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

Cross-cultures

Just back from eating sushi. Nick played 'The Star-Spangled Banner' on the piano in the mall until a guard told him to stop.

Uzbek cake

Moscow - Marvels and Miracles IV

Today we had a delightful lunch with a friend оf a friend, Ruth, at a marvellous Uzbek restaurant called Шеш-Беш.  The pickled garlic and green herbal tea vied for being my favourite things.  Afterwards, we strolled down Arbat and back to Red Square - actually getting in this time - and visited first GUM and then the incredible St. Basil's Cathedral.  In one of the upper churches, a four-man choir was singing orthodox music and the bass - from Kazakhstan - had the deepest voice I've ever heard.  The interior of St. Basil's is wonderfully colourful and strange - and this male voice choir added to the mysteriousness of it all.

Moscow - Marvels and Miracles III

l-r Aleksei, Sasha, Elena, Ivan's arm, me

Yesterday evening, Nick's colleague Sasha drove us out to his home south of Moscow.  We took our swimsuits and set off on bikes to the nearby pond (in which Sasha's wife Elena also bathes during winter - plunging into a hole in the ice).  Swimming in the cool water while the sun went down, reflecting on the lake, was very special.  We then went back to Sasha and Elena's for a fabulous dinner of borscht, salmon and melon, after which their son Ivan brought out a chess set and played with Aleksei, a neighbouring physicist.  Elena and Sasha gave me a book in Russian about art and a porcelain frog.  A truly magical evening.

Ivan v Aleksei

Moscow - Marvels and Miracles II

On our first full day, we visited the Kremlin with our guide Katya.  This was my record for most cathedrals in the shortest time - the Cathedral of the Assumption, the Cathedral of the Annunciation and the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael.  We also saw the Bell-Tower of Ivan the Great, the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon.  The last, a 40-tonne monster, was never used in battle (who could lift a ball into it?) but came in handy to fire the ashes of the 'False Dmitri' (who pretended to be the dead son of Ivan the Terrible) back in the direction of Poland, whence he came.  The Kremlin gardens were a delight; the fleet of black official cars - engines running - rather more sinister.

Moscow - Marvels and Miracles I

On our first day, we saw Red Square through the Resurrection Gates but couldn't get in as they were locked as the 'airborne troops' were arriving home.  The 'airborne troops' were cooling off in the fountains in the Alexander Gardens - dyed pink for the occasion - and were happy to spray us as well.  We saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Kremlin Wall but best of all was the air-conditioned mall in the Manege.

Pink Fountains

Boschian Arrival

Our arrival on Monday in Moscow was truly to an infernal scene - something out of Hieronymus Bosch.  We got off the train at Belarusskaya Station to a terrible smell of burning and a black sky - so grimy it was possible to look straight at the sun.  Smelling the brimstone, I half-expected the earth to tear open and sulphur to start pouring out.

But things got better...

Days 8 & 9

We're in Moscow!

More Minsk

Delightful day with lunch in a shady restaurant 'garden', complete with fountain (though the food did take an hour to come) and afternoon spent in the National Art Gallery.  Fascinating Soviet art from the 1970s, all featuring beaming workers.  Tickled to find that Marx Street and Lenin Street intersect.

With Vladimir Ilich

Victor Vasnetsov, Portrait of a Son (1892)

Issakhar-Ber Rybak, Glazier and Goat (1917)

Raisa Kudrevich, Back to the Native Collective Farm (1942)

Raisa Kudrevich, Student (1962)

May Dantzig, About the Great Patriotic War (1968)

Day 7 - Delights of Minsk

The chief delight yesterday was going bowling for the first time in my life at the Zhuravinka (Журавинка) complex.  The bowls began to take on characteristics, so we gave them names - 'The Potato', 'The Scalpel'. Nice drink on the terrace overlooking the river Svislac.  Finished off the evening - bizarrely - at McDonald's.  So in our first former Soviet republic: bowling, diet coke and McDonald's.

Day 6 - Minsk

We're just back in the hotel, with cups of tea, having seen the catholic (red and white) cathedral, the orthodox cathedral of the Holy Spirit and the Belarussian Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (Белорусский Государственный Музей Истории Великой Отечественной Боины).  Great lunch at a place called Il Patio.  Best bit of day was cooling off in the fountain in the square by the war museum.  Belarussian seems similar to Russian, but not exactly the same - anyone know how the two compare? - and the differences keep catching me out.

What happened to Day 5?

No internet access.  But our last day in Warsaw was spent happily and involved the post office, the Palace of Culture and Science, lunch in the amazing LOT building, a spontaneous visit to the Applied Maths department of Warsaw University, the most amazing latte I've ever had - Tiger Latte at Coffee Heaven - perfection in the form of spiced, steamy milk, and finally embarking on a train straight out of Anna Karenina, with net curtains, red carpets and potted plants in the compartment - the Warsaw-Minsk Express.

Day 6 - Arrived in Minsk!

We're here!  In the Hotel Minsk, Minsk.  Now to get breakfast...

Day 4 - Shorely Shome Mishtake

The Hotel Bristol was reopened after refurbishment by Margaret Thatcher, and I assumed that this was a quite bad bust of her:

But no!  It's Paderewski, who owned the hotel in the 19th Century. 

Day 4 - Trip to Łowicz

Day trip to Łowicz, small town sw of Warsaw, in attempt to see the 'real' Poland. Not unlike Birkenhead on a quiet afternoon.  Nice museum with wondrous winter landscapes by Wojciech Kossack and colourful folk art.

Pieta

Day 3 - Reading

Finished Dead Souls and loved the conversation in Part 2 between Chichikov and the General.  'What's he writing a book about?'  'Generals.'  'Generals?  What kind of book about generals?  A general book about generals or a book with portraits of individual generals or a book about the generals of 1812?' 'The generals of 1812.'  In a book shop near the university, we bought Absurdistan and a book of conversations between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said - I'm now reading the latter.

Day 3 - Random Conversation

This takes place in a travel agency which has the word 'Bialarus' on the window in big white letters.  A woman is sitting at the far end of the darkened interior.
Nick: Do you speak English?
Woman: shakes head.
Kate (in Russian): Do you speak Russian?
Woman: nods head.  Rest of conversation in Russian.
Kate: Do you have any information about Belarus?
Woman: No.  We have no information about Belarus.  [Relenting slightly.] What is it you want to know?
Kate: Do you have a map of Minsk?
Woman: No.  [Pause] Try a map shop.
Kate: Where is such a shop?
Woman: shrugs.

Day 3 - Jewish Warsaw

Today we went to the Nozyk Synagogue (which actually survived the Second World War) and the Zydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute Museum).  The latter had a film showing images of suffering in the ghetto so sickening that it was almost unbearable to watch - in all my time of studying war representation, I haven't seen anything like it.  Not much to say except that, oddly, I found most poignant of all the information that the autumn of 1942 was particularly beautiful.

Day 2 - Hotel Bristol Meridien

People who have stayed here: the Queen, Prince Charles, Charles de Gaulle, Enrico Caruso, JFK, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Evgeny Kissin, Marlene Dietrich, Michel Platini, Jackie Onassis, Jose Carreras, Murray Perahia, Edouard Deladier, Nigel Kennedy, Bob Dylan, the Shah of Persia, Prince Philip, Jeremy Irons, the Kelly Family, Marie Curie, Margaret Thatcher, Paderewski, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Artur Rubenstein, Roman Polanski, George Bush Sr., Gabriela Sabatini, Marshal Foch, Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Edvard Grieg, Richard Strauss, Mary Pickford, Margot Fonteyn, Willy Brandt, Naomi Campbell, Yehudi Menuhin, Garry Kasparov, Al Gore, ZZ Top, Tina Turner, Bob Geldof, Duran Duran, Oliver Stone, Jacques Chirac, Paul Auster, Gerard Depardieu, Kiri Te Kanawa, Bill Gates, Lionel Ritchie, Mark Knopfler, John Malkovich, Bruce Springsteen, Paulo Coelho, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Isabella Rosselini, Placido Domingo, REM, Woody Allen, Yoko Ono ... though, oddly, none of them seem to be around at the moment.

Day 2 - Palaces and Radium

Morning spent - once I had dragged myself away from the pancakes - in the Royal Palace.  Best thing: statue of Chronos with clock / globe on his back. 

We then made it to a 25-minute organ concert in the cathedral of St. Jana, including Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  Still feeling guilty about the pancakes, so had salady lunch in the Old Town Square - complimentary glasses of cherry vodka as digestifs.  Then on to the Marie Curie Museum.  What an incredible female role model and general superstar!  All those physics conferences in which she was the only woman.  When the First World War broke out, she organised mobile radiology stations at the front, thereby saving the limbs of thousands of soldiers - and she later wrote a book called La Radiologie et la guerre.

Day 2 - Pancakes and Gogol

Happy breakfast eating pancakes and reading Dead Souls.  Nice touch having Chopin playing in the lifts.

Day 1 - Wild Boar

Back in the land of marble floors, concierges and retro bars (thanks, expedia) after dining on wild boar and cranberries.  Drizzly stroll in the Stare Miasto.  Outside the Radziwiłł Palace, passed a group of people clustered round some candles, singing - a shrine to the late President Kaczyński.  Can't possibly keep up this rate of blogging - poss. due to having no email access.

Day 1 - Arrival in Warsaw

Don't quite know how have lived up to now without liveried doormen. First impressions of Warsaw: rainy. First Polish discovery: l with a line through it is pronounced 'oo'.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Warsaw Centralny