When I was younger, in the early 90s, I had a chance to be on one of the earliest U.S.-Russian student exchanges following the fall of the Soviet Union. I spent a summer there, mostly in the Urals, but a bit East of those mountains as well, sometimes out in open steppe areas.

If somebody asked me what my top 2 memories of that trip were I'd probably narrow down a great number of memorable moments into these two things:

- The incredible warmth and hospitality of the Russian people and our host families.

- The blue enormity of the Russian sky. I've never seen it captured quite right in pictures until the first time I saw Gorsky's photos.

I learned later that Russian recognizes two different kinds of blue as base colors in the language: синий (what most languages call "blue") and голубой or what in English we call "light blue". Being surrounded by that sky all the time, it's no wonder.

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.full

http://blog.properrussian.com/2011/05/what-colors-are-there-...