Russian Washing Machines and Top Pie of Life

Just back from a nice dinner at the Grand Cafe - Nick's apple pie was the best he'd ever had and he asked me to tell the waiter so.  I rendered this as something along the lines of 'top pie of life' (самый лучший пирог в жизни).  Nice few minutes spent figuring out the Russian washing machine in the flat.  It worked, but if only we'd put the soap in the right compartment...

The Great Synagogue

Quick change of denomination.  The entrance to this on Lermontovskiy Prospect was rather forbidding – security cameras, guards – so in the foyer, noticing two people, I said I was a tourist from England and asked if I could see the Prayer Hall.  One of them – a man – ushered me in, telling me to take a photograph, to take a photograph of the bimah, that he would take a photograph of me.  He then escorted me personally to the gift shop, which turned out to sell Jewish matrioshkas and marshmallow fluff.  It was a very warm welcome indeed.

Candy City

St. Petersburg is the city of confectionery colours:  the spearmint-green of the Hermitage, the ice-blue of the Smolny Cathedral, the raspberry of Alexander Nevsky Monastery, the inky-blue of the Trinity Cathedral, the orange of the Smolny Institute, the pale-green of the Marinsky Theatre, the yellow of the Peter & Paul Cathedral.  Sweetshop Town.

Nabokov Museum

And finally, hot and tired, along Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa to no.  45 and the Nabokov Museum.  I read again from Speak, Memory the passage about the chrysanthemum petal falling and imagined young Vladimir looking out of the window, hoping his tutor’s sleigh would not materialise.

St. Nicholas’s Cathedral of the Epiphany

A hot walk along canals to the next Cathedral, swapping deep-blue for ice-blue.  There’s a point on Glinka Ulitsa where you can see the two together.

Anna Akhmatova Museum

 On by metro to the Scheremetov Palace and the Anna Akhmatova Museum, which took some finding (“Далее!  Далее!”).  Akhmatova’s former “House on the Fontanka” consists of a few rooms painted toilet-green, bare and cold.  I stopped in the one described as “Комната Ахматовой” (“Akhmatova’s Room”) and imagined the meeting she had there with Isaiah Berlin.  She entered their conversation with her whole being, she wrote afterwards, and could not later remember whether they discussed death or poetry.  The photographs now left on the mirror are strangely transparent, so that you can look at yourself right through them.

Trinity Cathedral

Back to the metro to the Technological Institute and a walk to the Trinity Cathedral.  The deep-blue domes, covered in gold stars, are inspirational from a distance.  Of all the cathedrals I saw today, I liked this one best, because of the beautiful Trinity iconostasis over the Royal Doors.

Alexander Nevsky Monastery

Managed a bit of the way by bus!  V proud!  This is a wonderful, tranquil oasis: no photos possible, sudden silence as you enter.  I first visited the Tikhvin Cemetery and saw the graves of Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Glinka, Balakirev and our favourite portrait painter Serov.  Dappled light between the trees.  Then through the grounds to the Cathedral, passing a very old priest being helped along the path.  The place where you buy holy bread was somewhat disappointing (“Нет хлеба! Хлеб будет завтра!”).  Behind the Cathedral is the tangled Nicholas cemetery and the Metropolitan’s House.  By a stroke of luck, I discovered the monastery café and had an excellent borsch and the best пирог I’ve so far tasted.

Smolny

I set off on foot, munching a poppy-seed twist, past the Tauride Gardens, to the Smolny Convent, Cathedral and Institute.  The Institute is of particular interest as I've read of it in such works as John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World - basically, it was the Revolution's HQ for a while (having been founded as an educational establishment for 'honourable young ladies') and where people like Reed were given their passes.  There's a statue of Lenin in the middle of the grounds and a fleet of sleek black Nissans outside.

Lenin in the Smolny Institute Gardens

The Day of the Locust

Nick took the day off from sight-seeing to catch up on work, so I went at it alone.  Result: 4 cathedrals, 2 monasteries, 2 literary museums, 1 synagogue, 2 exhausted legs ("the strings have gone, Dmitri").

Terrassa

Just back from fab, sixth-floor restaurant just off Nevsky Prospect by the Kazan Cathedral.  Recommended by a young couple we asked on the street.  Stunning views, great wine shop / cookie store.
www.terrassa.ru

Peterhof Fountains

Peterhof does fountains like nowhere else.  There's the Grand Cascade - a wondrously over-the-top, multi-level, golden-Samson-statue-featuring, escalator of water.  There are the Roman Fountains: two massive urns chucking out streams.  There's the Spruce Fountain, cunningly disguised as a tree.  There's the Umbrella Fountain, looking quite like an umbrella.  There's a golden nymph emptying a bucket.  There's the gorgeous hazy Sun Fountain.  There's the Checkerboard Fountain.  And there are the joke fountains.  We stopped by one of these, watching children run in and out of the arcs of water.  A smile on every face.  The jets seemed random, until we tried to sit down on a bench behind the fountain and a surly individual indicated his stick.  It seemed that he wanted the bench to himself.  Then we worked out that the stick controlled the fountain.  It wasn't random at all: this guy was watching the kids play and directing the spray.  With sunglasses, head-phones and a cigarette, he looked the most miserable person in the place.

The Grand Cascade

Me by the Sun Fountain

The Joke Fountain Dude

Peterhof

Fabulous day in Peterhof.  We took a Meteor hydrofoil across the Gulf of Finland - silver-steel-blue water - to Peter the Great's estate.  The view along the sea canal to the Great Palace and the Grand Cascade is stunning.  First we lunched on pancakes (Nick had red caviar on one of his) and then walked up the Grand Cascade, dazzled by the interplaying water jets, the golden statues, the view out to the blue bay.  The queue for the Palace was as long as for cabbages in the old days, so we went instead to Monplaisir, with yet more wondrous views out to sea.  It was here that Catherine heard about the coup against her husband - she hastened to Petersburg (one wonders how) and by nightfall was Empress of All The Russias.  The fountains are miraculous (more in later post).  Peterhof out-Versailles-es Versailles and out-Sans-Souci-es Sans Souci.  Unbelievable.

On the hydrofoil

Red caviar blin

Peterhof Grounds

Me by the Sun Fountain

Letts

Dinner at Latvian restaurant, Riga Seta.  My first Latvian restaurant; nothing detectably Latvian about the food.

Nabokov

Petersburg is the perfect place to be reading Speak, Memory.  Nabokov describes how, in his family's city house on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa, the sound of a chrysanthemum petal falling on a marble table would make his nerves 'twang'.  I'm struggling to remember the sound of a chrysanthemum petal falling in Meols.  We may not have time to visit the Nabokov Museum in the family's city residence on Большая Морская Улица, but it's nice to know it's there.

Kazan Cathedral

St. P's Kazan Cathedral is a mighty affair, complete with colonnades and statues to Kutuzov (responsible for burning Moscow so that Napoleon wouldn't get it - the original 'scorched earth' policy?) and Barclay de Tolly.  Inside, a wedding was going on and the singing (a 5-woman choir) was heavenly.  We stopped briefly at Kutusov's tomb, which has captured Napoleonic standards above it that are very faded indeed.

Colourful Cakes

Benois Wing

After a lunch spent mostly in the queue, we briefly visited the Benois wing for a temporary exhibition called Гимн Трудну - Hymn to Labour.  Dreary factory scenes, miserable miners etc etc.  Oh dear.

Russian Museum

It took us a while to find the Mikhailovsky Palace, but it was worth it!  This museum is one of the greats - not only paintings, but also red and gold tableware, princesses' headresses, lacquer boxes, figurines.  Our favourites among the paintings included the icons of The Archangel with the Golden Hair and Boris and Gleb, Rublev's Peter & Paul, Karl Bryullov's The Last Day of Pompeii, Vasily Smirnov's Nero's Death, Stepan Bakalovich's Praying of Khans, Nikolai Yarushenko's In Warm Lands, Genrikh Semiradsky's Purina at the Poseidon Celebration in Elusium, Nicholas Ge's The Last Supper, Repin's Barge-Haulers on the Volga, The Zaporozhe Cossacks Writing A Mocking Letter to the Sultan, portrait of Tolstoy with bare feet (which we saw at the From Russia exhibition at the Royal Academy), Sadko and Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council, 7 May 1901, Vasily Surikov's Yermak's Conquest of Siberia and Suvorov Crossing the Alps (the soldiers tobogganing down), Vereshchagin's At the Entrance to the Mosque and In Jerusalem, The Royal Tombs, Arkhip Kuindzhi's landscapes, Filip Malyavin's Two Girls, Vervka and Peasant Women Dancing, Serov's society portraits (esp. of Princess Zinaida Yusupova), Mikhail Nesterov's The Great Taking of the Veil, Leon Bakst's Antique Terrors and Boris Kustodiev's At Shrovetide.  The model for the head of Falconet's Bronze Horseman is also in one of the halls and you can go and look it in the eye.

Vasily Surikov,
Surinov Crossing the Alps

Boris Kustodiev,
At Shrovetide

Balzac

Fab dinner at local restaurant Бальзак - borsch and shashlik, complete with mound of embers at the table.  Lovely evening here in St. Petersburg.  The crosses on the domes of the Smolny Cathedral, which we can see from the balcony, are glittering in the late sun.

Peter & Paul

Today to the Peter & Paul Fortress and Cathedral.  We went first to the Museum of the Defence of Leningrad, where the tug on my arm of the babushka-guide, her intense desire that I should know the story, was as strong as anything on display.  Then we walked over the breezy Trinity Bridge; people were sunbathing standing up on the 'beach' and swimming in the Neva.  P&P is stunning.  The Romanovs (Nicholas & Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia) are buried in the cathedral, as are Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.  We took a boat trip across the Neva and up and down the canals.  St. P. is Venice on a large scale - less maculate and more 18th-century.

Loving St. Pete

Happy transfer to Vosstaniya Ulitsa.  Yesterday afternoon we strolled through Liteyniy, visiting the Cathedral of the Transfiguration and the Church of St. Panteleymon, then though gardens (Marsovo Pole), along canals and past palaces to the dazzling extravaganza of the Cathedral of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood.  Fab moment cooling our feet in the Griboedov Canal.  Then on to Nevsky Prospect and a happy hour spent browsing in Dom Knigi, with coffee in the cafe overlooking the Kazan Cathedral.  Some grocery shopping and dinner in a nice wine-bar, Probka, by the Church of SS. Simeon and Anna.

 

Bronze Horseman

This evening, we strolled to the Neva to view Falconet's Bronze Horseman (would be better without the snake, we felt), then had dinner in a nice Italian restaurant (Да Винчи) opposite the hotel (since the waitress didn't notice us when we came in, it seemed that we Officially Didn't Exist).  Nick started learning Cyrillic in the ultra-violet light.  But, uh-oh, there's mist rollin' in from the sea - it seems the smoke from the peat fires may have followed us even here...

Hermitage 2

In the state rooms, there was also an excellent mechanical peacock, which Catherine the Great bought from Potemkin.  Nick said, 'I will buy you a bigger peacock.'

The Hermitage

Having booked our tickets online, we waltzed past the queue and into the Hermitage.  First to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, then to the State Rooms, then to the Rembrandts and finally to the Italian section.  Particular favourites:  Titian's and Rembrandt's versions of Danäe, Andrea del Sarto's Madonna and Child with SS. Elizabeth, Catherine and John the Baptist, Bernardino Luini's Saint Catherine, Guercino's Assumption, Capriolo's Portrait of a Man, Monet's Dame dans le jardin, Derain's Route en Montagne, Kees van Dongen's Danseuse Rouge and Albert Marquet's Bay of Naples.

Titian, Danae

Rembrandt, Danae

Andrea del Sarto, Madonna and Child
with SS. Elizabeth, Catherine and John the Baptist

Bernardino Luini, St Catherine

Monet, Dame dans le jardin

Albert Marquet, Bay of Naples

Kees van Dongen, Danseuse Rouge

The Escape Train

Arrived at midnight last night in St. Petersburg.  Fab fast, air-conditioned train from Moscow through birch forests - only took 4 hours.  Business class was strangely full of very young businessmen (average age 0-2) - one family told us that this was the 'escape train' out of smoky Moscow.  And now - fresh, breathable air!  Hurrah!

The Pianist 2

I just had a go!  And a guy said it was great!!

Seven Sinister Sisters

Moscow's Seven Sisters are seven Stalinist-Gothic monoliths - Muscovites know them as Сталинские высотки (Stalin's high-rises).  There were meant to be eight but only seven were completed (though an eighth is in Warsaw - the Palace of Culture and Science that we visited).  The seven are:

1. the Hotel Ukraina
2. the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Apartments
3. the Kudrinskaya Square Building
4. the Hotel Leningradskaya
5. the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
6. Moscow State University at Sparrow Hills
7. the Red Gates Administration Building

Gargantuan, dirty-white, crazily crenellated, featuring somewhere the hammer and sickle, intimidating in their sheer thereness, they were meant to be a show of power and they certainly scare the hell out of me.

Hotel Ukraina

***Just seen on Wikipedia that a precursor was our own dear Liver Building in our own dear Liverpool!  Will never look at the Liver Birds in the same way!

Royal Liver Buildings

And here's Warsaw:

Palace of Culture and Science
(with a touch of Capitalism)

The Pianist

Sitting in the Lobby Bar of the Radisson - Nick has just gone over to play the piano.  Sounds of Americana fill the hall and everyone's enjoying it.  Very proud!

Strong Stuff

We met some people from Ohio in the hotel - a retired couple and their daughter.  They were here to pick up a Russian orphan she has adopted.  There they were, in the corridor, with 2-year-old Maxim, who is about to fly the Atlantic to begin a new life as an American.  Not surprisingly, he hadn't uttered a word in the 36 hours since they picked him up.  It was a primal scene, very raw.

The Big Smoke

But the unbelievable atmospheric conditions in Moscow are getting us down, so we're bailing out early.  Tonight we head for St. Pete.

"Москва, я люблю тебя"

Tretyakov Gallery

     Yesterday we visited the Tretyakov, Moscow's great gallery of Russian art.  We saw what is probably Russia's holiest icon - Our Lady of Vladimir - reputedly painted by St. Luke but actually dating from the 12th Century.  The other icons were pretty amazing as well - pieces by Theophanes and Dionysus and Andrei Rublev's Old Testament Trinity.  The 'Old Russian Art' section also had an 11th Century mosaic of St. Demetrius from Kiev (a few decades older than Balliol) and an 11th Century stone relief of two horsemen.
     In the paintings section, our favourites included Ivan Argunov's Unknown Woman in Russian Dress, Orest Kiprensky's portrait of Pushkin, Ivan Kramskoy's Nameless Lady (which adorned the cover of my Penguin Classic edition of Anna Karenina), Ivan Shishkin's Rye and Tree-Felling, Vasily Surikov's The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy on Red Square (featuring a bilious-looking Peter the Great) and Boyaryna Morozova, Repin's portrait of Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son, Vrubel's Demon and Demon Overthrown, Konstantin Korovin's Roses and Violets, Valentin Serov's Girl With Peaches and The Rape of Europa and Zinaida Serebryakova's At the Dressing Table.
     Check out:
http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/316

Luxury

Anne Semonin toiletries ... mmm.

Moscow River Cruise

I always think that an evening cruise along the Moscow River - past the fairy-tale golden domes of the Kremlin, the illuminated sky-scrapers, the monasteries and parks - is enhanced by Donna Summer singing 'Hot Stuff' over the loudspeaker.

Andrei, Nick, me

Kremlin cathedral domes

Kazan and Kitay-Gorod

Then once more to Red Square by metro, this time to see the Kazan Cathedral (a delight) and along Nikolaiskaya Ulitsa to the Church of St Barbara (which gets my vote as friendliest orthodox church), the English Court, the Church of St. Maxim of the Sign and - en route to Revolutsii Square metro - the Cathedral of the Epiphany.

Interior of Kazan Cathedral

The Old English Court

Cathedral of the Epiphany

Хамовники / Weavers' District

Church of St. Nicholas of the Weavers

Back on the metro to Park Kulturni and a visit to the Church of St. Nicholas of the Weavers.  Rather odd lunch which included (by mistake) cold black cherry soup.  Then on to Tolstoy's House / Museum but, alas, it was closed.

Tolstoy's Moscow House

But, at the end of Tolstoy Street, is a statue of the master, set in the Devichovo Pole (Maiden's Field) where the scene takes place in War and Peace in which Pierre watches the executions by the French soldiers.  I've read this scene so many times - it was incredible to be there.

Tolstoy

Novodevichie

Hurrah!  Today the smog / smoke cleared and Moscow was just a boilingly hot city (100cF).  Nick gave a talk at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics (part of the Russian Academy of Sciences), and I went sight-seeing solo.  Took the metro to Sportivnaya and visited the Novodevichie Convent, a fairy-tale ensemble of onion-domed buildings: the Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk, the Church & Refectory of St. Ambrose (with icon exhibition), the Church of the Assumption and a little mausoleum.  Famous Russians from Gogol to Raisa Gorbachev are buried in the cemetery, but that was closed.

Mausoleum

Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk

Annunciation Icon

Trinity Icon