the. beasts in which bryson if you knew moon and sun moon from one student is. nice for instance on t.v. dot com. and welcome back you are watching archie direct from mars through the art studios in central moscow to get right to the top the parts to bomb blasts have killed twenty seven and leaves scores wounded in a coordinated assault on security compounds in the syrian capital damascus the attacks come at a sensitive time as that the u.n. attempts to broker an end to the violence in the country that's claimed thousands of lives. to belorussians and sentenced to death for last year's terror attacks on the minsk metro have been executed this despite calls from human rights groups to

reconsider the sentiments. nationalist marchers in a lot of the s.s. veterans it sparked concern over the resurgence of far right groups in the european union the annual event has been widely condemned as a glorification of nazis. and coming up we head to the unique urals as we guide you through the russian city of perm that's in our special report next r.t. . a two hour flight east of moscow will land you in a city called pup it's one of russia's most populous is minister of capitals and the industrial and cultural center of the european urals. lying on the banks of the comma river it's home to almost one million people and as you take a walk around is easy to see that this is a russian city trying to create an impression.

perm is quickly making a name for itself in the contemporary art world and the generous local government grants means there's something colorful crunchy or just colossal around almost every corner. and right here in the center of the city you can find the highlights of its consent real projects. is fifty under logs making up a cyrillic letter for pearl. and this is he's autistic pedigree has been furthering haunts by the new contemporary art museum it's been open since two thousand and nine and houses of the riot even usual and striking exhibits. among the paintings here are of the form of this little sculpture. quite an impressive bunch of criminals that. i'm ahead of perms public art program believes that the changes are adding to the

city's reputation. through today is in the vanguard of cultural and social issues which affects not only these particular region that's also the country as a whole this is very important. and it's not just professional artists that are being showcased here. now these six hundred snow men are all part of the sixty one for six designs get the people more involved in all and they've all been made. great sits. by the local school kids. in freezing temperatures and no barrier to a good time and i see playgrounds are filled with the young and the young at heart .

really doing it only playing. well i had a stroll through perms windsor wonderlands but it seems to me that there's one. very important guy still missing. says hello to fellow j.m. was nice to me i'm glad to see you here in perm thank you very much it hurts that you are quite an unusual for the frost is it true yes i'm a real dyed in the wool father frost complete with a real beard. yes i'd like to show you some of my winter tricks would be brilliant so the rule. and it's clear from the beginning that live is no more than a response or. plays in general and he loves

to speak to all the frost does anyone want to be on his milton list. so now i get to own doubts and my remote news coordinated as a sixty nine year old. probably not but we'll see yeah this is great. blimey. we. like balance keeping me here and a little help from. the frosts so. let me. break. your k. i didn't break anything. thankful that i haven't done any permanent damage i left

left his acrobatics and headed back out into the streets it was time for a little souvenir hunting there are many things more strongly associated with russia than the bear and although you might not see too many running around the streets of perm doesn't mean you can't find them if you know it's a good. bet if you go down to one particular workshop and you're sure of a big surprise. these are the sort of bears you really wouldn't mind money and see and hear in their mate has a bit of a superstar because the winner of but golden george the equivalent. of a teddy bear. his designs have been cleaning up an international competition for several years now from her postcard bears to her jeans characters she's amassed an impressive collection of her own. some of natasha's bears a real antiques including one that's supposed to have belongs on the cholas the

second she used to be a told me can you turn to teddy's when a scottish friend brought us some plans to make their clothing now she can put together a new furry friend in around ten hours and she's a pretty good teacher too so at last he has kindly offered to show me the arts of making your own pets or going to see. if i can get most of the guy to look a little bit more cuddly. cultural quick tutorial on stuffing my first began to look far more healthy but i was ready for something a little more delicate. or that was easier said than done. off the fail. and then there was the question of how to get them in the right position and how to deal with here. and it's

brutal when it's in calls because promises. nine. concorde tricky. but eventually after some minor brain surgery we were ready for the finishing touch. and then oh boy. here we go apparently according to the tacit it's only when the eyes go in that the bear actually becomes a bear so. i don't i would think it might not be an oscar winner but i think it's quite lovable. i was finally ready to explore some of the per region and i started in the southeast in the picture a city of congo or back in the eighteenth century congo was considered to be the capital of the urals and it was all of the most important stops along the trade route to siberia but it was a hundred years later with the birth of bits of sun but it really reached its

heyday. meet alexei good ken the man who became russia's most famous t.v. importer and. boy one of the god is going to tell me a little bit about his life. hello chains our cool air and the title of the t. capital of the russian empire thanks to the merchant can his talent was responsible for the fact that he was no longer an exotic a beverage it was something extra civil to walt aleksey was dumped. here and discover all sorts of. kim's achievements transformed and as old his museum is devoted to his life and work it seems only right to sample his wares well in this case i think we do need to have a cup in his honor so all go. to go can just go on and that is of course

james let's go for it a bit of course there's a court. just below the main exhibition hall is a replica of a nineteenth century russian tea house burned although the brew itself became more affordable and good can style not everyone was able to have their tea with all the trimmings. sugar was expensive so much so that ordinary people could not afford it. in this case they drank tea all gazing at the sugar and and what sugar was suspended from the ceiling. tea drinkers would just look at the sugar while sucking on the bottom it's food their brains seem to think in their tea was sweet but some of all it was also becoming more and more widespread and tea drinking part and parcel of each meal companies like this one were places to take your time in whether you were immersion striking your deal or just friends enjoying allegedly discussion or listening as they have the right idea to me back in the

nineteenth century couple an excellent company what more could you want is the can . deviate from the bill of what we know you are doing even if you were a kid you usually get judged it was time to return to the present but down on the congo river a far more ancient tradition was taking place. i arrived in time for the russian orthodox celebration of a perfectly a festival commemorates jesus his baptism and dozens of people were gathering by a hole in the ice to observe the sanctifying of the water so we. can. actually. see the crowd coming in here on mass with as many containers as they can carry

because often the water has been blessed the russian orthodox people believe that it's become incorruptible and they'll take all this warsaw home with them to bless themselves their families and their houses. it was a bit of a scramble but at least for now every woman staying drawing and i headed off to watch the festival's culmination and one of congress' most famous landmarks. this is got to be the region's natural high lights i'm in the congo cave and it's the only ice cave in russia that's quit the tourist expeditions and these beautiful crystals hang from the walls all around the caves ventilation system acts like a natural freeze up meaning the ice near its entrance never forced and stomach tight and stolid might stand corrected ceilings and forced.

it's amazingly beautiful but. it is enough slippery and the cave was first documented back in the nineteenth century and it's been a guided tourist attraction for well over a hundred years. it can be pretty cramped in places but as you move further back the ice receives the landscape starts to change the whole cave extends almost six kilometers on the ground and this should give you an idea of some of the variations of the size of the cross so this one is must massive compared to the pole across that we saw right at the beginning and also it's much much warmer it's probably about plus two here and back at the start was around minus twelve. when you get it. became rich is a depth of almost sixty metres and it's here at the bottom that you find it's

underground lakes and just for tonight a crowd of the faithful. so once the this is for this to everyone can use up for a quick splash of holy water and a blessing from the priest. and for the bravest believers that's the signal to take the plunge. freefall dips into the lake to all of the holy trinity and wash away all their sins from the past year. now and go the utmost respect for guys like this but. purely for health and safety reasons you understand i should not be immersing my whole body in this freezing water so i think i'm going to troy an epiphany lights. and i may be able to take care of

a parking fine something like that. i made my way out of a cave away from. the city maybe abusively preserve poems of the region's industrial past but i was ready to take a trip into the countryside to a place with a mysterious. science technology innovation all the developments around russia we've. covered.

have been a place. perhaps just another piece of region country saw its but apparently you can have close encounters here with much more than just nature. perms version of area fifty one following sources alien encounters and unusual goings on have been reported here i want to see if there was anything to get. the going to look for extra terrestrials around. that. i believe. i've got the most experience. in the business strange things happening come it's supposed to have its own equivalents of the you

triangle some even believe that it's a gateway to a parallel universe and larry and i believe they can prove it is not what it seems it's pretty tricky. but. this part is supposed to be the most. anomalous zone so it's only when it is going to happen it's very likely to happen right here. and nikolai has an instrument he thinks shows up discrepancies in the areas energy fields through the first. i have brought a few devices with me. check this out this one is interesting because of the text things we can't normally see. there's a pulsing signal. joyce going around. if you go kind of like a pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop. which gets

a lot. when i move up. the tone will vary there is in for red radiation here it may affect the operation of appliances and even the human body when you take a photo sometimes years appear and there is an anomaly here for sure we can hear it . there was certainly something strange afoot and the larry had yet more tales of the unexpected for me. several years ago i came across strange markings in the snow this is what they looked like. snow was only here in this place and it seemed to have evaporated and there was no snow here. so i saw two squares and something looking like this if. you haven't moved i think this was left by a u.f.o. i barely noticed the i was passing of the sun had already started to set if i was

going to see something in the lead it had to happen fast. so i've encountered parallel universes energy anomalies and even lapses in time but i still haven't found any of these pesky aliens that i must be some way to do it. take me to your leader. well i don't know what happened next i seem to have some strange unexplained memory loss aliens or no i needed to head north and the three hundred twenty kilometer drive or switch teleportation will take you to one of the area's most populous cities and a genuine industrial powerhouse this place is called sol accounts and it may be the most important city in the whole of the perm region they call it russia salt cellar and it's been supplying the vital mineral to the country for more than six hundred

years. the city lies on the karma river and its name translates to salts of the common it's particularly famous for its potassium chloride which is refined and sold as fertilizer and a trip through the city shows how the process has changed over time. these buildings are tribute to a bygone age they date back to the eighteen a.c.'s and they're the oldest standing soap factory left in russia. all of this is original equipment and this borehole goes down to it that the woman's two hundred meters i found the down there the salt water had a higher concentration and they would pump it out and take it to the furnace house for the next stage in the process. and so it was obtained by of operation and once it boiled down this great big basin here it would put up the top ready for the next batch and then it would all have been transported by hand and bags like this this

one was supposed to be just for the ladies are concerned about fifty kilos they made them tough in those days. but this will give you a better idea of what the watch looks like this one was drilled in one thousand nine hundred six i was actually under another old factory the water still flowing and nowadays people basically come and use it as some sort of tonic townies has to be very good for the skin. certainly refreshing. the times of most definitely changed. nowadays of course the salt production is a bit more sophisticated so alexander annoying are about like it's all of the known

just. in the world. something a little bit dark supposed to turn this on now we're going down about four hundred twenty five meters behind me the right to think about three minutes. away from you saying that if i don't tell him. this is rudnick showoff number four and i can say i was around one point three million tonnes of all from it every month. as we moved on would it was easy to make out different leds present on the mind. it's believed the devil deposits of an ancient seat but flowed through this one. and around two hundred fifty million years ago and they have some seriously heavy equipment to collect them. this massive drilling machine is the softs workhorse it weighs about one hundred tons

and excavates almost thirty meters down each scene every shift and i'm going to get a chance to put it into action right now is not a. club. where we get to see. someone sit gets going it needs to be emptied pretty quickly. so our transport vehicle is coming up here through the drilling the c. . and in the seconds. that all is going to come down and we should see about a civil war. going on in the back here. i just it's everywhere you bury your mouth that. does not. belong to. the north has forced their empty again.

and we have. big guns are loaded up on the trip now. to get into position. a little. bit of good. strides. to the factory her side. this point is most are now quote it's believed this mine contains enough salts to last another forty years and there is store room is to make sure the production continues around the clock but for. alexander and the boys the shift was nearly finished i can't get over this year and scale of this story and it's about twenty metres high and almost two hundred metres long it's like

something out of a hollywood horror movie i keep thinking that some is going to jump out at me from the shadows but just thinking about the scale of the work that must be required to fill this with or makes me tired so i think on that note it's probably time for a well earned cup of tea. and after the journey back to the capital per thought i deserved a point to eat to. one of my favorite things about travelling around russia is that it gives me a chance to try out all the different local cuisines and all the chilly winter day like today it's the perfect excuse to eat something hot. i know this is a city off the my own heart because palm is famous for its poisonous i'm going to learn how to make one. how low oh stores can we cook today i can

teach you how to cook. if you better be great there's very much they do. translates as juicy ponies tiny supposedly to match the shore towns of daylight's their winter favorite here in perth. ok. all right ok let's see how good i am of the rolling pin. and then the contents is good and good so we've got minutes chicken breasts with some with some young ones in there as well and if you create that's going to make up off of it because. once each has a generous donor up the edges the seals and crimped into a shape that reminded me of how. they live west country roots help they're. used to working with the past these pieces that each of us does when you see three

each one is handmade and has the reputation of being the best in the city the restaurant serves them to around fifty guests tonight. guess the best bit now drawing them in lots of oil. more space for just better. and also just a couple of minutes they're ready to be plated up and served with this special sauce. treat it the whole thing just yours and that's ok so mustard and then they go. of course the proof of the course of course you can only need to. i think i'm going to be packing on the winter insulation movies. there's no doubts that if you're visiting russia the region has a great deal to offer

a thriving capital that's making an artistic statement natural highlights and an industrial center that's still going strong off to six hundred years on slave miller care for the end just in case.

all right.