Kazan
Day Two of the cruise centered around a visit to Kazan. Kazan is an interesting city for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was the old capital of Tatars, who were the descendants of the Mongol hordes that overwhelmed Russia on their way to Eastern Europe. It remained in their control until the city was besieged and captured by Ivan the Terrible. Though the Tatars descended from the Mongols, they intermixed with Turkic populations and consequently the Tatar language is considered a Turkic language and they became predominantly muslim. This all swirls together to make Kazan a curiously non-Russian city...yet Russian all the same.
The first stop, like with most cities, was the kremlin, which is a UNESCO heritage sight...I'm not sure why, but I think its because the kremlin is white. As with most kremlins in Russia, the grounds house a number of government administrative buildings both for the Kazan city government and for the regional government of Tatarstan. And as with most kremlins it still houses a number of historical and religious buildings as well.
Of course, with Kazan being a predominantly muslim city, the main religious building is its mosque, built in 2005 on the site of an older mosque destroyed by Ivan the Terrible. Though I had seen mosques before (St. Petersburg has very impressive one), this was my first foray inside. The layout (and to some extent the architecture) reminded me of the basic structure of a synagogue, with the main floor being reserved for men and an upper gallery (complete with screen) for the women-folk.
The interior was incredibly decorative, though in stark contrast to most church interiors I've seen. In Orthodox churches they cram about as many pictures and images of saints or Christ into the nave as possible. In most protestant churches (especially Calvinist ones) they pride themselves on having the most non-descript interiors possible. Catholic churches (at least old ones) tend to focus around geometric shapes and patterns. In this particular mosque, the decor was largely swirling and curved lines creating patterns on the walls and ceiling. I guess you could say that the decorations reflect the basic characteristics of Arabic script, much like the geometric shapes in old Catholic cathedrals a reminiscent of the Latin alphabet (that might be a stretch and I can't prove that). But anyway interesting.
The only other major building of note in the Kremlin was a large, red brick tower built by Ivan the Terrible. After the siege of Kazan, he pressured a Tatar princess into marrying her. She told him that she would marry him only if he built the tallest tower in the city in a week, thinking the task impossible. Of course Ivan, being the obsessed maniac he was, built the darn thing on time despite foundational problems that make it lean to one side. The princess, realizing her fate, decided death was better than marriage to Ivan and flung herself off the top of said tower. Russians, eh?
The rest of the city is quite pleasant if a bit non-descript. There is a nice pedestrian-only stretch in the center of town, but i can't really judge the city beyond that. A number of my fellow students felt Kazan was their favorite city on the trip, but I still have to maintain that I enjoyed Nizhnii Novgorod more, though Kazan was definitely runner-up.
The prodigal linguist returneth!/Nizhnii Novgorod
I have only just returned from a wonderfully enjoyable 7-day vacation on the Volga River. It was a brilliant time and I saw lots of things I'd never seen before (most notably the inside of a mosque) and eaten several new foods (most notably horse meat). To try to cover all aspects of the cruise in one fell swoop is far to ambitious for my tastes, so I will break it down by destination and a couple other miscellaneous posts (e.g. life on the boat and train travel). Today's expose is on our first stop: Nizhnii Novgorod.
Nizhnii Novgorod (which translates as "Lesser Novgorod," in contrast to Velikii Novgorod, or "Great Novgorod" which is located south of St. Petersburg) is located almost due east of Moscow at the convergence of the Volga and Oka rivers. Depending on whose statistics you're reading, Nizhnii Novgorod is Russia's third, fourth, or fifth largest city. The city itself dates back to the 1200s and boasts a fairly large kremlin on the west bank of the Volga (the west bank, almost invariably, is the higher bank of the Volga by several hundred feet). I have also been told that it boasts a fairly healthy contemporary arts scene, but it would difficult to corroborate such a statement. Nizhnii also boasts the oldest tram system in Russia.
We arrived quite early on the overnight train, at about 7.15 am. Our day started with a bus tour of the city with stops at various scenic look-outs on the Volga and then a visit to the city's open-air museum of wooden architecture. This museum is similar to one I visited in Velikii Novgorod some years ago. It houses a collection of...uh, houses as well as a couple graineries, a huge well, a church, and a couple other buildings. The buildings themselves were fairly interesting, but by far the most enjoyable aspect of the museum was how these old wooden buildings appeared surrounded by autumn leaves and warm sunshine. It was very beautiful.
The center of the town, as least as far as tourism is concerned, is obviously the area surrounding the kremlin. The main gate to the fortress is accessed by, miracle of all miracles, a pedestrian only street! I suppose this is not something that should be all that amazing, I mean Moscow has its share of ped-only streets, but they either seem really small or people just don't care and park their cars where they want anyway. So it was quite something to see a mile-long stretch of brick pavement devoid of anything except people and shops.
The kremlin itself houses a number of government buildings as well as a church and some of the town's war memorials. The view from the Kremlin is very picturesque, with stunning views of the Volga, and the low, flat forests of the east bank, which is covered with color from deciduous trees.
We had a couple hours of free time so some friends and I revisited the kremlin (via a very long staircase) and walked about enjoying the views before heading to the boat for our departure for Kazan.
Low Culture, High Culture, Bad Culture, and Honey!
I'm going to try to speed through all this stuff so as not to make it particularly rambly, OK, here we go:
Mosfilm:
Friday was, once again, excursion day. Our intrepid leader, Vika, took us to Mosfilm studios, the Russian Hollywood. I was quite looking forward to this particular excursion, seeing how interested I am in the history of Russian cinema. It was at this studio that the likes of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Vertov made their most famous films. For some reason, I was under the delusion that this excursion would cater to my needs and interests and that we'd be treated to an intense overview of the history of Russian cinema and that I would meet some really important guy who would introduce me to some other important guy who would help me with my research. As it turns out, the excursion was a far more predictable tour of the studio, showing us how movies are made. Interesting....but still.
Evgenii Onegin:
The Opera. It's something I hated as a tyke, but enjoy as an adult (kind of like kissing and Arby's Horsey Sauce). A handful of us put our varying levels of duds on and went to the Moscow Academic Music Theatre in the name of K.S. Stanislavskii and V.I. Danchenko to see Tchaikovsky's operatic adaptation of A.S. Pushkin's epic poem "Eugene Onegin." It was quite an enjoyable experience, except for the three noisy and disrespectful teenage boys across the aisle from us who, by the end of the performance, I wanted to box in the ears in a robust manner.
The thing with opera, at least as far as I can tell, is that it's usually treated as a relic and not as an art. When most people think of opera (or at least most people I know), they think of elaborate sets and costumes, and various characters tramping around on-stage singing while everyone else stands around listening to them. The Academic Theatre was surprising proof that some people really do treat opera as art and the staging of this 125 year-old opera was surprisingly modern. The entire first act was done on a catwalk that moved up and down between the stage and the rafters (not all the time, but some of the time). It was refreshing in that, rather than just listening to the music, I had to pay attention to what each character was doing and trying to figure out why. It was a surprisingly intellectual experience. Plus I got to wear dress pants!
The Honey Market!:
This afternoon I went to the Ярмарка Мёда (Yarmarka Myoda) or Honey Market. This is an event that occurs every September when all of the honey producers in Russia come to Moscow to peddle their wares. It's also where Muscovites come to buy their year's supply of honey and possibly medovukha (медовуха), a sweet, strong honey beer. Seeing as how I'm dating an insatiable gourmet, and having been swept up in its wake (mostly of my own volition), I figured it was my duty to go to this market.
The grounds far exceeded my expectations. This took up probably a good 4 or 5 acres of ground, which close to 500 booths. Most of the sellers came from the east or the south, from places like Tatarstan, Kyrgystan, and North Ossetia. They arrange their 7 or 8 varieties of honey on a table with dishes and sticks for sampling the different honeys so you can decide what you want before you buy (one of the beauties of food shopping in Russia is that you very rarely have to buy something without knowing what it tastes like). Once you decide on what you would like, they dish it out of what are basically milk cans into plastic containers which are weighed and sold by weight (with most choice honeys going for at least $15/kg). Often times the booths will display what makes each honey different (for example, from which flowers the bees got their pollen). They will also display pictures of themselves on their farms with HUGE hives (one family has their hives set up inside two tractor-trailer trucks). It's a pretty great way to buy your honey and I the only thing that probably would have allowed me to enjoy it more would have been if my Russian was better.
In the end I ended up purchasing to containers of honey from one guy (with really dirty fingernails) in the Voronezh region, who was really keen on me trying all the types of honey, rather than just the one I thought I could afford. I bought a bottle of medovukha from another vender which was mixed with horseradish(!). My host-mom and I had a glass at dinner this evening and when I stated that I couldn't really taste the horseradish (and if you've ever had it, it's hard to ignore), she retorted that it's like wine, where it has to be subtle. So yes, a lovely little market.
You can click on the photos link at the top to see pictures of the market (once I upload them). There may not be a post next week as I'm heading to Nizhni Novgorod on Thursday night with my compatriots for a week-long cruise on the Volga River. I will try to make a nice long post when I get back on the 9th. Until then, as my old shop teacher used to say, "Be safe and if you can't be safe, be careful."
Moscow: End of 3rd Week.
I'm really enjoying the routine we're getting into here. Our schedule is thus: Monday through Thursday we have class at the university from 9-3. Tuesdays we have meetings after class and Thursdays we have "American Club" at 5.30, which is a weekly meeting of Russian and American students to talk about similarities and differences between our two cultures (politics is the only topic off-limits). This schedule, coupled with an hour commute each way every day, and a sizable amount of homework everyday means I really pretty much have to put my head down and work every day. This tends to work out just fine by me since it makes these days go by faster. Much like when I was in St. Petersburg, the first week was agonizingly slow, but subsequent weeks have been much faster.
So anyway, you'd think that spending your week either at the university or at home would hinder the general experience of living in Moscow. Fortunately, Fridays are "excursion days" where we take trips to particular places of significance in Moscow. Last week, as I mentioned, we went to the Russian State Library. This week we went to the All-Russian Exhibition Centre (which I'll elaborate on in a bit). Weekends are free, but I am pretty content to spend them doing homework and maybe going into the city for a bit once or twice. Last Sunday I met up with my tutor, Tania, and we walked around Novedichy Monastary, a really beautiful nunnery in the centre of Moscow, and the pond next to it called Swan Lake (supposedly the site that inspired Tchaikovsky's ballet of the same name). This weekend I'm hoping to go to an art gallery that is displaying underground art from the Soviet era, we'll see what happens. Anyway, the system works out so that I get so immersed in my work that the time flies by quickly, but I can still enjoy a number of cultural aspects of Moscow (and frankly, that is more interesting to me than going to bars or clubs...though that can be enjoyable from time to time as well).
So yes, the All-Russian Exhibition Centre (or ВВЦ (VVTs), as it's known in Russian) is located in the north of the city. Like the Russian State Library, it used to have a longer and, in my opinion, more interesting name: the All-Union Achievements of the National Economies Park, simply known by it's abbreviation, ВДНХ (VDNKh). This is a huge Stalinist park that was originally built to house the All-Union Exhibition of Rural Economies in 1939. As a result much of the park is agrarian in theme.
Towering over you at the entrance to the park, two kolkhozniki (those who worked on the collective farms, or kolkhozy) welcome you to the exhibition. The lamposts as you enter the park are designed to resemble stalks of wheat. All around are pavilions and fountains that exhibit artwork revolving around the agrarian economies of the Soviet Union. There is surprisingly little imagery of workers at VDNKh.
The exhibition of 1939 was so popular, and the area was so well liked, that when the park re-opened in 1954 (it had been dismantled during the War) it became an exhibition grounds for the economies of all the Soviet republics (hence the "all-union" reference in the title). It was possible to go into the different pavilions and see all the achievements the regional economies could boast of.
Sadly, after the collapse of the USSR, the park submitted to the laws of capitalism and became a giant market (this is actually a running story for a lot of Soviet era buildings). A couple students I was there with complained that it was impossible to take a picture of any of the buildings without having some sort of advertisement in the shot. It really is amazing how invasive advertising is here, but that's another post entirely.
Anyway, this happens to be one of my favorite parts of Moscow. I remember stumbling on it by complete accident when I first visited the city in 2004 and just loving it. Sadly, yesterday was overcast, so the photos I took are pretty flat. But to see this place at sunset is really a sight to behold.
Oh, yeah I went to a palace too, which was pretty interesting, but I don't have any pictures of it. I'll just say they have a really neat old theater there. We also rode Moscow's only monorail line, but I'm working on a transportation post, so we'll save it till then. Peace for now.
Um, I suppose I owe you an explanation
Yes, right, well...I'm in Moscow now. Though I have a hunch that those of you still reading this skeleton of a blog are already aware of that. So let's see what kind of a picture we can paint here:
General Orientations:
I live in the north-western (but mostly northern) part of Moscow, very close to Metro station "Planernaia," the very last stop on the Purple line. I live in a two-bedroom apartment with an incredibly lovely woman who cooks excellent meals, loves tea, and is generally up for conversations about anything. My own room is a bit tight, but its comfortable and has a desk, chair, and tv so I can't complain.
It takes me about an hour to get to the university everyday, which is located about a ten-minute walk north of Belorusskii Train Station on Leningradskii Prospekt. The university building is in the last stages of being remodeled and its still pretty chaotic. Students spend a decent amount of time wandering around trying to find rooms that may or may not exist. For the first two weeks, one of my classes had no door or fourth wall. This is normal for Russia and you just have to put up with it. I take classes on conversation, grammar & lexicon, phonetics, mass media, film, and literature. These are coupled with a lecture every morning on Russian geography, history, and music history (which is taught by the assistant rector of the Moscow Conservatory). A lot of information is thrown at us over a four-day period so we are pretty exhausted each day.
Excursions:
Each Friday we have excursions, half of which we are required to attend. Today, for example, we did a tour of the Russian State Library (formerly known as the State Library of the USSR in the name of Lenin), the largest library in the world (with the possible exception of the Library of Congress, depending on who you ask) and managed to get a card for it, good for five years. Last Sunday we went to a historical reenactment of the Battle of Borodino, the battle that sent Napoleon's grand armee packing back across Europe. The reenactment was impressive in the sense that it had some good explosions, but unimpressive in the sense that nobody died. Those of you who read War & Peace will probably find this a bit shocking, but there it is. It was better than the reenactment of Bannockburn, but less impressive than a WWII reenactment.
The City Itself:
Oddly, the first thing that hit me when I came to Moscow (other than that errant football, cue rim-shot) was the smells and how similar they were to Petersburg. The smells of dust, stagnant water, alcohol, poorly refined gasoline, and urine were instantly familiar to me and strangely comforting in the sense that it made Moscow less foreign and strange. They tried to scare us in D.C. during orientation into thinking we were gonna die in Moscow if we weren't careful. So far it just feels like a slightly larger, colder (both in temp and in personality), and more complicated version of Chicago. I have to keep reminding myself that I am used to big city life.
I have to admit that getting out more around town makes me feel more comfortable. This afternoon, after leaving the library, I went to the State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow's main gallery devoted to Russian art (akin to the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg). Though I enjoy the Russian Museum more, the Tretiakov has its own collection of famous pieces, including Repin's painting of Ivan the Terrible holding his only son and heir after mortally wounding him. It's quite a powerful piece. There are also some good pieces by Surikov and Kuindzhi, two of my favorite Russian painters. It's being able to do things like that that make me feel more settled here, that make the city less overwhelming.
I suppose that's all for now. I'll try to remember to add pictures when I can and I'll try to update more regularly than I have. Hopefully once a week, but no promises. Ciao for now.
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