Day 25: Vilnius

Our train arrived in Vilnius at an ungodly hour of the morning. We disembark and then try to figure out how we can get to our hotel. We had mapped out that a taxi would be the best bet, however we had no local currency, and the shops were all closed so exchanging it was somewhat difficult. Off in a corner of the train station we were able to come across a money exchange machine that let us get some Litas for our taxi ride.

The taxi brought us through a series of really narrow and curvy streets that eventually met up in what is known as Old Vilnius. The hotel was open, but seeing that most people weren’t up yet, getting our room for the night wasn’t possible. They were kind enough to let us drop off our luggage and give us a map so we could explore the city until our room freed up.

We ended up wandering, looking for some place where we could grab breakfast. Here are some of the newer apartments in the city.
  We ended up following a path that ran on top of the ridge that follows the river that cuts through Vilnius. The lilac bushes were in bloom which was rather nice.   An office building we passed along the way. What I found neat was if you look at the building there is a second layer of glass on the outside of it. Each window inside the building can open up, unlike most offices in North America. The end result for this building is that you have a air gap at the bottom of the building and as the sun strikes the outer layer of glass it heats up the air between it and the building. The air rises, pulling air from inside the building out. In short this is a type of solar chimney, which is a really awesome way to keep buildings cooler without the excessive use of electricity.   Along the path we were able to see the old fort, and one of the only hills in the area (the country is REALLY flat).   We found a local grocery store and took a look through it. One of our odd delights when travelling is to visit local groceries and see the type of food that is commonly stocked in the shelves. It tells much more about an area than anything you would read in a book. After we had our breakfast we continued along to see more gorgeous brickwork.   We crossed a bridge which had some statues commemorating one of the many battles that has happened here (in recent memory).   Yo.   Once we crossed the bridge, we ended up in what is known as the new city. There aren’t many skyscrapers (7 at most), but they are all new and quite pretty. The art in the park was also distinctly Baltic in nature.   In the core of the new city is what anyone would expect to find… a mall. It was a nice mall, but not too different than what we have back home.   It seems sports cars were a bit more impressive here than some spray paint on an old car. This one was even branded 🙂   A panoramic of the new city of Vilnius.   Another local apartment complex. I did like how green everything felt.   And as we wandered, we eventually hit this place!   Even cooler was that this prison was the one where the first president of Israel was imprisoned at during the second World War. We just have to go in and see it!   We were about to go knock on the front door to ask for a tour when a police car pulls in, and is buzzed in… Oops. A further sign this wasn’t a tourist attraction was that a pair of women came out… crying. So we quietly made it around the back to where the parking was to take a snapshot of the place.   There was quite a lot of razor wire.   Ya… maybe we don’t want to visit there.   We followed the back alleyways past the prison and saw some more houses. This was one of the chimneys.   A here is a local child, behind bars. Although in this case, he was in school – so a different type of prison.   The backs of one of the apartment buildings. Funny to think that one of my grandparents owned something like this before the war.        By now most of the people had woken up, and we were in serious need of a pick-me-up. So we visited a local coffee shop that was eerily like Starbucks.   With our new found energy, we made our way further into the old city.   Here is a memorial to WW2. There are a lot of these in Vilnius.     The memorial with the church in the background.   One of the carved rocks that was built into the memorial.   And, as I was saying, there were a lot of WWII monuments. This was likely the biggest one we saw that day. This is only a small part of the wall.   The granite bricks surround a very large building. Each brick has a carving of a name of one of the freedom fighters that was killed in action trying to liberate the country (in action or captivity) from the Russians, then the Germans and then the Russians again.   Now this building isn’t just any building. It is a former MGB, German SS, and KGB facility. Let’s just say the building feels a bit heavy when you walk by. It has now been partially converted to the Museum of Genocide (which ironically only recently included the Jewish genocide). When they refer to genocide, they are specifically speaking to the genocide of the Lithuanian people, specifically those who resisted.   The resistance piece is very important to note, since my family fled after the Germans conquered the city, but before the Russians recaptured it. A lot of family and locals were deported to Siberia during this time. It may also explain why the border guard as I entered Russia smiled once she saw my heritage in my name.   The building was not immune to attacks and is still covered in shell markings.1   I will just describe the museum as heavy. In the basement it still had all of the jail cells that were used. Some were no bigger than me! And I do mean me. They were like coffins. Some of the larger rooms lacked covered windows and were specially built to be used in the cold winter months. Prisoners would be place on a small disc in the middle of the room, and then beneath the disc a large amount of water was filled and left there. This is like an early form of water boarding, where if you fell asleep, you’d be quickly woken up by falling into the water. (and now we have tamer versions of this as a ‘challenge’ on Survivor). The weirdest room was the kill room. We made our way in and even though we didn’t know what happened in this room (yet), we were creeped out. We end up in this small room and as we are looking about I just freeze. I don’t know how long I was there, but Alicia eventually had to get my attention since I was standing on the exact spot where… too many people were shot. The number of holes in the rock precisely in front of my head from the bullets was grotesque. And thinking this was bad enough, there was a reverse coal chute that was in the room, which was used to send the bodies up, “to be dealt with”.

And after several hours of this not so uplifting atmosphere, we tried to lighten things up, and came across a vintage clothing store.

   Alicia tried on a bunch of things, and eventually left with a lovely skirt. I didn’t fare so well.

We passed this really cool statue in the park. And no, that isn’t perspective, it is stretched that way by itself. I find it one of the easiest ways for me to peg off Lithuanian work. Now the importance of this statue? It is what was built to commemorate when Lithuania announced its independence from the Soviet Union through the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania.

Some more monuments, although we didn’t get what these were for.    Another apartment with more Lithuanian art. Notice a trend with it?   And now some pansies to lighten the mood.   A church.   And here is the site of the Lithuanian parliament.   While mostly erased, we did see a few communist markings on a few of the buildings. And as proof of how strong an influence mother Russia can be, Alicia had to try really hard not to say thank you in Russia when interacting with people. This was harder than it sounds. And given the history, it was very important to NOT speak Russian lest one ticks off the locals.   An eagle.     And here was their own version of Atlas.   Carvings in the stone.   A local selling some flowers.   An interesting form of advertising we saw there. Go peddle power!   The bus system there, while electric, does look a bit in need of a coat of paint.   Mr. ice cream guy   Hidden church.   So after having spring chase us for so many weeks, it finally caught up with us and gave us tulips.   And here is a dog being silly by wearing glasses.   This old lady statue isn’t amused.   Nor is this lady, as Alicia tries to get a picture.   Another church. I think there was a higher density of churches than Tim Hortons we have back in Canada.   Some students relaxing under a tree.   Another monument.   And some mandatory yarn bombing!   Me beside Vincas Kudirka, one of the founders of Lithuania (for lack of a better term).    These three sisters were above the opera house.   Part of the old city.   And more crosses, one of those heritage products.   Faith was always held on during whatever occupation happened to be in at the time. Much persecution of priests and nuns happened during occupation (many of the great freedom fighters were priests), and even in the face of the risk of being a man or woman of the cloth, Catholicism held on strong and gave the people hope.   Apartments!   As the day started to end, we made our way back to the hotel. This was a view from our window, although there was a lovely green courtyard down below.   During our adventures we did come across something else. We found some cake in one of the grocery stores, the same type of cake as we had for our wedding, along side some sparkling Lithuanian wine. For the record, the thought was nice, but wines and store bought cakes are not something Lithuania is known for… and with good reason

Cheers!

Day 24: Saint Petersburg

And continuing on with our last (full) day in Russia!* (there is a good story about this at the end. It involves borders, bribes and Brits).

We arrived at Kazan Cathedral. Like all active churches, we couldn’t take photos inside, but suffice to say it was much like St Petersburg itself: very Russian but oddly European at the same time. It was like a combination of a Catholic and Orthodox church and was beautiful.

Like any holy site, Alicia had to cover up before entering (doesn’t she look like a lovely babushka?)

The columns were impressive and were like something out of Rome or Corinth (being Corinthian and all).

Complete with bronze statues!

After our visit we continued on and managed to get a nice walk through the park at the front, and headed to St. Isaac’s Cathedral. A better shot of the front. An even better shot. Truly an impressive building.

Even Norbert and Norman liked it. As we continued along we passed by this old church. During the Soviet era, this Lutheran Church held a swimming pool. Now, take a guess what was first made at this place? Hint, it is delicious*. A canal This building was one of the only “communist” ones we were able to find. Notice the hammer and sickle above the windows. One of the bridges that raise in Saint Petersburg. Very pretty and very important to pay attention to, since you can end up trapped on the wrong island once they all raise in the middle of the night, and would be unable to get home until about 5am. So we kept walking, and walking (seeing some regular houses) and walking and more walking… and… After an oddly familiar path, we ended up at St. Isaac’s Cathedral! This is the world’s 4th largest domed cathedral (or so claimed the signs). And it came with its own array of angels. After getting some good photos from the ground, we decide that we could get a better view of the Colonnade from up above. 43m above and 262 steps to be exact. The view turns out to be worth it (and the terror) A view of the upper part of the dome, from the stairs. Saint Petersburg – from above. A view directly up. And a view overlooking the square. Off in the distance with the large green roof, that is a palace. More angels. It was never certain if any of these were the weeping variety. They were just there overlooking the city. Saint Petersburg has an absolutely massive port. We weren’t able to see them up close, and this was as close as we came. One of the many bells in the cathedral. Mandatory owl shot. And that large distant building is the hermitage.. I think. Alicia enjoying the view. Oh no! Where did those angels come from? This is me, trying to look relaxed. In reality I am shaking in my boots since I REALLY hate heights! As scary as it was for me, the view was great. After a while up there and way too many photos we got ready to head down. After our time up on the Colonnade, we started the long descent down. There were a lot of steps down this “very secure looking” staircase to get to the sturdier stone ones. I couldn’t have been happier to see those steps. And after counting them, there was as many going down as going up. On the outside of the cathedral there was some amazing bronzework And some very intricate carvings. Including a gorgeous door with the stations of the cross! As we left, we saw the angels watching us. We then left the cathedral and headed towards a park for lunch. Within the park Alicia found a friend (who followed her from Mongolia) They hung out for a while. Afterwards, Alicia wanted to mimic the tree, here is her impression. We saw several soldiers here, relaxing. This one looks a bit depressed… wonder why? Oh, cause this guy has the girl it seems.

We saw this bird who decided that his food needed some more spice. And here he is with a packet of mustard.

We decided to find some place to have lunch, near here seemed good. We sat down for lunch and opened up a drink we had been hearing about. It was described as “pop”, that isn’t pop. It is actually fermented rye bread, and we both agree it has a very acquired taste. As we were eating we saw this awesome sports car!!! After being fuelled we headed towards the Hermitage, one of the world’s largest collections of art.

The building almost seemed to belong as a piece of art in itself, creating a risk for the situation that occurs when someone puts a bag of holding within a bag of holding… or tries to google google.

Near to the museum was a old tallship that was part of the old Russian navy.

Now to get into the Hermitage, you had to go through this massive courtyard, as seen below. It did feel a bit like a tourist trap, complete with – Segway’s! horse drawn carriages and of course tourists. Once you’re through the large courtyard, you pass through some arches within the building and a led to another courtyard. There was even a fountain in this courtyard. The little guy was there, enjoying the water. Little did we know he’d foreshadow the new ginger in our lives. And we get to the doors… And promptly decide to turn around. It is a bit of a shame we chose not to explore the insides of the Hermitage, but there just wasn’t simply enough time to do it justice. Plus we figured we could always see many of the art pieces it holds online or in books or as they come on tour to the National Gallery of Canada. There was also the fact this was our last day in Russia and we did have a train to catch, but before we could we needed to get some souvenirs, eat, check out of the hotel and figure out how to get to the train station. A golden eagle with two heads. Yes, this is the dreaded hydraeagle! So we trotted off On our way by one of the markets we did pass a wedding party having their photos done. One of the venues for wedding photos that seemed to be popular were these guys. I like to call them Atlas. And here I am posing with Atlas 3 and 4. And here is another tourist pretending to be funny… *sigh* These guys were pretty damn big, as can be seen by the hand-toe comparison offered. A look up at Atlas 7. These two also wanted to show just how big the toes were on these guys. Maybe it is some unknown Russian tradition or blessing for the new couple? 😉 I don’t think Atlas 2 liked my joke. No, wait. He is just getting really angry at tourists trying for posted photographs. After picking up some Russian dolls we set our compass towards the hotel and a set of paintings we had been eyeing. Me by a canal. A boat cruising much faster than we did on occasion… maybe due to our obsession with taking too many photos. As we were walking we did stumble onto these doves. This did confuse us as we couldn’t figure out why someone would be keeping some doves around here. This mystery is resolved 12 minutes later. We passed a bridge similar to Moscow’s with locks of lovers. We kept huffing it, stopping to take some photos of the church along the way. And of some of the other buildings. We had to pass the church on our way, so we snapped a few last pieces of Russian architecture. And as we walked this is where our dove mystery was answered! Fly free little birds! Or at least fly to your cage! (It was really amazing how many people were getting married on a Wednesday afternoon.)

Now this next part didn’t involve many photos, and for obvious reasons. By this point in the afternoon we realized we had an alarmingly small amount of time left before we had to get to the train. So we did a very brisk walk towards our hotel, not stopping for any photos on the way. Instead we re-found a stall on the street that was selling paintings we had admired earlier. We were short on time, so we weren’t able to execute Alicia’s plan of removing the canvas and disassembling the frames to make them easier to move. So onwards we went, carrying two rather large paintings with us (2 feet x 3 feet each). We did stop for dinner at one of our favourite chains, Teremok, for one last taste of Russia and then realizing how late we were, we ran to our hotel to get our bags. We put on our backpacks, glanced quickly at the map and ran towards where we thought the subway station was. It turns out, we were right on the location for the subway station, however what we didn’t expect was how crowded it would be. After descending down what was at least a few hundred feet (remember these are some of the deepest subways in the world), we ran through the station to get to the route that went towards the train station. Then what happened next is only what I can describe as being a bit lucky. We weren’t sure 100% which direction was the right train, but had some certainty.

The train comes in and we launch ourselves towards it. I use the word launch since the platform was that crowded, it was the only way we could get onto the train. There we are, two Canadians, with large backpacks on the back, smaller on the front (one carrying two large paintings as well), glancing at some folded up map, trying to read the Cyrillic and pointing in several directions. Alicia is able to get onto the train and I am able to wedge myself just inside the door so that it tries to close with me in the middle of it. With this short pause I am able to shove my way onto the train further so that the doors now close behind me – such that they are trying to separate me from my backpack. Alicia is able to grab me, pull me in further as the doors try to close 2 more times on the backpack and finally behind the backpack.

As we catch our breath we are relieved that by the next stop we did guess right on the train and are going towards the train station. We get out of the subway near the train station, compass in hand to point us in the right direction of the train station. We run, as by this point we have about 10 minutes before the time on our tickets. The train station is, unfortunately for us, rather large. As we get deeper and deeper into the bowels we were able to find a helpful employee that points us in the right direction. We get to our train right on time and boarding starts once we arrive. We get to our cabin and I run out for some last minute supplies for this leg. Soon after the train starts and we kick back for our last few hours in Russia.

This train also felt rather posh, providing us with packed sheets and other “extravagances” we were not exposed to on our earlier legs. As the train continues and we walk through the hall we hear a familiar sound, an actual native English speaker. In this case it was of a couple and their daughter from England. Sadly they weren’t super friendly and seemed to want to keep to themselves, so we left them alone. And remember how I mentioned bribes? These newly introduced characters will be important soon!

The countryside continues to get more and more rural. We get some amazing shots outside of the train, and just enjoy having our heads out of the windows with the wind in our hair.

Looking back along the train. The train, rounding a bend. Around now, I should introduce our two roommate we have with us. They are two big and burly Russian men who appear to do migrant work in the Baltic states (this train went through Latvia, rather than through Belarus, as some trains do). They were truly wonderful and could only be described as gentlemen. Us, proving that we can learn some new tricks look at the schedule on the train to see at what time we will be crossing the border to Latvia. Knowing it will be about a 3am crossing we decide we should retire early for the night. And here is where our roommates showed their awesomeness. They left the room to let us sleep quietly, and apologized profusely when they had to get anything from the room.  
The “day” got interesting around 2 or 3am in the morning, as we were getting close to the Latvian border, or more specifically at the Russian side of the Latvian border. The train stops and the Russian border guards board the train, checking everyone’s passports and visas (if applicable). By this point, we’re feeling seasoned for this type of ordeal and are ready with our passports and some snacks to pass away the time as we’re processed. They come by, grab our passports and continue along the train to collect everyone else’s. We sit and wait, and wait and wait… much longer than normal. Then we hear the guards get on the train, hand back our passports, but this time there are some extra people with them…

Now one thing you must understand is the unique process by which Russia handles its tourist visas. Like any visa it has an entry and exit date and you are allowed in the country while it is valid. For most world countries, if you overstay and your visa is expired as you try to leave they get annoyed and throw you out of the country (in some cases you may not be allowed back in). But Russia is not most countries, and have adopted a very different set of rules to strongly encourage people to leave before their visa expires. When travelling in Russia, should you try to leave with an expired visa, you aren’t allowed to leave the country. Instead you’re forced to stay in the country while a new exit visa is processed (this can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks). During this time, since you have an expired visa, hotels are not allowed to provide you rooms (and are encourged by a $10,000 a day fine if caught), but you must remain in the country. In most cases, your own government/country will help out, but not do too much since you’re the one that screwed up.

It is around this point we find out the reason for the hold-up. Our newly met English speakers on the train… it turns out they didn’t read the train schedule properly. Their exit visas had expired at midnight, and it was now 3am. Can you say uh-oh?

It was unfortunate and interesting to hear from a distance. At first they didn’t understand the problem. An additional layer of confusion was added since only one of the guards spoke English and they hadn’t gone to bed early and were still in that sleep-induced state of confusion. The husband was trying to find out what the problem was and how to solve it, his wife was furious, and also hard of hearing (so we could hear her yelling), and we aren’t sure what their teenage daughter was doing throughout this (although I suspect she was in a ball scared). Once the Brits realized the issue, they appologized and then asked about having the visas extended (not possible). This was refused, followed by them openly offering a bribe to the guard in the form of “how much do we have to pay to get over the border”. Say what you want, but the guard stood by and refused the bribe, explaining that they needed to get off the train so they could be processed (we weren’t sure what this meant). There was a lot of back and forth, close to 30 minutes of it. During this time the Brits tried all the regular and expected elements of grief. They threatened to use their ambassador friend to get the guard in trouble (unsurprizingly, the guard didn’t care), they then got angry (mostly at each other, including her hitting her husband for a bit (yes we heard it 4 cabins down)), crying and eventually acceptance of the situation. As they gathered up their stuff we offered to collect their information and inform their embassy or friends (they politely declined). They were then escorted off the train into the darkness. And then the train started moving…

Now back to our cabin and roomies…

These two were also very curious about the dealings in the hall with the Brits. They were confused as to exactly what was happening, as they could only understand the Russian portion of the conversation, and the guards weren’t very talkative. During this entire ordeal all of our curiosities were piqued and we stumbled through the language barrier to “discuss” the situation.  We eventually got a system working consisting of charades, random words and one of them using google translate on their iPhone. We were all a bit wired from the crossing so we showed them a bit of Canada, and they shared photos of their families and their hunting trophies (these guys were good!). We had a few good chuckles with them, especially when the Latvian border guard came by. These two guys have crossed the border a lot, to the point where their passports were fairly full. All of the stamps were in a row and the guard puts in a stamp at random. The guy then asked for a second stamp, so that it would continue to line up (the guard refused with a chuckle). We then all drifted off to sleep until we landed in Vilnius.

* Answer: Beef Stroganoff

Day 23: Saint Petersburg

So where were we….? And let this be a lesson to make sure you keep going with the momentum that you have, since otherwise you might end up like this post and be “in the queue” for an inordinately long period of time. On the plus side, memory recall is very strong and these photos always get the juices flowing again. Having had a good night sleep we decided to take full advantage of our first full day in Saint Petersburg. Logically we then went and hit up the streets. We’re still being blown away by the ornateness of these buildings. Here is a group of workers painting the ironwork on the bridge. Unlike Moscow, there are very few symbols of communism on the bridge and the decoration is either related to the sea or is meant to look like something fancy. With all the canals, one could think you’re in Amsterdam. More of the symbolism on the ironwork. After much walking we finally made it towards one of our major destinations for the day, as it peeks out in the distance. (queue the Tetris music) This city is truly unbelievable. Gold colored and complex work everywhere. Apparently here, this is “normal”. A pathways towards our destination. On the way, this was one of the most ingenious things I’ve seen in a while. Rather than having a cop stand out in the middle of traffic and control it by hand, why not manually control the light from the safety of the sidelines?

 

Just a park we passed… with a dock on a canal. And a small shed (for lack of a better term). Part of a birdhouse series we found. We were speechless. Then deaf. And then we stumbled about blindly for a bit. But when we removed our eyes we finally came to our destination, the Church of the Spilled Blood. Oh, and we saw this grandma and her grandchild, or at least we assume it was grandma. Ah here we go! Not a job I would envy, cleaning the mosaic tiles and all, but someone has to do it I guess.   We took this composite of the front of the Church of the Spilled Blood here. Catherine the Great was not so impressed by our photo taking it seemed.       This was one of the golden eagles on the top of the spire.

  We were able to get inside, which was amazing. The inside of this place is 8000 square meters of mosaic tile.   I am not sure how exactly to describe the awe-inspiring art that was present within the church. I think the photos will just speak for themselves…   Roof shot – at least 100 feet up   One of the ornate chandeliers   Another shot taken from looking up.   A side altar   A composite of Alicia under one of the large columns. It sort of puts things into perspective.   Up close of a side altar, this is also all mosaic.                   Here is the actual central alter. It is a door that opens to a room where the priests do some part of the service behind closed doors (preparation of the host maybe?)   The number of gemstones on that door is incomprehensible…   If you study imagery in church art-work at all and are mainly familiar with Catholic and Protestant imagery, take note of the next collection of images. Leesh was stunned because she has never seen so many representations of the women from the Bible in all her church and cathedral visiting. Something she noted among all of the Russian Orthodox churches in our travels.

Mary visiting her cousin Mary during their pregnancies.

  Mary being attacked by deathrays. Or so I figure. (Alicia’s note: Or the day when the Angel Gabriel said “Fear Not” and gives Mary news of bearing the Son of God)   Up close of her foot.     More deathrays…   An example of the restoration that needed to occur after the fall of the USSR to where it is today.   Composite of the altar of the church.                  This is part of the canopy over where the whole creation of this church began. So a bit of a history lesson. In short, when the Tsar, Alexander II was in power someone tried to kill him with a bomb. In the process he was “mortally wounded” (but survived…) and some of his blood was spilled on the ground. In response – this canopy, and ultimately the church was built.   Composite of the ceiling.          (Alicia’s note: probably the coolest Assumption of Mary images I’ve seen)   After an hour or so inside we headed off, enjoying the building’s exterior.   Outside there was buskers, complete with moneys   drums   and somewhat questionable cars.   A distance shot of the church. The neat part is to look at the canal, and the out-cropping that has occurred. This was done to make room for the church.   We headed off for our next meeting with a guide and passed some neat work on the way.   Part of the Singer sewing machine building                  Our other destination for the day – tea with a local. Now, you would think… tea? really? Tea here is more of an event, involving dumplings and a whole host of delicious food. It was amazing to have her invite us into her house. She used to be a school teacher and loved to travel. Her apartment was full of really old books and plates from around the world. It was a delight to be able to share this experience with her and teach her a bit of Canada 🙂   Once we left, we wandered back towards the hotel, hitting up some back alley markets.   Admittedly, they were a bit weird, although this was towards the end of the day, so that may explain why it looks incomplete.     One of the doors leading out of the alleys.   We made our way back towards the hotel, passing some gorgeous buildings along the way.     We passed the statue of Catherine the Great  We did stop at this corner for a bit to try and throw up coins onto the platform. Alicia was successful right away, and I took a few tries.   Here some kids were playing with this giant granite ball on the fountain. It is oddly fun to spin.   Some of the statues on the building      We found this outside one of the stores.      A gate with some neat metalwork.   Going past the gate showed a courtyard We had heard that we needed to try a Georgian restaurant while here, so we found one and made our way there passing a painter on the way.         After getting slightly lost, we did find it.

We greatly enjoyed a delicious meal… soo good! We fell in love with their lemonade which is lemonade as you would know it, plus bubbly water and tarragon. We liked it so much that we now make it at home (often with gin for good measure). Other food included an amazing flat bread with cheese baked on it, tomato salad, lamb kabobs, tea, and some sort chickpea patty. Georgian food is truly amazing and flavourful as it historically has sat on the spice route and so has been able to incorporate a world of spices into the cuisine. It was funny in St Petersburg – we kept asking for a Georgian restaurant and the locals would turn their noses up (yeah political conflict/war a few years ago!) but it seems everyone eats Georgian food because there are many many Georgian restaurants around. Kind of like everyone turning their noses up at McDonald’s because they don’t want to like it, but really they do.

Day 22: Saint Petersburg

We finally arrive in St. Petersburg after what can only be considered a hot and horrible train ride. It makes us wish we did what the Chileans had done (which was take the bullet train between the cities, during the day). Oh well, at least this time our driver was present and waiting for us on the platform. The walk from the train and its platform to the station seemed to drag on and on. The train had at least 20+ carriages on it, and we were at the far end 😦 Once we do make it to the station it is only a very short walk for us to get to the car. Things then became even more un-dramatic as we are driven to our hotel – the distance is less than what we walked from our carriage to the strain station. At least we were able to get there in one piece in our sleep deprived state. We get into the room and crash.

Around 9 or so we wake up and head down to meet our guide who is to give us the lowdown of this city. Immediate difference from Moscow is that her English is rather good and she just seems a bit more relaxed and friendly.

We had heard that St. Petersburg was a beautiful city, especially when compared to Moscow, and we weren’t disappointed. You would turn a corner and lo and behold there would be one VERY nice building there. Why? Well why not! The Czars spared no expense when it came to this city it seemed. Buildings are covered in intricate carvings and painted in different colors –  all of which seemed to match. The amount of history within these buildings was also amazing – if only they had ears and a mouth to tell their stories. Many of the buildings we saw didn’t have the same communist feel as the ones in Moscow did, but instead felt a lot more like the rest of Europe.

Yep, just another normal street.

And this one is red to balance out the pallet of the one next to it we are certain.

During the communist rule the buildings were never destroyed, even religious ones – that would be wasteful after all. Instead they were repurposed and turned into places for the public good. We learned that one church was converted into an indoor skating rink and that one Lutheran church was turned into a swimming pool. Apparently at the right time you can go into that church and still smell chlorine (or the ghost of chlorine past?).

But presence from the communist era wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it was in Moscow. There was little communist iconography present and we never saw a hammer or sickle. The bridges here were instead ordained in decoration that showed the might of the oceans and their gods.

The building below is actually store that sold overpriced, yet lovely looking food.

The window display of the store. The inside was gorgeous – however photos were only allowed if you bought over a specific ruble figure.

Catherine the Great (and her minions)

Also Catherine the Great… there seemed to be a few of them in town.

Not an add for fast food, but instead one of the local statues, as denoted by the tiny cat on the platform. It is said if you can toss a coin up there and it stays you get your wish granted. It didn’t stick for us when we tried.

More fun statues. The wear patterns are interesting. It doesn’t matter what the statue is, but animals have the highest wear.

So back to the buildings – I know! It needs more statue!

As our guide continued our tour we started to get a bit peckish. She first brought us into a chocolatier where we had the issue of having too much choice. So in a hungry and confused state we then visited a nearby store which sold this delightful snack. It is walnuts on a string, covered in a semi-sweet gummy thing. They were really good! Thank you Armenian food!

I forgot to mention this store was up a tiny alleyway, and this church was at the end of the alley.

And we then wandered by another palace, which has now been converted to a museum. Catherine the Great was here too.

One of the highlights on the walk was this place: the Church of the Spilled Blood. Like anything in this city, there is a story behind it. In this case one of the Czars was the result of an assassination attempt involving a bomb going off under his horse drawn carriage. It went off and he was ‘mortally wounded’. So mortal was his wound that he survived and ordered an altar to be build around the location where his blood was spilled, and for a church to be built around it. Since the attack occurred along one of the canals, in order to accommodate for the structure, the canal had to be shrunk and permanently has this large square jutting out into it.

We skipped going in for the sake of timing, but were told we should return to see the mosaics inside. As we continued we passed this place, the former headquarters for the Singer Sewing Company. It still has the Singer café on the ground floor. The background of this building was that Singer was one of the first foreign companies to enter Russia, made rarer still by making a large headquarters here .

The Singer building, with a church off in the background.

And this church also had special significance, as it is the place where all the Romanoff icons are stored (the bodies are kept elsewhere). Also – this is the place where that delicious recipe comes from.

We only went in briefly, but wanted to return another day. The inside is what can only be described as take the grandeur of a catholic church, get rid of the gold and then mix in some Russian Orthodox. The inside was absolutely stunning.

Saint Issac’s Cathedral (the 4th largest domed church in the world).

This does help put it into perspective – slightly.

And here is one of the scars from the siege of St. Petersburg, which is more commonly known as World War 2. The kept the shell impact markings on most of the buildings to serve as a reminder.

Us with our guide and Saint Isaac’s in the background. She was amazing and we learned so much from her about the city and regular living. We talked about mundane aspects of life to see how different things were when compared to home. The big difference – house prices and size. She recently put a down payment towards a bachelor apartment which cost about double what our entire house is worth.

Even though our tour was officially over and our guide had to get home for a water delivery*, she still directed (and then led) us to her favorite restaurant in town. It was run by the Hare Krishnas and had some delicious food (mostly lentils and other things we would typically have at home). After a delicious meal we then headed back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep, as we were dragging our butts. And they did drag – we woke up in time for a late dinner. We had looked up a Georgian restaurant that looked interesting and hoped to go there for dinner (a co-worker of mine raved about Georgian food, so we had to have it while here).

One of the many places we passed. By now we’ve figured out how to do some basic reading of Cyrillic. This is Subway (in this case the branding helps significantly)

Normally Alicia is on the ball for directions, however tonight was not one of those nights. She leads us in the completely opposite direction of where we want to go. An hour or so into our nice wandering walk in the rain we decide we should not be picky and just eat anything before they all close down, as it is nearing 10pm. Not that you could tell based on the sun, since it was still sunny around this time (go northern cities in the summer). We get back closer to the hotel and find a cafeteria-style place that is still open and have a surprisingly good meal. We manage to leave the restaurant after a major downpour and make it back to the hotel without getting too wet. Not bad for over 3 weeks of travel for us to experience our first real bit of rain! We make our way back to the room and continuing doing what we had practiced all day for – more sleep.

* why water delivery? So there turns out there is a consequence for building a city on several rivers and a swamp using poor water management systems. The local water that comes from the taps is completely undrinkable. It can be boiled and then drank, but not doing so risks giardia and many other water-borne illnesses. Amazingly this is the first place on the trip where we couldn’t just drink the local tap water.

Day 21: Moscow

[aside: still alive and still posting – just getting distracted with summer gardening]

Even with the late night we were able to spring (or crawl, depending which one of us you ask) out of bed. We headed down for breakfast with Rodrigo and Jose – which turned into just breakfast with Rodrigo since Jose slept in. After some catching up on our adventures since we separated we bided him adieu and set off about our day. The morning had two goals for us – first was to find a lock so we could lock our love on the bridge we had seen yesterday and secondly to get some food to munch on throughout the day.

We had seen a local market nearby when we first arrived and figured this may be a good place to start for food. Along the way Alicia spots the impossible: a hardware shop. Why is this such a great thing? Well we don’t know what to recognize in cyrllic, and mostly because these stores tend to have a horrible habit of not advertising they are a store on the outside. Typically they look like just all the residences. Alas, the place lacked heart shaped locks, but it did have a few nifty ones and moreover the specific one we wanted was in stock (and we also took the demo for the store). We bought two – one for Moscow, and one for a bridge near home. With our pack a pound and a bit heavier we made it to the market.

Like any good market, it had just about any fresh food you could want. The fish looked particularly tasty, but useless to us and our lack of kitchen.

After getting some veggies we were tempted to pick up some spices to bring back home. Saffron was plentiful and rather cheap. However we opted out since we weren’t sure how it would go over when crossing the many borders we still had to go.

We left the market and headed back to the hotel, trying to stop at a few places on the way to find stamps for the small pile of postcards we were able to produce during the train treck. Of course, everything was closed, but luckily the nice gentleman in the hotel was able to mail them for us (for no extra charge too!).

We packed our things, checked out, tossed most of our things into storage for the day and headed off for our last day in Moscow. We decided it would be nice to try and visit the Kremlin, which worked out well given how close it was to the lock bridge. But before we could put our lock up, we had to mark it as ours somehow. Alicia was feeling in desperate need of having pretty nails came up with a solution that solved both problems, and so we proceeded to pick up some bright red nail polish.

We headed towards the entrance of the Kremlin and found the ticket booth. The booth was what can be described as a coffin with a line-up. Compounding the unpleasantness was the rather expensive ticket prices for those who “are not citizens of the Russian Federation”. Our travel guide stated as a clever and sarcastic retort to this: “While it is unfortunate to think you must pay more than the locals, think of this as being the perk from not having to be Russian”. So after nearly dying of heat stroke in line we pop out to see that the grounds are being watered. We were very tempted to join the kids in “playing with the water truck”.

We get to the security checkpoint of the Kremlin and put our bags through the x-ray machine (pretty routine for us by now). This time however we aren’t simply able to keep going. The guard politely stops me and asks me to open my bag, which I do. He asks if I have a lock in it (which I do) and asks why I have this. Using my non-Russian skills and something resembling an odd form of Taboo I am able to tell him we have this lock for the lover’s lock bridge that is nearby. He hasn’t heard of it, unfortunately for us. He invites us to check our bags at a coat check if we want to continue, and confronted with a lack of choice, we agree.

We get near the coat check and decide that the risk of losing our stuff (or at the very least, the extortionate amount of money required for this) is too much and that we’d be better off to just ditch the lock. So we sit down on the grass and Alicia proceeds to show me what years of painting nails can do.

The finished result (one side of it at least)

With a personalized lock we start the trek towards the bridge passing a fountain on the way. The heat wave appears to be even bothering the locals, as some decide to take refuge from the heat in a fountain. We got some serious smiles once they realized we snapped their photo.

Without melting in the heat (or getting lost) we arrive at the bridge, pick a wire tree to plant our love and snap it into place!

<3s

This lock came with three keys, so I felt that at least one of them should remain nearby, but out of reach. The canal seemed like the most logical option. The view from our lock (if it had eyes):

And now with us departed from our Kremlin contraband we head back to do our tour. We stop along the way to get some great shots of the palace.

Since a camera was brought out, we followed in the local tradition of posing for it. I wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I had hoped.

This time we make it through security without incident and go in through the main gate.

On the inside we see rows of cannon, pointed at the entrance. We suspect they are purely decorative at this point 😉 However it is worth mentioning that a Kremlin is just a Russian castle, this just happens to be Moscow’s castle – and also where parliament is held.

Speaking of… this is the big fancy building. It has an air of “cold-war” to it, but still looked very modern.

We continue on the marked path towards the rest of the inner parts of the Kremlin. There are a few guards who are extremely proficient with a whistle that stop tourists that decide to try and get a closer look at some of the more secure buildings, and more importantly to force tourists to stay on the sidewalks, rather than walking on the road. (Who gets that kind of job? Is it punishment? “What did you do at work today honey?” “I blew a whistle at tourists who were dumb enough to walk on the road!”)

And like any good castle, a church had to exist somewhere on the inside of the walls. (And in good Russian context, “a church” meant at least 4).

We also come across a special cannon that was made. Like you may also expect from Russia – this one was GIGANTIC.

The cannon balls were just shy of half my height. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of this cannon (or loading it for that matter, it may have blown up). Luckily, it never was fired.

The day was just a stunning day for melding the sky and buildings. The gold onions at the top of the churches glistened in the light.

And then we had a moment which made us miss our smartphones and good internet connections… a man was there with his tablet and Skype – showing his brother the Kremlin. Excessive? yes. Do I want to be able to do something similar? Of course!

In the event that the ginormous cannon wasn’t considered “big enough”, we then came across the world’s largest bell. This bell has never actually rung (which isn’t a bad thing) and was broken shortly after its completion during a fire. On the other side is the large “chunk” that had broken off. I could not imagine being the poor guy that would have to pull the strings to make it chime had this bell not been broken.

And this would be that small piece. Note: there is a child hiding behind that piece in this photo.

Also, I suspect that this church would have had to been made a bit bigger to accommodate the bell.

Side note – world’s largest bell that never rang? World’s largest canon that never fired? Hmm… hopefully someone learned a lesson from this.

Near the church was some gorgeous gardens, where Alicia posed for a few pictures. The flowers (mostly tulips) were all in bloom. There are some distinct advantages to travelling in the spring – this was one of them.

The grounds of the Kremlin (at least the public parts). We barely knew we were in a city, or a castle or near Mr. Putin.

A flock of women started to congregate around here, all waiting in line for their chance to pose…

… next to this thing. The irony should not be lost on anyone.

From some angles we could see above the trees and to the nearby buildings. Admittedly having Saint Basil’s Cathedral popping up was rather easy on the eyes.

In centuries past they would have moats, or keeps within castles to protect the ones in charge. Here they have helicopter pads to get them out, as well as what would appear to be some very well armored tunnels to let people gain access to the choppers. Interestingly there were 2 helipads, one of which (based on my rudimentary knowledge from Hollywood) would be a decoy.

With the high price of admission, and the timing of us being here towards closing, we had opted out of the extra access that could be purchased on the grounds. But, we knew there was one building we were allowed in, but were unsure which it was. We therefore tried to get into several – and succeeded in each case. Apparently they didn’t look at the tickets too hard.

Some of the artifacts within these buildings were amazingly old. More remarkably is that they still exist and were able to survive the Communist era that had outlawed religion.

This roof of crosses was just stunning.

And so after a few hours we headed towards the exit of the Kremlin, all the while following the well marked paths on the pavement, lest a guard blow his whistle at us.

Once outside, things got a bit weirder for a bit, as we ran into Captain Hook.

With the time for our train approaching we set out to head back to the hotel to get our gear and meet our driver. On the way we passed by here, and quickly went in. This was (until the 2012 Olympics) the world’s largest McDonalds. As a former employee, it was impressive to see the size of the place and how nicely decorated the inside was. McDonalds is a big deal here, has smaller portion sizes than North America, and is amazingly cheap, all the while being a more middle-range restaurant.

We decided to go back to Mumu instead. We wanted to see what foods were there and knew they had some very nicely sized beer steins.

Norbert and Norman with the Holstein balloons, a hallmark of Mumu.

Near the metro to the hotel we came across this bar. Obviously it wasn’t so secret.

Within the Metro station we did stop and pay our respects to one of the many shrines/memorials that were created after the Moscow Metro Bombings (sadly there has been more than one attack. This is the shrine at the station near our hotel.).

Around the shrines though, life continued on with shops that sold pretty much anything (the change “rooms” in these places were quite creative).

We arrived at the hotel, grabbed our bags and shortly after our driver showed up. We were not originally to have a driver for this, but he wanted to make up for his missing us when we first arrived in Moscow. We appreciated the gesture.

And our appreciation grew as we were driven through Moscow’s streets on the 12 lanes of traffic that make up the ring road, or on the smaller 8 lane roads. It was slower than the metro, but did allow us to get a view of the city, which was nice. He whizzed us through the insane traffic and parking jam at the train station that goes to Saint Petersburg (Moscow has 4 major train station, with each having a certain destination profile). Carrying our large backpacks, we made our way to the platform for our train and waited for it. Like all the trains we have taken this trip, it arrived on time, and – after some pushing from the safety inspector and conductor – our carriage attendant opened the door up to passengers.

The car was what we were familiar with, but it was just nicer. You couldn’t see the flames around the boiler (or the smoke in the cabin), the bedrolls were actually soft, the sheets looked like something an airline may give rather than a prison, and to top it off we both got boxes from out attendant. We were really confused at first and opened it up to discover that food was actually served on the train! They even had water that wasn’t from the boiler! It felt a bit too posh for us.

Adding to the poshness was the lack of an openable window in the cabin, mostly because it had air conditioning. Given the heatwave the city had been experiencing, this was welcomed… even if it didn’t work very well and only functioned when the train was in motion (so we died of the heat before we left). Therefore we waited on the platform until the very last minute, and upon returning to the cabin were greeted by our bunkmate for the trip. He was young, quiet and unfriendly fellow who tossed on his headphones and went to sleep on his bunk. He must have been hard of hearing based on the volume blaring from his headphones. We both missed readily available music on the trip, but hearing tracks like Linkin Park on repeat at 2am at the same time they decided to turn off the AC made he journey less than pleasant. However this would all be worth it for in the morning we would be in Saint Petersburg.

Day 20: Moscow – the rest of it (kitchen sink included)

And when we last left our weary travellers…

It was 12:30 and we were hungry from completing our Moscow Subway Tour. Our guide was very kind and had asked at the start of the tour what our plans were afterwards so that he could end us at an appropriate metro station. In our case we ended a little ways away from Red Square, near the theatre for which we had bought tickets the day before. With some time before the 2pm show and some gurgling bellies we set out to find a place to eat. One of the many guidebooks we had suggested this one place called “mu-mu”, which was renown for their large plastic cows and inexpensive price: therefore we had a winner (how can you say no to large plastic cows?). On our way we passed by some employee passing out fliers and Holstein-like balloons to attract customers. The café was fairly easy to find, and the Cyrillic was fairly easy to translate (y=u).

As you can see it was a bit of a party atmosphere. The inside was neat and resembled a mix of a cafeteria, a rustic cabin, shipping containers and a barn. We aren’t sure how, but the look of it actually worked. The table overlooked the street which let us have fun with people-watching and the game of “who can spot the most expensive car”. Our food was delicious and it was great to be able to wash it down with an overly large glass of beer. Soon it was approaching the time for the show, so we headed down the street to the theatre.

Before proceeding into the events of the theatre, I need to put a disclaimer. I enjoy music, but the classical variety doesn’t typically interest me (I am more of a givemeanythingafter1990 type of guy). Alicia on the other hand knows many of the classics and so when she seemed keen on accepting this as a show, I happily went along with it. I also feel the need to mention that this wasn’t any show, it was a show for “Peter and the wolf” and that it was a Saturday – all of this additional information’s usefulness will become clear shortly.

After climbing a few sets of stairs we make our way to the concert hall and take our seats. This hall is fairly cozy and could maybe seat a maximum of 200 people with the orchestra ahead of everyone (there was about 45 performers). It gets quiet and a man in a tuxedo comes out and, in a very dramatic way, starts to tell a story. Or we think it is a story, we can’t tell for sure since neither of us knew Russian. What we were able to ascertain was that he was a very good and very animated actor, as we were able to understand some of what was going on, as he initially introduced the instruments. The story then started and we were able to laugh as the story seemed to have many funny parts. I think the laughter from the other audience members was a bit contagious, but then again that is what happens when about 60% of the audience is under the age of 8. Yes… there were some children in the audience, and by some I mean many. It was a Saturday matinee children’s show of Peter and the Wolf we were attending.

The music was excellent, and our host’s facial and body expressions were sufficient to convey the story and have us giggling. I realized part way through the performance that I knew all of the tunes from somewhere else… turns out it was from the video game Viva Piñata. Towards the end of the show they brought out two grand pianos and had two pianists dueling away with various tunes. It reminded me a lot of of Daffy Duck and Donald Duck. And then it started to get really interesting.

The host proceeded to have the children learn about each of the instruments and how each can represent an animal not to mention he brought up power music and how they tie to emotions. The kids were grossly engaged in this, so when he asked for volunteers he found them by the handful. Each would go up close to the instrument while it was being played. We both found this a large departure of what normally happens in North America where children on stage with an orchestra would be frowned upon. We can easily see why Russians are so in love with the performing arts, and are frankly so good at them – since it is engrained and practiced at such a young age.

Luckily for the parents in the audience, the host made sure the kids would not leave hyperactive. The finale was dueling pianos, the orchestra playing and about 60 children running around the pianos in a circle in the middle of the stage. It was quite a sight. And for us, it counted as seeing a show in Moscow 🙂

With the show now over we continued with our wandering of the city, only to have it interrupted by bumping into our two Chilean friends. It was amazing to see them after all we had been though. We made arrangements for breakfast and continued back to Red Square so that we could explore more to the south.

As we passed Lenin’s mausoleum we saw the one face of Stalin still remaining in Moscow.

As we continued through the square, a large troupe of monks/priests came through. And with most things in my mind relating to video games, it almost looked as if Alicia was trying to blend in with the monks as one does in Assassin’s Creed.

We passed Saint Basil’s… so more shots were needed.

And we crossed the bridge over the river that runs south of Red Square. From here we were able to get a great stitch of the Kremlin.

So another tidbit of information about both of us, we are fans of the tv show, The Amazing Race.  As such, we have seen some very cool places that we may eventually visit. One thing we remembered from many seasons ago was a “lock” bridge that was present in Moscow. Our goal was to put a lock on this bridge, as is the custom. We knew it was somewhere in the central core of the town and had foolishly decided not to research it beforehand. We figured it would be known to people. We were wrong. Luckily we had the wherewithal to figure out who may actually know (since many locals didn’t). We went into the Metropol Moscow hotel and asked them. Even though we were not guests and were dressed like backpackers, they did their best to find us the fabled location of this bridge and even gave us a map! Talk about service! So armed with this map in hand, we were able to eventually find our way to the lock bridge.

Before the bridge are several “trees”, full of locks of all the other couples that wanted to express their love to each other. Some of these date back well over 10 years. These trees are ones that were previously on the bridge, but had been moved as they were now “full”.

They were rather beautiful and had locks from all over the world with different styles, sizes and shapes. Around the middle, in a rust color is one of the larger locks we saw… until we looked down and saw the silver one on this tree.

Unsurprisingly there were several wedding photo-shoots happening here.

And more wedding photos.

Our hope to put a lock on the bridge was quickly dashed when we remembered that a) we didn’t bring a lock with us and b) had foolishly assumed that someone nearby had the good sense to set up a small booth near here and sell locks (at an inflated price) to couples like us. And so began our hunt for a lock! We headed further south, as each security guard we spoke to didn’t know and pointed us down the street to ask another guard. This was a museum that we passed (apparently it is somewhat famous – Moscow State Tretyakov Gallery).

In our travels we passed a TUC giveaway. The only reason we even paid attention to this was that this was the cracker we had been searching for on the train (and each station was out of). We later bought a pack when we found them, not out of a need for them, but out of vindication for finally finding the damn things!

With it now close to dinner, we were getting a bit peckish so we expanded our hunt to include food and not just a lock. We decided McDonalds French fries in Russia was worth trying (they are just as yummy there). So there we are sitting outside, enjoying our fries and minding our own business when we were attacked by 2 dogs! They were both puppies, and their attack consisted mostly of rubbing, licking and just being overall cute.

A short while later their daddy came by to also say hi, to get some love and try to steal some food.

And with our snack complete, we headed off! By now we’ve given up on hunting for a lock (for today) and felt like visiting Gorky park… so we moseyed over towards it. We were in this small neighbourhood which seemed to be starting the process of gentrification (the story of most cities right now it seems). Of course, it had a church.

And another mymy café, which is the first one that opened too.

We came across a park along the way and sat down for a rest. There are lots of fountains or statues, and this park was no exception. And while the giant Chengis was amazing, this one was just cool and a true example of (what I consider at least) art. This one is called “The Children – Victims of Adult Vices” and is super simple in its composition. In the middle and made out of brass are the children, blind to the world around them. Surrounding them are the figures (from left to right) representing: Addiction, Prostitution, Theft, Alcoholism, Ignorance, Pseudo Science, Indifference, Violence, Sadism, Child Labour, Poverty and War. A VERY cool piece!

We passed by the lock bridge again and Alicia couldn’t help herself and take some more shots.

We found some very lovely decorated locks.

And some very old (and new) ones.

Some of the trees had become filled so chains were added (or locks were linked) to make “fruit” (or viney things).

Eventually we were able to find someone with a DSL to take our photo.*

This one was just cool.

On one of the bridges we took had the typical soviet style. Nearly all public building and structures (fences, bridges, gates, etc) have Soviet designs (wheat, hammar, etc).

Some of the cars appeared to be from the soviet era too.

One aspect of Moscow we did notice was that is was truly and oddly a romantic city. I have been to Paris and maybe it was the time of year, but Moscow could challenge it as home of Cupid.

All of this romance was on the bridge we were taking towards the church of Christ our Saviour.

Off to the left the sun had started its decent and one of Stalin’s skyscrapers towered in the sky.

We realized that the path we were on would take us the wrong way… also we were having to walk through some construction areas which made us a bit worried (was razor wire really needed?!)

And then came another tower, however this next one wasn’t nearly as cool as one of Stalin’s.

The first question I bet that came to your mind was “wtf – why is Christopher Columbus in Moscow?!”, mostly since this is what went through both of our heads. The statue is not of Christopher Columbus, it is instead Peter the Great. So how did this statue (which is 98 meters by the way) of “Peter the Great” come to by in its current form? I am sure there is a historic and valid story, but folklore is much more fun – especially when you heard the story from your Metro tour guide a few hours (and one musical performance) earlier.

The story goes as this: Once upon a time there was a great artist and his work was revered by many. He created and sold statues all over the world, and was considered a master at his craft. One day inspiration hit him for a statue, one of Christopher Columbus, sailing into America for the first time. He contacted the US authorities and offered to give them a statue to celebrate some significant milestone date. However, the authorities refused it. What isn’t clear is the status of the statues, which was  either built at the time or the artist was too stubborn not to see his masterpiece built. So he contacted the Russian powers-that-be who agreed to purchase the statue. But why would Moscow want a statue of Columbus? Well obviously they wouldn’t, so the head of the statue was replaced with one of Peter the Great. He did greatly expand Russia’s navy… so it may have been appropriate. Maybe.

Some questions do come up that do validate this story. Peter is wearing some clothing which doesn’t look at all like what a Czar would have worn. The ships look like Spanish Galleons and not the Russian ships that would have been used. And why would a statue of Peter the Great be in Moscow? Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint. Petersburg.

And so the name was developed “Peter the Columbus”, and that is definitively a Peter the Columbus.

And near the base of this statue was one of the parks we had hoped to find – Statue Park.

What is so special about this park? Well it demonstrates what happens when the powers that be change, and the core philosophy of a country with it. This park was first created after the fall of the Soviet Era to house the statues used to celebrate of the (now former) powers that be. When the communists fell with the Soviet Union in the early 90s, many of the Soviet “heroes” were deemed inappropriate and were removed. But what to do with them? I suppose they could have been recycled, but instead the Russians, who are ever practical, decided to make a park of all of these rejected statues. Over time the odd collection grew, and eventually it became today, where the park is filled with any type of statue that may not go anywhere else.

Mustaches were big once upon a time.

We have no idea who this guy is, but he seemed to need a hug.

And this one a shampoo

And this one a secret.

And arms.

And then we started to come across some more interesting statues. We waited for this little guy to finish his photo shoot before we had some fun in the boat.

I had to rescue one of the rabbits that had fallen overboard.

The water wasn’t that deep… but a little imagination can be dangerous (and make it seem like a lot more).

Next it was Alicia’s turn to take a boat ride. Here she is leading the way.

Apparently the boatman didn’t believe her and went his own way.

She then vented her frustrations of the boatman to this guy.

Oh right – there was this guy overlooking us still.

And then we came back into the weird stuff.

This was not the only bust we saw, although these were the more traditional variety.

And more Soviet busts.

And then this… person?

And with that burned into our eyes we then turned to the skies and bumped into Peter again.

This one was surprisingly religious.

There are five statues in this photo. Those large huggable arms are 50m behind the white statue in front, and are BIG.

I don’t know how they succeeded in making so many of these statues super creepy.

And the weirdness continued.

This one was being installed, and was rather tall.

We both rather liked this one.

And so we left Statue Park and went under a bridge to get to Gorky Park.

Entering this park we could just feel this great energy coming from it. There is a large road at one entry point which runs parallel to the river. It was packed with people! A bit further along we came to the park itself. We describe this place as “Heaven for a pair of 30 year olds”. There is no shortage of neat things in here. Starting off we saw several people sitting on large (3m x 3m) beanbags, then these giant chairs on the grass.

There were several pavilions which had photo-fun pieces.

Note: this method of travel is not safe yet.

There were cyclists, quad-cycles and roller bladers. People were at the park alone, in pairs, with friends and even family.

The giant beanbags… I wonder if I could get one for the house.

Several beach volleyball courts.

A sandy beach.

A lake to paddle boat in.

An epically HUGE pedestrian/bike bridge.

Break-dancing stages, statues, fountains and restaurants.

And love!

The place kept going. It was several square kilometers and even had late-night lawn bowling.

A movie theatre.

A giant pond full origami boats.

And 3 piers along the river – each one having several hundred people on it, all dancing to Latin music. It was freaking awesome!

Later on, table tennis was brought out.

And most of this was free of charge, to a park with no admission fees. It was getting late (around 11:30pm) and so we headed off through one of the main gates.

This is a map of Gorky park… soooo big! So awesome!

We hopped back onto the metro towards home and Red Square, with the intent to get some night shots of the square. These escalators are great to have and run very deep (some of the deepest in the world).

We came out near the Bolshoi

We were in Red Square again, and it looked stunning under the cloak of night.

The little church we had seen earlier.

And the Kremlin (and Lenin’s mausoleum).

The giant hammer and sickle had been taken down by this point.

The GUM was lit up.

And I found it looked remarkably like Harrods (perhaps on purpose).

Saint Basil’s.

This building was still stunning, even under the night lights.

Most of the square.

A nice red star.

It was nearly 1am when we took this shot. After that we headed back to the hotel to get some much needed rest.

*Since we have a DSL, we have found that typically if you find someone with a DSL, they likely know how to use it and are hopefully competent at taking photos.

Day 20: Moscow – Metro Tour!

Today is the day where we had originally hoped to visit Stalin’s bunker. This hope was dashed as we found out a week or two before the trip that it was cancelled for some unknown reason (we later guess it may have had something to do with the May 9th celebrations). Instead we opted for a tour of another underground location – the Moscow Metro system. The Metro was even used as a bomb shelter during WWII, so it was so close it didn’t really make a difference for us.

 The Metro is also massive, and is still being expanded.

This also leads us to our first problem with the Metro system. Its maps, specifically most of the ones given in paper format were designed for tourists. You may be thinking – oh great, he’s finally lost it – but bear with me. Maps such as this are great, since Russia is a phonetic language, meaning if you can read it and know the sounds those letters make, you can say it. So maps like this do make it possible to ask people for a station name (although Metro is a universal word). What the locals generally cannot go though is point to something on this map, since it is in English and some kind person decided not to confuse tourists by not including the Cyrillic names of the stations on the map. Which is the downfall to this map, as a tourist you can see Cyrillic symbols, I am completely incapable of matching the station’s proper name with its English translation.

We were greeted at our hotel by our guide, who was about our age and taken to the nearest Metro station. One nice part of the system is once you pay to get in, you can stay on as long as you want, making this a very inexpensive tour. So after entering the Metro we proceeded down a long, low ceiling tunnel that ran under some roads. On one side of the tunnel are shops, very tiny shops. Most of them sell small items, but some even have clothes and are creative with curtains to form a dressing room. Once past these stores you enter the Metro itself, pay for a ticket and off you go. Well not quite, you need to go down, very far down. A large escalator that was well over 100m long (and very steep) took us to the lower level of the station where we could find the actual subway trains.

The first thing we were introduced to was that like any good public space, all of the subway stations are entirely decorated in marble. This included the more ‘austerity’ ones opened in the 80s. So the newer stations could be identified since while made out of marble, they were ‘just’ very plain looking. Another fact we found out was that no two subway stations look alike. Not only is this neat, but it is useful! Each station is notoriously poorly labeled, and it can be impossible to see the name of the station when you are on the train, so the different marble décor helps people identify where they are on the route.

So what kind of décor would be present? Well the first station had simple marble tiles and several very large (3mx10m) glass tile mosaics, and this was one of the more ugly stations. The next station we were at had carvings.

All of the artwork in each station had a very specific Communist motif, and was meant to spread the thought and greatness of Communism and the USSR. So you will notice that stars, hammers, sickles, the military, wheat, iron and greatness are always present somehow.

And while the walls of the station were amazing, looking up on the platform there were these large glass mosaics.

The above mosaic was originally intended for the station where we got onto the subway, however it was nearly complete by the time the octagonal pieces were done, so they were shipped off to the next station to be mounted. Interestingly all the mosaics were created by one expert craftsman who lived in Saint Petersburg. A monument to him is also in the station.

And what is to cool about a guy that made mosaic murals? Well he apparently did some great work in a church in Saint Petersburg, Храм Спаса на Крови (which translates to The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood). He was also very old when he was tasked by Stalin to make these mosaics. He didn’t want to at first, but Stalin insisted. Oh, and the subway was being constructed around the start of WWII.

What ended up happening made these mosaics a bit of a miracle. During their construction Germany attacked Russia, and started to bomb Saint Petersburg, eventually leading to its occupation. Like any city being attacked and then occupied, supplies become scarce. He dispatched a letter to Moscow asking for candles and fuel so that he could work (all the windows had been boarded up). The request was denied citing that it was too dangerous – yet somehow he was able to complete the mosaics. When it came time to pick up the finished product, Stalin had no trouble sending our a group to pick up the artwork and bring it back to Moscow. The artist died shortly thereafter (most people suspect this project had kept him going).

Other art in the subway is different, but most of it starts to follow the basic themes. Take a guess what message they are giving here

We then travelled to more stations, eventually stopping here, where these chandeliers

hung from the ceiling. I like the subtle hammer and sickle.

And the stations became more and more grand. One had these massive marble benches on the platform that people could sit on. We questioned why they would be built, since they were a level even above the stations. Our guide explained that the benches had once belonged to a church and were built in the 14th century. Since the Communists outlawed religion, the benches were no longer needed. And rather than throw something out, the even practical Russians reused it in their subway station.

The next station just took things to a completely new level with bronze archways and amazing lighting.

In the center of each of the circle of lights was a tile mosaic of some great Russian activity.

The art style changed sometimes, but being great at sport was hugely important.

Some of the station platforms are over 1km long! This one is located fairly deep and was used for a dinner party Stalin hosted during WWII (I think it was Christmas). You can imagine all the tables set up here.

This monument was added in a station after WWII, as a tribute to the Belarusians. They came to the aid of the Russians and fought against the Germans.

And the chandeliers continued. This one being creative in the use of fluorescent lighting. It is unique in this way, since many stations had tried to use CFLs, but the light was so poor, they swapped back to incandescent bulbs.

One thing that isn’t translated well by these photos is the noise. The newer lines were okay, but the older ones were deafening! Many of the stories our guide told us were paused each time a train came in or out of a station. That said, the stations continued to be very easy on the eyes and kept a ‘simple’ look.

And to think this is public space. I actually like the idea of having it so beautiful, since it certainly shows where your taxes went.

More of Lenin, I think this was him at the start of the revolution in Saint Petersburg. Interestingly he wasn’t in the city at the time as this picture. We are surmising it meant his spirit was there, although I am sure the people that installed this piece would disagree with me.

Another station. My jaw was still on the floor, and as I write this has dropped again.

A closer shot of some of the art in the station.

A close up of the detailing in the station. Got to love the red stars!

In many of the pieces of imagery used all the people were common people, and were just plain and simple. All jobs were typically either farm or factory worker, with the occasional soldier thrown in. It is neat to see how hard the PR machine worked back then to keep people’s minds thinking along certain lines. Even in this tribute to the end of WWII they brought up the same thoughts. That said it makes me happy thinking how many monuments mark the end of that war, may we never go into another one like that again.

And the insane metro stations continued.

And then we came to one of the busiest stations in the entire metro system. Moscow’s metro moves about 12M people a day (about half of the population of the city, since they make 2 trips each). We came to this station on a Saturday, in the morning, on a long weekend and it was still busy! It reminded us briefly of Beijing, although with less English. This station was neat since Stalin had commissioned an artist to create bronze statues for this station. Like all the other stations before it, Stalin would inspect and approve of it personally before it could open. Also, if he didn’t like your work… well bad things could happen to you. It wasn’t uncommon to have at least one or two works in each station specifically showing off Stalin’s greatness. Oddly, we didn’t see a single one all day, and were told we’d find out shortly why.

So back to this station and its art. It contains around 80 full-sized bronze people. Each of these people represent a segment of Russian society. Here we have the woman farmer.

And here is a soldier, at the start of the station, defending it and all of the people behind him.

The lighting is horrible in here, and flashes just ruined it, but they were pretty epic. We enjoyed particularly the one of a man and his dog (police I believe). Tradition in the city was that people would rub the nose of the dog for good luck. Its nose was nice and shiny to prove it. It was also amusing to see all the other spots people had polished the statues, wishing for good luck.

And here are most of the statues. Notice anything odd?

And lastly at the end of the station were these two – two children. Everyone else was the past of Russia and these were their future. One aspect that our guide excelled at was the history and context when everything was built. This station was made during Stalin’s time, and he had very tight control on the entire country. Now scroll back and notice that every single statue is sitting, except for the children. A bit odd? Maybe space constraints? It was actually the artist making a political statement in an era where being overt would at best have you killed, and at worst… well… let’s not get into that. There is a saying in Russia, when you are in prison you sit. The entire country in prison due to Stalin? Maybe.

After our history lesson we went to one of the ‘plain’ stations, created during the time of austerity. Horrible isn’t it 😉

And then we ventured to another station, this one being one of the most grand in the entire system.

In each area there was some battle being depicted where Russia was victorious. They sometimes went back a LONG time.

The golden emblem there is the USSR one, complete with the regular symbols.

This was also a very long station.

And here is a mosaic made to commemorate the victory over Germany in 1944, and here are some interesting bits and stories about this art. Of course it has the ever popular hammer, sickle and grain, with the person wrapped in the red cloth of Communism. It is also in Red Square (see the background) and on the floor is a bunch of flags, specifically Nazi flags. The story goes back when Germany was defeated by Russia, the Russians celebrated with a huge parade through Red Square. At the end of the parade was a battalion of German soldier, marching after the Russian army. When the parade was wrapping up, near Lenin’s mausoleum, something unexpected happened. The German troops all threw their flags onto the ground in a pile and marched out of the city. And so this picture was made. More interestingly this is not the original picture, it has been ‘enhanced’ over time. Originally there was no hammer and sickle in her hand, instead there was a flag with Stalin’s face.

So remember how we couldn’t find evidence of Stalin anywhere in these stations, even though he usually had several works done in his honour? It is because each of them have been changed. After Stalin’s death the new ruling party did all that they could to distance themselves from him (calling Stalin unpopular is a gross understatement). In response they set out to wipe his presence and any memory of him from Moscow. Currently there is only one piece of artwork of Stalin in the city (barring what is in people’s private homes), and that is his bust, behind Lenin’s tomb (in Red Square), where he is buried.

The piece below used to have Stalin in it. The baby was actually reaching for Stalin (I think it was a flag or a face), however you can’t really tell it was changed.

And so began our most important lesson of the day.

Russia is a country with an unpredictable history.

It also was why our guide had studied history so hard (even though he is an engineer and only does this on the weekends to meet new people and teach them). He was always watchful of how those in charge could change perceptions on how things once were. He told us a story of the Russian-Georgian war in the early 2000s. He was in London and saw it on CNN, BBC, Euronews and Russian TV. He swears there were different wars going on. Afterwards we had a great conversation afterwards about how things are now, and where they were going, all in a very neutral way. We had no trouble understanding each other.

So we then came to one of the newer stations, this one being unique as it was the only one that uses stained glass for its decoration.

Each panel showed a different career that one of the people could have. It had the normal farmer, soldier and factory worker. It even had engineers, which were rarer to see in the other stations. What this one did have which was unique was artists as a profession.

And we finished up in this other plain station, the Mendelson Skya. For us science geeks, it was awesome!

And with that it was 12:30, and much of the day was still to go.

Day 19: Moscow

Admittedly it has been a little while, but rest assured we are not done posting yet. Apparently it takes a while to unpack and start to sort through 7500+ photos, but I digress… since we’ve just arrived in Moscow (at this leg of the journey). The adventure of not having our driver pick us up is partially complete.

After arriving at the hotel, checking in and showering we are called by the front desk and informed that a gentleman is here and is very apologetic. It turns out to be our driver, who we think overslept (not that we blame him… it was early and sleeping is always nice). He gives us our tickets for the next part of the journey and we doze off for a while before breakfast. When we do go down to breakfast we find that this hotel seems to have taken a page out of the book of wildlife in its decoration.

Picture this. You enter this nice dining area and a gentleman takes your meal ticket. You walk over towards your seat and start to look around. The TVs are blaring their normal 90s style dance-pop music videos and on the wall is a series of murals. These murals are rustic in nature, meaning they have images of lynx, bobcats, bears, etc. Then someone tossed in a beaver and a panther since I suspect they never learned ecosystems in school. There were several stuffed animals mounted on the wall, some with a painted mural habitat around it. In the middle of this hangs a large disco ball, and down a corridor are several strands of Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling, intertwined with fake green vines. And it was here, in this beauty that we ate our breakfast. Luckily it wasn’t as questionable as the décor, but it did make us miss Listvyanka a bit.

Afterwards we head downstairs to meet our guide to the city. She’s a bit older than us, I’d wager early to mid-fifties. She introduces us to the quirks of the subway system and takes us towards the central part of the city (4 stops away). The subway is AMAZING, but that is more for the next post…

Upon exiting the subway we start to learn more about the city of Moscow and the various groups that have governed it over time. This guide was very heavily interested in poetry, fine-arts and other such studies. Needless to say I was in way over my head quickly and Alicia was able to pass off some knowledge of not being completely uncultured.

We arrive at our first church.

The guide then explains how this area was used during the war, and afterwards during the Communist era, as well as some earlier history. This church had some historic significance since the czar Peter (the Great) sought refuge here during his sister’s reign. His sister Catherine (I may be wrong in the names… it blurs after a while) had ascended to the throne since he was too young. Rather than relinquish it when Peter came of age she kept it and scared him away (for fear of his life). He sought refuge here from her, and eventually found out that the people supported him over her leading to him taking charge. This kind of sibling rivalry makes my sister and I completely tame by comparison.

Other than history, our guide was big on building architecture. This is a theatre and you can tell the decade it was built based on the complexity of the brickwork involved (as well as its size). This was one of the first smaller theatres in Moscow that catered specifically to the middle and lower classes.

And this building is an example of the odd architecture in the city. This building was odd since it went right to the street and its primary face wasn’t where the actual entrance of the building was. If you look at the right side of the photo you see the “enhanced” version of the building, better known as “what they wanted people to do to beautify it”, as compared to the left which is the original. Many buildings in the city had veneers added to them to make them seem more grand. Of course this muddling caused the buildings to stand out more since they didn’t quite ‘fit’ with the others.

We stumbled by one of the guide’s favorite theatres (she sees shows more often than people would rent a movie by comparison), and found out they had tickets available for a show the next day at a great price. We took advantage of our Russian speaking guide and picked up a pair.

This building is where ALL foreign correspondence used to go to be ‘approved’ (read censored). It was also where most major announcements were made, such as the end of WW2. Russia’s largest (and one of the world’s largest) McDonalds is across the street from here.

We saw this sign and couldn’t resist snapping a shot. Apparently they are prolific.

As we continued we came by the Metropolitan Hotel, which is gorgeous on the inside and has a massive stained-glass roof in its central dining hall. The staff are also super helpful for lost tourists as we found our on Day 2 here.

Even though May 9th celebrations had finished, there were still many decorations up.

The Bolshoi theatre.

This is a statue of Carl Marx. While it has an official name, the common name in Moscow for this statue is “Man getting out of a fridge”. We liked this name.

As we got closer to Red Square it seemed that the touristy stuff was starting to become more prevalent.

It was nearing lunch, and not knowing what to expect in Red Square, opted to go in a nearby mall for some food. There was some regular fast food, such as Russian Burger King (it looks hilarious in Cyrlilic), Subway, etc. but we opted for a local chain called Teremok. It is a Russian fast-food equivalent that serves crepes/blinses with a large variety of toppings. Alicia was in heaven.

The mall itself was mostly underground, but like most public spaces in Moscow, it was stunning (and it was here where we discovered Russia is composed of two areas, Siberia and Moscow/Saint Petersburg).

After lunch we headed off towards Red Square, but were distracted as we approached it, and opted to run alongside of it, towards the Kremlin entrance. This statue is one of Russia’s best military commanders, he is also Mongolian (you can tell by the way he rides standing up).

There were some military officers in uniform nearby.

And then we came to Russia’s tomb of the unknown soldier.

A close-up. This area was being cleared of people since it was to be used for an event 30 minutes after we took this photo (even though it was May 10th). It did allow for a shot, considering the rest of the time in Moscow this area was packed with people.

Many onlookers waited with us to see what the ceremony would be.

To pass the time we wandered a bit (basically between the mall and the tomb). We even found a spot to cool off.

The view was a bit questionable though, even for NNN.

Is Alicia laughing due: to a) the background b) a joke I told c) water trickling down her back d) all the above?

A stitch* of the area.

The rest of the nearby area was full of bronze statues, all depicting fairy tales. The part we liked was that unlike back home, people actually used and had fun around the statues. Here a girl is playing in the water.

Now cooled (it was 30+ degrees) and fed, we headed into Red Square.

Within the square was this orthodox church, and while pretty, it wasn’t the cool one here.

There was this building (we still aren’t sure what it is used for), complete with May 9th celebratory materials mounted.

And then we saw it across the square Saint Basil’s cathedral.

I personally was never too fond of this building, until I met it. Then again, most of my seeing of this building was from the movie “The Saint”, or from . Tetris even made young me believe it was the Kremlin (that is about 100m to the right actually). We never saw this cathedral fly off into space during our visit here 😦 As a related aside it was impossible for me to go more than 1 hour in Moscow without the theme to Tetris getting stuck in my head.

This is part of the Kremlin. For those interested and not knowing a Kremlin is merely a castle, this happened to be Moscow’s. When the capital was re-relocated back to Moscow this became rather important once again.

Using our keen eyes we were even able to spot a fellow photographer with an SLR camera to take our shot. He did an okay job.

One amusing aspect of Russian culture we encountered was with women. I would say young women, but I actually can say I don’t think it mattered. They loved to pose for the camera! Not ours specifically, but if they were in a space with decent lighting and a person nearby had anything that could go ‘click’ they would be ready and posing in various positions in no time. Maybe it is for their profile pictures?

More onion domes of Saint Basil’s.

And a rather neat statue outside the entrance that we saw as we purchased tickets to enter.

The inside of this place is unreal. It is full of iconography and history. This piece is many hundreds of years old and painted on wood.

A view looking up from one of the many rooms in the cathedral.

A good idea of some of the detailing involved in each of the rooms. There were dozens of these!

We even saw a ghost!

And in the same room that had the ghost, this should provide some scale. These rooms are massively tall!

And the work, all the way up them is just.. wow!

We did start to get a crick in our neck after a while.

This was a lowly hallway.

Our necks were still stuck pointing up.

Another shot of the hall.

The cathedral is built on a hill, so it has a great view of the city. This is Moscow State University, one of the Stalin skyscrapers in the city.

We left the building and headed back to Red Square.

A priest was in the crowd, likely from out of town.

And with that we continued from Red Square south, alongside the Kremlin. The walls are impressive, although impractical given today’s weapons.

… our necks were still stuck. This is a pointy onion.

And remember how I explained there was this posing culture for women in Russia? This bridge had, at any point in time, 5 women posing for a camera.

In fairness, this was the background. Kremlin to the right, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the middle.

The May celebrations were still up along the bridge.

And while Alicia isn’t Russian, she did indulge me and posed for some photos.

Another shot from the bridge.

And looking north, back towards Red Square, this was the view.

We were starting to get tired around this point and headed back towards the metro, which is through Red Square, so more shots were in order.

Along the way in the square, we were distracted by the large building opposite to the Kremlin. Near one of the doors we saw a 60 year old lady with a massively impractical hat getting into an oversized SUV (yes, oversized). Obviously she was wealthy, based on the size of hat alone, so we concluded we must have found the GUM (pronounced Goom, looks like RYM). The GUM used to be the state department store. After the fall of the Soviet Union during their Perestroika (aka restructuring, but in the really dark and scary way) this place was mostly empty. Eventually for reasons unknown to me it started to fill up with high-end Western brands. And I do mean high-end, for me it was like reliving my luxury branding class all over again. When Gucci was almost low-end in here and prices were starting at $1000 for a pair of shoes (when the same pair in New York City, on 5th avenue would be $600). This place just oozed money. Us with our questionably washed backpacking clothes while not barred did garner the occasional sneer.

One of the many stores in the GUM.

So without any overpriced shoes in hand (even a drink there was triple what it would be at an expensive store in Moscow), we heading back to the Metro, leaving through the gate of Red Square.

We made it back near the hotel, saw a few neat statues as we wandered around it and finally found a place for dinner (it’s closer to 9pm in this photo). Yes, it was the same place as lunch, and man was it good!

*we had taken many photo stiches previously on the trip, but the netbook we had didn’t have the muscle to make them.

Days 15, 16, 17 and 18: On the train – truly in the middle of nowhere

KM Marker 5185…

When we first boarded the train, I am happy to report that we managed to find our birth with no major difficulties. It was one of the cabins towards the end of the carriage, #8 out of 10 to be exact. Amazingly we were excited at our future trek (this feeling would fade) and even more excited that it appeared we lacked bunkmates!

All this enthusiasm was quickly taken away when we started to actually look at the train itself. It was old. And I mean really old. Like, we think it was made during Stalin’s time old. The walls were a lovely fake wood. The nice bench seats we had become used to on our previous 2 trains were replaced with something that was as soft as plasticized rock. Gone were the helpful electronic displays (or even lights for that matter) that let you know when a washroom was in use. The padding for the bed we received was the thin, stripped mattress that you often associate with prisons. Even the hall rug that is normally present in the central corridor was absent. We quickly concluded that this was going to be a bit more real than we bargained for… and then our bunkmates arrived.

They were a nice couple (about our parent’s age) who were also riding the train, although they were locals and didn’t speak any English. This complimented our lack of Russian nicely. We fumbled about for the first couple hours and were able to establish names and state where we were going, where we were from and why this nice couple had a crazy pair of Canadians with them in their cabin (go tourism!). We also made a quick dash some of the nearby carriages to see if there were any other Anglo- or Franco- travelers – there wasn’t. And thus began our long journey.

Fairly quickly though you start to learn about the train and its quirks and habits. For example, our carriage was old and crotchety. We say this since any time it had to go around a bend, even a slight one, we heard this large KA-CHUNCK noise right beneath our feet, followed by some clicks as things straightened out. One of the other travelers was an old man we referred to as old Smokey. Like clockwork, each 20 minutes he would pass by our door towards the end of the carriage, where he would go to the smoking ‘compartment’*. His constant back and forth, as well as other people smoking/moving about led to a lot of smoke coming into the main hallway, making our ride much less pleasant. As a whole our carriage was older, subdued and a bit of a chain-smoker. Other carriages included the tech car (lots of young people with laptops and cords everywhere), as well as the flower carriage, where the provonista scented it with lily of the valley.

After some exploring and attempts to communicate with our bunkmates we got ready for bed, which would be our first of 4 nights on the train. It was okay, at first, and Alicia took the bottom bunk and I the top, each of which had their own challenges. The trans Siberian train tracks are littered with small stations and villages everywhere. Each of them are very well lit – much to Alicia’s dismay. The curtains didn’t close fully in the room, so every time we stopped at a station or passed through a village, she had the lovely, blinding glow of the station lights to disturb her.

I was much less lucky. I was too high for the lights, but was doomed due to 2 major design flaws in the world: hot air rising and historically poor nutrition. The heat is easy to understand. The cabins were heated, even with the warm temperatures outside and could only be cooled by opening a window in the room. This window had 2 positions, closed and hurricane. So in an effort to allow others to sleep, it was kept closed and I quietly was baked as the hot air rose in the cabin and didn’t escape (since the doors are closed at night). My other problem was that due to poor nutrition, the designers of the train were short, and as were all of its original passengers. The top bunks are designed to fold up against the wall for space, but hang down flat for people to sleep on. In the Chinese train they used large padded shelves, where the bunk could rest on, and here they skipped the shelves and decided that chains in the wall would do nicely instead. The result is a 6’2″ man laying on a plank that is 6″ long, with chains where his head and feet should be. So I would stuff my pillow around the chain and push my head into that space, and would carefully put one leg to either side of the chain. Rolling over was an exercise. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep that well (mostly due to the smoke).

We wake up, eat, got our bearings (thank you km markers) and readied ourselves for the first chance to stretch our legs.

KM Marker 4197 wizzes by. A while later we arrive at Krasnoyarsk, the third largest city in Siberia.

The signs were helpful, but in Cyrillic.

It was cool outside, but the warmth of the train made the ice cream bars look rather tasty, so we indulged.

As we wandered about stretching (and enjoying the ice cream bar), we heard a neat series of musical notes coming from the direction of the train. It turns out it was a series of inspectors going over the train. Each stop they end up tapping away at various parts of each carriage (about 30-40 taps per carriage), and they seem to listen to how it sounds. My suspicion is if it sounds off, something is broken and they fix it.

At the station we came across one of the old steam trains that used to power the trans Siberian train.

However the puffing and coal-fired beasts of old are no more and Russia has modernized its railway significantly since then. The entire trans Siberian is now entirely electric. It is astonishing to think that the entire line is electric (we’re talking well over 20,000km of track – and that assumes a single track, which most of this is dual or more). There is something to be said about the old government here with its grand ideas, money and a virtually free labour force. What is to be said shall remain a mystery. However this train does seem to be the backbone of Russia’s transportation. It moves soooo much people, minerals, goods, everything really. Even the mail is shipped on the trains!

At the station in preparation for the May 9th celebrations, a photo-shoot seemed to be happening.

Throughout the day we made a few stops at stations, however never for long enough to safely disembark the train (for fear of it leaving us behind). We did notice several reoccurring themes.

Turrets. These seem to exist in every small Siberian town we passed through. Why they exist, we don’t know. They look Stalinesque, but some have been decorated to actually be pretty.

And more turrets.

Resources. The amount of black coal, brown coal and oil we saw was mind numbingly large.

Dumbness. It appears it isn’t isolated to home and that even in Russia they need to make signs to point out the obvious. I think this one says, “Don’t do pushups on the side of the train”.

Siberia. It is more beautiful thank you can imagine. It did remind us a bit of home, but with less rocks and more birch.

Siberia is equally as depressing as you can imagine. I now fully understand how and why someone who immigrates to Canada from a place like this (or worse) would be happy in anything we have.

Poorly done English translations.

One of the amusing aspects of train travel in the direction we were going is we finally were able to have more hours in a day. Thanks to the wonders of time zones we had 25 hour days. Not that this was actually productive time, but it does seem humans are adapted to 25 hour days very nicely. However all the time zone trickery was moot since the only time we cared about was Moscow time (all trains in Russia operate on it). And as a person on a train, not knowing where you are, having to not worry about time zones is a good thing.

So what does one do with all that time? Not much actually. The train could be at best described as some form of purgatory. You are stuck in a place, it isn’t bad or good and you are going someplace good, but need to wait out your time first. I think it is one of the few occasions in life where both of us truly did nothing for a period of time. Between the nothingness though we did read the Train Siberian guidebook we brought, wrote some postcards, typed a blog post or two (until the power ran out) and looked out of the window at the forest fires.

By the evening of our first full day on the train we were passing through a section of Siberia that was experiencing a fair number of fires. Most of them seemed natural, and many were quite small. Some of the larger ones followed the train along the tracks for about 10km, with flames reaching at most 3m high. They looked really neat with the sunset and seem to be just a fact of life out there. The ground was so dry since the snow had melted, the rain hadn’t quite kicked in yet and the underbrush was dry.

To end our day we opted to go to the dining car for dinner and see what they had, while we played a board game or two. We were presented these large menus, about 12 pages in all and it was full of all sorts of dishes. There was no shortage of liquor in the car (specifically beer), however ordering food was not quite unlike the Cheese Shop Sketch by Monty Python. Several times we pointed to something, only to find out they didn’t have it in stock (it may have been because no one else seemed to eat in here, only drink). After much pointing and being disappointed she showed us one item which was on the menu – logically it was the most expensive – schnitzel. We were tired and hungry, and even though the cheaper items on the menu used the same ingredients, we gave up and went for it. This was sadly our most expensive meal to date, but it was very good and tasted even better after being on the train so long.

That night the couple gets off the train and around 2am a man comes into our cabin, only to depart from the train 4 hours later. Needless to say we slept very well that night. We awoke to day 2 of our captivity to a new guest in the cabin, who rode with us for a few hours, only to get off the train a few stops later carrying what we think was medical supplies. Norbert and Norman at this point were starting to get a be squirrely (we had to lock them up).

And we had settled into a nice routine. Today was the day we were both glad we brought books with us, since that is all that happened all day.

Some napping occurred.

And conversations to do things the rest of the day went like this:

-You know we haven’t been to the end of the train yet, want to go?
-Sure!
(2 hours later we go exploring. Everything seemed to move on a time-distorted scale.)

We became quite comfortable in our surroundings, even if the benches/beds would have been softer had they been granite. The bedroll is something that we would see an inmate sleep on.

I occasionally popped my head down – this is the joyous look Alicia would wake up to.

And the day was made even more wonderful since we lacked cabin-mates after the medical supply guy left.

And the train kept going. We started to pass through from forest into agricultural land. This was taken in a spot where the Soviet Union had decided to convert and start farming 30 million hectares of land (yes that is a lot).

We did pass many small villages, usually without stopping.

And sometimes we would find a large station in a small village. We were never sure why and wondered how big this village once was.

KM Marker 2099.

We arrive in Yekaterinburg around dinner-time and set out about foraging, so that we can avoid a repeat of the food carriage. The train only stopped here for 20 minutes, which wasn’t long enough to leave the platforms (since the station is quite large). We were able to find a babushka on the platform that was selling hot dinners for 100 rubles each (a little over $3). The dinners were these amazing meat and veggie patties, with potatoes, some veg and even a piece of rye bread. Needless to say it was delicious and so we set up a picnic in the cabin.

Late that night, I think it was near 2am Moscow time (I had given up on the local time zones), another couple enters the cabin and hunkers down with us for the rest of the journey. I think this was Perm, although my judgment at that time of the morning tends to be off.

We wake up with a little over 1000km left to go and proceed to whittle the day away. A lot of time was spent tying up lose ends such as finishing all the postcards we bought, and filming the joys of the train (including the washrooms). We even ventured into 3rd class and quickly concluded that we were happy we were in 2nd class and that we would avoid travelling in 3rd class on the train if we ever come back. Lots of games were played and time passed, with us occasionally popping off the train when it stopped. These station stops became a quest for us, specifically one we started as soon as we first boarded the train. Our goal? To buy some crackers for dinner, as we wouldn’t have anything for the 3rd evening meal.

Every time we visited a store, they were out of crackers. Since all the items were in the window and on display, pointing didn’t work, and we still had some trouble reading the boxes (and also pronouncing them too). So we resorted to taking photos of the boxes and showing them! Score one for digital cameras! In the end we were standing in line and the person in front of us ordered some bread. We didn’t know they sold bread and quickly pointed and bought ourselves a loaf. This allowed us to complete our dinner!

As we got closer to Moscow, we could see several “train graveyards”. I think this may have been this train’s sister, once upon a time.

We packed, went to bed and prepared for our last 500ish km on this train. We arrived in Moscow right on time… 4:20AM.

We weren’t even sure we at the right station at first, as we were expected to have a driver come pick us up and take us to the hotel. He never showed up. We were able to confirm we were in Moscow though, which was a plus.

So after about an hour of exploring the station and not finding our driver anywhere (and also realizing that we didn’t bother with directions to the hotel since – hey we were to have a driver!), we caved and hired a private taxi to take us to our hotel. Luckily for us they were expecting us, gave us our key and we went upstairs to shower and then sleep.

* it is called a compartment, but in actuality it is the area where one would get on and off the carriage onto the platform. This area is usually unheated (not a problem at this time of year), and sometimes has open windows. In the event that the windows don’t open, when people would pass through this area to another carriage, a blast of fresh air would come through this room care of the large gaps along the edge of the floor, where the two carriages meet.

Day 15: Irkurst

Today we were driven from Listvyanka to Irkutsk. The driver came by right on time and was also carrying the Canucks into town (it was much easier for them to hitch the ride at a reasonable fare than try the “public bus”, if you can call it that). Before leaving the night before, on the way home from dinner we felt it best to stock up on refreshments for the long train ride we knew was approaching. So we picked up this 1L can of beer. Selection was made ‘completely at random’ (or so I say).

We arrived in Irkurst and were able to witness the May 9th celebrations being prepared for. For most North Americans we may scratch our heads as to why they have a celebration on May 9th. World War 2, the end of it more specifically, is celebrated May 8th across Europe. Well many moons ago when the treaty was being signed it ran late into the night and was so late that for those in Moscow it was May 9th. In Russia people receive I think 3 days off for this Holiday (and 4 for one at the beginning of the month for another one, making May a rather unproductive month) and is a BIG DEAL. For days we had watched in our room (on their equivalent of MTV) celebration commercials leading to the 9th. There here is the central park in Irkurst.

They take this holiday very seriously and decorations are everywhere!

We wandered about for a while and saw an Orthodox church.

And then several seniors and veterans visiting the war memorial.

A school trip was also out visiting the monument in town.

The orange and black (maybe brown?) ribbon is their equivalent to Canada’s red poppy.

A short jaunt from the memorial we came to an overpass, which was full of lovers locks. We had seen these before on one of the daily images Bing displays and were somewhat giddy to have found one.

There was a large variety of locks, although the 2 more decorative lock winners was a red heart or a black lock that looks like a log cabin/home.

We visited the inside of the church, which was pretty neat. It was still completely decorated from Easter and looked beautiful. Again this was a sharp contrast from the churches we are used to since the inside was full of icons and consisted largely of a painted mural.

An example of a mural, but on the outside.

The architecture on these buildings was really intresting.

After the church we continued into town and quickly came across this van. We still aren’t sure what these guys are, although we are guessing an armed private security firm. We had seen the logo in Listvyanka earlier when we bore witness to that warning shot being fired.

Some of the historic buildings in the city were stone, although not many.

There were a few roads where some more traditional houses were protected, since modern buildings are concrete and tend to lack shutters and the colors the older buildings do.

Many of the buildings were not in that great of shape. The connection for the addition for this house had a gap where light shone through.

Although some of the places were well kept.

The woodwork was impressive. Although I ask what else are you going to do when trapped indoors during their winters.

The rest of the day we just wandered through town. To be honest, it was a bit depressing and not exactly screaming beauty (and this from a person that thought that the abandoned ship part factory in Listvyanka was gorgeous), however sometimes we were able to find some nice places. This house belonged to a Decemberist. Back in the day they realized that martyrs were a bad thing and just exiling people to Siberia was much more effective.

Some more shutters.

It seemed that plants were very popular things to have indoors. The green would be needed for sanity when everything would be covered in snow.

A little girl wondering if she should run through the fountain – like the three older girls had (with partial success).

Nope, she decided to stay put.

A park in the downtown area, also decked out for May 9th. We were kinda sad realizing that we would be somewhere on the train that day, and not in Moscow. We found out later that in Moscow they paraded an ICBM through Red Square for the celebrations.

After a run to a grocery store where we could grab goods we stumbled onto this place. Apparently I could have received a Lake Baikal MBA J

I mentioned that we visited a grocery store where we could grab goods, since many of them just have large numbers of items behind the counter. With our Russian, or lack thereof, it was easier if we could grab the items off the shelf rather than pointing and saying ‘ete’ all the time.

We did find a statue of Stalin in our travels. Leesh decided to look cross like him.

We were fully stocked up for our train ride and going back to the hotel to meet our ride when we noticed a large number of police blocking off roads. Uh-oh we went. Buses and cars were being stopped or rerouted and after some time walking to our hotel we found out why – they were hosting a youth May 9th celebration.

We watched them pass and made it to the hotel with a few minutes to spare, enough for some coffee. Norbert and Norman enjoyed some of it too J

And with that we were driven to the train station, all the while listening to what could be called 80s Dance Mix. The driver was super helpful and pointed us to the right platform. So here I am waiting for the train with tickets in hand. Neat things in this photo. The train number is 349, as we were wondering and would soon confirm, larger numbers on this leg meant older trains. It is also around dinner time in this photo, not 13:21 as one may believe. All the trains run on Moscow time. This may seem initially stupid, but it does make sense given all the time zones. And lastly look at all the overhead wires, those are 2.5k or 5k volt lines for the trains. And by trains we mean all trains – our trip from here on in was going to be 100% electric!

So we waited some more since the train hadn’t shown up yet.

Took some more photos.

And on time the train came squealing into the station. We boarded and sat down to dinner. The Russian way of eating had really become engrained in our head by now, so we had a wonderful meal of bread, cheese, sausage and cherry tomatoes.

The train rolled out of the station and we started the next leg of the journey, 87 hours straight on the train. You can so see I was psyched for it!