russia: sergiev posad

My first day trip in Russia, yahoo!! I looked at my guidebook, Sergiev Posad seemed like it was close enough to Moscow, with something worth seeing.

I met up with two women, one of whom works at another branch of my school, and one who works in my school. We met at Komsomolskaya metro station, (one of my favourites, one that never fails to amaze me every time I see it,) then went to find the suburban train station. It didn't take long, and the cashier even asked in English whether we wanted one way or round trip tickets.

We answered round trip, and were surprised at the ticket price, in that it was super cheap.

The train we wanted left in just fifteen minutes, which was awesome. It was an electric train, called an electrichka in Russian. It seemed as though we stopped every few minutes along the way, but the ride was smooth so I can't complain. Less than two hours later we arrived in Sergiev Posad.

The train station in Sergiev Posad was not big, it was basically just a platform. After getting ourselves oriented, we started walking. Not too far away we saw the bus station, I asked Caroline and Claire to stop and take a selfie with me. 

I wanted to have us in the photo with the city name, which was on the front of the bus station.

We kept going, heading in the direction of the main sight in town. On the way there, we stopped at a mostly frozen pond, it looked as if it would be perfect to play hockey when totally frozen. The area that wasn't frozen was full of ducks going every which way.

From the small bridge going over the water we could see a 'tree' with lots of padlocks. It was an interesting take on the idea of a bridge of locks. Every time I see one of these things, I wonder how many of the couples who closed a lock together are still together.

Near this 'tree' was a pair of statues, of Peter and Fevronia. (I had to look up the names, as Fevronia isn't exactly a name that rolls off your tongue or sticks in your memory.)

Then we arrived at the main sight of Sergiev Posad, the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius. It was founded in 1337, when St Sergius built a wooden hut. Obviously, over the years other buildings were built. The way in which this monastery was built was copied many times over the years, to create other monasteries around the country.

We approached the monastery from the side, so we had to walk along the walls for a bit. 

While walking we passed a WW2 memorial, complete with eternal flame.

Outside the grounds of the monastery we found two small churches, we entered both. Neither one of them was noteworthy. Perhaps the most noteworthy part was a stroller parked outside one of them, as it had skis instead of wheels. It also had hand warmers attached to the hand rail. Genius!

We got to the entrance of the monastery and walked right in. As far as we could tell, there was no entry ticket to buy. Entry is through a gate in the bottom of a bell tower, the gate was painted with frescoes.

As soon as we walked in, I realized each building in the complex was painted differently. One of them was actually painted with a geometric pattern of sorts, definitely not what I would ever expect to see on the outside of a church. Very photogenic, to say the least.

The geometric church was the first building we entered, the inside was painted as well. The ceiling was covered in frescoes, though they weren't very brightly coloured.

The next church we entered was more of a memorial chapel. We learned that there is a 24 hour a day memorial taking place in one corner.

The memorial is for the man for whom the monastery is named, St Sergius. There was a queue of people waiting to kiss the coffin. We did not join the queue, we watched for a few minutes then walked out.

All these churches are gathered around a small central platz. In the middle of the platz was a small fountain, I presume it runs on holy water. Since we were visiting in December, it was not running.

On another side of the platz was a big blue church, I presume it was the main church of the monastery. We walked in and loved the interior.

The whole thing was painted with brightly coloured frescoes. Love love love.

At this point we felt as if we'd seen everything there was to see. We walked out of the same bell tower through which we'd entered, and went looking for a cafe. There weren't many options, we ended up settling for one nearby. I ended up having the best tasting fruit tea I've ever had.

From the cafe we walked around the block, just to see another part of the town. We ended up seeing another church, the interior of which smelled like wet dog, probably from the wet wool clothing worn by various parishioners. 

We also saw a few government looking buildings, one of which had a big mosaic as decoration on the front facade.

Yet another section of town had newer looking buildings, including a couple souvenir shops. We found magnets in one of these :)

From there we walked up the main street, hoping to visit the toy museum. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong day, as it ended up being closed when we arrived. What kind of toy museum is closed on a Sunday? We hoped it was just a one off, and we were just unlucky. I always thought the typical day for museums to be closed is Monday. 

That was the end of our day, so we walked back to the train station. We boarded the train, thinking we were all good. Unfortunately, we weren't. Even though we were sure we'd bought round trip tickets when leaving Moscow, we hadn't. (We never figured out how the mix up happened, since the lady in Moscow had asked in English, not Russian.) We each had to buy another ticket, plus pay a 'penalty' for buying tickets on the train. Sigh, lesson learned. Fortunately, that was the worst thing that happened during the day. Yay for day trips!