Białystok

We arrived in Białystok on a lovely sunny evening and checked in to the Hotel Gołębiewski.  Pretty famished by now, we walked down Ulitsa Lipowa to Rynek Kościuszki, taking in Branicki Palace and the Basilica of St. Roch (Kościoł św. Roku).  In the Rynek, a stage was set up, Solidarity flags were everywhere, there was a bouncy castle, a sizeable crowd and evidence of a forthcoming fireworks display.  Poland's National Day?  A party of some kind?  We couldn't find out, but we enjoyed dinner at the Café Esperanto (Esperanto's inventor, Ludwik Zamenhof, was from Białystok).


People speak Russian here so I can communicate a bit.

Kościoł św. Roku

Vilnius → Białystok

A train journey through south-west Lithuania and north-east Poland, travelling 1st, 2nd and 3rd class.  We went through lovely farmland and pine, fir and birch forest, past small lakes and rolling fields.  We changed in Šeštokai (LT) and stopped in Augustow and Šuwałki (PL).  Tragically, those pancakes were the last thing to eat all day....

Mellow

Sitting in the breakfast room, enjoying a cup of tea after yummy pancakes with honey.  Mmm...

Gloomy

It seems like our trip is running out, and it only just started :(

Nocturnal Sight-Seeing

After a lazy afternoon drinking coffee and writing poetry, we suddenly felt guilty and got a taxi to the Old Town.  By night, the buildings down Aušros Vartų gatve to the Gates of Dawn were pretty spectacular: the Basilian Gate and Church of the Holy Trinity, the Church of the Holy Spirit (complete with a priest walking by the wall in the darkness) and St. Theresa's.  We found a great place for dinner - Restoranas Felicie, featuring a jazz pianist (Nick was jealous).  After dinner, we strolled down to the Town Hall Square.

The Basilian Gate

Frank Zappa Statue

Why???  Why not???

Friday in Vilnius

Today we visited the Museum of Genocide, which incorporates the basement where the KGB tortured and shot dissidents.  There's really nothing I can say.  We also tried to visit the Catastrophe Museum (Nazis) but it, the synagogue and the other branches of the Jewish Museum were closed.

Lithuanian Reflections

It was a stunning day and we owe so much to the Ragulskis' generosity.  Talking to real Lithuanians about Lithuania and seeing something other than the main tourist sights makes a big difference in getting a feel for the country.  The Lithuanian empire used to stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea; in later periods, the country was menaced by the Nazis and the Soviets.  Now, membership of the EU seems a really positive thing - as Minvydas said, 'what can happen to us now?'

Kaunas Old Town

Back with Nick and Minvydas, we visited the Town Hall Square and the Cathedral, St. George's Church and Vytautas Church and - out of town - the Ninth Fort where a memorial commemorates the 'victims of fascism' taken there (some from Munich) and shot.  Nick pointed out that the dead represented by this memorial amount to half-a-percent of the Holocaust.

Čiurlionis

While Nick gave his paper at KUT, I visited the Synagogue (Jewish population in Kaunas = 180) and the M. K. Čiurlionis Museum with Tautvydas Ragulskis.  I was expecting Lithuanian pastoral - forget it.  The art of Čiurlionis (1875-1911) is mystical, thoughtful, detailed, symbolist, wondrously coloured in, firstly, blues and turquoises, and, later, pinks and golds.  His motifs are the crowned king, the angel, flowing rays of light, crowds on roads, tiny flowers and butterflies.  Čiurlionis believed that music and art complimented each other and, after viewing the pictures, Tautvydas and I sat in the Music Hall and listened to his composition 'Forests', in which I seemed to hear the lime-greens, dark-greens and yellows of leaves and trees.  My favourites among his pictures were Rex (1909), Forest and the cycle The Creation of the World.

From The Creation of the World

Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikalojus_Konstantinas_Čiurlionis
http://ciurlionis.licejus.lt/index_en.html
http://www.muziejai.lt/Kaunas/ciurlionio_muziejus.en.htm

Kaunas

And on to Kaunas.  We stopped at the Church of the Resurrection, a modern building with a stunning altar-piece of the Hill of Crosses.  Quick lunch in the Akropolis Shopping Mall (one of the largest in the Baltics), which features a skating-rink and bowling alley.

Trakai

The island castle at Trakai is probably Lithuania's best-known monument.  We loved the lake location, the old steam boat, the castle museum.  Fascinatingly, the Lithuanian ruler Vytautas brought people from the Crimea, the Karaim, to guard the castle.  The Karaim, who are still in Trakai today, follow a Judic religion based on the Old Testament and speak a Turkic language.  We saw their low, colourful wooden houses.  Another group in Trakai were the Tatars.  Minvydas suggested we try kibinai - a Tatar delicacy - which we did in a restaurant by the lake.  The kibinai turned out to be not unlike Cornish pasties.
There are lots of amber shops around Trakai.  Minvydas told us the legend is that a maiden who lived in an amber palace under the sea one day rose to the surface and met the god of thunder, Perkunas.  When they kissed, the amber palace broke into fragments, providing the Baltic's rich source of amber.

An Amazing Day

I'm just going to quote our itinerary for yesterday, arranged by Prof. Minvydas Ragulskis of the Kaunas University of Technology:
9 Pick-up.  Meet with Vice-Rector of KUT at Ratonda Hotel, Vilnius
10 Arrival Trakai.  Visit to castle.
11.30 Leave Trakai.
12.30 Arrive Kaunas - lunch.
13.30 Sight-seeing in Kaunas centre.
14 Nick gives talk at KUT.  With Tautvydas Ragulskis, Kate visits synagogue and M.K. Čiurlionis Museum.
16.16 All together again.  Sight-seeing in Old Town.
17 Visit to the Ninth Fort and Holocaust memorial.
18 Dinner just outside Kaunas.
19 Leave Kaunas.
20.30 Arrive back at Hotel.

But that doesn't do justice to a totally memorable day...

Vilnius

We loved the Vitebskiy Station - it was like going back in time two centuries.  A very comfy train took us out of Russia, through Latvia and into Lithuania - miles of birch forest.  And here we are, back in the EU.

Vilnius is quiet, green and western in comparison with St. Petersburg.  The shopping malls are less congested, the pace of life seems calmer.  We visited the cathedral, St. Anne's Church and the university (including the Grand Court and St. John's Church).  Much amber is on sale.  I had my first potato pancakes.  The hotel has up-graded us to a suite - yippee!!

St. Anne's Church

Farewell to Petersburg

Good-bye blue, white and golden city!  I dream of coming back in the snow.

[Final note: I managed to call and order a taxi - Russian on the phone!]

Hermitage Encore

A beautiful, blue, breezy morning - real St. Petersburg weather, Elena said.  After some time spent constructing a diptych (yes), we went back to the Hermitage for another look.  We spent more time in the amazing state rooms, visited the 3 x rooms of British art (dreary Gainsboroughs), the Siberian section (very horsy), the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists again, the Spanish, the German, Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish (inc. Peter Breughel the Younger) and the 'Russian Culture' (two fantastic sleighs).  This time, the paintings that stood out were Maurice Denis's Martha and Mary, Matisse's Arab Café, Cezanne's Blue Landscape and Murrillo's Liberation of Peter and Rest on the Flight to Egypt.

Matisse, Arab Café

Murillo, Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Tsarskoe Selo

And this afternoon, we went by coach - 'Eclectica Tours' - to Tsarskoe Selo.  The Catherine Palace is magnificent - a vision in ice-blue, white and gold - and the Golden Corridor, culminating in the wondrous Amber Room, truly breath-taking.  The grounds - the English and French parks, the Cameron Gallery, the Turkish Bath - were resplendent and it was stunning just to watch the play of sunlight on and through the leaves.

Souvenirs

Nice, leisurely morning wandering about near the Griboedov Canal and its souvenir market.  Fun to haggle with the seasoned pros.

Gostiniy Dvor

And, rounding off the afternoon, a spot of shopping.  Having walked round both floors of this massive store (pausing to admire a torrential thunderstorm), we both began to wonder if we'd known any other existence.

St. Samson's Cathedral

Or possibly St. Sampson's.  Not the Old Testament strong man, in any event, but a saint known for his hospitality.  His cathedral bore him out - we got the warmest welcome we've had in an Orthodox church.  The blue-and-white exterior and golden domes and beautiful and, inside, the iconostasis is magnificent.  We also enjoyed a two-piece illustrated 'calendar' of saints' days.

To the Finland Station

We set off by foot, over Liteyniy Most and arrived at Lenin Square to the strains of piped orchestral music - Shostakovich?  Soviet anthems?  The fountains are most impressive and the Lenin statue joke - "Where did you get that waistcoat?" "Over there" - still works.  We bought platform tickets to view the place where he got off the train and the locomotive which brought him back from Finland the second time.  We also reflected on how he twisted and corroded the Revolution.  Lunch in Кофе Хауз.

Anna Akhmatova

Westward the sun is dropping,

And the roofs of towns are shining in its light. 

Already death is chalking the doors with crosses 

And calling the ravens and the ravens are in flight. 

From ''Why is our century worse than any other?' (1919)

In Praise of Popsicles

Ice-lollies have been saving us in the heat, both here and in Moscow.  I made the wondrous discovery that certain brands - Помпей, Кактус, Вам-Пири - contain space dust, that crackly stuff that bursts on your tongue that used to be around in the '70s.  Yay!

Twirl Follows Twirl

... as Nabokov said.  We took today at a leisurely pace, visiting St. Isaac's Cathedral (Nick climbed to the top to the viewing gallery) and the amazing Yusupov Palace.  In this palace, in the cellar, Prince Yusupov murdered Rasputin.  Today, the place is notable for the number of grand pianos it contains (we counted 8 or 9), the gorgeous Blue and Red Drawing Rooms, the Moorish dining-room, an exquisite private theatre, a copy of Serov's portrait of Princes Zinaida Yusupova (we saw the original in the Russian Museum) and a charming 4-man choir who sang a quick piece.  Nice lunch in a laid-back restaurant called The Idiot, and the end of the afternoon was spent souvenir-hunting.  Nice dinner at the Restaurant Piter, where we had fun translating the cocktail menu, drinking a лунный свет and playing heavy-duty, 6-letters-and-up Boggle.

Nick on the viewing-platform of St. Isaac's
(the yellow dot)

From a fresco of the Three Graces in the Yusopov Palace

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.