There are no pics this time.

We are home, safe and sound. Our travels back were thankfully boring. Here are a few observations I haven’t made elsewhere.

Going over the Atlantic, we flew the double-decker A380, which I believe is the largest passenger plane in common service. It’s a nice plane, but the new Boeings are better. Between Paris and Russia, we flew the A319, which was incredibly cramped and totally lacking in amenities such as music, USB chargers, video, etc. Air France served decent meals with complementary wine.

The Russians are spectacularly unwilling to let go of the past. They talk about the Polish invasion like it happened 50 years ago. They absolutely fixate on the German Invasion (which we call WW II). Overall, the Russians seem much more prone to despair and depression than in the US. That’s understandable, given how they hang on to bad events of the past and their tendency to drink. “Times of troubles” are fresh in the memory of all but the youngest Russians. The 1990s, when the USSR and the Russian economy collapsed, were much harder than I had realized. The retirement pension has been slashed. Even with a free house, Russians cannot live on the standard retirement pension without help from their children. (Citizens receive their apartments for free when property was privatized.) In addition, many people lost all their savings during the 90s, as banks and financial institutions went belly-up. Then and now, there is no equivalent to FDIC insurance for bank savings accounts. BTW, I saw less alcohol than I thought I would. The idea of the Russian male who is drunk all the time is much more a joke than a reality. However, on vacation as at home, we are early to bed / early to rise. We did not participate in any night life. We were generally in bed before the good folks in St. Pete had finished their dinners. Russians are certainly less well of than Americans, but the extreme poverty we have in the US either doesn’t exist or is well hidden. I didn’t know what to look for, since anybody who is homeless would certainly die if they tried to live on the street in the winter. But the people I asked said there is no homeless people. According to the people I asked, nobody tries to spend their winters in the Metro, even though it would be ridiculously easy to do so.

The Russians I met like Putin. They like having a strong central government. Putin’s overall rating is somewhere between 80% – 90%. They freely joke about Putin being the Tsar. He was inaugurated right next the the Church were all Tsars were coronated. (Even when the capital was in St. Pete, Tsars were coronated in Moscow.) The Russians have spent large fortunes restoring their ancient Churches and buildings.

The standard of living in metro areas appears to be good. Smart phones and cars are pervasive. I saw more high quality fashionable dress in Russia than I see in the US. Bicycles are used but they are not common. All the bikes I saw were heavy steel models with fat tires. I didn’t see a single road bike (carbon-fiber body, skinny tires, and drop handle bars).  Russia is cleaner than Disney World. There is no trash anywhere. I often saw people cleaning. Most citizens keep their cars very clean.

Russians enjoy much more personal freedom than they have had in the past. They know their news is censored, but minimize that. They compare their news to the “slant” that US news organizations put in their content. It is still difficult for a Russian citizen to get a visa to visit the US. When visas are denied, no reason is given.

Russians love to have the biggest, even if it s not the best. They believe their country is well behind the US in every respect. Most of them did not believe me when I told them they were only country that can send people to the space station, or that we need a Russian rocket engine to send heavy satellites into space.

The metro stations built in the 40s are very deep, The escalators are long and very fast. Danita used to find it very difficult to get on US escalators. Now she does escalators as well as anybody.

Using a tablet as my only computing device brought some limitations. Spell check works only sometimes (I don’t know why). Everything takes longer than on a computer. One needs almost twice as many clicks to do something on a tablet, and each screen rendering is much slower. I usually rename picture files to indicate what I took a picture of. Using the tablet was so slow that I quickly gave that up. Now, faced with hundreds of pictures and a poor memory, I will have a nice collection of pictures on my computer, with little idea of what they represent. I did almost no proofing, as you have certainly noticed. Somebody left a message on our phone. One of the security cameras saw the blinking light as a motion detection at night. I adjusted the sensitivity to “minimum”, but we still got 60 or more alarms every night. (I left the alarm on so that if somebody had broken in, I would at least have a picture of the perp.)

Seven Sisters Skyscraper

We started out at the Kremlin. Here’s one reason we had a very good tour guide. Our book said one could buy tickets to the armory and jewels, with admissiions every half hour. What it didn’t say is that they allow only 30 people for each half hour purchase tickets at the gate. Most of the people who get in buy tickets ahead. Our tour guide knew better, which is why we saw both without any extravagent lines. Indoor pictures were not allowed. I’ll group all the outdoor pictures at the bottom.

Moscow Diarama

Kruchev built 7 sky scrapers, known as the 7 sisters. We visited one of them, which is now a swanky hotel. The lobby had a diarama of Moscow as it was in the 50s, complete with an audio and lights show.

Sletvana got us into the observatory deck. Normally, people are admitted only if they are drinking at that bar, but Sletvana’s smooth personality allowed her to talk is in. We were the only ones up there. This picture is of the White House, which is where the Duma was meeting when Yeltsin climbed up onto a tank and ended the coup against Breznev.

We finised up with a river cruise. We leave the hotel at 5 AM tomorrow to get to the airport for our flight to Paris, then Dulles. We arrive in Virginia at 4:30 PM. Driving home between 4 and 7 is insane. We will stay at the Holiday Inn near Dulles airport and drive home the next morning.

Danita and I at the world’s largest cannon. It’s likely a good thing it was never fired.

Danita and I at the world’s largest bell. It was more of a subsonic earthquake than a bell. If it hadn’t broken, its tone would be an octive lower than the lowest note on the piano. It would likely be a threat to the stone buildings nearby.

Eternal Flame, for the victums of WW II

I’m making a “Y” for “Yeltsin”, across the river from the Russian White House

Tretyakov Gallery

We had a second day of wonderful weather. Our first stop was the Tetyakov Gallery. I don’t see how one person can know so much about so many things. Sletvana knows names of painters, names of who was painted, who was related to whom and how, when it was painted, and why the paintng was important artistically. I’m not all that interested in Russian artists. I kept up as long as I could. After several hours, Sletvana and Danita were still going strong. I went off to find a seat, as I often do in art galleries. Danita understands and continues looking at the art, but Sletvana didn’t want to continue without me. I’m afraid I cut our visit a little short. But the lunch in the museum cafeteria was pretty good.

Summer Palace

From there we went to Peter the Great’s father’s sumer palace. This was a log cabin on the outskirts of Moscow. The cabin was reconstructed based on measurements taken by Catherine the Great when she had the palace dismantled. This was much more interesting. I even paid extra to go to the upstairs balcony.

Typical State Meal

They had a typical state meal laid out. When they served swan, the entire bird was displayed for the guests to appreciate. They cut it up while the Tsar and guests were present. I also learned why the Tsar always entered the room first, when there was any public appearance. The royals wore so many clothes and jewels that weight made it hard for them to walk. The Tsar, being the most rank (so to speak), had to carry the most weight. He needed two helpers supporting him, one at each arm. It’s hardly the image of a strong leader.

The Tsar’s throne had an unusual feature. There were lions, one on each sid of the throne. One of the Tsar’s assistance could make the lions roar. Their heads moved back and forth. When this was re-created, they added eyes that light up; but of course the feature of electric lights in the lion’s eyes was beyond the technology of the day. The Russians liked being rude to foreign ambassadors. They would ask the ambassador a question, then activate lion roars to interrupt his answer.

Solomon and the Baby

Of course there was plenty of artwork. These were portraits or religious. This is a painting of Solomon’s wise decision about the baby that was claimed by two different women. If you look closely, you will see that the baby is being held upside-down by one foot. I found it funny. In many of the paintings and icons, the Russian artist had no idea what some story element looked like. we would see Jesus riding into Jeruselem on a wierd looking horse because nobody knew what a donkey looked like. Men didn’t spend much time around babies in those days. I suppose they didn’t know how a baby is held.

Tented Church

We took a tram to the other side of the grounds to see more buildings. (The palace had to be recreated a kilometer away from its origial site to prevent tearing down old trees.) I thought all Russian churches had to have onion domes, but it turns out that’s not true. This church has a tented roof.

Metro station

We were done early, so we took the metro back to Moscow and visited meto stations. This was much more interesting than I thought it would be. The older stations are done in a “art deco meets Soviet Hero” style. I’ll include two pics to give an idea. This station was the deepest. It doubled as a bomb proof in WW II. On Nov 7, 1941, Germans were on the edge of Moscow. But Stalin wanted to celebrate the anniversary of the revolution. So they held their celebration in this station.

Heroic mosaic

The station has 24 mosaics in the ceiling; each in al oval lit by lights around the perephery. Each mosaic is viewed at a diffeerent hour of the day. This mosaic is during the day time. It shows a Soviet Hero parachuting from a plane. Other stations have other themes. One shows each of the Russian invasions. One shows heroic professions, etc.

We ended our day with the best meal we have had in Russia. The concierage told us how to get to a restaurant with Russian food and an informal atmosphere. It turned out to be a neauvo quisine with “Farm to Table” food. I put that in quotes because the phrase isn’t used in Russia, and also because it is so over-used in the US that it is almost meaningless. But this was excellent food using fresh ingredients. We had a delightful time.

Svetlana

We met our guide Svetlana at 10 in the hotel lobby. We started out visiting the interior of Christ the Redeamer Church ( exterior picture posted yesterday). We were quite lucky, because they were having a service to present one of the artifacts for veneration. When we arrived, the icon door was open and we could see the alter behind the priest. I was surprised they let us in during the ceremony.

Christopher Columbus with Peter the Great’s Head

As we walked to our next stop, we crossed the river and Sletvana told us an interesting story about this statue. Russia made a statue of Columbus with the intention of giving it to the US. They tried Baltimore in 1977, Columbus Ohio, and several other cities. They learned that Americans don’t think much of Columbus. So they lopped off Columbus’ head, stuck on the head of Peter the Great, and put it in their own river.

From there we went to the Pushkin fine arts museum. Sletvana wanted us to visit the entire muesem, but we limited ourselves to the French Impresionistic exhibit. It turns out that the art we saw in St. Petersburg was originally part of the Pushkin colllection. The pieces we saw in St. Pete were wonderful, but Pushkin saved plenty of good stuff for themselves. All together, it’s undoubtedly the best collection in the world. (Sorry, there’s no boring photos of paintings.)

New Maiden Nunnery

From there, we went to Novodevichy (New Maiden) nunnery. In the old days, Tsars often had female sisters, mothers, etc. that they had to put out of the way. They uniformly found this nunnery to be a convenient way to keep them out of the public but allow them to live relatively comfortable lives. Peter the Great’s regent was his older half sister, Sophia. She learned to like being Tsar. When Peter came of age, Sophia started a revolution against Peter, so Peter stuffed her in the nunnery. Sophia started a second revolution from behind the convent walls. Peter put that uprising down also, and left a dead soldier hanging outside Sophia’s window for over half a year.

A Ballerena in New Maiden Cemetary

Next to the nunnery is Novodevichy Cemetary. Only important people an be burried here. “Important people” includes the normal list of generals and political leaders. But it also includes ballenerias, poets, authors, artists, and even a clown.

Clown in New Maiden Nunnery

Our last stop was Tolstoy’s house. Many historic houses are restored and include period furnature. Everything in this house was owned by and used by the Tolstoy family — Mom, Dad, and 8 kids. Besides the novelty of knowing that Tolstoy’s back-side was actually in such-and-such a chair, the house itself wasn’t that enlightening. However, Sletvana’s knowledge was extensive, as usual. We learned a lot about this gentle Russian hippy. They wanted 100 Rubles for the right to take pictures. That’s less than $1.50, but I obhected on principle so there are no pictures of the house.

New Moscow

Here’s a bonus pic of “New Moscow”. About 10 years ago, Russian leaders decided Moscow was going to become the financial capitol of the world. So they built a bunch of ultra-modern sky scrapers. Then they found out that it isn’t so easy to be the financial capital of the world. Today, some of the skyscrapers stand unfinished. Our dinner yesterday was in New Moscow.

Changing of the Kremlin Guard

This was a whirlwind tour if ever there was one. We drove around town for a while, all of us trying to take pictures through the bus windows. Then stopped at the Kremlin / Red Square area. This started our great. We arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard. By the time the guard was changed, it was raining steadily. Danita and I were prepared, but unfortunately we discovered that our jackets are not waterproof. We walked around, trying to keep our cameras dry. We decided to skip the last church and went to meet our bus. Unfortunately, the VIPs were exiting and the road was closed. There was actually a time when a patient in an ambulance died waiting 90 minutes for the VIPs to finish exiting. We waited in the rain 90 minutes for our bus. The group was prepared for cool temperatures and rain under normal circumstances, but standing still for 90 minutes got everybody kind of grouchy. Things weren’t improved any when we found out the bus driver was prevented from cranking the heat due to limitations placed by the automatic comfort control on our Mercedes bus. We went to a “good” restaurant for our last dinner. The music was loud and the bar active, but it was fortunate we had found good restaurants in St. Pete, so we wouldn’t despair of finding decent food in Moscow.

Christ the Redeamer Church. The Russians love their history. This Church was destroyed by Lenin. Then Krushev built a swimming pool here. Then it was re-built to the exact original plan, to the cost of about 3 billion dollars.

Most of our group had paid for an optional tour “Moscow by Night”, but it was so late and we were so uncomfortable that every last person wanted to skip that tour. When we got back to the boat, we learned that those who paid for the optional tour had to find their receipts to get a refund. There was quite a bit of unhappiness.

Metropol Lobby

Jumping ahead a little, we made it to our hotel Satuday morning. The Metropol is a beautiful hotel, with stained glass windows in the lobby and a chandelier in our room. I booked it when the exchange rate was 75 Rubles to the dollar. It is a little more than we would normally pay, but it is an easy walk to the Kremlin and an amazing place to stay. On the down side, while waiting for our guide in the lobby, we saw an Afgan official being greeted. His wife and daughters received expensive silver bowls. It’s corruption in the open.

Kremlin Church

When taking guided tours, the phrase I’ve heard more than any other is “The Time of Troubles”. Any country that’s been around since 900 AD is bound to have had many times of troubles, but the Russians love to remember all of theirs.

Church Interior

Uglich is a very old Russian town. Most cities were built entirely of wood. Uglich built their Kremlin (castle) and other stone buildings in the 15th century. Unfortunately, Dimitri, the last royal Romanov died in Uglich. Boris Godunov (who became Tsar for a few years) was shocked that his rival died, and sent a team to investigate the cause of the Dimitri Romonov’s death. The investigation team found that the Dimitri had an epileptic fit while holding a knife and unfortunately slit his own throat. It was a tragic “accident” and Boris was forced to become Tsar.

Church of Dimitri’s Spilled Blood

Unfortunately, Boris couldn’t form a strong government. This lead to the Times of *Polish* Troubles, when the Poles came and destroyed Uglich. The only building to survive the Time of Polish Troubles is the ugly red brick building. The current church was built in the 17th century on the site of the original church. They have a glass floor allowing us to see part of the original’s church’s foundation. The red Church is the Church of Dimitri’s spilled blood.

Nunnery

The last building you see here is the Nunnery. You might well wonder how such an important city as Uglich can get by with just two churches and a Nunnery. The answer is that the rest of the town was flooded in the 1930s when Stalin built the locks and canals that made the rivers navigable between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Several of Uglich’s churches and other buildings were flooded when the reservoir was expanded. One can see the top of a bell tower poking out of the reservoir today.

Traditional Dress-up at Dinner

So we finished the formal part of our tour, and decided to walk 300 meters to the Nunnery, as much to get some exercise as anything else. I became aware of an electronic song, such as one might hear from an ice cream truck in the US. It kept on playing, over and over, and it was becoming somewhat annoying. We walked several blocks down the street, and we could still hear it. I started wondering whether the merchants had installed some kind of community music system. Then I started wondering why anybody would install all those outdoor speakers and then play the same dumb ditty over and over. Finally Danita figured out I was the source of the noise pollution. I had set an alarm yesterday to remind us to attend an event. It went off again today. That’s probably why nobody wanted to be near us as we walked around town.

Monistary

Today we visited the village of Kirillov and saw the monastery of St. Cyril. It was one of the largest and most important monasteries. We saw the inside of the white building, which contained many icons, including some incredibly beautiful icons painted in Moscow. You can peruse these pictures of the outside of the monastery.

Toumbstone Paving

The Monks wanted to pave the path to a new Church, but Catherine the Great had confiscated the liquid assets of all monasteries, as she felt she needed the money and the monks should be focused on praying. The monks decided to use build the path with graveyard tombstones. People could read the names of deceased monks and pray for them while they walked to the Church.

Village Homes

I included a picture of some of the houses in the village. These wooden structures are supposed to be typical of Russian village homes today.

Monistary Entrance. You can see the stuco painting on the entrance wall. The thickness of these walls is for defence against attackers.

Monistary Church

Summer Church

The time on board is longer than it has been on other cruises we have taken. We cruise overnight and most of the day, then we get 3 or 4 hours in port. In the mean time, we see lots of woods. Logging seems to be the main industry of the area. One person in our tour group couldn’t understand why the river isn’t lined with summer homes. We’re here in the summer time, which is mostly rainy. In the winter, the river freeze is thick enough that they can land small airplanes on the ice.

Winter Church – you see the icon wall and a 3-person choir giving a brief concert

Today’s stop is Kizhi. They moved several original Russian wooden churches and houses onto this island, putting them on display. Our guide was excellent. We didn’t receive a written summary of what we saw, so I won’t try to reproduce the Russian names for the structures.

Icon detail

This was an area with about 1,000 islands. People lived in small villages. Some villages had only one house. Each house provided shelter for an extended family of 20 or so persons. The dominant feature was the central church. It served as the area’s administrative center and graveyard. As in most communities, the main church had 3 buildings – a summer Church, a smaller but heated winter Church, and a bell tower. This Church was built in the 1714. There were no nails, because each nail was hand-made. 60 nails cost a cow. The Church as 22 cupolas because the parishioners lived on islands all around the area. Everybody wanted to see the front of the Church, so they built the Church “in the round”. The bell tower was built after 1900. By this time, cheap factory-made nails were available. The summer Church is being restored. We saw the interior of the winter Church. The buildings form an active Russian Orthodox Church. I did not realize than the Russian Orthodox used a wall of icons to separate the sanctuary from the alter. The winter Church has 4 tiers of icons. The summer Church is larger and has 7. People visit the alter only once or twice in their lifetimes (the stories I heard weren’t clear.) Baby boys visited the alter when they are baptized (but not girls). Couples are taken into the alter when they are married.

Rich person’s house – Danita’s grandmother had memories of living in a house similar to this, in Poland

We went inside one house. It housed 22 people, 10 cows, plus assorted chickens and a few horses. Residents were very self-reliant. They built their own houses, farm implements, boats, sleds, etc. There was one bed, which was made available to whichever woman had most recently given birth. Buildings were highly organized. A shelf ran around the interior of the house. Every family stored things in the same place. The shelf on one wall was reserved for sharp implements, a different one salt, one for hats and mittens, and one for pies. Shelves were high enough to keep the kids out. The cheese and butter making room was the clean room. (No kids with dirty feet allowed!) The detail picture shows where the barn section was joined to the house. In the summer, they moved cows to a nearby island. This was convenient because cows could graze where they want, but can’t wonder off into the woods or be attached by a bear. The only inconvenience was rowing out to the island twice a day to milk the cows and haul the pails of milk back to the house. The barn or grainery includes a hole for the cats.
We saw a house for the less wealthy. Instead of a nice stove with a flue to the outside, they heated with an open fire. There was as circular hole in the roof, which could be opened or closed. There was lots of smoke when the fire was first lit. After 20 minutes, the smoke was mostly up by the ceiling and they opened the vent for a short while. After that, the fire was burning well and there was less smoke. They washed the walls down to clean the soot. They burned egg shells to make the ceiling shiny. The advantage of a “black house” is that it needed less wood to keep the house warm.

Russia’s oldest wooden Church

The last building we saw is Church reputed to have been built by Sty. Lazarus, the founder of the Murom Monastery. He died in 1391, making this the oldest wooden Church in Russia.

There’s not a lot to report today. We stopped in Mandrogui. The name rolls off the tong, but there’s not a lot here. They built some replicas of old log cabins and offered artists the opportunity to live here, creating and selling nesting dolls, lacquered boxes, and other traditional Russian crafts. The artists live in a type of commune, complete with a written agreement not to drink. I wonder if this is strictly enforced.

Peter the Great’s Throne

Our boat trip included a tour of St. Petersburg. We took it and we are glad we did. The highlight was the Hermatage. We never made it to the main part of the museum because of the very long lines. But the tour group took is right in. Right off the start, the main staircase was incredible. Of course, it was used only for official functions. But it still looks amazing.

Peacock Clock

The tour went around the rooms of the main floor, which contain some of the most important exhibits. Here’s a picture of the Peacock Clock. Once an hour, various parts of this clock moved in the most incredible ways. They claim the clock works perfectly. If you want to see this peacock strut its stuff, there are plenty of YouTube videos. Just search for “Peacock Clock”. Don’t worry about what language you get. The clock doesn’t need words to make it more interesting.

Church of the Spilled Blood

We had time to see several other things we hadn’t seen already. Here’s a shot of the Church of the Spilled Blood.

Russian Wedding Party

One of the interesting things we saw was bridal parties taking pictures. In Russia, couples usually get married on Saturday by going to the marriage office and signing papers. Then the newlyweds run around town getting their pictures taken in places with great views, while the parents and guests start the reception party. The happy couple shows up at the reception in time to have dinner. Then it’s off to their new lives together.