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Moscow, Russia

The Hotel Bulgarov, Arbat, Moscow, undergoing internal renovations at the moment, has the smallest toilet cubicle I’ve ever had the pleasure of entering. There have been many toilets in my years of travel that have allowed me to find at least one position to throne and de-throne, even with the aid of something to hold onto or of a friend! But this one takes the cake. With the toilet at 45 degrees to the door opening I tried leaving the door open so one knee could protrude. But this failed. I could bend and sit but that meant that I was sitting on the cistern. I even tried to stand on the rim of the porcelain bowl but still the walls were too close for my long pointy knees. I’m off to find an alternative. Yours in waiting…

Moscow, Russian Federation

Arrived on the time 0530 into an already bustling Moscow. Leningradsky Station was big and soviet. Having rehearsed the Cyrillic names of all the stations and changes I entered the underground metro system. First hurdle: buy ticket. I was anxious that trains would already be running super packed as the multiple queues just for tickets from cashiers were horrendous! But in reality it took 5 minutes to buy the ticket and my pronunciation of Russian numbers was starting to flow. With my 10-ride contactless (i.e. electronic swipe) metro card I entered the gates. Checking the map once more to remember line termination names so as to pick the right direction I headed down the enormously long downward escalator. As I entered the pedestrian tunnels below I noticed an incongruous ‘muzak’ began over the piped PA. It was a corny instrumental version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”! As I walked and listened I felt a mild euphoria of contentment – I suppose this was the intention. I walked smiling innately at my fellow Metro goers – all serious and off to work we go. I must say I’m quite proud of myself having navigated to Hotel Bulgarov in Arbat – a bohemian area of historic writers and painters. Check-in is at 1300 but I asked nicely and got a shower with a clean towel. Feeling good for a first day of exploration in Moscow. Drinking a tea at reception and listening to techno rave music that the night clerk at front desk has going quietly, while I wait for Andrei (17 y.o.) to come here to meet me. He’s Katya’s (WWF) step-son. Sunny and warm. Looking toward to blini (pancakes) for breakfast!

Moscow, Russian Federation

Today I walked and toured and photographed and smiled for 14 hours straight. Moscow looks and feels great. And my gentle and knowledgeable host was seventeen year old Andrei, my new friend. Stay tuned for more….

Valday, Russia

21:20
Dog box to Moscow tonight. So far I’m sharing with a shy young non-English speaking student. The large wagon-matron, the provodnitsa, is already sternly calling the shots clearing the train of non-ticket holders. Mid evening and the fluffy seeds make the sunbeams casting across the tracks move like gimlet-coloured polyp-filled water columns.

The provodnitsa tends the hot water machine, the samovar, and I hear the endless tinkling of cups of tea being prepared emanating from said matron’s cabin.

22:15
I’ve just had a canned pint of Baltica. And as the long northern twilight began to produce its entire northern horizon explosion of pastel greys, blues and pinks I emerged from the dog box to take a photo from the corridor window. The young lass in number 7 had the same idea and it seemed we’d emerged in perfect synchronicity to photograph the same scene.

23:34
My fellow dog box companion is snoring soundly just centimetres from me. Like ships in the night we rush past north bound trains. Tw beech, oak and confer forests are interspersed with low shrub lands surrounding marshes and small lakes. Occasionally in towns and in industrial shunting yards I spy men cutting through the bush to cross the tracks the unofficial way. I wonder I’d we’ll have additional occupants tonight. They’ll have the top bunks if the do come.

0:10
I’d just brushed my teeth, made up the bed and was lying down looking at the passing forest and fading sunset reflected from the window behind my head in the mirror behind the closed door of the dog box, when we pulled into a small station and suddenly the door opened. The final two occupants had arrived. Being young and lithe they speedily stowed their bags and made thir beds without a fuss. The provodnitsa presented large glass mugs of tea and they then proceeded in silence to sit in their top bunks and eat fried chicken. Lucky I’d eaten. But the smell was vaguely soporific anyway.

Novgorod, Russian Federation

After spending the late morning and afternoon at the Novgorod kremlin I sat on the banks of the Volkhov River to feast upon my decidely non-vegetarian survival food: Russian black bread, local SPb cheese and a lovely looking Latvian salami stick! I then found the number 7 bus south out of town to a place dedicated to the ancient art of wooden architecture, with a whole village reconstructed using the log cabin style of construction. From the 9th century Novgorod served as the centre for the infant Russian state, influenced greatly by the Viking invaders from the north and northwest. The village was dedicated to the architectural style from the 16th to the 18th centuries. There were agrarian folk houses and amazing churches. And inside women in 16th, 17th or 18th century period dress (depending on the building you were in) completed the picture. They served as caretakers of the exhibits which displayed period family household and stable / barn items. A couple of young local women were in the same bus out as I and we ended up walking around the site at the same time. It turned out that they had just come to use the beautiful wooden buildings as mere backdrops for their portraits. I secretly smiled as they each took turns to position themselves in various poses on the bleached wooden steps or the verdant grass lawns, while the other took their photo. After an hour or so the swamp land that surrounded the site came alive with mosquitoes and as the welts grew large on my neck and shoulders I raced back out to wait for the old bus again to take me back into the town of Novgorod.

Novgorod, Russian Federation

We’ve all seen the practice of people placing locks on bridge balustrades engraved with their names and sentiments. Well on the bridge over the river beside the Novgorod kremlin I found a new take on this. A lock with the words ‘Hate you!’ in English had been placed around an already attached one. I can only imagine that the person who attached this lock was no longer in love with the person with whom they had attached the first one. Unable or not wanting to cut the original lock away (keys are customarily thrown into the river by the vowing couples after the lock is attached), they simply and efficiently attached what can politely be called the ‘annulment’ lock. I suppose it makes her or his dissatisfaction with the other party more public (in English language though). I wonder if there’ll come a ‘rebuttal lock’?!

Novgorod, Russian Federation

It reminds me of the late summer in 1993 that I spent in Alaska. Floating through the air tiny white fluffy seeds. Giving animated substance to sunbeams. Loosed by last nights downpour they lie caught in Novgorod’s gutter-edge grills and in the spikes of my beard. They’ve been floating for days now. I saw them in SPb. Racing against the northern summer’s brevity the seeds seek new dominion via the Baltic wind’s assistance. Maybe it was that light and the intense green of the beech and oak forests that reminded me if Alaska. The white flaking trunks and the freshness of the air made aromatic by the ever so delicate warmth of the sun. The gentle floating parade of the fluffy white seeds connecting all parts of this northwest Russian landscape gave me the sense of unity. From where I sit now outside the Novgorod kremlin I can see the fluffy whites drift before me, while off in the distance, across the moat and beset by the deepening green of the denser forest recesses, they make a steady passage i the same direction. Like a journey of faithful pilgrims making their way in unison despite and oblivious to the world that stands around them. There’s a sense of festival in the air. And it’s not he making of humans.

Novgorod, Russian Federation

On train now heading to Novgorod, which is 3 hours south of St Petersburg (SPb), sort of on the way to Moscow. It’s the ancient site of the first Viking settlement in Russia, around which the beginnings of the first Russian state formed. It was hard to leave SPb. I made good friends quickly here amongst the crowd of Anton The Good & Katya The Saint. They are all such kind and caring people. Katya has kindly given me her sister’s contact in Moscow who works as concertmaster with the New Opera Theatre and has offered to take me around. The Electritska to Novgorod is very efficient and clean, and after emerging from the industrialised outskirts of SPb, we passed through deep green explosions of rural countryside. The girls next to me were watching a movie together on their tiny smartphone and the large women across the aisle was sending clippings flying as she vigorously manicured her fingernails. This now feels more alone to me after saying goodbye to my SPb friends. Katya and Sasha (a friend of Katya’s whom I was delighted to meet the night before when we went drinking in the park as a party of several – it was after the afternoon downpour in SPb and by late evening with the sun still up it was warm and muggy and it was better to be outside of the apartment) kindly walked me to SPb’s Moscow train station, helping me to navigate the complex ticket purchasing system. I know I’ll manage but I quipped to them both that I need to take them with me for assistance. In Novgorod the dark clouds opened and so I waited after arrival at the station under shelter until it passed. It was after 21:00 hours when I found Hotel Akron. I had some food from my survival provisions in my room and headed out for a lap of the Kremlin until midnight. A grand wall and a sodden moat. Couples wondered through it and out over the splendid river on the pedestrian bridge in the midnight light. Back outside the Kremlin a roller blade skater was practicing exquisite moves on the grand asphalted area before Lenin’a statue. National sports are considered to be ice hockey and skating. In fact Russia is world champion in ice hockey. I supposed this fellow was a ice skater or ice hockey player keeping in shape during the summer on his rollerblades. I’ll explore this old city’s Kremlin (castle) further tomorrow, including the monument to a Thousand Years of Russian History, in the daylight and when things are open and then catch the overnight sleeper train to Moscow.

St Petersburg, Russian Federation

After a full day at The Hermitage with kind Katya, which will have to occupy a blog of its own, I headed off with Anton and his energetic father Sergei (who is a petrophysicist was state petro-giant GAZPROM) to join them on their weekly Saturday afternoon banya session. With not much common language between us, I knew I was in for an experience when the tied bundles of dried birch and oak branches (venik) were produced and we entered naked into the sanctum of intense heat and steam with large men wearing strange felt hats. I was exhausted when Katya and I returned from The Hermitage. As the LP says “navigating [this place] is an art in [and of] itself.” Anton and Sergei were waiting. Just bring a towel and thongs they instructed. We walked up Middle Prospect for 10 minutes and down a back alley to a large old building. Walking up the decrepit and broad flight of stairs to the third floor I smelt stale tobacco smoke. As I’ve now grown accustomed most stair wells are full of the fug of stale smoke and this one was no exception. We came into a plain reception area with a series of curtained cubicles. A stern looking lady attended the reception. Euro 2012 showed on the little tele in front of her. Stripping down and hanging our clothes, Anton flashed open his towel wrapped around his waist by way of indicating to me that putting on my speedoes was not appropriate. I happily took them off! Towels wrapped around us we entered the wet area of the showers and large cold dip pool. I stood around naked a little unsure of what to do next while Anton and Sergei walked about preparing things. First they set to soak in large soaking buckets the dried oak leaves wrapped tight into large bundles by their branches and tied by multiple turns of twine. And then throwing me a pointy felt hat to put on (mine was a stained white one with the Russian Red Star on the front) we entered the sauna. Immediately the heat was intense and imposing. The room was dark and lined in timbers and the smell was pleasant. We laid a linen cloth on the wood benches at the top of a platform accessed by stairs and sat down. One of the men in the dark corner decided it needed more heat and walks down to the boiler in the corner and using a large long-handled ladle, threw water from a bucket onto the coals. The increase in ambient temperature was almost instant. With my arms rigid straight on my thighs I leant slightly forward and breathed hard and intentionally through my mouth – breathing through the nose stung the delicate skin in my nostrils. After a time that wasn’t too soon we stood and slowly stepped down and out to he relative coolness of the shower and prep area. I slowly climbed the ladder to the cold pool. Being on the third floor it wasn’t at floor level. Instead it was like a massive trough with large unwieldy ladder steps up and over for access. Now it was time for the fraternal administration of oak leaf beating. While I sat breathing slowly in the hot steam I watched Sergei douse the wet leaf bundles with a mixture of pone and eucalyptus oil. He then rose to the platform and walked up and back shaking these branches above his head. We were hit by the fine spray of wonderful aromatics and soon the bath house was a perfumed sanctum of men taking the time to care an honour each other. Sergei asked me to lie down but then changed his mind and thought it better to have a demonstration first on his son – they of course do this habitually / ritually every week.

St Petersburg, Russian Federation

Another late start but thanks to Anton’s amazing Ukranian borsch all was put right from the night before. His supply of Bread Beer was also well appreciated – a yeasty fizzy non-alcoholic drink made from soaking good Russian black bread in water and allowing natural fermentation. Late in the day after a pile of handwashing Anton and I headed out to the Peter & Paul Fortress. We took the Metro, which was my first experience on this deep subterranean beast. It’s at least 70 metres down and all accessed in one long single escalator. A bit old and rattly it certainly goes fast and moves thousands of people. After passing underneath the River Neva twice and admiring the baroque interiors during line hops of some of the oldest stations – constructed in the 1950s – we emerged on the surface at Gorkovskaya Metro from what can only be described as a giant flying saucer shaped building. At the River Neva waters edge near the fortress many people swam in the murky sea waters pushed by the tide up from the Finland Sea. It was hard to imagine the long winter freeze and the fact that these river waters would be iced right over later in the year. I tossed low denomination rouble coins at the little hare statue in the moat accessing the fortress. Katya told me a story about this hare, which in the early stages of relating she was erroneously referring to as everything but a hare. After a lap of the fortress interior Anton left me to attend his yacht sailing club. With his beard and height he looks all the bit a sailor. And though he is by nature a man of few words he has an ancient wisdom about him. I continued exploring the fortress alone. I then took the 27 rouble (AUD$0.82) per ride Metro via two changes to Lenin Square, where I’d arrived on Wednesday night but never really noticed being in the tow of Katya and Anton. Apparently a terrorist act recently had ripped a hole in the massive bronze statue of Lenin. The explosion’s hole was left right through him in the place where people would say hurts the most! Needless to say the statue was repaired rapidly to avoid Lenin’s embarrassed state lingering in the public eye. Headed back to the ‘hood via Metro and adjourned to a little vego restaurant hidden in a back alley. Very delicious!