Feature
From Russia With Love
By: Dana Saftoiu
A journey by train from Vladivostok to St Petersburg proves to be a wonderful introduction to the vast expanse of space that is Russia. This account shows the diversity of vast country that many Romanians have grown to dislike intensely, even hate
Posted: 17/11/2007
St Basil's Cathedral, in Moscow.
Ahead of our departure, we had already felt the full tilt of Russian bureaucracy when applying for tourist visas. Proof of hotel reservations and travel plans had to be presented in order to obtain a visa that would start precisely at the time of entering the country and expire precisely when we had left. An unforeseen day's delay might have meant a ban on ever visiting the Russian Federation again. While going through this process I was frankly willing to forgo our $1,500 deposit and change our vacation destination. Thanks to my husband's patience, a couple of helpful friends and the watchful eye of the National Geographic visa experts, we managed to get what we thought were the right documents to travel through the Russian Federation. The ten minutes the border guard spent examining my passport - the scotch taped additional pages added by the American Embassy in Bucharest gave him a lot of trouble - made me sweat a little but it was all in order and we were able to enter Russia.
Even if I had not looked at a map and seen how big this country is, the trip from the airport to our hotel in the centre of Moscow was an indication of its size. Seven lanes of traffic in each direction are not enough to carry all the cars moving through Moscow at rush hour! Everything is a different scale there: bigger is better. The streets are larger than anywhere in Europe and even the US. The buildings go on for blocks. We spent several hours in the Kremlin visiting museums accompanied by an amusing guide who reinforced the idea that Russians think big is beautiful! We were warned not to ask the value of any of the objects because they were "priceless".
Moscow is a vibrant city where every other building is either beautifully restored or in the process of being restored. The shades of grey from the old communist regime have been replaced with yellow, beige and the colours of natural materials. None of the unnaturally bright colours you often see in Bucharest are present here. The streets in the centre of Moscow are clean and elegant with all the designer stores one finds in any major capital of Europe. We ate in a couple of great restaurants with interesting food and prices that matched the ones in the great capitals as well. Today we are off to Vladivostok to join our National Geographic group and board the train that will be our 'home' for 12 days. The time difference between Bucharest and Vladivostok is bigger (eight hours) than between Bucharest and New York - and so is the distance!
We've been told that cities and people are different than they are in Moscow - that out there they don't care about Moscow and that Moscow doesn't care about them!
On the way out of the Buriat Republic, our train snakes around the massive Lake Baikal.
Sunday, 9th September, 2007
The only eventful moment of the flight to Vladivostok was figuring out that the small hairless creature one of the passengers had in a wicker carrier was actually a hairless cat! We were picked up at the airport by a bus with a bunch of other Americans from other groups that were going to join us on the train back to Moscow. Our tour manager greeted us in the hotel lobby, gave us the key and told us to join the group whenever we felt like it. We did later on in the evening for dinner as well as on the second day for a bunch of museum visits, guided by a local tour guide. We were all a bit eager to get on with the trip and thought two days in Vladivostok was one day too many. The comparison with San Francisco was only accurate in its position as a mirror image to the American city! It seems that some important international event is planned for 2012 for which the Russian government allotted a large construction and improvements budget - maybe it will look like San Francisco after all!
We boarded the train almost an hour late but were finally able to settle in our small - eight square metres - quarters. The lower bunk was a small double bed which turned into a couch during the day. We had a small closet and a number of shelves to put various items - enough to empty our two small suitcases for the duration of the trip. The bathroom was small but very efficient.
Wednesday, 12th September, 2007
A trader in a market in Novosibirisk makes a sale.
After stopping the next day for several hours in Khabarovsk we spent two and a half days on the train with just occasional short breaks. Our only diversions were the three meals a day and the changing landscapes but the movement of the train and the jetlag most of us were still suffering from made long morning and afternoon naps a daily event.
We also got to know our fellow travellers - most from the US, mostly from the West Coast. The average age must have been somewhere in the late 60s, mostly retired folks who finally had some time and money to spend on travelling and who had been other places and were looking for a more interesting experience
National Geographic prides itself on attracting travellers eager to know about the culture of the places they visit. Our resident lecturer is a lady who spent some time teaching in Vladivostok and wrote a book about Russia. We found her interesting although not as knowledgeable as lecturers we've had on other NG trips. We did however learn about the "colonisation" of Siberia, none of which seemed to have been undergone by willing participants.
We are so used to moving from one continent to another that it is not unusual to get ona plane in the middle of the winter and get off in the middle of the summer. Traveling by train such long distances allows you to actually notice the changing seasons. In Vladivostok it was still summer and all the trees were green. By the second day, traveling slightly north and west and a bit higher in altitude, the leaves had already turned yellow and orange.
Thursday, 13th September, 2007
The largest bust of Lenin, in Ulaan Ude.
The Mongolians were much more expeditious but they too had their own procedures! The tough part was that we would have to go through the same thing on our way back from the spur of the trip that took us to Ulaan Baatar.
We spent a full day in Ulaan Baatar, first visiting a monastery complex where we were introduced to the basics of Mongolian Buddhism. It was hard to figure out how genuine it all was. The praying monks seemed to spend a lot of time socialising while tourists were gawking and immortalising. The always present cell phone and occasional iPod did not harmonise well with the traditional monastic garb. The young boy monks did not seem to be there of their own accord but were going through the motions nevertheless. Lunch was in a restaurant in the shape of a traditional round yurte and were entertained by a group of young Mongolians singing a variety of traditional songs including throat singing - a low sound emanating from the back of the throat that imitates noises made by animals, which is very difficult to perform and takes years of training to perfect. We found out later that the group was fairly well known abroad.
Our next interesting visit was a way out of the city, to a family raising yaks. They lived in a traditional yurte that was covered with felt but with bits of old clothing - a testimony to their meagre living conditions: no running water or electricity and no obvious means of earning a living. Nevertheless they were happy to show us around and offer some of the few foods traditional to yak farmers. This family did not seem to be on the official touring circuit. They were friends of our Mongolian guide who wanted us to see a real Mongolian yak farming family.
Some traditional Mongolian houses, or yurtes.
Sunday, 16th September, 2007
Speaking of guides, unlike our last National Geographic trip, on this one we had a different guide in each city we visited. They seemed to go with the rented buses and a hold over from the communist days when tourists were shown only certain things. Although young enough to have grown up mainly after the fall of communism the guides used the same language I remember hearing in Romania 30 years ago. The Mongolian guide spoke of her country being "liberated" from China in 1921 and of the great educational improvements of her country during communism but not of the lost traditions and religions. In Ulaan Ude (the capital of the Buryat Republic) the main square was dominated by the largest Lenin head in the world. Our local guide was proud to tell us that it even made it in the Guinness Book of Records. Close by was a large picture of Putin with the latest Buryat president, the first appointed rather than elected and the original ethnic population is only a minority now after years of Slavic immigration. We were shown in every town statues and monuments related to communism although occasionally a previously ignored character from their history before the revolution was recognised.
In Irkutsk we visited the house of one of the exiled Decembrists, Prince Volkonsky, and his wife Maria Volkonskaya. A wonderful concert had been prepared by the director of the museum and some local pianists and opera singers. The house had been painstakingly restored to its original layout after having been shelter to 20 families. Although a member of the wealthiest families in Russia of the early 19th century, Prince Volkonsky had been rehabilitated by the communist regime because he had once fought for the abolishment of serfdom.
Traditional country windows.
Novosibirsk was one of the more interesting towns we visited so far on our trip. It boasted one of the largest opera houses in the world with 1,600 seats, built in the Stalin era and opened after the end of the war as well as a smaller town (Akademgorodok) where important research was being done in various institutions and where the scientists lead a charmed and isolated life. Much of that atmosphere was still present although we could not find out how much of it was still due to the Russian government.
Yekaterinburg was a short stop with a visit to the church built recently on the site where the tsar and his family had been executed during the Bolshevik revolution. Curiously enough the house survived many years only to be demolished in the 1970s. Large pictures of the family were displayed outside the church as well as inside it.
The last city we visited before getting to our destination in Moscow was Kazan. Its Kremlin houses the largest mosque in Europe, an orthodox and a catholic church and the city prides itself in being tolerant with all religions.
Moscow was the last stop for the train travellers while a few of us chose to board a regular Russian train to travel for a few more days to St Petersburg. My husband had been there and always described it as the most beautiful city he had ever seen. It is indeed impressive, planned and built all at once, a city built on a grand scale, a city of rivers, bridges and islands. The majority of buildings are made of stucco, in excellent condition and the same height. The city boasts more than 300 palaces and as many more mansions and has been called the Venice of the north. St Petersburg is a source of great pride to the Russian and in constant cultural competition with Moscow.
In Mongolia, a farmer milks a yak.
Having returned from this journey, many of our friends have asked how we liked it. It is not a trip I would recommend to everyone, but the glimpse we saw of Russia left the impression that it was very impressive, vast and diverse. Russians are special people with great national pride. Their cultural patrimony is huge and not widely understood. I don't by any means claim to understand Russia after a three-week trip but I would like to think that we broke the barrier that communism put between us and the Russians.
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