Day: December 17, 2012

We awake to a dense fog and are informed that we have had to moor most of the night due to dense fog.  Our mooring spot is off Cherepovets.  The ship eases very slowly towards today’s destination.  There is no way we will get to Goritsy by 10:00am so when the fog lifts, we full steam towards Kizhi.  We are north of the 60^th parallel.  It is common for the first fall of snow in Russia to be on the 13^th of October each year – we hope that it is not going to happen near us or we may never get to St Petersburg.  Today, it is freezing.  To go on the top deck, we must ‘rug-up’ for it is only 4 degrees and with the wind chill factor, it must be around zero.

To fill in the morning, the Matryoshka Painting Class is brought forward.  Lyn paints the little doll as is displayed in the pictures (not bad for the first attempt) while I have a kip in the cabin when not looking at the view ahead.  One guy, we think is an artist, doesn’t like painting clothes so he painted the dolls as nudes – he reckons.  Then follows a ‘bloody mary’ tasting session (We don’t join in on that one.)

Lunch is the normal four-course buffet meal.  I have decided to do my best not to have more than 3 courses in a meal.  I hope that decision pays dividends.  We have free time in the afternoon to enjoy the passing scenery on this great waterway and on into Lake Beloye.  The sunset is another ‘northern stunner’.  Our cabin faces to the forward and left hand side of the ship and so we have time to get the cameras ready for taking photos of the waterway scenes along the way. The Volga Baltic Waterway is a canal from the Volga River to the Baltic Sea.  The Volga River flows into the Caspian Sea to water the farmlands of southern Russia and on into the southern states of the former USSR.

Prior to our ‘what are we doing tomorrow’ session with the cruise director, there is a lecture on how vodka is made, what it can be made of and how to drink it.  One demonstration has the glass placed on the elbow and is drunk for that difficult position.  Another idea is to drink from two glasses at the one time – with a wide-open mouth.

Dinner tonight is with some interesting folk from Coonabarabran NSW.  Dell specializes in golf tours around the word and Colin has the small motors shop next door to Dell’s travel agency.  Dell’s clients come from all over the world – a niche market indeed.

The evening entertainment is performed by the two photographers on board who are also accomplished musicians, one on a button accordion, and the second, a 4 stringed balalaika.  Dressed in national dress with red knee-high boots they pump out their music at a very fast Russian pace.

We retire at 10:30pm but are woken at 12:00 midnight with the ship dropping anchor, as the fog has come on very heavy and we cannot move until it has lifted.

We arrive at Yaroslavl at around midnight and anchor just near the port.  At 5:30am, I get up to post the Uglich Day and we commence breakfast at 7:00am before disembarking and joining a bus tour of the city.  It is hard to take nice photos of any city enshrouded with mist but we take a few walks around various monuments and yes, more churches.

Yaroslavl was founded in the beginning of the 11^th century by Kiev Prince Yaroslav, the wise, as a fortress on the right bank of the Volga river at its confluence with the Kotorosi River.  There is an old legend about the building of small wooden fortress named after Prince Yaroslav on the place of pagan settlement.  It says that Prince Yaroslav was traveling around his lands with a large retinue and came to Bear Corner.  The inhabitants of the settlement worshiped bear as a sacred animal.  Local people let loose a bear.  But the Prince fought the beast and killed it with his battle-axe.  This legend explains why the coat of arms of Yaroslavl shows a bear and an axe.

The upswing of the Volga Trade Route, which took place after the disintegrations of the Kievan Russ, favoured the development of the town.  In 1218 Yaroslavl became the capital city of the Yaroslavl Principality, and in 1463 the Principality joined the Great Moscow Principality.

By the middle of the 16^th century Yaroslavl was transit trade points between Moscow and the countries of the East and the West.  There were about 70 businesses in the city.  Yaroslavl was also famous for its white wash and leather.

The first female Soviet cosmonaut, Tereshkova Valentina, comes from Yaroslavl.

At one of the museums, a brown bear is on display – she is BIG!  We are treated to some bell music played by a guy who was clever but looked totally disinterested.  At the toilets in the museum, we find what you never expect to see at a museum – the walls covered with pictures of toilets from around Russia.  Lyn takes a liking to the picture above of the elephant enjoying a big piece of meditation.  We visit a lacquer museum – the chocolate at 100 rubles is an acceptable price but the lacquer boxes at 300 to 3500 USDs do not make it to the credit card machine.

We are set free to roam the city for 45 minutes and find the local markets in behind a bare looking street frontage.  The food hall is most interesting with colorful displays of food and produce.  The dried fruit stall has some tasty items, which we purchase for nibbling later.  Our ship leaves for tomorrow’s destination a little after mid-day while we are enjoying another Scenic Tours lunch of four courses.

Lyn gets in a little sleep before a session on Scenic Tours Destinations.  I am able to enjoy the passing Russian countryside with sunshine, yes sunshine, streaming into our cabin.  What a good choice Lyn made in upgrading our accommodation before leaving Melbourne.

This afternoon, we are given a demonstration on cooking Instant Russian Blinis.  A Blinis is  a pancake and some of you may be interested to try them out.  Here’s the recipe.  5 tbls. Flour, 2 and ½ cups milk, 1 tbsp. sugar, 1/3 tsp salt, 2 to 3 tbsp. vegetable oil.  Beat eggs, salt and sugar, pour in milk, add flour, and mix.  Add vegetable oil, stir again and begin to bake blinis on a preheated pan.  Grease the pan with butter before baking the first thin pancake.  Wait till air bubbles appear and break and then flip the pancake over.  Serve with jam, honey or cream, or as is suggested (this is for Sharon), serve instant blinis hot with red or black caviar or salmon, with butter, sour cream jam for tea or coffee or as an appetizer for vodka.

After another sumptuous evening meal, our Tour Guide and ambassador, dressed in Russian costume, give us a photo/commentary on the things Russian.   This is followed by some Russian folk dancing.

We wake to a new day but not a new sky – it is still cloudy.  Our ship has been travelling all night and after breakfast, we pass through a loch and into the town of Uglich.

Founded in 937, Uglich is one of the most beautiful towns of the Yaroslavl region.  Its foundation is ascribed to a relation of a Kievan Prince Igor whom he had sent to the Upper Volga ‘to levy tribute and to register population’.  Uglich features an ancient kremlin in a very provincial setting.  Up to the 17^th century that was all that Uglich had represented – a kremlin surrounded by the trading and the artisans’ quarter fortified with ditches and ramparts and a few, unfortified, settlements beyond.  The trading quarter has 10 monasteries, two trading squares and houses of townsfolk.  Years ago, this small town used to mint its own coins.

In the 16^th century, Uglich became the center of the most important events – in 1552 a portable wooden fortress was assembled by Uglich carpenters for Ivan the Terrible to take Tatar capital Kazan to put the end to the Mongol-Tatar yoke that had lasted for over two centuries.  Under Catherine the Great, Uglich became an administrative center and its architecture was changed to become more symmetrical. Despite the economic decline in the 19^th century, the town’s old history and its charming beauty lured people of arts who stared its cultural revival.

Following a talk about the handcrafts of Russia, we are taken on a walking tour through the ‘country-style’ kremlin, which includes visiting three churches.  In one of the churches, we are favored with a couple of songs from a male quintet.  Man, did that 2^nd Bass get down ‘low’.

Like Moscow, Uglich shops do not have a verandah over the footpath; the entry ways are small and non-inviting.  We try the local supermarket for some toiletries.  It is not self-serve and the customer service person found the products for us on the shelves.  We are reminded of how things used to be done in the old 4 square shop on the corner back in the 50s.  After wandering into many of the shops just to see how they operate, we make our way back to the ship through the vendors’ market place where artifacts and national dress code is available at reasonable prices.

Our ship departs the little town of Uglich at 1:45pm.  Another four-course meal is available for lunch and then we take part in a Russian language course for an hour.  The Russian language is made up of 33 letters and many shapes representing the different other sounds used within the sounding of the word.

We have a short rest followed by a History lesson about the period pre the 1917 revolution.  I enjoy hearing history but as for re-telling it accurately, I am useless.  So I can’t tell you what was mentioned other than names like Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great and Elizabeth.  Of course there were other names which ….you best google for the detail.

Tour director, Anna, gives a short talk on tomorrows program and dinner is another, “weight watchers delight” – NOT!

An early ‘8:30am on the bus” starts our day again.  Our plans for today are to visit the State Armory Museum, walk around the Kremlin Grounds, some free time and then a 7:00pm concert to be given by the Zlatoust Choir at the Ilia Glazunov Picture Gallery.

We find that nothing has changed since yesterday – the traffic is slow and unpredictable.  It takes over 1 hour 10 minutes to go the normal 30-minute drive into the city center again.  Along the main street are literally scores of banks each displaying the current conversion rate from roubles to USD – around the 31 roubles to 1 USD.

Red Square is the ‘center’ of the city with the Kremlin backed up against it.  To enter the Kremlin after paying the entry fee, we are scanned by machine as well as Russian eyes.  Those in ‘authority’ do not know that smiling is a lot easier than frowning.  So you feel these burning sets of eyes going straight through you.  Today, we can only take pictures if we can see sky – in other words it is forbidden inside buildings or be ‘destined to hard labor in the harshest conditions’ of the local ‘salt mines’.  The word kremlin means a fortress or walled town; the one in Moscow is the biggest and most famous of all.  The earliest rampart was of earth and wood, but successive rulers raised and strengthened the defenses after attacks. There are 20 towers along the wall of the kremlin; each one has its own history and architectural quirks.

The State Armory Museum began in the 16^th century as weapons workshops.  These palatial buildings developed into a center for Russian arts and crafts, employing the most-talented jewelers, icon-painters, printers, leather-workers and embroiderers. The Armory became a museum in 1851 and its collections were expanded with treasures from churches and private collections after the October Revolution.  The highlight of the gallery is the display of royal regalia and thrones.  In many ways, The Armory reminds us of the Vatican but I think the Armory has much more wealth in the form of precious stones and handcrafted clothing with some beautiful coaches donated from other countries.

In the Kremlin grounds, are many famous buildings; the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, the Archangel Cathedral, The Cathedral of the Annunciation, The Cathedral of the Assumption, five Palaces, the Armory and the Senate, the Arsenal and the former Supreme building for the Soviet Congress.

We come back to the ship for lunch and a short amount of free time before returning to Red Square for free time.  Lyn and I wander the area visiting the underground 3 level shopping plaza, and witnessing the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier.  The guards march goose-step style with a straight leg coming up to waist height.  We all meet at 6:30pm and are taken to an interesting picture gallery for a one-hour concert performed by a small Russian choir.  I say interesting, because the large paintings contain famous people from mainly the USA, the USSR and the UK.  Even Marilyn Munroe, JFK and Bill Clinton with Boris Yeltsin are there.  Someone suggested the paintings are Russian Porn as there are few nudes amongst the politically famous.  The music is Russian classical and unaccompanied; very well done and impressive.  As the main tourist season to Russia is coming to an end quickly and the weather gets very cold, this classical choir of 5 ladies and 5 males has replaced the regular ‘folk music’ concert for us to enjoy.

Our light buffet dinner begins after 10:00pm following our 1 hour 10 minute trip back to the ship.  We chat until 11:30pm before retiring to our luxurious suite.

We are up early this morning for a 7:30 breakfast and a 8:30am departure for a tour of the city and walk aroundRed Square.  We are given our receivers that enable us to hear the commentary from our local guides.  Testing is done in the coach and we get to know

the guides and a little of the Russian language.  The traffic is thick as, and very slow.  We only see the one ‘small’ car; most cars are much larger than Italian cars back on our trip in May.  It is raining with a temperature of about 9 degrees.

Moscow is a city of 17 million residents and 4 million cars.  Road rules seem to be made up while driving.  In some ways, it is slower than any European traffic we have experienced recently.  We see many famous buildings and sites around Moscow, including the Kremlin, the Bolshoi Theatre, the KGB Building, parliament building, and many other buildings with names too difficult to spell, and equally difficult to pronounce.  Just near Gorky Park, there is the Russian version of the Columbia space shuttle that did only two circuits (I cant think of the proper term for that at present) of Earth before being brought back to become a memorial to the Russian space exploration program.  There are many multi-level apartment blocks.  It is interesting to learn that the state heats water to be piped to buildings and used as heating.

There is an extensive Metro rail system of some 300kms and 175 stations.  Some stations are up to 80 metres underground, with escalators of 130 meters. There is one complete loop of railway around the city center that takes around 30 minutes of travel time.  At most times of the day, a train comes through each 75 seconds, so there is not much time waiting for a train.  There are no benches on the stations to sit on either.  Other forms of public transport are trolley buses and the normal bus.  We only see the one pushbiker – he is game and courageous.

After a tour of the Metro, we take lunch in the Hall for Writers.  What a magnificent place for a restaurant.  Prior to the meal, we hand in our warm coats to the cloakroom to be more comfortable.  The meal is delicious – a beef stroganoff in a ‘dug-out’ whole meal bun with garnishing of tasty pickles. The afternoon is taken up with a walk around Red Square and a major up market shopping centre as well as a tour of the Cathedral of the Intercession (Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed).  The Cathedral is made up of 6 unusual spires and many small rooms.  In the central room, we are treated to some accapalla music by a quartet of men.  The acoustics were well worth a listen.  The music was slow to enable the echo not to be too messed up.  After a free-time period, we board the coach for the crawl back to our ship during peak evening traffic.  In the main street, it is legal to do a ‘U’ turn – at one point we witnessed 10 vehicles U-ing, and side-by-side, at the same point in front of us.  All the other traffic just waitied for this ‘procession’ to complete. We arrive back at our ship after the 90-minute trip.

Our evening is taken up with another sumptuous Scenic Tours meal and free time (to do this post).  I am still having trouble getting fast WiFi and so if you see any pictures in the post, unusual circumstances have occurred.