When I was a kid, they advertised "The Ultimate Adventure": the Trans-Siberian Railway. Even going to Russia was adventurous, and the 5,772 mile network of railroads connecting Moscow to Vladivostok -- that's over twice the distance from New York to Los Angeles -- took 8 days.
Today we can fly, which allows you to jump all over the vast conglomerate of republics, territories, and oblasts in search of beefcake.
Other than Siberian swimming star Vlad Morozov, of course.
I'm skipping over Moscow and St. Petersburg, which have enough beefcake art for their own posts.
1. A 1 1/2 hour flight south of Moscow, Volgograd straddles the Volga River, the homeland of the original Rus tribe that became the Russians. This statue on Mamaev Hill features a buffed, shirtless warrior defending the Motherland during the Battle of Stalingrad.
2. Now you have to rent a car and drive about 10 hours south of Volgograd, to where the Transcaucasian Highway passes through the Alagirsky Gorge in North Ossetia, beneath this 28-ton statue of a shirtless St. George on a horse.
By the way, white people are called Caucasians because they were once thought to originate in the Caucasian Mountains.
3. Continue south another 5 hours to Maykop, the capital of the Republic of Adygea. Only 13% of the population is Muslim, but the Mosque Park contains these two specimens.
4. Another five hours to Nalchik, capital of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkarina, another Caucasian state, and another buffed warrior.
5. Fly back to Volgograd, and then to Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan (about 8 hours, but that's better than 25 hours by car). The Tatars are a Turkic-speaking people, one of the largest ethnic groups in Russia.
Outside of the Kazan Kremlin is this statue of a shirtless, defiant Musa Calil, a Tatar poet and resistance fighter executed by the Nazis.
More after the break
6. You might also stop for this statue of a naked Shurale, a demonic creature who lures unsuspecting humans into the forest, where he tickles them to death.
7. A five hour flight across the Urals is Yekaterinburg, and the Ural State University, with this student who has taken off his coat so we can see his muscular chest through his undershirt.
8. Only an hour and a half by air, Omsk, capital of the Omsk Oblast in southwest Siberia. It is a city of statues, some whimsical, some stern. This one is another muscular warrior.
9. Just an hour by air to Novosibirsk, where you can get a change of pace from all the shirtless warriors: a shirtless memorial to the actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky (1938-1980). There are others in Moscow and Montenegro.
10. Another hour by air to Krasnoyarsk, in the heart of Siberia, where there's a naked athlete atop a pillar at the Soccer Stadium.
11. And this Neptune-like naked man, actually a symbol of the Yenisei River, which flows from Lake Baikal into the Artic Ocean.
12. It's still 5000 km, or a 7 hour plane flight to Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan near the borders of China and North Korea. Surprisingly one of the most beautiful cities in Russia, where this chesty Stalin overseas the main square.
See also:
The Russian Beefcake Museum; and the
Penis Museum of Moscow.
