бомбы в Москве

At 12:40 pm on Sunday, March 28, a group of 27 students studying in Denmark for the semester arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia. At 7:56 am and 8:38 am on Monday, March 29, two suicide bombers attacked two metro stations in central Moscow. It was the most shocking news we could have gotten, except if the attacks had occurred in St. Petersburg. Our hotel in St. Petersburg (for some reason) did not provide free WiFi access so we had no real way to assure people we were okay.

Some people in our group came close to flying back to Denmark and not completing our trip to Novgorod in Moscow, but I was not one. After an attack like this, we figured the security both in the city and in the airport would be extremely high and therefore it would be the safest time to travel to the city. As we predicted, there were large numbers of security and police all over the city, metro, and airport. Due to fears by a few in our group, we did not travel by metro as a group, but a few trips were made.

One of these trips was to the site of the second blast at Park Kultury. It was an optional trip for those of us who wanted to see the site of the blast and lay a flower for those who had been killed in the blast. It was a sobering experience to see all of the flowers, candles, mourners, and police in an area completely unaffected by the blast because the stations were originally built as underground bunkers for bombings during WWII and hypothetical wars during the Cold War.

I just wanted to share with everyone that I am, in fact, okay. The trip to Russia was very interesting but I have over 400 pictures to go through before I can update with what we did and include pictures. I am also leaving for the UK in a few hours. So I will leave you with a picture of the memorial in the Park Kultury metro station and thoughts of those who died in the attacks.