Russian Waterways Travel Diary, Moscow to St. Petersburg

We have just arrived from Helsinki, Finland a land of sanity, good order, a place not altogether exciting but friendly and efficient. Now we are in the Moscow Airport lined up before the processing booths. When my turn comes I practice my new minimal Russian language skills, straight out of Berlitz, "Dobroye Ootra," I say, "Dobry, dobry" she replies unsmiling, and motions me to be on my way. Once through immigration, we collect our bags and sail through the nothing-to-declare customs line.

What do I know of Russia to bring me here in the first place? An admiration for the valiant defiance of the citizens of Leningrad during the 900 day siege of World War II. A nostalgia for the Revolutionary ardor of the early 20th century. Sergei Eisenstein movies. Russian composers, writers, the ballet, artists, folk tales and the fact that I attended school with the nephew of Leon Trotsky - "Uncle Leon." The Volga Waterways cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg sounded like a good bet. Ann and I booked on the M/S Vladimir Mayakovsky departing Moscow in July, 2001. I have an old Fodor's (1988) in hand, under the assumption that not much has changed by way of rules and regulations. And in general, I am right about that.

Our guides, Luba, Olga and Sergei keep us good company in the arrival hall. We bus to Moscow's Northern River Terminal at Khimki Harbor on the Moscova River and finally board the M/S Vladimir Mayakovsky late in the evening. The Terminal is shaped like a vessel and is topped with a huge red star. We dine aboard ship and get to sleep very late indeed.

Our cabin is small but serviceable with its own shower/bath combo. After breakfast, we leave on a bus tour of the city with Anatoly, our local guide.

The Kremlin ("wood" or "citadel") built by Prince Dolgorucky "Long-arms" overlooking the River, now contains within its sixty-eight acres government buildings, palaces, cathedrals of white stone, and the Armoury, a magnificent museum. The walls are made of red brick and stretch for one and a half miles and rise to a height, in some places, of sixty-five feet. The approach Tower is called Kutafya "clumsy or confused" and its shape is different from the other towers. Dating from at least the fourteenth century, the Kremlin stands as a symbol of Russian power and piety. Inside is the world's largest cannon (the Czar Cannon) which has never been fired and the world's largest bell (the Czar Bell) which has never been rung. I purchase the Russian soldier's hat decorated with Olympic pins and Moscow book from a peddlar outside the Kremlin walls. The street vendors happily sell for American cash money; most are young men.

Cathedral Square, the oldest and principal square in the Kremlin, is bordered by three cathedrals: the Dormition, the Church of Saint Michael Archangel, and the Annunciation, masterpieces of Russian architecture. The Cathedral of the Dormition (1475) - in Russian iconography the Assumption of Mary into Heaven is shown as Mary falling asleep, hence the term "dormition" (whereas in the West she is shown as standing erect ascending with outstretched arms). The architects were brought in from Italy because of their level of technical skill in construction. Czars and patriarchs were crowned in the Dormition, Russia's premier cathedral, even after the monarchy moved to St. Petersburg. The interiors of the cathedrals are as impressive as the exteriors. The focus of each cathedral is its iconostasis, literally a wall of icons, and walls and columns are decorated with paintings.

The Church of Saint Michael Archangel , is home to the remains of Ivan, the Terrible (Awesome) and his sons and features floor to ceiling iconography and agate floors. In Russian Orthodox Iconography there is a screen called the iconostasis, which includes a series of religious icons flanking a central pair of doors behind which is the altar. The second icon to the right of these doors represents the name of the church, in this case St. Michael.

President Jiang Zemin is visiting President Putin in the Kremlin this very day, China having just been awarded the Olympic site for the 2008 Games and he is no doubt in search of some hard cash to float the $29 billion investment Bejing is going to make in preparation. I pass on the Armoury tour and walked instead with travelling friends Ann, Diane, Pia and Sue to the Manesh Underground, a shopping mall in the park to change money, do a little shopping, read the city names on the tombs of the Fallen Soldiers, and I manage to take a picture of President Jiang Zemin's limousine as it speeds away from the Kremlin (surprise!). I happened to spot the police cars pulling up to block traffic and these secret-service NKVD types (they look the same in every country - congregants of two or three in suits, shirts, ties, hats and shades) hanging around the Kremlin back exit and the street then, whoosh, out speeds the motorcade. It was all very fast, unlike American motorcades which are characterized by yellow barrier gates, the police hanging around for hours and massive traffic jams.

Our next stop is to Moscow-Lomonsov University on the Lenin Hills with a view of the Moskova River and the Olympic Sports Complex built in 1980. Here I purchase my first Matryoshka doll, signed and sold by the artist herself, a lovely young Russian woman named Elena.

In the afternoon, we visit Krasnya Ploschard - Beautiful Square, known mistakenly in the West as "Red Square" where preparations are being made for tonight's outdoor concert by Placido Domingo. I wander inside GUM, the massive department store cum shopping mall that borders the Square. From a second story balcony here I can see Lenin's Mausoleum across the way. It is closed to visitors so I will not get a chance to view the remains. Pokrovsky Sobor - St. Basil's Cathedral at the foot of the Square is the subject of an original watercolor bought from a street vendor. (A sobor is a large church, translated as "cathedral" but is not the seat of the bishop as it is in the west).

This night we go to the Moscow Ice Circus. A treat and a half if you like your one ring circus staged in an ice rink with a side-show on the second floor of a three story building. (I still don't know how they got the elephant up there without an elevator). You can have your picture taken with the elephant, or bear cubs, buy popcorn and ice cream.The acts are splendid and the audience approving. I do not see the unbiquitous Japanese tourists and Anatoly tells me there are neither Japanese tourists nor Japanese investments in Russia because the WWII peace treaty between these two enemies has yet to be signed. Boris Yelisin once joked that if they want "their" islands back, they can buy them.

The next morning, Ann and I take a stroll along the quay to the shipyards. But the entry is gated and locked.

Our bus ride takes us along the Moskova River to 12 Volkhonka Street where stands a lovely park and the The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art which houses original artifacts from the ancient Mediterranean countries, and plaster replicas of sculptures of ancient and modern masters which were provided here so that poor Russian art students could see them. There are also original paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, and the French Impressionists, many of which -- like Van Gogh's The Prison Yard and The Red Vinyard, I have never seen. The building dates from 1895 and is the largest museum in Russia after the Hermitage. The Pushkin also administers small private collections such as the apartment of the conductor Sviatoslav Richter.

From here we cross the street to the Great Cathedral - The Church of Christ the Saviour (1991) Khram Khrista Spasitelia. Herein lies a tale because my 1988 Fodor's makes no mention of this place.

Back at the close of the War of 1812 (The Great Fatherrland War) Czar Alexander wanted to build a church to commemorate the war dead. This church was built over a period of many years, with fifty-five tons of gold on its domes . But waning interest by the later Czars who succeeded Alexander slowed the construction. The entire church was raised to the foundations in 1931. The government determined to build The Palace of Soviets on the site (photographs) but this undertakling proved unsuccessful because the new foundations kept sinking into the ground. The pious said that it was the "hand of God." So the Moscow bureaucrats in 1958 made a heated outdoor swimming pool instead - the largest in all of Europe. (This Moscow Swimming Pool is in my 1988 Fodor's but with no reference to the pre-existing church). Rumor had it that the pool was the site of secret baptisms on more than one occasion. After perestroika, private and collective monies were gathered to reconstruct the Cathedral as it had been, according to the original plans. Artists from all over Russia donated their time and skills to the new church. It is too splendid a thing to describe and it stands as a monument to the spirit of the people and their tenacious faith. Inside, once again as before, small children watch carefully as their mothers and their grandmothers light candles before the beautiful icons and bow their covered heads and say their prayers. The names of the war heroes of 1812 are inscribed on the antechanmber walls. In the words of the Russian poet, "Nikto ne zabyt - Nichto ne zabyto." "Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten." Olga Berggolts (1910-1975).

We stop at Victory Park, the monument to the 30 million Russian war dead of the Second Great Fatherland War.

Then Anatoly and Olga treat us to a rollicking ride on the Circle Line Metro, which really tests my ability to read Russian -- some of the stations I can figure out on the map Smolenskaya, Kievskaya, Novoslobodskaya, Komsomolskaya, Kurskaya, Arbatskaya (Arbat Square) but the names are hard to read as the train whizzes by. We visit six stations in all, followed by a group of raggle-taggle, laughing Roma children who are finally shooed by Olga back onto a departing train.

Ann and I shop Arbat Square. She buys a small art piece for her daughter Molly and I purchase an embroidered Christmas cloth with napkins and apron.

At dinner tonight we have assigned seating - Ann, Diane, Pia, Sue and I are at lucky #13 by the window. Our waitress is Eugenia and she is a gem of a young woman. In Kostroma, I will buy phlox to decorate our table, they will last the entire voyage.

Our ship sails on the Moscow Canal passing through six locks before we reach the Volga River under a bright summer sun. Matrushka -"Little Mother Volga," the diminutive used by Russians for the greatest European river which winds and meanders 2,400 miles from Moscow to the Baltic linking five oceans and seas together. To travel its entire length would take over a month. This month she is smooth as satin - our wake fans out in quiet folds of glistening fluidity like a soft bridal train. These recent unseasonably long hot weather days match the record heat wave last set in 1936. It will be the same for the remainder of the voyage. The ship is operationally air-conditioned. Much of the rest of Russia is not. The river bank is mostly wooded, with occasional hamlets of dachas, fishing lean-to's and scattered farms and villages. Men fish from the riverside and in little boats. And the Muscovites are all swimming like tiny killie fishes to cool off in the sultry weather.

Along this section of the Volga one sees abandoned and derelict factories but no more so than the relics that line the shores of the Thames in London or the East River in New York. Factories in the west are everywhere abandoned.

As we approach the Uglich quay, the sounds of music float up on the air. Uglich, founded in 1148, is best known as the site of the murder in 1591 of Prince Dmitry, youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, thus the name of the starry-domed Church of St. Dmitry on the Blood, built in 1692. But it is a town of trials and disasters: the murder of 20,000 by the Tatars and 40,000 by the Poles in 1611.At the nearby green-domed Transfiguration Cathedral, in the high vaulted chamber we hear a concert by a small men's choir. It grieves me to enter sacred space now given over to tours "of the museum" that is still a church. I am saddened by the condition of the church and dismayed at the matter-of-fact behavior of the tourists in a place which is, after all, God's house. The central panel is too splendid for words. But ill-luck still follows star-crossed Uglich, last night lightening struck the steeple, knocking out all the electricity in "the museum." The canters redeem the building with their hymns, the power of their song fades otherness to background noise.

On the path back to the ship, we pass lines of small stalls exhibiting local crafts of all sorts. Our guide calls our attention to the table run by the local orphanage. I purchase a christmas stocking made by the children. Old women line the path offering summer bouquets. I must buy something from a young woman with the most beautiful voice I have heard in a long time, and I do, a small heart-shaped box with a scene from the Tale of the Firebird.

"Long ago, there was a tsar who had a magnificent orchard. But every night someone, or something would make away with a few golden apples. The Tsar ordered each of his three sons to catch the culprit.

The two elder brothers fell asleep while watching. But the youngest son kept watch. In the dark of night he saw a firebird swoop in to the apple trees and he reached up and tried to grab it by the tail, but the bird evaded his grasp, leaving him only one bright red tail feather. The tsar then ordered his sons to find the firebird."

Somewhere in all of this I conclude that if we prosper the people, they will reclaim their church.

Today also I had my first Russian lesson, and complete a take home quiz (I earned my Mayakovsky Diploma in Russian Language here). We also enjoy a violin concert by Boris Glavis who teaches at the University.

Leaving Uglich, we sail into the Rybinsk Reservoir, then down a branch of the Volga to Kostroma the family seat of the Imperial Romanovs - of Michael Romanov, destined to become the first Romanov Czar in 1613. We are still in the Upper Volga region. Morning exercise on the Sundeck at 7:40 am tells me I am stiff. We enjoy a folk show at 10:00 by the on-board group which will keep us musically entertainted throughout the voyage. After lunch we tour the city with our guide, Tatiana. We visit the Trinity Cathedral, here the icons were originally painted by nineteen men over three summer months (their names are on the wall) these same icons recently took twenty years to restore. We are treated to a wonderful concert by the choir Glas.

To really understand Russia, one must visit the provincial cities. Kostroma's downtown center looks sunny and busy but the arcade sidewalks are badly in need of repair and the shops are airless, without circulation except for wisps of air which straggle through the open door.

Yaroslavl, a university town with 600,000 residents is the next stop. Adjacent to the Post Office is the only ATM machine to be found between Moscow and St. Petersburg. After a bus tour of the historic city, founded in 1010 and briefly the Russian capital during the Time of Troubles (1598 -1613), we stop next at the seventeenth-century church of St. Elijah the Prophet where we admire frescoes that completely cover walls and high ceilings with icons that date mostly from the 1670s. Unique carved wooden thrones for the Czar and patriarch face the iconostasis. In the smaller winter hall of the church, we are entertained by a wonderful men's quintet.

On to the Savior - Transfiguration Monastery. Jesus is portrayed against a red square, the corners of which represent the four compass points respectively and the color red signifying the Blood of Redemption. The walled monastery was a fortress during the Time of Troubles. Here we listen to a demonstration of stringed bell-ringing but decide not to climb the monastery tower. Instead we walk about the Market Square, blueberries and lingonberries are in season. Vendors who arrive early have the advantage of the shaded arcade, latecomers must sit in the sun all day long. The food stalls in the closed market sell spices, cheese, smoked meats, some vegetables and potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes and fruits in season, and dried plums and apricots. None of these is in overabundant supply.

Awake early for the first time on this trip. The sun is already above the horizon at 5:00 am. As we move north night merges with day for shorter periods of time - the so-called "white nights."The river bank is dotted with spruce mixed with silver birches in surrounds for small villages which are now spread at greater distances from one another. Goritsy a small town at the edge of northern Russia, lies on the east bank of the Sheksna River. Small houses, small gardens, back-breaking labor. Some gardens are tidy and well-cared for, some haphazardly maintained -- an all-too-human place, -- Eden. The major attraction here is the Resurrection Convent founded by Euphrosyne (spouse of Prince Andrew, Ivan II's son). Here she was compelled to take the veil accused of plotting against the Tzar. Ivan the Terrible cloistered his daughter Xenia here during the Time of Troubles. There is a Holy Spring. The Russian Orthodox Church keeps to the old calendar which is about thirteen days off the western calendar, Christmas is celebrated here on January 6.

Underway again, we enter the Rybinsk Reservoir, so large that it is often called a sea, passing the huge statue of Mother Volga, a tribute to the mighty Volga, and a declaration of Socialist success in rural electrification.

We steam all the next day, through Beloye Lake "White Lake" following the Western Kovzha River, part of the Volga system, to Lake Onega the second largest lake in Europe. The banks are mostly wooded, with openings through which we glimpse rural hamlets, cultivated fields, haystacks, and clusters of dachas.

This is the area where the villagers were not warned against the rising waters -- many fled, many died as their villages were inundated, --one can see the tallest tree-tops still poking out of the water.

We arrive at the four mile long Kizhi island or kizhar suari in Karelian "the island of games" under overcast skies. It is an ancient pagan site having been settled settled only since the 14th century and not by christians until the 16th century. There were dark dreams last night of the murder of children by poison and I will do my cleansing ritual here. The principal attraction at Kizhi is the magnificent wooden twenty-two-domed Transfiguration Cathedral.

Dating from 1714, it is constructed as a summer church, entirely without nails, to commemorate Russia's victory over the Swedes in the Time of Troubles. The cathedral is not open, but we see the inside of the smaller wooden Intercession Church adjacent, the winter church, which houses icons from the cathedral.

An outdoor museum was added in 1966, and wooden structures were moved here from the Onega region. The Lake is very deep here and still pure. Our guide confides to Sue and Pia that she has never before met persons of Korean ancestry.

During the night, we cruise on Lake Onega and enter the Svir River. A few kilometers after passing the village of Podporozhye, we dock for a "recreation stop" at Mandrogi which in the Veps language means "pine trees in the bog." Near the quay, tented venues offered food, local crafts, honey, and beer. A popular stop is the log building which houses a museum of vodka and sells a wide variety of spirits. The St. Petersburg Art Academy students sell wonderful crafts pieces painted by hand in Gordets style. Ann and I flag down a troika and for $5.00 we are in for a wild ride through town to the local zoo and in a headlong dash manage to be back in time for the shashlyk (shish-kebab) picnic.

Boarding in the late afternoon, we continue on the Svir River and enter Lake Ladoga, Europe's largest lake. We glide along the southern reaches of the lake, passing many small villages. This afternoon we have an open panel discussion about Russian contemporary life. Obstacles to economic development include the drain of the long war in Chechnya a feature of which is interminable acts of banditry and violence. The market downturn in 1998 severely damaged the burgeoning middle class and the American tobacco companies hire workers thirty years old or younger with two years technical training (compulsory education ends at ninth grade here), and experience working for a non-Russian company at wages greater than that earned by college teachers. In the evening we all dress for the Captain's Dinner.

We are in the Neva River, and arrive at River Station in St. Petersburg by morning.

Peter the Great intended St. Petersburg to be Russia's window to the West. At first glance, it indeed appears more western than Russian. Our visits during the next two days reveal the city's role in tsarist, Soviet, and modern Russia. And while our guide Katya keeps insisting that we will prefer this city to all others, I must admit that I prefer Moscow.

Our bus tour of St. Petersburg's center follows a running commentary on the city's origins. When his new city was finished in 1712 after a decade of work Peter the Great moved the Russian capital from Moscow to Petersburg. By decree the buildings of this new city were to be of stone construction forbidding it's use anywhere else, and so the small towns like Uglich had no stone with which to rebuild after their devastation by fire or war.The seat of government remained here until 1918 when Lenin moved it back to Moscow. The city name was changed in 1914 to Petrograd. When Lenin died in 1924, the name was again changed to Leningrad. In the emancipating atmosphere of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, the city's inhabitants elected to return to the name of St. Petersburg. We stop to take pictures at St. Isaac's Cathedral. This is a church in the western style. The architect was French. We also visit the Synagogue, second largest in the world, which is in the process of reconstruction and beautifully light and clean. What a struggle Janet had to arrange with our guides a stop here. Viewed charitably, one can suppose a lack of interest in Judaica, or any other belief system for that matter, because throughout the entire trip we visited only Russian Orthodox sites. Her effort was worth it.

The Church of the Saviour on the Blood is built on the site of the murder in 1881 of the reformist Czar Alexander II by a terrorist. It was never meant to be a parish church, but rather a memorial for the fallen tzar. The only services held here were those in memory of Alexander, though a sermon and requiem were said regularly. In 1917, the Bolsheviks opened the doors to the public. When St. Isaacs was closed in the 1920s, the Saviour on the Blood functioned briefly as the cathedral church until it was closed in 1930.

After a visit to the Grand Hotel (with two! ATM machines) I eat my sack lunch in Pushkin Park, read the St. Petersburg Times and am ready for St. Petersburg's piéce de resistance: The Hermitage. Actually a complex of five buildings dating from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, this museum houses almost three million works of art in four hundred rooms, so many that, it has been said, to pause just a few moments at each would require nine years. In Czarist times, the magnificent collections were largely for the court's enjoyment. Catherine the Great once wrote in a letter: "All this is admired by mice and myself." The Hermitage was opened to the public by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

We spend two hours of an afternoon in the Hermitage. Our guide moves us through this massive collection so effortlessly one could not but admire her ease and expertise. We see treasures of the western European masters--paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, jewelry, medals and coins--so much elegance that one is almost overwhelmed. The buildings themselves are also works of art.

After dinner, Pia and I walk along River Station road. Everywhere we see the gray-walled high rise apartments, called "Krushchevs" after the late premier who insituted large scale rapid building programs to provide small, temporary housing for Soviet citizens. These temporary dwellings became permanent and they are notorious for their shoddy workmanship and poor plumbing. Later buildings, called "Stalins" are a little better. Citizens had a chance to purchase their state-run apartnments after perestroika but it appears as if none are being maintained. In both Moscow and St. Petersburg the grass is unmowed. Much of the new construction appears to be invidual dwellings in the countryside or suburbs.

The next day we drive out of the city to the town of Pushkin, - Tsarskoye Selo, "Czars Village," a summer haven for the Czars, and a visit to the Palace of Catherine the Great. The road circles around the city gates wheron during the war the Nazis hung all the Jews of the town. My day at the palace is clouded by the memory of this terrible deed and the blue exterior with white trim and gold decoration of the palace hurts my eyes. The notes played by the flautist at the palace door drop one by one into my ear, like sweet poison. Everything around me disconnects into fragments. Inside, the richness of the decoration is unbearable. Much of what we see is art reconstruction, since the palace was gutted by German bombing during World War II. I tell myself, these palaces bring in the tourist dollars. But it still comes off the backs of the people, just as the originals did in the days of its youth. In the dappled shade of the formal gardens, I buy a watercolor of the Peter and Paul fortress from a sad-eyed young woman. There is a town memorial to the Jews, we drive by it on our way out.

In the afternoon, we are bused to Petrodvorets (Peterhof). We walk in the gardens and among the many beautiful fountains, which operate without pumps, and then tour the palace.

The good ship M/S Vladimir Mayakovsky has a first-rate crew and the service is commendable. The food is agreeable and the soups and breads are especially tasty. On-board programs are excellent. We had, for example, the advantage of on-board lectures by Ann Odum, curator of the Hillwood Museum, one of America's premier estate museums. Founded by Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir of the Post cereal empire, the museum features the most comprehensive assemblage of imperial Russian fine and decorative arts outside Russia.

And who was this Mayakovsky for whom our vessel is named? Why, he is a poet of the 1917 Revolution:

"Listen,
if stars are lit,
it means - there is someone who needs it.
It means it is essential
that every evening
at least one star should ascend
over the crest of the building."

Listen,1914

Russian WaterwaysTravel Diary