russia: pushkin and st petersburg

Most people who come to visit Russia have a limited amount of time to explore the country. Russia is so big that it is pretty much impossible to see everything, even if that's your job. (And I don't think that job exists in Russia, but I could be wrong.)

Rachel came to Russia with about a week and a half to see what she could. I know that Moscow and St Petersburg are the cliche cities of the country, but that's for good reason. They have heaps to see and do, great public transportation, and fabulous food. 

No matter how much time you spend in each city, you can always find something new.

I wrote that explanation for why Rachel and I went to St Petersburg for the weekend she was in Russia, instead of a smaller, less known town or city. We took the train of course, because that's the best transport system in the country.

For the first and only time (so far,) that I've been in Russia, the conductor in our train wagon did not come in and wake us up before arriving in St Petersburg. I woke up, and immediately checked my watch to see if I should go back to sleep.

I was shocked when I realized it was after our arrival time, and we had already arrived in St Petersburg. I had no idea how long the train was scheduled to wait in St Petersburg, but I did not want to get stuck on the train until it stopped again, not knowing when or where that would be. (The final destination was Helsinki!) I woke Rachel up and rushed us off the train, then took a big breath to calm down.

We stayed in the station for an hour or two, getting ourselves sorted out. After waiting around, we got on the metro, and rode to Pushkinskaya station, because it is right next door to Vitebsky Railway Station. 

I'd already seen this station, but I still love it as it is one of the oldest stations in St Petersburg, and has classical architecture.

Plus, this was the station from which the elektrichka train we wanted was scheduled to depart. It took us a while to figure out where to find tickets for this station, Rachel figured that out. Soon enough, we were on our way to Pushkin.

There was a manor and estate on this spot as early as 100 years before Pushkin was officially founded in 1710 as the village to support a royal palace called Tsarskoye Selo. 

The land was first ruled by the Swedes, with people being documented here all the way back to 1501. Wikipedia tells me how the name of the place changed in various languages, and how it came to be Tsarskoye Selo.

Fun fact: the first public railways in Russia started here in 1837, called Tsarskoye Selo Railways. After the October Revolution the town was renamed Detskoye Selo; then in 1937 the name was changed again to Pushkin, to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the death of the famous Russian poet.

Current population of Pushkin is around 92,000, it is 25 kilometers south of St Petersburg.

The train station in Pushkin is pretty lame, especially when you think that it was established as a place to support a royal palace. Oh well. We got off the train and started walking up the main street right in front of the station.

Even though it was only the end of September, it had been cooler weatherwise, so the trees were much further along in their anuual rainbow than in Moscow. We got to see that as we walked, and it was awesome.

The walk to get to the palace and palace grounds took us past a church. The church itself wasn't very interesting, but the landscaping around it was quite photogenic. As we walked by we didn't see an open door, which was disappointing for me. (I love looking inside churches, Rachel isn't an art fan.) Oh well.

We got to palace grounds a bit before they officially opened, but not by a long time, so it was easy to wait. The park around the palace has an entry fee, separate from the entry fee for the palace. The grounds are extensive, and we got lucky in so many ways.

The sky was grey, but not a flat grey. The trees were all sorts of colours. It was not raining. The temperature was chilly but not too cold. I write all these things to say it was a fantastic day to take photos. We went into the park as soon as we could, and wandered around with no real goals in mind.

We loved the big pond, (which is really a small lake, but I wasn't the one who came up with the name,) and the reflections it created. We found the pyramid, I'm not sure what it actually is.

There was a small Chinese bridge we did not see, since we didn't look carefully enough at the map ahead of time. We also enjoyed a small building that looked quite similar to the main palace. I don't know what it was, but I imagine there are temporary exhibitions inside from time to time.

The palace opens to independent visitos at 1200, and the queues begin about 30 minutes before then. There are two routes for going through the palace, with separate entrances for each of them. 

I don't think it's possible to pay one fee and go through both routes, but I think that's what we did, though unintentionally.

Finding the right place to queue was a bit of a guessing game, I didn't really know where we should go. We paid our fees, put our coats and bags into coat check, then started to follow the crowds.

Like every other royal palace I've seen in Russia, there was a lot of gold. A LOT OF GOLD. Many grand rooms with fantastic ceilings, beautifully placed mirrors, intricate chandeliers, etc... 

The powers that be did a good job in setting up the palace for tourists, it isn't hard to figure out where to go next. That being said, there are a lot of tourists, so it's hard to take photos without people.

Tsarskoye Selo is the palace most famous for one room: the Amber Room. There is a lot of history and mystery to the room, what you see now is not the original room. (Which disappeared during WW2, and has never been found. There are a lot of ideas about what happened, but nothing has ever been proven.)

The current Amber Room is the one place in the palace where you're not allowed to take photos or video. I'd heard about the room, and read a couple stories, and was ready to be impressed. But I wasn't, and I'm not sure why. The room isn't all that big, and amber isn't very bright. I could see that most people did like the room, I guess I'm the odd one out on that.

By the time we left the palace we were blinged out. I love palaces, but all the gold gets to you after a while. It wasn't hard to find our way back to the train station, where we didn't have to wait too long for the next train back to St Petersburg.

After arriving back in St Petersburg we hopped back on the metro to get to our hostel, a capsule hostel. Capsules are small, but they're private, and relatively cheap, so I'm a fan. After dropping off our bags we walked to one of the most recognized sights in the city: the Church on Spilled Blood.

This church is often mixed up with St Basil's in Moscow, because they both have amazing exterior decorations. Lots of colours, twisting lines, etc... The interiors of the churches couldn't be more different though. 

I tell all visitors its worth seeing the inside of the Church on Spilled Blood, but not worth going inside St Basil's.

Rachel appreciated the interior of the Church on Spilled Blood, but wasn't blown away since she doesn't love art, hee hee. There are mosaic frescoes everywhere, which can be pretty overwhelming if it isn't something you see often. Plus there are heaps of people, and bright colours.

After that I took Rachel to my favourite restaurant in St Petersburg, Namaste. Yum. Both of us crashed early that night.

Our Sunday started with packing up and checking out, then leaving our bags at the hostel. We noticed almost immediately that the weather wasn't amazing, but oh well, that's life. Our first sight of the day was another church, but since I knew Rachel was already a bit churched out after the Church on Spilled Blood from the day before, we didn't go inside this one. 

Instead, we bought tickets to climb up the spiral staircase to get to the walkway that goes around the outside of the rotunda of St Isaacs Cathedral. 

There are fantastic views over the entire city from all the way around the rotunda, and even though I'd seen these views before, I loved them just as much this time. 

The trees were already changing colours, which meant every visible park looked like a rainbow. Just like the last time, I was annoyed by some tourists as they sortof blocked off narrow walkways while trying to take the perfect photo for social media. 

A bit of walking on random streets brought us to the river, which we followed for a while.

We crossed one of the many bridges, which brought us to a small park in the middle of which we found a Solovetsky stone. The stone was brought from the Solovetsky islands, which were the sight of the first gulag camps. The stone honours and remembers everyone who was sent to one of those camps.

Just up the street from this stone is a mosque, decorated like many of those along the former Silk Road trading route. In other words, the outside is gorgeous. Rachel and I took a quick look, but did not go inside. In a future visit I hope I'm able to go inside.

Our next sight was the Museum of Political History in Russia. Both of us enjoy history, and geopolitics, so it was a great museum to visit. It was also pretty intense, as Russia has a very long political history. There were sections for the different chronological parts of Russian history, but the biggest focus was on the Soviet years.

Lots of specific items, lots of photos, lots of propaganda posters, lots of information. There were a lot of medals, clothing, and diplomas. There were also a few big dioramas of what living spaces might've looked like for different people at different times in different parts of the Russian empire.

As we left the museum it had started raining. Not a heavy rain, but still pretty unpleasant. Rachel was satisfied with what we'd seen in the city, so I proposed getting dinner even though it was still pretty early. Back to Namaste :) After that we went to get gelato, I'm usually a sucker for that as well, even when the weather is chilly and rainy, like it was that day.

After eating a lot more than either one of us needed, we went back to the hostel, picked up our bags, and walked to the train station. Goodbye St Petersburg, I will be back.

russia: nizhny novgorod and bor again

During my first year in Moscow, Claire and I went to Nizhny Novgorod for a weekend, for two reasons. First, it was home to another branch of the school we work for in Moscow. Second, it was going to be one of the host cities for the 2018 World Cup.

That trip was at the very end of March, beginning of April, and when we left, we were not big fans of the city. We knew that part of it was because we visited at an ugly time of year. Winter was over, but the city hadn't yet been cleaned up, and all the beauty of spring hadn't yet arrived.

I couldn't help but wonder if the reason we didn't like the city was because of circumstances that could change, so I decided to go back this fall.

My train arrived on time, of course, at the ridiculously annoying hour of 0430. That's too early to wake up, but too late to stay awake all night, argh. Anywho, I sat in the train station for around three hours, because walking at that hour did not sound fun.

I don't know if any renovations had been done on the train station in the past two years, but it didn't feel like the interior of the station was the same as when Claire and I visited. There was a giant Lenin mosaic on one wall in a large hall, which seems like something I would've noticed last time. 

Maybe we just missed that hall last time, I've been known to be really close to something and completely miss it.

The view upon leaving the train station was the same, just at a warmer time of year. When I turned my head around, the outside of the train station looked the same as I remembered, not very interesting.

Since I was traveling by myself in a place I remembered not liking very much, I'd made a tentative itinerary for the day. I decided to start my trip by returning to Bor, the town on the other side of the river. Claire and I had gone to Bor out of curiosity about riding on the cable car, more than a desire to see the town. 

I wanted to find out if there was anything we'd missed seeing.

The walk to get to the cable car station from the train station was long, especially because I stopped regularly to take photos. The weather in Nizhny had already started to change, so there were plenty of orange and yellow trees, everything was beautiful. Walking over the main bridge was still really windy, but it was worth stopping to take a few photos.

I got off course even before getting to the bridge, I went to see a church Claire and I had skipped. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral sits on the right bank of the river, not too far from the new football stadium. The outside was yellow and had a typical orthodox 'look' to it. The inside was awesome, I'm glad I went inside. The entire interior was painted with frescoes, and the iconostasis up front was wood with colourful icons. The side iconostases were also wood, and also awesome. There were quite a few people inside the church, so I didn't get to take all the photos I wanted, but I definitely appreciated what I was seeing.

After crossing the river I walked partway on the boardwalk, which had been finished since Claire and I were there. Just about anything looks better than a construction zone, but the finished product really does look nice. That being said, it's still pretty windy, that wasn't any different.

I also stepped off the walking route to see another tree, this one had also been under renovation when Claire and I had seen it. The inside of this church was really boring, and not worth seeing, but the onion domes outside were really colourful. Almost like a baker had been able to play with ganache to create different patterns.

When I finally got to the cable car station I'd already walked well over seven kilometers, in a bit over two hours. The ride still cost just 100 rubles each way, which is a great price for a 15 minute ride.

Lenin was still where I remembered him being in Bor, as was the WW2 memorial. Instead of going straight back to the cable car, I walked a bit further in town, just to see what was there. I found a small monastery with bright gold domes on the main church, and back roads that looked like they'd been paved a loooong time ago with no upkeep since.

I also found the main intersection in the middle of town. There was a local market on one side, with plenty of produce, dairy, shoes, plants, etc... available. Anything I might've wanted, but I didn't need anything.

Except some of the baked goods I found in a small bakery. I definitely needed those. ;)

There was also a church on that intersection, and a big supermarket. Overall, it was a great place to stand around and just watch people.

After that intersection I found my way back to the cable car and headed back over the river. From there I walked to my hostel and checked in, another long-ish walk. 

I guess I hadn't paid enough attention to the map when I made the booking, but oh well.

After resting up for a while I walked back out to see at least one more museum. I headed to one of several Gorky related museums in town, only to discover that it was under renovation, argh. There was a sign on the door pointing me to another museum, one that I ended up liking probably better than what I'd intended to see in the first place.

The museum I did see was an apartment in which Russian writer Maxim Gorky had lived with his family for a while. 

It was neat to see the different rooms, their furniture and interior decoration. Again with the awful wallpaper, yuck. Women did not get to wear comfortable clothing. There were also informational signs all around, which were conveniently in several languages.

After leaving the apartment museum, I realized I had time for yet another museum, this one a history museum. Officially called the Nizhny Novgorod State Museum of History and Architecture, this one was in a renovated mansion.

I wouldn't say mansion, I'd say former palace, but I'm not the one who decides the specific wording used.

This museum required visitors to wear shoe covers, something I find incredibly wasteful. The weather was good, so no one was going to track in dirt, and these plastic shoe covers don't prevent the damage done by women wearing heels on a wooden floor.

The museum had a fair number of grand rooms with amazing ceilings and chandeliers, as well as intricate wooden floors. 

I liked the rooms with old school furniture, I did not like the old school wallpaper. I loved the old school pajamas, I did not love the fake fruit on one of the tables.

After leaving the museum I made my way to the main pedestrian street in the city. I went back to a burger restaurant I remembered from my last visit, which was good, and so much cheaper than it would've been in Moscow. I also went back to the cafe I remembered from our last visit, because of my memory of a really good chocolate cheesecake. 

Why mess with something that wasn't broken?

The next morning I woke up to rain. Argh. I packed up and waited around for it to get better, but it didn't. Because of the lousy weather (hard rain, cold wind, dark clouds,) I didn't do much during the second day of this visit. I kept finding ways to take cover: in supermarkets, churches, archways into courtyards, etc... The rain finally let up after dark, go figure.

Instead of wandering around the city like I'd wanted to do, I killed a lot of time in the burger place from the night before, then more time in the coffee place. 

Is there such a thing as too much chocolate cheesecake? I don't think so ;)

I finally left the cafe, and made my way to the metro, riding the entire length of one of the two lines Nizhny Novgorod has. Just like Moscow, all of the stations were clean. Just like Moscow, a few of the stations were really well decorated and designed, and the others were boring but still nice. The biggest difference I noticed was in the time of how often trains came through each station, as it wasn't nearly as often in Nizhny Novgorod as it was in the other three cities I'd seen. 

Since I've seen the metro systems in St Petersburg and Moscow and Novosibirsk, so it was neat to have another comparison to add to the list. Russia does metro systems really really well.

My train back to Moscow went as expected. Will I return to Nizhny? Probably not. Even so, the dream of a full weekend with good weather is going to stick in my mind for a while, hahaha.

russia: petrograd and a quick repeat of shlisselburg

I've been to St Petersburg quite a few times, but it never gets old. I want to go back in mid September for a couple reasons, the biggest one that I wanted to retake some of the photos I'd lost when I lost my camera after my last trip to St Petersburg.

Because of that desire, the first day of this trip was almost exactly the same as the last first day of the trip. (Does that make any sense?) My train arrived on time, as expected, then I hung out in the train station for a couple hours.

Instead of taking my backpack to my accomodation, I made my way straight to the wooden church just outside city limits. 

Go figure, I arrived about 30 minutes before the gate to the property opened, argh. I spent the first few minutes walking around the outside of the wooden walls, then made my way into a forest area.

As it was a bit cooler in St Petersburg than in Moscow, some of the leaves had already begun to change colour. I'm a sucker for fall trees, I love that rainbow. Most of what I saw was still green, but there were hints at yellow, yay! As I walked along a couple paths I saw people kinda peeking out from tents, it seemed as if they were living in the woods. I don't know, but their campsites did not look like anything official.

The church was the same as before, I only needed about 10 minutes inside the property to take the photos I wanted. From there I took the bus back to the city, then the metro, then another bus to get back to Shlisselburg.

I visited the fort again, there were far fewer visitors in September than in June, but there were still plenty of people around. I wanted to go up the stairs to the area along the top of the old walls, but much of it was being renovated, so I skipped that this time.

The beach was just as beautiful last time, though the water was at a higher level, meaning the beach area was actually smaller than last time. 

A peaceful area though, I can see why most visitors spend a fair amount of time out there.

As soon as I got back to Shlisselburg I went straight to Lenin, who actually looked better in September than in June. (The leaves were changing colours, yay.) I also went back to the supermarket, hoping to find the chocolate brand I'd found during my last two visits. Unfortunately, they didn't have it anymore. I was gutted.

I didn't have to wait long for the next bus to St Petersburg, and the ride was the same it has been each time I've ridden this bus previously. 

Since this was the third time I'd come back into the city this way I knew exactly where I was when I got off the bus, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

This is where this trip was totally different from the last trip, I didn't repeat anything else. I rode a couple metro trains, then walked the rest of the way to my next sight in the city: the Rumyantsev mansion.

This mansion (now a house museum,) was originally built in the 1740s for Grand Duke Mikhail Golitsyn. Ownership changed in 1802, when Nikolay Rumyantsev became the owner.

The family owned the house for the next 100 years or so, and its appearance changed when a few architects were employed to make changes.

The Rumyantsev family opened a privately owned museum in 1831 to show off the collection of nearly 30,000 books, nearly half of which were in foreign languages. As far as I can tell, the last private owner was Grand Duke Lev Kochubey, who gave it to the Museum of the History and Developement of Leningrad in 1938.

I was thrilled to find out there was NOT a special entry fee for foreigners, woo hoo. The house is beautiful, and huge. 

There are three levels, with a whole bunch of really grand rooms. The ballroom was bright and gold. There were a few rooms with paintings on the walls, and a couple rooms with historical exhibits.

I'm pretty sure I didn't get through the entire house, so I wouldn't mind going back for another visit.

At that point my body was starting to remind me that I'd been on the go pretty much the whole day. I went to Namaste for dinner, then went to my capsule hostel to check in and crash.

The next day it took me a while to get going, but this time I have an excuse: the weather. I ended up having to walk in the rain each time I was outside, which was not my idea of fun.

As St Petersburg was the capital city for a long time, and had a royal family for quite a long time, there are now a zillion museums with history and art as their focus. I already had several of these museums on my list of places to go, and the weather made it easy to decide my itinerary for the day: museum museum museum.

When I got to my first museum of the day (the State Russian Museum,) I found the normal heap of options at the ticket desk. 

While queueing up I had plenty of time to read the signs, and was actually pretty happy to have all the different options. I ended up choosing a ticket that allowed me into several of the museums over three days. Of course I didn't have three days to see the museums, but if I went to three on one day, the ticket was worth it.

So that's what I did. I went through the State Russian Museum, St Michael's Palace, and the Marble Palace. I saw lots of grand stairwells, and really missed the girls. Stairwells were always good team photo spots for us, and they were always willing to take paparazzi photos of me on the stairs. Sigh, I miss them.

I saw more artwork than I can ever begin to try to remember. I saw gorgeous ceilings, many of which gave me a crick in my neck. I saw a LOT of gold leaf, apparently that colour was really important to the various royal family members. I loved the intricate wooden floors in so many of the rooms.

I managed to irritate two particular docents; one because I barely touched the pedestal of a sculpture, and the other because I wanted to take a photo of old school door handles. I understand why the docent didn't want me touching (not even a little) the sculpture pedestal, but I did not understand why taking a photo of the door handles was a bad thing. 

As that docent wasn't able to give me a reason why, I'm guessing she just wanted to pick on me. Argh.

There were plenty of brightly shining chandeliers as well, particularly in the rooms where the royals would've had public gatherings. Most rooms had different colours on the walls, sometimes it was paint and sometimes it was wallpaper.

After walking out of the third museum it was only late afternoon, but I was completely done. I was cold, and totally arted out. Thank goodness the waiters at Namaste know me, it is easy for me to stay there a few hours each time I have dinner.

From there it was a a quick walk back to my hostel to pick up my bag, then another walk to the train station. I love that I've been to this city enough times that I know how long it takes to walk to the train station from various points in the city.

I will be back :)

russia: moscow: tuesday touring

Moscow is full of churches. They're everywhere. You can barely go more than a few blocks in any direction without running into a church. At least that's how it often feels to me, when I'm walking around the church. I'm constantly stumbling into new churches, just because they always catch my eye.

This Tuesday afternoon I chose to go see one of them in particular. Actually, this one was a full on monastery, complete with big red walls all around. The name translates to Pokrovsky Convent, but the Russian languages writes it as Pokrovsky women's monastery.

Anywho, when I got to the exterior gate I found a security guard and metal detectors. I have no idea what makes this monastery worthy of that kind of security, but it is a lot more than I'm used to seeing. As I got closer to the gate that sends you through the walls, I realized there were a LOT of people there. A LOT.

I didn't think it was a holiday, but apparently there was something going on. There were long queues outside both churches on the grounds. It seemed as if everyone in the queue was waiting for a blessing? Something like that.

I didn't want to wait for a long time in a line I wasn't sure about, so I went in just one of the churches. The interior was beautiful, with frescoes everywhere, and a beautifully decorated interior of the cupola.

On the way back to the metro station I passed by the Museum of Retro Transportation. I wanted to visit, but the gates were closed and locked, and there was a sign saying the place was under construction for a couple months. Argh. Seems like it would be a fun place to see.

One of the Instagram accounts I follow is called russiabeyond. It covers the entire country, and nearly every day has gorgeous photos of Russia. I'd love to have the chance to see all the locations they post.

Anywho, one day they posted an article with a list of quirky buildings (and some of their history,) to visit around Moscow. I chose to continue my Tuesday afternoon off to see a couple of the buildings, since the sun wouldn't be going down for a few more hours.

The first building wasn't too far from school, woo hoo. Tucked into a relatively small street, on a corner, is a building with statues carved onto the front of the building. Some of the statues look to be more than friends.....

From there I walked to the second building, also not a long walk. Along the way I saw a church, so of course I tried to go inside. The church ended up not being open, but I was able to walk around the grounds, which were quite pretty. So was the roof of the church, with lots of colours.

The second building of the day was allegedly built by a guy who had given up drinking. The top of one side looks like an upside down shot glass. I guess the architect put it there to remind himself how to behave? Something like that.

Moscow is a capital city, full of all kinds of quirks.