To Russia:
with spasibo!
by Bob Pride
Grim. That's what I thought Russia would be like, and I didn't want to go there. The Russian cruise my wife and I were thinking about -- she with enthusiasm, myself indifferently -- was to last 10 days. Three would be spent in St. Petersburg. Then we would travel by small ship (the MV Kirov, a Russian vessel run by a Swiss hotel company) down the Neva River, through lakes Ladoga and Onegin, along the Volga, through the Rybinsk Reservoir and then via the Moscow River to Moscow itself. Along the way we would visit the Russian towns and villages of Kizhi, Yaroslavl, Kostroma and Uglich.
Uglich? The name sounded like stepping on a toad. But St. Petersburg and Moscow would probably be OK. The Hermitage Art Museum in the former and the Pushkin and Tretyakov museums in the latter were said to be wonderful. And Joan dearly wanted to go. So I swallowed my misapprehensions and said, Why, of course, I'd love it. (As I type I can picture her reading these lines, her eyes filling with grateful tears, aware at last of what a truly great sport she has married after all). Back to reality. Needless to say I was wrong about Russia. Russia, at least the Russia we saw, was wonderful. Clean, colorful, friendly and warm. Very ungrim. I had a great time. (No doubt one of the rewards of being a flexible, kind, thoughtful, and altogether wonderful husband.)
ST. PETERSBURG AND THE HERMITAGE
The city of St. Petersburg is a monument to one man's ego. Peter the Great had it built as close geographically, as well as culturally, to western Europe as he could get only better. He and subsequent czars and czarinas including Catherine the Great filled it to the lip of the cup with great art and architecture. For this reason as well as the fact that the city is laced with canals, St. Petersburg is called the Venice of the north. The Hermitage Art Museum is housed in the former Winter Palace. (My one complaint of the trip is that we didn't get to spend enough time there.) On the other hand, there are so many paintings, sculptures and various other art objects that, we were told, if you gazed at each one for a mere 30 seconds it would take nine years to see everything. A cogent aside: in a park near the boat we saw some huge stone statues of Lenin and his cohorts. They were neglected, dirty and overgrown with weeds. So much for the revolution?
ÊSEEING RUSSIA BY BOAT
Our ship, Leisure Voyages MV Kirov, moored in the Neva River, was spotless and well maintained. The Russian kids who staffed the dining room were friendly, charming and all of them were anxious to try out their English on us. Unfortunately in return I could offer only one word of Russian --spasibo -- which means Thank You. But the service was wonderful and I happily needed to use my one Russian word with frequency. Journeying by small ship proved to be an ideal way to travel between cities. It's convenient not to have to pack and unpack each time we move from place to place. After all, our hotel room journeys right along with us.
And each day as we cruised through the Russian countryside a travelogue unreeled itself on either side. The landscape was green and lush, filled with pine forests as far as one could see and remindful, of course, of northern Minnesota. Each city we passed had its church, with multiple onion-shaped domes. Many of the churches were especially picturesque because they were constructed entirely of wood, and in one case, believe it or not, without nails. For when Peter the Great built St. Petersburg he decreed that all the stone masons in the country must work exclusively in the city named after him. Thus during that era the rest of the country had to make do with erecting only wooden buildings.
We also passed several abandoned churches that rose out of the water, part of the drowned towns inundated when, also in despotic fashion, Stalin ordered the Neva to be dammed to create the enormous Rybinsk reservoir. According to the story, 'Good Old Joe' forgot to tell the people there about the dam and the reservoir. They didn't know they were soon to be homeless, or awfully wet, until the water rose around them. Our ship passed over the drowned remains of over 40 cities and an untold number of farms as we navigated the reservoir -- an astoundingly ruthless bureacratic bungle now acknowledged to be a huge and tragic mistake. The cities of Kizhi, Yaroslavl and Kostoroma were picturesque. In Yaroslavl we attended a terrific folk music concert. Kizhi was my one contact with Russian extortionism. As we walked up the path from the boat to the village a blond bandit, all of three or four years, marched determinedly straight at me and stopped, blocking my path, with her nose against my knee. She thrust a tiny, wilted bouquet of wildflowers at me. Obviously I was intended to buy them or else. I paid up.
MOSCOW
Someone once said, speaking of the great composers, that it is an impertinence to compare masters. It is probably equally impertinent to compare great cities. But Moscow is to my mind even more beautiful than Paris. Or even more visually exciting than Rome and Florence or Venice. It is also a city filled with delight and happy surprises. I recommend the Moscow Circus for fun. And did you know that there are 15 churches within the Kremlin walls?
As far as this nouveau Russophile is concerned Russia is the blind date you were apprehensive about meeting but who turns out to be beautiful, charming, intelligent, exciting, bedazzling, -- but with enough imperfections so that you are not totally overawed and dumbstruck. We loved it. The people are splendid. The scenery is awesome. The architecture is stunningly unique and beautiful. The metro is safe and efficient. There is more great art in St. Petersburg and Moscow than in any other place in the world. One sorrows that such a great country has endured -- and endures -- so much.
Bob Pride
