The first time I
heard of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, was in August of 2011. I signed a
contract to work for a school that has branches in Kyiv, Ukraine,
Moscow, Russia, and Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. (At the time there was
also a branch in St Petersburg, but that has since closed.) I always
wondered why Nizhny Novgorod has a branch of the school, I have never
gotten an answer from anyone, and after this weekend, I was even more
uncertain.
We chose to visit
Nizhny Novgorod for two reasons: one, because our school has a branch
there, and two, it was selected as one of the World Cup host cities.
Nizhny Novgorod
(usually shortened to Nizhny,) was founded in 1221, it isn't a new
city. It was founded by the same people who founded many other cities
in early Russia, one of the princes of Vladimir. From 1932 to 1990 it
was known as Gorky, because the famous writer Maxim Gorky was born
there. For a time Nizhny was an important industrial center of
Russia, it was even called the Detroit of Russia. During the years it
was known as Gorky it was a closed city, (that is, closed to
foreigners,) to make sure no one could access the Soviet military
research and production facilities.
Claire and I met as
we usually do, on a metro platform, then went to find the correct
train. The ride to Nizhny was only five hours or so, we arrived at
0430. Not a terribly convenient time to arrive anywhere, we found
seats in the train station and just hung out for a couple hours.
Despite having previously been so important to the country, this was
another city with a less than impressive train station. I was
starting to give up on finding/seeing the type of grand stations I
loved so much in Ukraine.
When it got light
enough, we started walking. First impressions of the city were not
great, nothing looked very new, or very clean. Google maps didn't
help, as it had us climb what we called the icy hill of death to get
to our hotel. Obviously, it wasn't really an icy hill of death, but
it certainly felt that way. There was a (not so) lovely mixture of
snow/ice/slush all over the city, which is what happens at the end of
winter in every part of the country. Nothing is clean, and all the
melting just reveals more dirt and rubbish.
We also had to
cross a bridge over a river, we somehow managed to avoid being blown
off the bridge by the crazy cold wind.
Before our trip someone told
me the city was windy, but I'd forgotten; as soon as we felt the wind
on the bridge, I remembered. Being built on a hill, with a river at
the bottom pretty much guaranteed awful wind the whole time.
We arrived at our
hotel and were initially told our room was not ready. That was fine
with us, we sat on the couches for a moment to get ourselves sorted
and leave our packs at the hotel during the day. Magically, our room
was ready about five minutes later. We put all our stuff in the room,
warmed up for a bit, then started walking.
Our first sight of
the day was closer to the edge of town, a monastery. It took us a
while to walk there, partly because we kept stopping to take photos.
(Totally typical for me wheneva I travel.) The Pechersky Ascension
monastery is old, having been founded in the 14th century.
It's fairly big, surrounded by white walls.
We walked in the
main gate and found a small garden off to the side. There were a
bunch of busts of previous leaders stood. Interesting to see the
differences in styles of how they were 'dressed.'
The biggest church
appeared to be closed, but we took plenty of photos of the exterior.
I thought the decoration around the windows looked like rainbows,
which is not something I expected. We were able to go in a smaller
church, which had lovely frescoes all over. We had to borrow
wraparound skirts, as both of us were wearing pants. (I've never
figured out why a skirt on top of pants is so important for some
churches/monasteries, but others don't care as long as you're not
showing too much skin. They all expect women to cover their heads, whether with a hat, or a scarf.)
After exploring
everything we could, we left the property and climbed back up the
hill. While walking in the general direction of the city center we
noticed a cable car that went across the river, and made a note to
come back the next day.
There was a mosque
nearby, and while the gates weren't open, we did admire it from the
outside.
Also while walking
Claire got in touch with one of the teachers of the school branch in
Nizhny, we arranged to meet up for dinner. Figuring out where to meet
was a challenge, as it turned out this teacher didn't know the city
at all, despite having lived there for nearly eight months by that
point.
We ended up meeting
on Gorky Square. At one end of the square there is a statue of Gorky,
at the other end of the square is a sign that says I love Nizhny
Novgorod. We didn't really feel that way, but we took a photo anywho.
We ended up having
dinner at a burger place, and were pleasantly surprised to find
prices about half of what we'd normally pay in Moscow. Good food, and
it was fun to find out what was going on in the school in Nizhny.
The next morning we
took our sweet time getting moving. We left the hotel right around
noon, they stored our bags for the day.
We first walked to the cable
car we'd seen the day before, and bought a ticket for a ride over the
river. From reading the ticket prices, I figured out that some people
use the cable car as a form of public transport. For us, a single
ride was 100 rubles, it took 15 minutes to cross the river. While in
our little car, we liked looking out over the area, taking note of
the people ice fishing on the river.
The arrival area on
the other side of the river wasn't any great shakes. (Then again, we
weren't impressed so far with Nizhny, either.) The name of the town
on the other side of the river was Bor, which didn't inspire
confidence in the location.
We were about to
leave when we noticed the 'shop of wonders.' As we got close, we
could see that it sold souvenirs of the town of Bor. They even had
coffee mugs!!! After seeing the magnets and mugs we figured we should
wander around at least a little, just to be able to say we'd seen the
city.
After walking about
3 minutes we found the city center. There was a statue of Lenin, and
a couple minutes past that we found the WW2 memorial. Our visit took
place about a week after the mall fire in a town in Siberia, and the
whole country was still morning, so there were fresh flowers and
stuffed animals laid on the WW2 memorial.
In this general
area we noticed that some of the fences had the town name as part of
the fence. It might be the worst name ever, but we loved the fences.
Walking down a
random street showed us the water/slush/ice/snow had affected Bor
just as badly. Some cars plowing through threw up what I'd almost
call walls of water.
About 30 minutes
later we walked back to the cable car, bought another 100 ruble
ticket and crossed back over the river. From there we walked to the
main sight of Nizhny Novgorod, the kremlin. Entry into the kremlin
was free, yahoo!!
We walked through
the gate, and immediately realized that the interior of the kremlin
wasn't very exciting. There were big, Soviet style government
buildings inside, which took away from the feeling of 'old kremlin.'
The walls of the
kremlin were red brick, and went all the way around, even going down
the hill. Either the walls have been renovated or maintained well,
but they still looked good to us. The walls ended up being the only
part of the kremlin that we liked.
Inside the kremlin
we found a couple churches, one of them just a small chapel. We also
found a WW2 memorial, complete with eternal flame and more stuffed
animals as we saw in Bor.
We walked down the
switchback streets (inside the kremlin,) exiting at the bottom of the
hill. We continued following the streets, getting ourselves all the
way to the embankment on the river.
It seemed to be under renovation,
and given how the entire city appeared to us at that point, we didn't
have a lot of faith that everything would be completed in time to
host football games.
Walking along the
river was cold and windy, not so fun. We basically followed the walls
of the kremlin, until we got to another corner. (Along the way we
passed a statue of Peter 1st, one of the great tsars of
Russian history.) There was a giant set of stairs (called the Chkalov
steps,) parallel to this side of the kremlin, I wanted to climb all
the way up.
We didn't climb in
one straight shot, as there were a lot of steps, and neither of us
was in shape to do such a thing. At the top of the steps was a
Russia2018 sign, just like the one I'd seen in Ekaterinburg. There
was also a statue of Chkalov, for whom the steps were named. He was
an aircraft test pilot, and an official Hero of the Soviet Union.
At that point we
felt like were done exploring Nizhny, there wasn't anything left that
we wanted to see. (Not only that, but the weather wasn't great, and
we thought the city was pretty disappointing overall.) We made our
way to a cafe and killed time until dinner by filling up on dessert.
We had another
good, cheap dinner, again with the teacher. After eating, we went
back to our hotel to pick up our bag, then rode the metro to the
train station. The metro station at which we started our journey was
decorated quite nicely, the train station metro wasn't nearly as
nice.
The train ride back
to Moscow was easy, departing and arriving on time.
I have zero desire
to repeat this trip, ever.
