Russia 2009

Please excuse lack of paragraphs - they got lost on the way from Word to here.  (Apparently "you can't get there from here.")

Please also see Russia 2009 photo album, in the column to the left.

Friday 14 August 09 Flight & Moscow Took a Lufthansa flight (used USAir miles) Business class (the way to go!!!) to Frankfurt, then Moscow. Arrived about 4:30 & waited at the airport for Tanya to come “pick me up.” Tanya is engaged to Nick – they will be marrying sometime next summer, which will make him an automatic dad to 14-yr-old Anton, her son. And me an automatic grandma! I am staying a couple of days with them before meeting up with a tour group. We took the train into Moscow & then the red-line metro out to her neighborhood, which is the end of the line. About a 10-15 minute walk to her apt, which is on the 9th floor of a large complex – fortunately there’s an elevator. It’s in an area with a lot of trees and a small playground. The apt is small, but has only one family in it, Tanya & her son Anton. (I found out later that in St Petersburg, about 10-15% of the housing is still multifamily.) Anton has his own bedroom, and Tanya sleeps on the sofa bed in the living room area, which has pretty fancy shelving & a desk for their computer. There is a small entry area (full of shoes since you have to take your shoes off when you come into a Russian home), which also holds the refrigerator. The “bathroom” is two separate rooms, one with the shower/tub & sink, the other with the toilet, all by itself. There is a small kitchen. Large windows overlook the playground area. Tanya made us a nice dinner of salad & pasta with tomato sauce. We planned what to see while I was visiting them, according to what was open Sat, Sun, & Mon. Then I crashed since I hadn’t slept much on the flights. Slept till about 10 am, then we hit the ground running. We had a lot of things to see!

Saturday 15 Aug Moscow First we took a river boat cruise of the city along the Moscow River. It was really a good way to see a lot of things. We cruised past Moscow University, large city parks & an amusement park, the huge & bizarre statue of Peter the Great, floating restaurants, all kinds of government buildings, the Kremlin, monasteries with gold onion domes - you name it, we saw it! Next, lunch at Grabli, which means “rake.” It’s a place where you walk from one station to another to choose the food on display, which means you get wayyyyy too much food. It was all good though! I bought lunch to try to help with expenses – Tanya got me a metro card & turns out to buy a lot of the admissions. Then we visited the Andrei Rublyov Monastery. He’s a hugely famous iconographer, but the museum here has none of his works – guess his name is on it for recognition factor, and because he did work here a while, doing some original frescoes I think inside a small church on the grounds – it was beautiful, taller than it was wide! Anyway, the museum. My first experience of 3 Russian truths: 1. You have to pay extra if you want to take photos in a museum. 2. Foreigners pay 3-10 times more than Russians for entry into museums. After this experience we decided I’d keep my mouth shut & let them get the tickets, just not mentioning that I’m not Russian. The way they manage the higher price is that the prices on the wall listed in English are for foreigners, and the Russian text lists their price, but foreigners can’t read it. Tricky. 3. Babushki. Every museum has an old lady in every room, who keeps an eye on the “guests” to make sure they don’t misbehave. These ladies are intimidating! Eagle-eyed. Not hesitant to speak their minds. At one point one told us “You’d get through here faster if you didn’t talk so much!” Focus! They also decide when it’s time to close up shop, usually at least 30 mins before official closing time. If you don’t leave when they say “time to go,” they turn the lights off on you! We enjoyed the icons in the museum. A number of them were “the life & trials of St George.” I thought he just killed the dragon, but around his large central image were boxes showing different things that happened to him – being crushed under a big rock, getting burned, etc. On the top floor was an exhibit of frescoes from a church in the countryside, forgot the name. The church was going to be flooded because of a dam on some river, so the frescoes were removed & brought here. The babushka in this room was nice & told us the story & what some of the images were about. The monastery closed at 6. We considered staying & walking around the grounds a bit, but seeing a guard with a rifle made us reconsider. “What part of closed at 6 don’t you understand?” Then we walked back toward the metro by way of a converted wine factory called Vinoteka (I think?) that’s now made into galleries & shops. We looked at a gallery showing of a photographer who had images of the Middle East, Afghanistan, etc. one we liked had a row of young boys looking off into the distance at a row of young soldiers in battle gear – looking at their future probably. In the garage area of the winery was a flea market, lots of handmade things & clever stuff. One funny thing was book covers that said things like “War & Peace” (in Russian of course) to put on your current book so no one can see you’re reading trash. I bought a t–shirt with a saying by Chekov “It’s never too early to ask yourself if you’re spending your time wisely” or something like that. We went by the grocery store on the way home. It seemed weird to me – small, almost like a convenience store, with tired produce that Tanya said has no taste, and she never buys it there. It was an economy place, so you do your own bagging. We got cheese & bread & milk. Got home about 10 & visited a while, then crashed about 12:30.

Sunday 16 Aug Moscow Another late start! Our goal today is the “Old” Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow’s fine arts museum. Going to it we took the same metro as yesterday & even walked past Grabli. This time I kept my mouth shut & got in for the Russian price. The museum is huge and full of works by Russian masters. I was especially taken with the huge Repin oil showing Ivan the Terrible cradling his son Ivan, whom he had just killed in a fit of rage, both covered in blood. Also a statue of Ivan the T on his throne, looking haunted. Apparently he had wild outbursts of temper (and violence), then was overcome by remorse. There were also a good number of paintings based on traditional tales, romanticized Russian history going back to the Rus, etc. And the icons were amazing – we didn’t have time to do them justice, so I would like to return. Afterwards we headed for the Arbat, a pedestrian street now aimed at tourists. I bought a couple of small watercolors from one of the artists displaying his stuff, along with that of his father & grandfather – one for me & one for Nick. We ate lunch at the Mu-Mu, which has a cow motif for some reason. It’s the same concept as Grabli, but the food costs more for smaller portions & there is one line that you have to go through, like a cafeteria. Tosha wanted beef stroganoff, and the portion was so small both Tanya & I looked at it with our mouths open – “huh?” but the serving lady said yeah, that’s it. Then we went to the Statue Park, but that’s not the name of it. It is full of statues of Soviet heroes that were taken down after the “fall” of communism in the 90s – Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, etc. The most interesting part was a statue of Stalin (nose broken off), surrounded by faceless, sometimes formless people. Behind him he is circled by a wooden frame fronted by bars & barbed wire, full of human heads, each a different shape or color or type of stone. It was very creepy, which is probably appropriate. We headed to Red Square to visit the GUM, previously a big department store in Soviet times, now a mall a lot like Houston’s Galleria, with fancy international big- name expensive stores. It is quite massive, filling the side of Red Square directly across from Lenin’s tomb. We walked around & decided to get a late supper (very late, almost 10 pm!) at Stolovaya No 57, based on the canteen-type eateries that were put in factories when women came to work there, so that they could have a hot meal and to make their lives easier. We had cold veggie soup, salads, & small desserts, all traditional Russian food & the kind of thing served at the stalovayas. Note: I have been studying Russian a bit with Nick, in Continuing Education at Rice. SO I know some words & grammar, and can certainly read the alphabet. But it’s a real struggle. I have figured out that part of the reason I am so TIRED on this trip, besides so much walking on apparently bad shoes, is that I am trying to read every sign I see, to see if I can read it, if I know the words, any of the words, or at least the case they are in. That will wear you out real quick. Again we got back home pretty late. Tanya has to go to work tomorrow, but first she is taking me to the hotel where I will meet my tour group tonight. We are going to drop off my luggage there so that I can meet Tosha to do a few things, then we will meet her for a late lunch.

Monday 17 Aug Moscow So we left the house before 7 (tough since we’ve been sleeping till 10!) since it will take ~ 1 ½ hrs to get to the hotel via the metro – the city is that big. A metro train comes about every minute, you never have to wait, but there can be quite a bit of walking & up & down stairs between stations. At the hotel they never heard of me, but that seems to be about the way things work here (more on that later). Finally we just left my luggage there & hoped for the best. She took the metro to her office (American Embassy), and I met Tosha at another metro station. We went to see the Mayakovsky museum. He was an early ardent supporter of socialism, a poet & artist (posters etc) who traveled around the world using his artistic status to promote the cause. He later became a bit disillusioned about it all, apparently. The museum is housed in a building where he had an apt, where he committed suicide. The room where it happened is left as it was, but the rest is just a riot of color & artifacts – books, drawings, furniture, letters, etc – that covers several floors in a huge, well, jumble – but an intentional jumble. At the top, where the apt is, we ran into a babushka who was washing the floor with a mop & pail (looks like after hours would be a better time?), but she put it all aside to tell everything she knew about M to Tosha, in big chunks of talk. Then she would stop & point at me & say “Tell her!” He was very respectful & did as he was instructed. She WAS a babushka, after all. All in all it was a pretty amazing place. We met Tanya at one of the metro stations, and then walked to a favorite restaurant, a Belgian place. Nice lunch! Then Tosha went home, having done his duty with the guest, and Tanya & I walked to a “factory” (just a couple of rooms, really) where they make dolls in traditional garb of all sorts – all very accurate. She knew I would like the place because she saw the Mexican ceramic calavera couples at my house & figured I needed a Russian couple too. It was tough to choose, but I settled for a guy playing an accordion & his wife & baby. Tanya had to get back to work, & we said our goodbyes - I hit the metro to head to my hotel. When I got there they STILL didn’t know who I (or my tour group) was & sent me to a tourist agency desk in another hotel, but they never heard of me or my tour group either. Part of the problem is that nobody heads to Russian without a visa, & to get that you have to work through a booking agency that has nothing to do with your trip, but is just a name to put on the application. The information the agency gives you about hotels you will stay in etc may be wrong, but it has to be put on the visa application anyway. It’s like a strange game. So when you show up at a hotel, you may have been booked under an agency’s name that you don’t even know. Some other folks were having the same problem, so I didn’t feel too bad, but I was wayyyyy tired & wanted to clean up & maybe lie down. Instead I dragged back & forth between hotels hoping someone could help. Finally after a couple of hours they figured it all out. Whew. My roommate turned out to be a German woman named Brigitte. We got along fine. She is a teacher of music & German. We talked about Russian music & I asked her if she was familiar with Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky. She never heard of it, which turned out to be funny because the rest of the week we ran into statues, plaques, even a St Petersburg metro station named for him. We met the group about an hour later, heard the intro talk, then went back to the room since neither of us wanted to go to dinner en masse. It turned out that through the whole trip we both snacked in the room at night instead of going to dinner. I brought granola & dried fruit, & we both grabbed things like juice or yogurt at a shop during the day, and it worked out fine. By this time I was working up some pretty ferocious blisters. I wore my old shoes that have never given me any trouble (tromped all over Spain a couple of weeks earlier, no problem), but perhaps they’re just worn out. I’ve resoled them twice, but maybe the support part is shot. Will have to figure this out!

Tuesday 18 Aug Moscow We got an early start today to go to Red Square & the Kremlin. We lined up an hour before Lenin’s tomb opens so that we could avoid a big crowd. Pretty soon the line stretched out across the entrance to Red Square. It’s only open 10-2 Tues-Thurs. You have to leave any packages, cameras, etc outside at a checked-parcel place. Our tour leader Efrat (a woman from Israel) kept all our bags so we wouldn’t have to do that checking part. Before going into the tomb they run you through a metal detector. Checking the bags & the detectors slow up the process a bit. Before you get to the tomb/ mausoleum you pass through an area with the graves of lots of heroes of the revolution, and busts of folks like Stalin. (Not sure if he’s buried there or not?!?!) Entering the mausoleum you walk down several flights of steps, soldierly guys with guns shhh-shing you all the way. It’s like a religious service, except you can’t even whisper! You walk ¾ way around the glassed-in case. Past his right side, feet, left side, then out. He actually looks pretty good considering he’s been dead 80+ years, but kinda waxy. Interesting. Next we headed to the Kremlin. We met our local guide (Tanya?), who took us through the area. I was glad to have her when the guards didn’t want to let me through – they said my camera was too big. She argued with them, we looked at the lens size (72 mm), which apparently let me squeak through. Inside the Kremlin we saw the government buildings, the place where the Supreme Soviet used to meet (all from the outside), the Tsars’ cannon (I think?), which was the biggest ever but never fired. Also a monster bell, with a piece cracked off – never rung. And lots of churches, which we went into – I think 5 or 6? Ended up at the Armory, which I decided to pay 700 rubles (almost $20!) to see. It was worth it though. (No photos! No photos! Don’t even look like you might take a picture or a babushka will take your head off!!!) The thing about this museum is that every room is filled filled filled with items that would be the centerpiece of any other museum – only there are dozens, scores, hundreds of those items. And rooms and rooms of them. For example, Faberge eggs – probably 20 or so. Royal carriages, armor, weapons, crowns, clothing, jewelry, gifts in silver & gold for the royal family. Just amazing. I considered buying a book from the store, but figured it would be too heavy to tote all over Russia, heavy slick pages with photos of the objects. Oh well. Next, Red Square. I headed for St Basil’s, the last big item on my Moscow must-see list. It was very interesting, some pretty steep steps at several points but I made it up! There were a lot of interesting frescoes, but really it’s the outside that’s amazing, colors that you can’t believe. Unfortunately I ran out of battery on my camera. I hadn’t had lunch, just an ice cream, so I headed to the GUM to see if I could find something. Ended up back at Stolovaya 57. Went back to the hotel on the metro, buying some yogurt & OJ on the way to the room for breakfast the next morning. The hotel was called Ismailovo because it’s right next to the famous Ismailovo Market, a big flea-market place where you can get anything souvenir-y, apparently including being pick-pocketed. It was built for the Moscow Olympics, and has over 8000 beds. It’s divided into several separate buildings, alpha-beta-gamma-delta etc. It was easily the nicest hotel on the trip, even had a water dispenser on our floor. (In Russia you can’t drink the tap water – it needs to be boiled or seriously filtered.) But this was our last night here!

Wednesday 19 Aug Vladimir & Suzdal Today we left our luggage at the hotel & just took a small bag of clothes (although my bag was mostly camera & computer. When it turned out to be cold I didn’t even have a sweater, br-r-r-r-r. We took a bus to Vladimir. We were there just an hour waiting for a van to come take us to Suzdal, so Efrat said Why don’t you go look at that church (pointing off in the distance), it’s the only thing to see here. We asked How do we get there? & she said It’s just up that way – but don’t be late getting back. So we set out. Fortunately I could ask a few questions in Russian & had a xeroxed map – we finally got to the Assumption Cathedral, which was amazing inside – a service was going on. No one went in but me. I had on long pants & a lady just inside handed me a wrap-around skirt to put on. I just stayed a few minutes, but between the icons & frescoes & incense & chanting it was quite an experience. We had to head right back since it had taken ~30 mins to get there. Vladimir was the original capital of Russia, before it got moved to Moscow. There were several mentions of Alexander Nevsky, old Russian hero, since he was a local boy, prince of Vladimir & also Novgorod I think. Suzdal is another old city, full of churches. Here we learned from the guide that in this part of the country many churches have two buildings – a summer church & a winter ones. We toured the Monastery of St Euthymius, founded in the 14th c to help protect the town. (Often monasteries were built into the protective walls, & were places people could go during attacks.) Ivan the Terrible was one of the benefactors of the monastery. We heard a bell concert from the bell tower – a little touristy, but hey, we’re tourists. Then inside one of the churches was a short performance by monks, looking for donations or for you to buy their CD. We also visited the Torgovaya Ploschad, Trade Square, where there were handicrafts & a farmer’s market where I bought some berries, a tomato, & 2 cucumbers. The food I’m eating doesn’t include enough vegetables or fruits, so I’m trying to make up for it. Another high point was the Cathedral Nativity of the Virgin. Beautiful blue starry onion domes & inside, gold-on-copper doors with biblical scenes and frescoes. This is inside the original Kremlin walls, which were piled-up dirt – you can still see them. There is a wooden church St Nicholas right outside. I didn’t get to see the Alexandrovsky Convent, set up by you-know-who for widows of the wars with the Mongols, or the Intercession Convent, established for the cast-off wives of tsars. Very interesting was the Museum of Wooden Architecture, which shows how traditional Russian villages were built – several types of houses, two churches, and even a couple of windmills. The shapes of roofs on the churches were beautiful. Some people in traditional costumes were at the monastery & this museum. They seemed to be tourists (but Russians), but for some reason were all dressed up in long skirts & lots of embroidery. We stayed in a traditional wooden house, kinda dacha-looking – taking off our shoes at the door, as you always do in a Russian house. We walked about 100 miles to eat dinner in a local house, with lots of shots of vodka, a traditional potato-peas-carrots etc salad, & something in individual pots with broth & potatoes & chicken. Fortunately we got the van to carry us back to the house or else I’d’ve had to spend the night with the lady.

Thursday 20 Aug Night train to Novgorod Bus back to Moscow, 4 hrs?, then metro to the hotel to pick up our bags, metro to the train station, where we caught a night train to Novgorod. Our group is 12 people + the leader = 13. The train cabins had 4 beds, and she had tickets for 4, 4, 3, 1, & 1. I volunteered to be one of the singles who would go in with strangers, and Efrat ended up to trade with someone so it was 4, 4, 4, and me with 3 Russians. I ended up with a babushka named Zinaida (Zina) and 2 young engineers named Artyom (Tyoma) and Alexei (Alyosha). The guys slept on the top bunks. We tried ever so hard to talk, but …! I struggled & struggled, then would curse under my breath and say Shit or Damn it and they’d say ‘We know THAT word!’ Communication! Eventually they got in their bunks & stripped (whoo, whoo!) and the babushka had night clothes she wore. It was altogether very strange. But fun.

Friday 21 Aug Novgorod Novgorod was beautiful. I just loved it. Fortunately the weather was sunny & warm & dry, so I was in heaven. Mellow, mellow, mellow. We explored inside the Kremlin (called for some reason the detinets), which still has brick walls intact, and across the river around the old commercial area called Yaroslav’s court. There were several weddings while we were there. After getting hitched, the couple is followed all over town by their guests – they have photo ops & some kind of games/entertainment & food in the parks, kinda strange. But good for photos. In the commercial area we learned that only churches were important enough to be made of stone, other buildings were all wood and the city was plagued by fires. The businessmen wanted to protect their goods, so they built church-shaped things that they used as warehouses. Sometimes on the top floor they’d put in a small chapel for their own use so that the “church” designation was sorta legitimate & their stuff was protected too. There are still a number of these standing (of course! They’re made of wood so they didn’t burn down!) Inside the Kremlin I visited the Cathedral of St Sophia, one of the oldest buildings in Russia (from the 1000s). The onion domes aren’t original; they were added as a modification later. The first roofs on the steeples were designed by folks who didn’t understand Russian winters, and held too much snow. The onion domes take care of that problem. These are thought to be perhaps the first ones. Inside the church is the most important icon in the city – Our Lady of the Sign, which is said to have saved the city in 1170 when folks from Suzdal were attacking. The bishop had a vision that the virgin would save the city, so they put the icon on the city walls. It was hit by an arrow & this blasphemy caused darkness to fall. The Suzdal warriors fell into confusion & the Novgorod folks beat them. The icon still has a nick over its left eye. Hmmmm. No photos allowed in the church but I saw a scene that I just had to shoot. Best photo of the whole trip. On a side note, this incident is portrayed on an icon in the city museum, in 3 levels – putting the icon out, getting hit by the arrow, & the defeat. One of the first icons to display an actual event. The museum is both history & art, in one area showing all kinds of wooden bits, birch-bark letters folks wrote to each other before paper was available, and then a series of rooms full of icons and another for wooden religious carvings. Also interesting is the Millennium Bell/Monument, a huge sculpture from the 1860s which celebrated 1000 years of Novgorod history. It’s in several levels, altogether looking like a bell, depicting incidents in the city’s history, important personages like you-know-who, Peter & Catherine the Greats, etc. We had dinner together as a group tonight at a local fancy restaurant inside the Kremlin, Restoran Detinets. Most folks were disappointed at the size of servings, but I got some stuffed cabbage leaves that were yummy.

Saturday 22 Aug St Petersburg Up early today to catch a train to St Petersburg, our last stop on the trip, about 4 hrs? We had a quick city tour showing us some odds & ends, then ended up at a pirogi place for a late afternoon snack. This is a kind of pastry stuffed with all kinds of fruits or meats or veggies. I had mushroom & a cup of tea, nice. This evening we visited with a young local family to have tea & blini, a crepe you eat with sour cream and/or sweetened condensed milk. I almost didn’t go because I was so tired & my blisters were horrible, but I’m glad I went. It was interesting to talk with them about child care, role of women, government support, etc, and since we were from US, Germany, Singapore, & Australia, everyone had different experiences to add to the conversation. A funny (well, not really) thing happened on the way to their apt, in the metro. We were in the Alexander Nevskaya (or whatever) station & Brigitte wanted to take a photo of the beautiful mosaic of him, since we’d been seeing him all week. As soon as her flash went off, a militsia was all over her & she got a ticket for 100 rubles. The funny thing is I’d taken photos in the Moscow metro several days in a row, some with militsia hanging out, & nobody ever said anything to me. Although I never use flash, my camera’s certainly big enough to draw attention, and … nothing. I never tried it in the St P metro; perhaps they’re more cranky about it there.

Sunday 23 Aug St Petersburg Today was devoted to the Hermitage, St P’s (well, probably Russia’s) premier museum. A bit of disappointment is that there are no Russian works here, you have to go to the other museum for that – these are all European. The collection was started by the Greats, then added to & added to over the years. It has zillions of pieces of art, only about 20% on display. Apparently the museum’s holdings really grew during the communist era, when private collections were confiscated for the enjoyment of the masses. I bought a ticket online, which is good for skipping the long entry line. I decided to take the 12:00 guided tour in English, which was a good thing because she took us through & showed us the high points – once you get all that out of the way, you can wander around & fill in the blanks by yourself. One interesting detail she showed was in one of the ballrooms, where the parquet floor mirrored the relief carvings on the ceiling, with 2 exceptions – the St George & the double eagle, which you don’t want to walk on, out of respect. The museum is actually 5 different buildings, each a warren of rooms. You find yourself wandering around just looking for room numbers so you can head to where you actually want to be. There is an amazing bunch of stuff here – Spanish paintings, of course lots fewer than the Prado, but probably the best group to be found outside of Spain. Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian. 2 Da Vincis, a Michelangelo statue, Caravaggios, etc. After 5 hours I was about done. Lots more to see, but my feet were shot. And moving from here to there in the museum I had moved through some of the rooms many times and it was déjà vu all over again. And again. And again. I hoped to make it to the Blockade Museum but got there too late, so I just headed back to the room to pack. My plane was at 6 am, so I had a cab at 3 am & wanted to get to bed early – so I skipped the group dinner. Good flight back home, then back to work!!!

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