A great additional benefit of travelling to Novosibirsk for the eclipse was the discovery of the Sun Museum. Essentially one man's life work, the gallery gathers together representations of the sun, from around the world collected and carved by Valery Lipenkov. The museum is kind of the story of his life and sun fascination in physical form, laid out in rooms bearing the ghost of their former functions as a home or a bar. I liked the photographs of Valery, wearing a beret and beaming beatifically alongside various gurus and shrines. Sweetness aside the museum was fascinating, showing the different forms that heliolatry takes: the reindeer of Siberia, eclipse dragons devouring the sun, the swastika reversed at the solstices. The night before the eclipse they held a ceremony to protect the sun. As far as I could tell, given my mastery of Russian extends to four words, each person there recited poems, sang songs and danced for the sun. On the way up to the museum I mistakenly walked into a cosmetic surgery... disturbing some woman post op with pads over her eyes who lurched up on me. The whole museum experience was weird and uplifting, and gives some deeper perspective on the symbolism of the sun.
