Monthly Archives: April 2013

How Big Is the Hermitage?

My second day in St Petersburg, I spent most of the day in the Hermitage Museum, using the first day of my two day pass. My goal: to check out the Italian Renaissance and Spanish paintings, alongside some of the State Rooms, so that when I went back the next day with my friend Aasa, we could go to the Impressionist/Post-Impressionist floor.

You enter the Hermitage through a central staircase (also called the Jordan or Ambassador Staircase), which is simply magnificent. It’s all white and gold paint. I then proceeded through a number of State Rooms, including the small throne room (for those intimate occasions) and the large throne room (when one wants to impress). I took a brief detour through some Russian culture rooms, which include Nicholas II’s library. I decided I want that room – it’s fantastic.

On my way to the Italian gallery, I passed through my favorite room in the palace: the Pavilion room, which currently houses the Peacock Clock. It’s another white and gold room, with a Moorish theme, so there are balconies and arches. It’s absolutely breathtaking – I could get used to living in a room like that!

I’m not going to describe all the museum galleries. Suffice it to say, the Hermitage (as you no doubt know already) is one of the greats like the Met or the Louvre. They have a room of Titians that is great, and a big, grand room full of Spanish art (primarily de Ribera and Murillo) that is breathtaking.

I thought I was covering a lot of ground when I made it through the State Rooms pretty quickly. Of course, the State Rooms mostly don’t have art in them and only make up a quarter of the second floor. It took me considerably longer to get through the Italian gallery! Before I knew it, it was mid-afternoon and I started thinking about heading back to the hotel to meet up with my friend.

But before I did so, I stopped in an adjacent Hermitage exhibit called the Winter Palace of Peter I. This building doesn’t really exist anymore as Catherine the Great built a theater over it, but they have rebuilt several rooms amongst the archeological remains and furnished them as they would have looked in Peter’s time. More impressively (as in impressive-creepy), they have a life-size wax figure of Peter the Great made from death wax casts of his face and hands and using his actual hair. I think he would have been very disapproving of my insane desire to giggle when I saw it (him?).

I wended my weary way home, where my friend Aasa had arrived. I’m very lucky to have her able to join me for my stay in St Petersburg. We’ve known each other for a long time and always seem to pick up our friendship where we left off, despite living on different continents.

I Heart St Petersburg

I arrived in St Petersburg and made it to the hotel without getting lost! Yes, it’s true! I love subway systems – they tend to actually make sense and even have maps to help you navigate them. And when I emerged from the subway and was looking around to see which way was west (since I was on the right street for once and just needed a compass point), a nice young man asked if I needed help with directions. Did I mention I love St Petersburg?

I’ve been trying to put a finger on where St Petersburg reminds me of. The first day I arrived, I had a free afternoon, so I just walked around for hours admiring the city and getting acclimated. It definitely feels more European than Russian, and also has a big city feel that I guess I missed these past couple of weeks. The wide, planned streets lined with historic facades reminds me of Paris, although in most ways this city is nothing like Paris. The canals might be like Amsterdam (if I had been to Amsterdam I could tell you better). It has a Northern European feel with a Russian flavor – and I guess comparisons in many ways are silly as it is clearly, indubitably St Petersburg, with a flavor all its own.

I walked first to a gorgeous synagogue about ten minutes from the hotel, called the Grand Choral Synagogue. A few blocks down the way, I completely geeked out in a balletomane way because I saw the Mariinksi Theater, in full green and white splendor. There was much internal squealing.

Then off to the Neva River, not quite as pretty as possible with all the construction but I suppose construction is a necessary part of life. Just like all this mud is a necessary part of spring…

The Neva is a very wide river, dwarfing the golden domes and stately buildings that line it by its very size. I walked down the embankment towards the golden dome of St Isaac’s, seeing the Bronze Horseman statue (the emblem of the city, a statue of Peter the Great about which Pushkin wrote a famous poem) which stands in front of it.

I continued past the grand buildings of the Admiralty to a green and white and gold concoction which turned out to be the Winter Palace portion of the Hermitage Museum complex. I went around to the Palace Square in front, picturing angry hordes mobbing the Winter Palace in 1917, and headed out towards Nevsky Prospect. I have to say the Palace Square is impressive, fronting the Winter Palace and with the curving arms of the Staff Buildings along the other side. There’s a lot of empty space and gracious, simple lines (not including the Rocco Winter Palace).

I ate an early dinner/late lunch of beef stroganoff not far from the Stroganoff Palace (strange thought!) and called it a day.

A Short Stay in Nizhny Novgorod

Continental divide? Totally anti-climactic. Just a quick blur of an obelisk saying Europe this way, Asia that way. But it meant that I’m back in the West, as much as Russia can be the West, and then my phone skipped back by two hours to put me in the Moscow time zone and I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod.

By now my stories of arriving in a new Russian city are either like a car crash (you just can’t look away from the drama: how oh how will she get lost this time? Stay tuned!) or funny. You tell me – I’m the one living through them and therefore no great judge. This time it was the fault of the hotel website, which told me the wrong bus number. Yes, it really wasn’t my fault for once.

Shortly after I found my bus (in the snow, might I add? First snow in Russia and I’m not even in Siberia anymore), it pulled into the terminus. I showed the driver the map I had printed out and he wrote down what bus I needed to take to get close to the hotel, then made me wait in the warm bus until my bus had pulled in and he’d talked to the other driver about the lost American girl. That driver and the conductor (a lady who sells the tickets) told me where to switch buses, made sure I got off at the right stop and crossed to the other bus stop, and even wrote out a note for me to give to the next conductor so that person could tell me at which stop to get off. I’m not sure what the note said – I think I’m going to keep it till I can get a Russian speaker to translate (“I’m a stupid lost tourist who needs to get off at the stop for the hotel Ibis and don’t speak a word of Russian. Can you help me?”). Whatever it was, it worked! Like Blanche Dubois, I always depend on the kindness of strangers. This time it worked out well. I might splurge and just have the hotel call me a taxi for my return this evening, though.

I got to the hotel before noon, pretty much exhausted. I munched on leftover Trans-Sib food (mmmm, Nutella) and watched most of the rest of The Lizzie Bennett Diaries on YouTube (great show). Then I figured I should use a couple of hours of daylight to explore a little bit of the city while the snow had lessened.

I walked out to the Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, a pedestrian shopping street lined with classic Russian 18th or 19th century architecture painted pale greens and blues and yellows. Bronze statues of people in 19th century dress dot the street – a shoe shiner, a lady with a parasol, a man on a bench. Even in snow, it’s charming, though I fear that some of the lovely facades are only that: facades. Looking at the sides of buildings, they’re not in as good repair.

The street ends at a big square in front of the Kremlin. (No, not that Kremlin. A kremlin is really just a word for fortress.) After going to the end of the square to look down at the view of the magnificent Volga, a huge river, I wandered back through one of the Kremlin’s imposing gates and explored inside and outside the ring wall. At that point my boot had leaked and it was snowing harder, so I headed back to the hotel, where I had beef stroganoff. You can’t not have beef stroganoff in Russia, right?

The weather was better yesterday, my only full day in Nizhny Novgorod, so I took full advantage of it and walked a lot. I headed out to try to find the Ostrog, a prison museum (this city having been used as a place of internal exile), and then looped back through a different part of the city to explore the Kremlin again more thoroughly. (No luck on the Ostrog, but it’s on the list for today.) This time I saw the church at the center, with the eternal flame and WWII monument behind it (again surrounded by cadets like in Irkutsk), and the amazing view down to the bottom of the Kremlin near the water. The Kremlin sits on a very steep hill, the walls circling the descent down to the Volga as well as part of the flatter top. One can imagine that if invaders managed to take the bottom of the Kremlin, they’d still have a hard time getting up to the heart of it as the defenders have the high ground.

The State Art Museum is in the complex, and is supposed to be one of the best regional collections of Russian art (about which I am profoundly ignorant), so I popped in for an hour. Russian museums (small ones, anyway) are very interesting: instead of guards in each room, they have babushkas who guide you about which rooms to enter in which sequence, often going ahead to open doors (in house museums where they have humidifiers going) and turn on lights. I’m guessing the Hermitage will be more like the western museums I’m used to – I’ll find out later this week! (I am so looking forward to St Petersburg! Seeing a great city and meeting up with a great friend from college.)

I saw a floor of Russian icons and then a bunch of 19th century Russian artists. I feel a little more knowledgeable now! On my way out, I stopped to buy some postcards and had a great chat (with a few words of English and a few words of Russian) with the lady selling them. She wanted to know where I was from, how long I was traveling for, whether I were married or had kids – the usual questions I’ve encountered from my nice older train companions. She also managed to tell me she had travelled to Marrakech. Then she saw a younger colleague whom she called over to speak more English and give me recommendations on what to see.

Following her recommendations, I took the road down to the bottom of the Kremlin and walked out onto another historic street, lined with 18th century houses and a church whose dome is covered in multi-colored tiles. (Somehow the word bijou comes to mind.) Then I had a relaxing lunch at an Italian cafe where I devoured some fresh vegetables (all this train travel has made me very happy to eat fresh food) and risotto and rested my poor weary feet. I must say, I love Russian “business lunch” specials. They usually run until 3 or 4 pm and provide 2 to 3 courses for $8-$15, the same price one dish usually costs at these restaurants. It’s great for the budget traveller. Since I ate lunch so late and there was a supermarket just down the street, I bought some picnic food to have dinner in my room.

I continued walking on the Embankment by the Volga, until I came to the immense Chlakov Staircase (closed for repairs over the winter). The Staircase goes from the banks of the river all the way up to the plaza in front of the (top part) of the Kremlin. At this point I was really tired, and the area was pretty empty of pedestrian traffic except for a few men taking smoking breaks by the river, so I decided I’d feel more comfortable in a more populated area. I headed back to the hotel, retracing my steps (and yes, that means climbing back up the steep road to the top of the Kremlin).

And now it’s today, Tuesday, and I have till this evening in the city and then it’s the overnight train to St Petersburg! Yay for less than 24 hours on the train! So I’m off to pack and hopefully mail some postcards.

Asia to Europe: Three More Days on the Trans-Sib

I got on the train, expecting another babushka speaking only Russian, and instead was pleasantly surprised to be with two women of around my age who both speak English. One is a geologist or a cartographer (or both) who stayed with us till Novosibirsk. The other is second mate on a sailing ship and is heading to St Petersburg. I have an invitation from her to come check out the ship next week!

We’ve had an enjoyable time chatting. The scenery hasn’t changed a great deal until the last hour or two, though currently we’ve passed from Siberia to the Urals region. There are fewer woods and more settlements, especially now as we will soon pull into Yekaterinburg. Shortly after that is the continental divide! I hope we see it – it sounds like it’s easy to miss.

And here’s an example of where Russians have been very nice and welcoming in personal interactions. When I unpacked my snacky food, we all had a good laugh at the fact that the dried fruit I’d bought was meant for the Russian drink “compote”. That would explain why I bit into a dried apricot and crunched through the pit. (I quietly disposed of the rest in the garbage.) My geologist friend popped her head back in after getting off at Novosibirsk and handed me two packages of dried fruit (meant for actual eating) – apparently she had called her father who was picking her up at the station and asked him to bring them. I’m not sure I understand the Russians and the contradictions of how they treat strangers.

Cartier on Karl Marx Street: Irkutsk

I had planned for four days in Irkutsk, hoping to spend some time on the famed Lake Baikal. As it turned out, early April is not a great time to go – the Circumbaikal train wasn’t running till the end of the month. I’m guessing early April means flooding on parts of the track as things thaw.

Oh well, my oasis was simply going to be even more restful. I spent the first day in full tourist mode, exploring the city, and was enchanted. The historic center looks much wealthier than that of Ulan Ude – the sidewalks were in decent repair and many 19th century buildings had gotten a recent coat of paint in the style of St Petersburg (classic facades in pastel colors).

I walked to the center square where the main government buildings are located, alongside a Polish neo-Gothic cathedral and a couple of lovely Russian Orthodox churches. Looking for an overpass over the road to the Angara River, I stumbled across the WWII monument and eternal flame, guarded by a bunch of young women (cadets of some kind?) in uniforms which included hair things that resembled nothing so much as white pom poms. As I watched, another group came high stepping around to replace the first. I managed to snap an unobtrusive pic.

After that minor diversion, I headed to the Angara. I found signs placed by the Irkutsk tourist office (the first such office I had encountered in Russia) suggesting a walking route around the city, which I more or less followed. This let me see a number of the wooden houses of the type I had seen in Ulan Ude, in rather worse repair (and sinking in parts) than the other buildings I had seen in the city. I exited this neighborhood onto the big, ritzy shopping street. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this capitalist mecca is called Karl Marx Street?

I passed Bennetton and Columbia and continued on to find the Trubetskoy House Museum. The Trubetskoys were part of the Decembrist Revolution and as such, condemned to hard labor and then exile in Siberia. The house was much grander than I imagined, till I went through the museum and it put it in perspective: this house was built for one of their daughters during exile, after their miserable period of penal servitude. So it made sense that they would live aristocratically 20 years after arriving in Siberia.

The following day, I set out for the touristy little town of Listvyanka, on Lake Baikal. I took a mashrutka (minibus) to the bus station. Well, actually, to the stop after the bus station. The problem with minibuses is that you have to request stops, which presupposes 1. that you know where you’re going and 2. that you speak Russian. There were no buses pulled into the station so I missed my stop, luckily getting off not too far away when the next passenger got off.

I took a minibus to Listvyanka, about an hour ride through birch tree forest and up and down steep hills. It was lovely, and I got to see parts of town that I never would have seen on foot as we drove out of Irkutsk. There was a nice middle-class looking neighborhood by the airport with new apartment buildings but also areas of old decrepit wood houses that looked like shanty towns.

We arrived at the cold, windy, deserted Listvyanka. It was so quiet! I saw blocks of ice pushed up at the edge of the lake, some colored a clear pale blue. I saw some men carrying buckets of water from the lake, which is supposed to have pristine water away from specific areas of pollution (like the mouths of the rivers that flow past cities with polluting industry like in Ulan Ude).

I wandered a little into the village, but it was cold and deserted so I decided to get some food (pozhi – Buryat dumplings finally!) and then walk to the Baikal Museum. Turns out the Baikal Museum is about three or four kilometers away from where the minibus dropped me off. What is it with my remedial map reading skills on this trip? I swear, normally I don’t have problems reading maps!

Unfortunately the Baikal Museum signs are all in Russian, and the tour group that the museum lady wanted me to join was German (I guess all foreigners are the same?), so I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have wished. I did get to see the freshwater seals in the aquarium, however. They were such cute cylinders!

I do know that I would love to go back to Lake Baikal to actually go hiking at a better time of year.

I had two more days to fill, so I took it easy, buying knitting needles and supplies for the train, and drinking pots of tea. I bought the knitting needles in what I thought was a department store called TK, but which turned out to be almost an indoor market with many tiny stores. Luckily one of the ladies at the hotel knits, so she was able to tell me where to go.

Everything was lovely and relaxing till the very end, when I had an embarrassing trip to the post offfice and later a traumatic minibus ride back to the station.

I wanted to mail some items home so I wouldn’t have to carry them, so I went to the post office on Karl Marx street. The first person told me I needed to go around the corner to the other part of the office, so I did. There I got yelled at by the post office lady (who had an assistant sitting there doing nothing in timeless bureaucratic tradition) that I needed to go to the international post branch. (Word to the wise: just because I don’t speak Russian doesn’t mean I’m deaf or stupid, and shouting will not make me understand better. Writing out the address of where I should go might. Luckily the lady behind me in line translated for me.)

As for the minibus, it took a turn to the right instead of the left as I expected, I tried to ask for the train station, and the driver grunted in incomprehension and then ignored me. Almost in tears, I tried to ask other passengers if they spoke English, but nobody did and nobody was willing to try to help figure out what I wanted to say or where I wanted to go. Fortunately, we were just making a large loop and I got to the train station in one piece, but visions of being lost and trying to get an overpriced taxi in Russian had been dancing in my head. What is it with Russians not wanting to help with directions? Most Russians I’ve had personal interactions with (barring post office employees in Irkutsk) have been nice.