russia: klin

If you start to talk about famous Russian composers, I'm guessing most people outside Russia will have a hard time coming up with a name straightaway. Howeva, there is at least one name people would recognize as soon as you say it: Tchaikovsky. He was born in a small town in 1840 and died in St Petersburg in 1893, and was originally slotted to be a civil servant; both his father and grandfather had been part of the army. Some of Tchaikovsky's most well known pieces include the Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty. 

It turns out the man spent a lot of time at a family house in Klin, which isn't far from Moscow. Klin is just over 50 miles from Moscow, and has been known as a town since the early 14^th century. It has been Russian for all of its existence except for a period of about three weeks in 1941, when the German army came in and took over.

Claire and I met up on a metro station platform, then found the correct suburban train station. We bought tickets and hopped on the next train bound in the right direction. We felt like the tickets were rather expensive, at 220 rubles, but maybe we've just gotten spoiled with some of the cheaper places we've been. 

In the end it would've been a better deal to pay for the faster, express train. Oh well.

As soon as we got off the train in Klin we saw a bust of Tchaikovsky, so we thought the day was off to a great start. We were traveling in mid March, which can mean just about anything in terms of weather in Russia. There was still plenty of snow and slush on the ground, not so fun to walk in that.

Our first stop ended up being a WW2 memorial along the main road in town. There were a lot of fake flowers, an eternal flame, a statue, and the dates of the war, all very typical.

From there we walked through a park, which was pretty because everything was frozen. There is something about a frozen park with a partly frozen stream, in quiet sunlight that always catches my eye.

Our main reason for coming to town was to see the Tchaikovsky family house, kindof on the edge of town. We ended up walking through snow drifts along the road, as there was no clear sidewalk for some reason.

Google maps took us to an entry to the property that was gated and locked. Thankfully there was a sign posted showing where an open gate could be found. 

We walked back around to the correct entrance and walked in the first building we saw.

In this building we had to pay a rather extortionate entry fee of 550 rubles, and since I wanted photos, I had to pay another 200 rubles. Argh. Talk about a ridiculous price. This wasn't the house we'd come to see, we had to exit through a side entrance, then follow a path through a garden area to get to the house.

When we got to the house we had to check our coats, then put on boot covers.

We walked through the house, which was arranged as it used to be, or at least that's my understanding. 

I don't know what was authentic (actually originally in the house,) and what had been added because it would've been common at the time.

We were totally disappointed that we weren't allowed to go in many of the rooms. Nearly all of them were roped off, so we could only look in from the doorway. In other words we paid a rather large entry fee to walk down a hallway.

There was a smaller building to see as well, I think it was something like a conservatory? I don't remember, and I never bothered to look it up later. It was much smaller, and only had a couple rooms plus a front porch.

After seeing as much as we could in those two houses we walked back to the main building. On the second floor there was an exhibition of items and information related to Tchaikovsky. Despite being the only two visitors at the time, in rooms that weren't at all cramped, we still had to take off our coats and check them.

When we left the property we left with a bad feeling, as if we'd missed something, or somehow been fleeced out of money. The house and grounds should be sooooo much better for visitors than they are.

We walked along the main road to the other side of town, stopping at a grocery store for snacks along the way.

Our second reason for coming to Klin was to see a Christmas ornament museum. The entrance ended up being on the backside of a building, we ended up circling the entire building before we found it.

As we entered, the people standing there looked at us like aliens. We tried to ask if we could buy tickets, and they said no. There was a price list and a ticket office, so we were rather confused. It turned out we could buy a ticket, but we had to join a tour.

We explained that we don't speak Russian, and don't understand much, but they insisted. So we dutifully followed our guide who prattled on as if we understood anything she said.

After about seven minutes of not having a clue, we simply ignored her, and went about taking photos on our own. She didn't seem happy about this, but we didn't understand and she was moving far too slowly for us to appreciate what we didn't understand. We didn't do anything crazy, we just walked to the next exhibit when we finished looking at the current one.

Exhibits were generally arranged by decade/style. We really enjoyed seeing how the styles of ornaments changed through the years. 

There were a few fully decorated trees, each of a certain colour family.

At the very end of the museum was a GIANT christmas tree, and they had a disco light shining snowflakes on the ceiling. Very cute.

We found the Lenin statue as we were walking back toward the train station.

Almost directly across the street was a small sushi shop which looked decent, so dinner was easy to sort out.

After eating we caught the next train back to Moscow. Day trips rock, though I have to say I would not recommend Klin to anyone else. Tchaikovsky was an amazing composer, his home/museum should be so much better than it is.