Category: From Russia with love

Our Kremlin tour starts with what has now become the obligatory rain showers which mercifully clear back to just heavy cloud cover. Kremlin in Russian means fortress and there are many Kremlins all over Russia in any significant city. Of course this one is the granddaddy of them all and the forbidding walls enclose 800 years of collective history. We see the old palace that is now Putin’s workplace and could almost cross the road to touch it but for the nasty looking armed guard who I am sure has orders of shoot to kill!

I always imagined that the big red brick walls enclosed the political heart of Russia forgetting that for centuries that political heart was the Tsars and they created a beautiful royal wonderland of palaces and churches, many of the latter with exquisite interiors. Sadly most of the churches including St Basil’s Cathedral are no longer functioning places of worship. In the Soviet era especially under Stalin all religion was banned by the state and the churches were closed. The more significant ones were kept as “museums” such as they are today. Many didn’t fare so well and were razed to the ground, most notably the already mentioned Cathedral of Christ the Saviour which was bulldozed and the site became for a while, the world’s largest swimming pool.

As the afternoon progresses the clouds begin to peel back and yes it is blue skies and sunshine just as we are about to complete the tour in the armoury museum. A quick whizz through to see the famous Faberge eggs and the dazzling crown jewels and I am off and running! An orgy of photography follows.

        

When I am finally back at Red square the clouds are still at bay and despite the impending dinner reservation at the 23rd ranked restaurant in the world, White Rabbit, our decadent tasting menu must wait as I take the only decent outdoor photos of the trip so far. Happy days!

The mild night air envelops me and, in the fledgling darkness, I pass young lovers sharing passionate kisses, Muscovites walk their dogs and all around is one of the world’s best known capitol city squares, Red Square. Flood lit and fairy lights all combine to add sparkle and life to the iconic Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral. I stand in the middle and revel in the 360 degree panorama. All around is a living fairy tale a melange of medieval European castles and Oriental domes.  It is 11pm and the sun only set an hour ago on a frustrating day.

Our first day sees leaden skies overhead with frequent rain showers and even storms. This is a pattern that is repeated pretty much the whole time here. My frustration at trying to extract something half decent photographically would have been palpable to Suzanne. Compounded with this were issues with a crazy queue for Lenin’s mausoleum that left us just on the wrong side of the 1 pm closing time and an inexplicable mass of people queuing outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour preventing us from getting in. Later we find out that these are pilgrims from all over Russia to worship at the church as it has recently acquired relics of the revered St Nicholas. There is no public access to this tourist hotspot for months.

In the end we completed the afternoon with a tour that seems underwhelming until you actually do it, namely Moscow’s metro stations. As I have seen in North Korea the communists used the underground rail stations for propaganda and “art” for the masses. Most of the inner Moscow stations were built by the people in the 1950s and they were decorated with frescoes, chandeliers, statues and paintings. Each had individual themes and all were designed to promote Soviet propaganda. Inexpensive entertainment and most importantly unaffected by prevailing climactic conditions.

Come the evening and my wander through Red Square without any rain nor reliance on sunshine and the diabolic weather forecast I resign myself to believing that these night photos are as good as it gets.

 

Why Russia? This was the consistent response from my patients and friends when I was aked about these holidays. Admittedly my primary interest in this country is trekking in Kamchatka but there was no way that I would neglect the rest of such a fascinating country.

Everyone knows all about Russia. It has always been there as the “yin” to the west’s “yang”. As I grew up in my childhood it was the “evil empire”, the premier Communist nation on the planet. The antithesis of the capitalist west, the “good guys”. With a finger on the nuclear button our side felt it had to build bigger and better nuclear weapons to protect us all. I. A closed society it created the iron curtain. Very few people from the west got in and even less information about their society came back out. I always found the air of mystery to be particularly alluring.

When communism fell in the late 1980s and we all expelled a collective sigh of relief. This enigmatic nation’s political system convulsed and morphed into a “wild west” corrupt version of capitalism all the while maintaining a pretext of being socialist. Now the nuclear threat has been replaced with a cyber threat and that somehow seems a lot less deadly than nuclear war.

When I looked further into Russia I realised how little I really knew. This is the biggest country on the planet (even after the loss of the Soviet satellite states in 1991) and the runner up does not even come close at only half the size of Russia. From side to side there is room for 8 time zones (Australia only has 3). It has a population of 142 million but, worryingly, its one of the few where the population is decreasing. The ethnicity of the people is diverse and in this county that straddles both Europe and Asia it is interesting to see that reflected in the differing visages on those walking the streets.

My adventure begins in Moscow where I will see the heart of Russian power and what remains of the Soviet times. Then onto St Petersburg, the ornate and very European side to Russia. The middle 2 weeks sees me on the trans Siberian train to Vladivostok. At over 9000km and seven days travel time it is one of the great railway journeys of the world.and also the longest. The conclusion will be 2 weeks trekking through the magnificent Siberian wilderness of Kamchatka.