Travels in Russia, April 6 to 13, 2010

This month I was in Moscow for a trade show. As a stark contrast to the cherry and magnolia trees blossoming in BC, Canada, Moscow still had patches of snow on the ground, frozen rivers, leaf-less Birch tree forests and its grass was still a winter brown. Despite this, my brain was constantly exercised by trying to decipher the Cyrillic alphabet of the billboards and signposts into Roman letters. As we passed nuclear reactors with white smoke billowing from their stacks, the lowering sun glinted off the golden globes atop Orthodox Church towers. Yet, despite the nuclear reactors, the skies seemed much clearer and less polluted than the Chinese skies I had peered into last month. *

We were put up at the infamous 4,000-room Intourist Hotel, Cosmos (photos 1 - a view from my hotel room - 2 to 4 - the statue is France's General de Gaulle - and 6 - one wonders what kind of compliment one got from the chef: I like your hairstyle today? Ooh! Nice boots? I wish now I had bought a coffee just to find out!), which was a smoke-infested pit (to the non-smoker that I am), and only 3 receptionists on duty! First I was told there was no reservation for me, then when I informed them I was one of a delegation of 148 Chinese (I am Caucasian so of course this possibility had not crossed their mind - not that I blame them for this fact), they said yes there was a room and gave me the key. I dragged my bags up to the 20th floor but when I tried to access the room found that my electronic key wouldn't work. I dragged my suitcases back down and got the receptionist to activate it. I dragged them up again and this time was able to enter the room, but found to my consternation that there were already suitcases and wash kits in the room. So I dragged my suitcases down a second time and informed them of this fact. They said 'Yes, you are sharing with a person named Liu.” Well there is no-one named Liu among my colleagues. I tried to tell them that I was uncomfortable sharing with a stranger. They raised their collective eyebrows and said “Oh really? You are uncomfortable?”, as if this were an anomaly. So I told them I was prepared to pay for a single room if they had any left. They told me yes but that this would be very expensive. At this point I desperately tried to find my colleagues and even tried texting the person who had arranged it all still in China, but my G4 phone was not working in Russia and none of my colleagues was back at the hotel yet as apparently (I learned later) their bus had been caught in a 3-hour-long traffic jam.

  

  

I was sent to the Intourist office and luckily the lady there had a bit more sense for she found my name and confirmed that yes indeed a single room had been booked for me. Then she was on the phone for an inordinate amount of time in Russian explaining the situation to the receptionist and finally handed me a piece of paper with a new room number written on it. I asked her if it were a non-smoking room. She promptly phoned back to the reception and gave me another number (across the hall from the former, but which had a better view).

I guessed later that I had asked a stupid question because the hotel had apparently not heard of such a thing as a non-smoking room and I, who am allergic to smoke as well as a non-smoker, immediately noticed the smell of smoke and the ash tray conveniently placed in my so-called non-smoking room. Well, one saving grace, as it was an old hotel it had a window I could crank open and I left it open for the duration. I was high enough up on the 15th floor that the constant traffic noise and gasoline fumes could be well tolerated in exchange for some fresh air.

Well that hurdle leapt, I went down to buy some bottled water to brush my teeth in and had to pay the equivalent of CDN$7.00 at the bar to buy a 2-litre bottle! I next went to find out about the internet (which to my disgust was not free) when one of my colleagues turned up, so I was less tempted at that point to turn right around and grab a plane back to Canada the next morning - or, less drastically, to change hotels to one that had non-smoking rooms and free internet.

I remembered that the last time I was in Moscow for the same trade fair there had been free internet at the fairgrounds so I resolved to wait until the next day to check my e-mails.

I will gladly omit the details of the fair itself, but Moscow traffic being what it was, it took us two hours to get to the fairgrounds along the highway for what should have been a 40-minute ride I am told. One day we actually took a different route through the city centre and arrived in 45 minutes!

On the last day of the fair, when 4:00 p.m. was reached, our booth stripped and most of our samples given away, we had some spare time and so packed back into our bus with the Chinese contingent and were taken to the tourist shopping street of Moscow, Arbatskaya, and for the first time on the trip I enjoyed myself, photographing the wares on display, the people, the scenery, etc. (photos 7 to 29). We were told to be back at the bus by a certain time and knowing the Chinese to be prompt I was of course also prompt, but then ended up waiting 45 minutes for stragglers. In hindsight, had I known this was to be the case, I'd have grabbed my dinner at Macdonald's PECTOPAH or the Starbucks (CTAPBUKC) on that street. As it was, the bus went on to a Chinese restaurant (the Chinese contingent refusing to eat at Russian or other types of restaurants in Moscow) and waited for them to finish as I am not really interested in Chinese food unless I am in China. I was told they usually took 1/2 an hour to eat as the food wasn't very good at these restaurants either (the breakfast buffet at the Cosmos was horrendous), but ended up waiting 1 1/2 hours as I was told by my own (tee-total) colleagues that some of the Chinese had begun drinking alcohol and that was the reason for the delay. So I settled finally for a pizza at the Cosmos with smokers all around me. Well, you know you are in trouble when all the restaurants, bars, and cafes in the hotel include cigarettes and a “smoking kit” in their menus!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

The day of our departure was a Saturday and the Tourist association our Chinese group was booked with, in order to obtain the tourist visas to come to Russia, was offering a tour to the Kremlin and Red Square. As our flights were not until 7:00 in the evening, I thought that finally this was something I might enjoy - rather than trying to travel about in the Moscow metro on my own and worry about luggage storage and getting to the airport on time - so I hopped happily on the bus with the others at 9:00 a.m. Our first stop was the Kremlin. We had a Chinese guide (with not much English) and had to have a official guide to get into the Kremlin, so, sadly, we were matched with a little old Croatian man whose Chinese was non existent but whose English was poor too, so it seems the group abandoned him after the visit to the first church.

Photos were easy here - no limits except for inside the churches, unfortunately, as they were so splendidly painted - but for one young Chinese guy who stepped in front of every single monument just as I was about to shoot, in order to have his own photo taken by his friends - so very frustrating for someone who likes to take photos of monuments on their own without any people in front of them. So I had to practice my patience on top of not understanding anything that was said by the guide. I almost bought a guidebook to the Kremlin in English in the church, but as we had to leave our bags behind in the bus and I had brought no money with me, I lost the chance and the one colleague I was with was reluctant to part with his roubles despite my promising him that I would pay him back once we were back in the bus. And the book was a bargain too at only $5!

  

  

  

  

Outside the Kremlin there were some marvellous statues and of course Lenin's tomb where we saw the first of many bridal parties in this area. Being a Saturday, a sunny one at that, and one of the first weekends of Spring, there were many wedding shoots going on as the Red Square seems to be one of the places for bridal parties to be photographed in Moscow. We must have seen a dozen or so (and as you will notice, I included below a few that I photographed myself).

  

Then we entered Red Square just around the corner. This is the first time I had seen it in daylight. We seemed to have been pushed back in time for wasn't that Tsar Nicholas II over there, talking to Lenin and that man there a Cossack soldier, perhaps?

  

  

  

  

  

A visit to the Gum Department Store was also on the cards (photos 61 to 67) and finally St. Basil's Cathedral on its sunny side (photos 68 and 69). Personally, I could have happily stayed longer here just soaking in the environment and clicking away, but we were suddenly rushed into a tunnel under the road (photo 70) in order to return to our bus and drive to another Chinese restaurant for lunch. (I passed on this opportunity again as I had brought some cold pizza from last night's hotel dinner with me). Then I waited another hour or so in the bus with my book and my music when we drove to a shopping centre so that my travel companions could purchase a few more gifts or souvenirs before heading to the airport. One of our Chinese contingent bought a huge doll which she later noticed had a sticker on it saying “Made in China.” Everyone had a big laugh about that.

  

  

  

 

The last photo above is of a ubiquitous billboard advertising a concert. I had recognised the face before I'finished transcribing in my head the Cyrillic letters into Roman ones and was happy to find out I had guessed correctly who it was.

* As pointed out later by my brother, an energy expert, “the 'white smoke' [ I ] saw from the nuclear reactors is not smoke - it is water vapour - there is no combustion in nuclear energy. In China, on the other hand, the vast majority of power production is from coal, with lower standards of stack opacity (i.e. smoke particles emitted) than North America and Europe.”

My trip to Saint Petersburg was not business related (for once) but personal. As the visa to Russia was so expensive, and it was valid for a whole month, it made perfect sense for me to put to use some of my accumulated hotel points and travel to this city that I had long heard to be more beautiful than Moscow and to find a non-smoking, new hotel (in contrast to my unfortunate experiences with the Moscow hotel that I related above). As I had worked solidly over the Easter holidays, I was due some time off (well I work most weekends and holidays anyway so I was more than due, really) and I was looking forward to some down time, some me time, some fresh air and sunny skies.

I was in fact lucky with the hotel, the weather and the safe metro system and it was only my lack of Russian that made me trust too much in the incorrect information of others. My lack of Russian also prevented me from realising that there was a grocery store right next to my hotel, knowledge that might have prevented me from spending several hundred roubles in the somewhat expensive hotel restaurant.

The day after my arrival here was a Sunday, so I headed off with a few roubles in my pocket to take the direct line of the metro from my hotel to Nevsky Prospekt, which I had been told by my concierge was the centre of town. As I headed down this street toward the river, I turned my head to look at the Griboyedov Canal and the first wonder I beheld was the Cathedral of the Resurrection, one of the three orthodox churches recommended for visiting and the concierge's favourite. It was to become my favourite too, but as this was only day one, I was not to know the secret splendours that were inside. I merely saw the entry price of 320 roubles and backed off, contenting myself merely with taking photos of the outside. I also approached the actors outside dressed up in 17th or 18th century garb but they wanted 100 roubles per photo. As this was beyond my budget as well, I turned back down toward Nevsky Prospekt after visiting the souvenir market behind the church. All along the walls of the buildings flanking this canal were works of art - I supposed made accessible to the people who could not afford to visit the Russian Museum or the Hermitage, whose entrance fee I had been told was more than my taxi fare from the airport had been! I later learned these were copies of the actual art works in these museums. Pity, but still, the copies were nice to look at despite being exposed daily to sun and other types of inclement weather.

  

  

I decided it would perhaps be a good idea at this point to buy a guide book as the maps themselves were not telling me much about the crosses my concierge had made on them. So I ventured into the House of Books, the city's largest book shop I read, in an art deco building constructed for Singer sewing machine company and picked up a small guide book cum map for about CDN$10. Once this was in my hands, I was able to figure out that the huge church across the road was the Kazan Cathedral. Here I was threefold lucky as entrance was free, there was a public wedding going on, and there was a wedding photographer and someone else with a camera whose flash was going off sporadically so I thought I might just try and get some non-flash photos somewhat surreptitiously so as not to disturb the headkerchiefed women lighting their candles, which explains why the photos are not perfectly straight! (because I was taking them surreptitiously without putting my eye to the view finder.)

  

  

I then walked down Admiralteisky Prospekt across the front of the Admiralty Building toward St. Isaac's Cathedral. However, as this was another paid entry, I made do once again with taking photos from the outside. My next stop was the Palace Square in front of the Winter Palace a.k.a. the Hermitage Museum. I took a few photos on the square where people were picnicking, roller-blading, cycling, taking horse-drawn carriage rides round the circumference and posing with a different set of actors. I'm glad I had my long lens with me!

  

  

  

Next, I headed out to the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island, photographing the two Rostral Columns and the Peter and Paul Fortress I was headed toward. As I walked around the perimeter of the fortress on the sandy beach (yes, sandy beach!) I came upon a most incongruous sight, people leaning against the wall of the fortress in various states of undress suntanning - in April! in Russia! Note, that while walking along Nevsky Prospekt a couple of hours before, I had been following pedestrians in fur caps, boots and long, warm winter coats! Even the police were wearing bear fur hats, so this sight was completely unexpected. And these were not what you might call the beautiful people of a somewhat younger and sillier age, but mature adults with various types of bodies as you will see. Granted there was sun, and it did seem to be turning their bodies brown, so maybe these were professional suntanners. Who'd have believed me had I not taken the photos, I ask you.

  

  

  

  

  

I then ducked inside the walls of the fortress to see the SS Peter and Paul Cathedral, once again deterred from entering due to the fee they charged. I would have liked to have gone in because this is where the body of the murdered Czar Nicholas II as well as those of some of his royal ancestors have been laid to rest. The next photo is of a statue of Peter the Great sitting, but there is surely something wrong in the proportions - the legs too long, the head too small perhaps?

The guard hut and lamp are on the bridge coming off the island on which the fortress is built. I next headed toward the Congregational mosque, the northernmost mosque in the world, apparently. Beautifully coloured, but of course closed to non-Moslems such as myself. After visiting the site of the Romanovs, I kept running into little boys in sailor uniforms that reminded me of Czarevich Alexei, or at least the depiction of him in that great 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandria. The next boy I photographed was kicking a football against another St Petersburg work of art, to my horror, but I knew no Russian to say “Cease and desist your desecration!”

  

  

  

The sun was starting to lower in the sky, giving me the chance to take some great shots of a clipper in silhouette on the Neva River. The last photo of the day was taken from the bottom of an escalator in the St Petersburg Metro. This is a somewhat shorter escalator that lasts 45 seconds from top to bottom (or bottom to top depending on the direction in which you take it, of course) but some of the escalators in this city's underground transportation system take over 3 minutes! Yes, I actually timed them as I was so amazed at the length. Imagine spending 6 minutes travelling up and down an escalator as part of your daily commute!

  

On Monday, I headed out again, this time to a different part of Saint Petersburg proper, first to the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevsky (photos 42 to 47). I had had to change lines in the metro twice and the only way to see anything once I'd arrived was to pay the entry fees, so I handed over a total of 330 roubles to enter the monastery (but was told no photos were allowed to be taken inside the church or of the monks) and then the graveyards. Due to my restriction of no photos inside the church, I took advantage of the possibility of photographing the graveyards of which there were two sections, one for the famous people, which was well spread out and well kept up, and the other for the not-so-famous, which was overcrowded and rather worse for wear. In the “famous” section I managed to decipher the names of Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Archangelsky, Arensky and Kuinji. The other section is represented in the remaining photos.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Then I changed metro lines twice more to travel to the Liteiny Section, which also entailed a long walk above ground. The jewel in this section was the Smolny Convent of the Resurrection and, next door to it, the Smolny Institute, both now used as museums. I did not enter either of them. During the long walk on the way back, I photographed a typical stop sign (although it took me a while to figure that one out as it was not the usual red hexagonal shape found in most other countries of the world) and how the news is brought to the public. I suppose in this way the city provides news for people who do not want to, or can not afford to, buy their own newspaper. I had seen similar displays of accessible daily news in China. Another photo shows how you can grab a fruit snack on your way to or from the subway station. These glass booths with fruit displayed on the inside were ubiquitous, yet unusual to me.

  

  

On my last day in Saint Petersburg, I had hoped to visit Peterhof or another great palace with gardens outside of the city, but there were no tours going there and neither the hovercraft to Peterhof from downtown nor the fountains at Peterhof itself operate until May, I read. Moreover, with Spring here being later than in my hometown, I did not hold out much hope of seeing any gardens here at their best in April. I shall have to make sure that the next time I am in this area of the world it is sometime during the summer months so as to take full advantage of the beauties to be observed.

Consequently, on Tuesday, I decided to visit some of the areas I had missed on Sunday and perhaps see what all the fuss was about regarding the Cathedral of the Resurrection, which had been my first stop on Sunday. I headed back to Nevsky Prospekt and to the Palace Square entering it this time from the General Staff Building arcade. I then turned up Millionaya Street where an artist was painting her rendition of the canal, so I thought I'd take my own photograph of the view she was admiring and another out toward the Neva River. Saint Petersburg certainly has some great water for reflections! Then I stopped at the Field of Mars to photograph the eternal flame and continued on to the Mikhailovsky Castle, another Monument to Peter the Great, one to Pushkin at Arts Square in front of the State Russian Museum and the Russian Ethnographic Museum, and finally to the Cathedral also known as Our Saviour on the Spilt Blood.

  

  

  

  

Luckily, I still had some roubles left and paid the entry fee, and wow am I ever glad I did. The interiors were so amazing I had one of those moments when you are feeling true bliss. And to top off my high, you were allowed to take as many photos as you liked, no holds barred. Well, you can understand I was in photographic heaven. I have so many photos from this Cathedral visit, I decided to write it up separately below, so that if you're not into gorgeous mosaics you don't have to keep on reading. On the other hand, if you love them as much as I did you can get your fill of them as I did. Of course the photos cannot possibly convey the immense awe of being there in person, but perhaps they will inspire you to visit this delightful place yourself some day.

  

  

  

The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, also known as the Church of our Saviour on the Spilled Blood, is one of the main sights of St. Petersburg, Russia. The spilled blood is that of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, who was assassinated on this site in 1881. As a memorial to his father, Alexander III had the construction of this church begun in 1883 and work was finally completed during the time of Nicholas II in 1907. Funding was provided by the royal family as well as many private donors.

  

  

  

Inside the church is a shrine over the site of the assassination embellished with topaz, lazurite and other semi-precious stones. There are some architectural similarities with St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.

  

  

  

The Cathedral has more than 7,500 square metres of mosaics designed by some of the most celebrated Russian artists of the day. The walls and ceilings inside the Church are completely covered in pictures of Saints and scenes from the Bible.

  

  

  

After the Russian Revolution, the church was ransacked and looted, and its interior was badly damaged. The Soviet government closed it in the early 1930s. During World War II, the church was used as a temporary storage site for the corpses of those who died both in combat and of starvation and illness. It sustained further damage as a consequence. After the war, it was used as a warehouse for potatoes!

  

  

  

In July 1970, restoration of the church was begun and it was finally reopened in August 1997. However, it is not used as a full-time place of worship, rather as a Mosaic Museum and a memorial to Tsar Alexander II.

  

  

  

It is an amazing place and well worth the entry fee. I encourage you all to go and see it when you are next in Saint Petersburg.