June 26th Space and War Museums

Another early start to a busy day.  The traffic was already very heavy but we managed to get to the Space Museum in about 1 hour.  It is very impressive.  Lots of displays on the early work into how to get into space.  A lot of information about the many dogs and monkeys who were first to travel into space.  The cosmonauts had to be small as there was not much room for them.  They explained about the training the cosmonauts had to go through to get used to the blood not flowing around the body as it usually does.  The weightlessness that caused many problems with the loss of calcium.  Many of the cosmonauts have died of cancer.

We met a cosmonaut, who through a translator,   talked about some of the training, problems, but overall joy and pride of what was achieved.

From there it was off to an Asian fusion restaurant – Asian as in Mongolian rather than Chinese or Thai.  Our entree was quite strange – it looked like raw meat but is actually a mix of tomato, eggplant and capsicums.  It was tasty and spicy and I tried to eat it but no….it just looked like a raw steak.  The rest of the meal was good.  My cup of green tea arrived in a really beautiful tea pot.

From there it was off to the War museum.  Most of the talk was on the 2^ndWorld War.  There were some well painted pictures on the walls so I mainly looked at them rather than getting involved in the violence of the place.  One story I liked was of a woman who was married to a communist – on hearing he had been killed she decided to buy a tank.  So she set about doing embroideries to sell and once she had the money and had bought the tank she learned how to drive it.  Unfortunately she was killed one week before the end of the war.  Outside there were many old planes and tanks from all wars.

And so back to the boat for tea and time to relax.