Ok folks, so here is the blog that I promised with all the pictures and I'm going to be adding captions to explain the picture and why I took it, I guess the significance.
Ok, so these first pictures are going to be pictures of us pulling into the harbor there in Vladivostok. I guess it would be more of a bay area where we were located, this is of the mountains that surround the harbor, in the left hand side of the picture is a "whip" antenna, which is what I worked on. I did communications and RaDaR equipment, I know that you are going to question the spelling of that word, but it stands for Radio Detection and Ranging.
Ok, so here we have some more mountains, and this picture leaves off where the first one stopped at the right edge, so if you can envision it, the right side of the picture above should pick up on the left side of this picture. As we can see the mountains are topped with some good snow. We pulled in in March and man was it just ridiculously cold! On the deck we decided to see how cold it was and decided to have ourselves a little tinkle break and our urine froze on contact with the deck of the ship, that is just to give you a picture of how utterly cold it was there.
Once again this picture picks up where the last one left off. These shots are on a film camera, so I couldn't compile them into a panoramic shot on the camera, so did my best with film. Ooh, talking about how cold it was we have these suits that we had to break out during Sea and Anchoring that we call "pumpkin suits." These things are rated for long exposures to sub arctic temperatures and are orange colored, with at least 6 inches worth of insulation, which is really nice because it keeps you so very warm, but really sucks because the cost of warmth comes flexibility, trying to tie off to a pier or supply ships and trying to chalk it up alongside is a bear because you can't get a full range of motion from your arms and legs! Haha, was terrible, but it was a warm terrible! >.<
Ok, here we picking up again from the last picture as we are pulling into the harbor! At this point we are setting the anchor. What that entails is we stop, drop anchor and wait for the chain to go slack at which point we set the brake and scoot backwards to make sure that it is fully lodged on either a rock on the sea floor, or entrenched in the muck, so basically we just back up until we hit 0 knots and stop.
Another set of pictures that shows the bay area, closer than the other pictures were.
Another panoramic view of point of anchorage.
Once again just another picture of the bay.
Ok, the last three are of anchorage, just all the scenery around where we were. Unfortunately pier side itself didn't have enough depth to support our draft so we had to anchor out in the harbor and take a little ferry to the piers and back to the ship.
Ok, so from the pier we took a bus that went all of 10 miles at the most to the city of Vladivostok. This is the drop off point and pick up point for the bus. That little building there is the second of only 3 bars located in this town. Imagine that a bus full of sailors being dropped off in front of a bar, that would never happen! ROFL! One thing to not about Russian vodka, it really is tasteless and so very smooth! Not compared to the stuff we sell here in the states!
Another picture of us pulling up.
And again.
Ok, so this is the tribute to Lenin. To the right of this picture is a statue of Stalin, and the cops were super ticked that we were taking pictures of all this stuff, hence the shaky-ness, I was trying to take the picture on the fly. The cops came up and were yelling at us in Russian, and I took a swig out of a bottle and offered it to them and they perked up and left us alone, actually ran into the same guys later that night and they took us out to the red light district *clears throat* and that was the end of that night! *blushes*
Ok, so these girls are the translators that showed up the second day. They were supposed to be there the first day but they had to work I think. Anyways, what they did was come on the bus when we pulled up and they had 2 people per group of sailors, for us there were 5 of us in a group and these girls wound up coming with us, they translated everything for us, signs on buildings, menus at the bars and restaurants, labels, whatever you wanted to know in Russian they told us, they were super nice and they put us to shame when it came to drinking! ROFL!
Ok, so this is on the pier. This is were the railroad stopped and was unloaded. Some of the buildings on the pier were used as warehouses for storage and others were used to refine goods. One building a little later on was used for refining ores into either steel beams or steel plating or sheets of steel for shipbuilding, I will point this building out when we come across it. Unfortunately I really couldn't tell you if what the translator said was true or not because the Russian police wouldn't let us into these buildings for fear of the building collapsing, or we get hurt while inside.
Ok, so here are the cranes used to take the finished products, or products from the warehouses, off of the pier and onto the ships, and vice versa. Unfortunately from what I could tell they were no longer in use, now I could be wrong though.
Ok, here is the steel refining building. This picture and the one below are of the sign that was on the building, now I can't read Russian so I really don't know if it was the steel refining building, or if it was just some warehouse, just gotta believe the translator ladies!
So, here is a cargo ship that was on the pier on blocks. The only thing that I can think of for this situation is that it was pulled up for an overhaul, or was going to be used for scraps, either way, most definitely forgotten about for quite awhile. The translating ladies said that it had been there ever since they could remember and they were mid 20's when we were there!
Here is a side view of the same cargo ship. Below this picture is a side long view of the steel refining building.
Ok, so here we are on the ferry boat from the ship going towards the pier. Here we can see the cranes and cargo ships that are/were used to transport the goods out to other places. There in background you can see the town which sits at the foot of some mountains, now these mountains are not huge, more of an Appalachian size.
again another pier used, this time it is a Russian military ship that was used to deter any kind of curious person trying to boat out to our ship, there were 2 used, here is one at their pier.
Cranes used to unload and load Cargo ships.
This is the piers that are used today for cargo.
Again the piers used, and a shot of the ferry boat we were using.
Once again the piers that are used today.
This is a picture of all the housing that was used during the time of economic boom during the Cold War era. These houses housed all the people that worked on the piers and in the warehouses and refining areas on the piers.
And here is the famed Stalin statue before the cops showed up.
And again, that long building there to the left of the statue is actually a University that is in use today.
And more Stalin, and the cops showed up right about now.
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the railroads, but these are all the pictures that I can show you of Vladivostok. Unfortunately there are many more but I won't be showing them to anyone! >.< Hope you had fun looking at all these and found them interesting. This is for Group 3 (I think that is what group I am in), but if you would like to you can throw this as a link in the announcements and let everyone in the class view them! Doesn't bother me at all!
