russia: peredelkino

Another weekend, another day trip. There is always another area to explore in this country and Moscow is surrounded by heaps of small towns with one or two sights. Peredelkino isn't mentioned in my guidebook, (if the guidebook mentioned every little place with one or two sights it would be several volumes, not just one,) we found it on Instagram, because of a photogenic church.

Peredelkino was originally a really big estate, owned by the Leontievs. Wikipedia tells me they were were relatives of Peter the Great. 

In the 1930s the estate was 'given' over (suggested by Maxim Gorky,) to the Soviet Union, and was made into an area with cottages for people the government wanted to support.

As usual, Claire and I met on a metro platform, then found a commuter train station. We hopped the next elektrichka heading toward Peredelkino. The 'station' at Peredelkino was tiny, but as long as there is a place to buy tickets, does it really matter how big it is?

We exited the station and almost immediately found an outhouse. Obviously it wasn't a sight of any kind, but I noticed it because the door was open and some snow/ice had gathered inside. I couldn't tell who owned it, it was just kind of, there.

Not a fun place to have to use in this kind of weather.

As we walked toward the first place we wanted to see, we figured Peredelkino had been through crazy weather. While there was snow on the ground, and lots of it, there were also plenty of big, 'scary' icicles.

A nine minute walk from the train station brought us to the church we'd been hoping to see. The name didn't mean anything, but it was definitely a newer style, a modern take on Orthodox church architecture.

We took a team photo, standing in the thigh deep snow in a field surrounding the church. While running back and forth from the camera I managed to drop my phone. Thank goodness I realized it really quickly, and didn't have too many places to check to find it again.

This church had coloured tiling around each entry door, of which there were four; there were also decorative tiles around each of the doors. So many things of which to take photos. Of those four doors, only one was actually open for entry. We went inside, but a service was taking place, so we were only in there for a minute or two.

After exiting we found the walls of a monastery about ten meters away. The walls were painted, a dark red colour. We found an open gate and walked in, it was really quiet. There was no one else around, and there weren't any other open doors. This wasn't a huge surprise, as the buildings looked to be housing. Nevertheless, we walked all the way around the grounds. It was fun to see the piles of snow in various places. Some of the benches would've been really picturesque if not covered in snow. They were picturesque as was, just not okay for sitting on at that point. 

After exiting the monastery we went back to the church, which was mostly empty at this point. I loved the interior, and the ceiling felt more space agey than other churches we've seen.

Not too far from the church was a graveyard. We tried to go in, or at least we thought about it, but after following several streets we couldn't get to where we wanted to go, which was the grave of Boris Pasternak. (The Soviet writer who authored Dr. Zhivago.) We decided if we ever come back to Peredelkino we will come in non snowy weather.

After that we walked on the main road for a bit, managing to avoid getting run over by crazy drivers. Eventually we turned off, and got to our second and final sight of the day: the dacha in which Boris Pasternak lived as a government supported writer of the Soviet Union.

Pasternak's most famous publication was the story of Dr. Zhivago, though it was rejected for publication in the Soviet Union. Ironically, it was this story for which Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Not surprisingly, the government was quite angry about the award, and he wasn't allowed to receive the award; he actually had to decline it.

The entry fee for visiting the dacha was only 150 rubles, quite cheap. We were able to wander through the house as we wanted, we were also given a set of papers with information about each room we saw.

The windows were fantastic. Not only was the dacha pretty big, the rooms felt quite airy. Part of the reason was because there were so many big windows that let in heaps of natural light. I'd love to live in a place that had so much natural light. He slept in a single bed that didn't look very comfortable. (Then again, any furniture I've seen from the first half of the 20th century has never looked comfortable.)

The bookcases held some of the other things he wrote, some of the supplies he used, a set of encyclopedias, and copies of Dr. Zhivago in various languages. On the bottom floor was the room in which he died, which seemed a bit morbid to me.

After seeing the house we walked back to the train station, we didn't have to wait long for the next train back to central Moscow, yahoo!!

Day trips are awesome.