome restaurant/bar, which was full with propaganda posters, spionage material and that kind of stuff. Also, the bartender believed that a beer card from Het Walhalla was a real Dutch currency (thanks to the amazing salesman power of Dirk) and he did add it to the wall behind the bar where a lot of different currencies were pinned against.
– Mariska van der Struijk