Month: September 2012

While St. Petersburg remains an 18th century city at its core, attracting tourists with its beauty, Moscow is a bustling metropolis throwing off its dowdy Soviet past with massive development of impressive new buildings. Make no mistake, the storied past remains as a firmly rooted present; but, the city plows confidently into the future.

At the heart of the city are, of course, Red Square and the Kremlin, long misunderstood by us. A kremlin is a fortress. Many towns and cities have them, or remnants of them. It is “the” Kremlin that lies at the heart of this historic capital of the nation. The Kremlin houses the seat of government and the War Department, complete with thousands of cannons to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon in his attempt to take the city 200 years ago.

And, of course, “Red” Square is not a reference to communism or the Soviet era. “Red” is a reference to beauty. The red corner in a Russian home is where the family’s most beautiful possessions are displayed (such as an icon) and the head of the house sits. Red Square is, simply, beautiful (and aptly named).

Red Square is the home of St. Basil’s Cathedral, comprised of nine churches. And, it is not just Lenin who now rests on Red Square. Archangel Cathedral houses the remains of Ivan the Terrible.

Famous GUM department store also graces the square, with its three levels of arcades and restored sophistication.

Joseph Stalin had the “seven sisters,” modeled on New York City’s Empire State Building, built to show the world that Moscow was every bit as sophisticated as any other major world city. That finally seems to be true.

Making our way up the Volga towards Moscow, the side of the river was dotted with one beautiful Russian Orthodox church after another, their gold domes glinting in the sun. In the thousand year old town of Jaroslavl there was also a green velvet elephant and a Cinnabon store. We also had an intimate encounter with a refueling vessel. In even older Uglich, we went into the home of the engineer Tatiana and noticed the sign on her gate that needed no translation. She has an enormous garden that she tends herself and a very nice bathhouse, moss proving insulation between the logs.

Lots of churches seem to be built at the sites of assassinations, men’s choirs pop up near the exits of many churches, and tour busses have rest stops only where there are souvenirs for sale. Brides now come to pay respect on their wedding day to the fallen of World War Two in which Russia lost twenty million people. We couldn’t leave Russia, of course, without a photo of Lenin. Behind us is the Church of St. Demetrius on the Blood. As a son of Ivan the Terrible, the saint was a threat to Boris Godunov’s campaign to seize the throne and was likely assassinated on this spot by Godunov’s agents.

On our way to the Kirillov Belozersky Monastery, founded by St. Cyril in 1397, we motored past a village church flooded from construction of the Volga-Baltic canal and a beautiful convent. We have St. Cyril to blame, of course, for the Cyrillic alphabet. Otherwise, he seems to have been a pretty good guy. The monastery evolved into a very well fortified outpost in the 15th through 17th centuries.

We’re spending a lot of time cruising the waterways, as the distances are quite substantial. Making our way through the locks is always fascinating. We shared a ride down towards the level of the Rybinsk Reservoir at the Lock of Sheksna with another cruise ship.

Tiny Kizhi Island is the site of an open air museum of wooden architecture from the Lake Onega area. Continually under restoration, the most imposing structure is the Church of the Transfiguration. It’s the one with 22 domes. It’s neighbor the Church of the Intercession was open, as was a typical house of the region that was transported to the island for the museum. The second floor balconies allowed them to not only close the shutters against the winter weather, but to darken their sleeping rooms when there’s only three hours of almost night time in the summer. It was all quite impressive. It’s the abundance of fish and game that attracted Russians from the 15th century who were creating some distance from the regions whose economies were based in serfdom. The Church of the Transfiguration was built in 1713.

The hooded crows followed us from St. Petersburg. Oh, yes, and thanks to Buchmann for identifying those other birds as white wagtails (not to be confused with pied wagtails), also found only in Europe.

Could Buchmann or someone else identify our new acquaintance?

On our way once again, the Captain welcomed his passengers to the bridge. Our ship was built in East Germany in 1975 and began sailing under the name of Lenin’s wife. Times have changed.

That’s what we’d all like, isn’t it? Crossing Lake Ladoga at night, our ship was a fiendish 5 hour KGB torture session, complete with loud banging noises as something loose on the deck pounded against the railings, our cabin creaked, and we held tight as we rocked back and forth, as anything not nailed down did the same. We’ve been promised a better night of sailing tonight as the same wind conditions are not supposed to prevail heading north across Lake Onega. Our fingers are crossed.

Traveling through two locks lifted us higher into the countryside along the Svir River. It was a nice change from the sophisticated urban center of St. Petersburg.

Stopping by the small town of Mandrogy was authentic tourism based on the ancient Russian folklore invented in the 19th century. On a Monday in September, it was creepily empty, a feeling reinforced by the meeting of the gingerbread lady. The craftsmanship was, however, quite good. The architecture reminded us of the Native culture in Alaska. The gnome with the sign points to the public bath, an activity we passed on.

We’re on our way overnight to an island close to the Artic Circle. Hope it’s not too cold!

It depends on what one can afford, of course, but we’d all really like a place to get away for the summer. Peter the Great could afford a lot, more than most. And, naturally, his successors on the throne made certain improvements. Peterhof, Peter’s place in the country, is magnificent. So magnificent that you aren’t permitted to take photos inside (sorry).

Having learned shipbuilding in Amsterdam before he became Czar, Peter loved ships and canals and all things Dutch, and French, and German. So, despite the cold climate and abundance of ice from around November, Peter created a city criss-crossed by over 200 miles of canals and 320 bridges. It’s nice to take a canal ride on a sunny day, hoping it won’t rain.

Thanks to Buchmann for identifying the hooded crow from yesterday. They are a Eurasian bird that never makes it to North America. Now, can someone help us identify our fellow visitor to Peterhof?

Peter the Great set out to create a city that would be the envy of the world and to take the Romanoff Dynasty to a new level. His success can be seen everywhere in St. Petersburg.

The Czarinas Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great created an astonishingly beautiful palace in a town that, at one point, was named for the most eminent writer of Russian literature (who was the grandson of Peter’s black general) – Alexander Pushkin.

St. Petersburg has more beautiful buildings than you can possibly want to look at. It’s reputation is fully justified.

But, then there are some unusual sights, like this odd looking bird! Can anyone tell us what it is?

A highlight of our day, however, was a visit to the Cathedral of Peter and Paul. It is the burial location of the royal family all the way from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family (interred here after their bodies were discovered in the 1980s). It’s now a museum, so our guide was puzzled as to why there seemed to be a religious service in progress, including wonderful singing by a Russian choir. We learned that there was currently a meeting in St. Petersburg of the Russian nobility and they had requested a service in what had been, after all, their personal cathedral.

Russia’s largest and most famous art museum got its start when Catherine the Great started a buying program in the 1760s. This was after she maneuvered herself onto the throne over the corpse of her late husband, the Czar. She lived well. This is the small throne room.

Using the wealth generated by the 99.999%, the royal family went shopping for art every year until the October revolution of 1917. The Hermitage then hit the jackpot when the Bolsheviks “nationalized” the amazing collections of other members of the nobility. The final major source of treasures was the war booty scooped up by the Red Army as it rolled into Germany in 1945. What Hitler had seized was now Russia’s, as long as they kept it confidential for 50 years. So, they unveiled it in 1995.

There’s a lot to see. The number of Gaugin paintings was especially surprising. Being part of a group prevented us from drowning in it all. Not only are the buildings spectacular, what they hold is just as impressive.

The traffic is also quite impressive. It’s been taking our bus an hour to navigate the 5 or 10 miles to downtown St. Petersburg. This gives us a chance to take in some sights along the way. Here’s the Peter and Paul fortress where Peter the Great founded the city in 1703 and a fisherman engaged in a timeless pursuit.

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We’ve just arrived aboard the Viking Rurik, with perhaps three minutes of sleep, to visit St. Petersburg and sail through inland waterways to Moscow. In case you didn’t know (we didn’t), Rurik was a Viking nobel chieftain invited by the Slav tribes to bring a bit of law and order to this area about 1200 years ago. The Rurikid Dynasty ruled the roost for 700 years. They are why we call ancient “Rus” Russia. Seems like a solid start to us and is the best you’ll get from us when we’ve been up for over 24 hours. Stay tuned.

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