Russia – 2000

I’m writing this in March, 2017 or seventeen years after we had taken this trip.

We had wanted to visit Russia, post Soviet Union, and thought a riverboat would be a good way to explore a large area and make it easier to deal with language and other cultural issues. 

In 2000 Misti searched online and found a small college group in Maryland that was planning a ten day riverboat tour between St. Petersburg and Moscow.  While we didn’t want to join their group, we were interested in that boat since having other English speakers on board would make it easier for us to communicate. 

They gave us the name of the woman who owned the riverboat company and Misti called her in Moscow.  Even though with about 100 passengers the boat was almost full, with groups from Turkey, Russia, France and the Maryland group, there was a cabin available and we would be the only independent travelers, not part of any group.  The woman asked if we could bring US hundred dollar bills to pay her, she’d give us a better price.  We agreed and the cost was quite reasonable, especially, compared with European riverboat trips now.

We flew to Stockholm where we spent two nights exploring the city.  We happened to be there when the city was hosting a tall boat festival, with older boats from several European cities, and we partied on the waterfront with the ship’s crews. Stockholm has several excellent museums but the best was the Vasa Museum which displays the 226 foot Swedish warship Vasa, which foundered in Stockholm harbor in 1627 after sailing less than one mile.  It was discovered and salvaged in 1961 and because of the very cold water is in excellent condition.

Our plan was to take a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, Finland and then a train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, Russia.  We booked an overnight cabin on the Tallink Silja line leaving late afternoon and arriving Helsinki the next morning.  Sweden has thousands of small islands and it was fun to watch the sailboats plying the waters as we slowly made our way east, wine glasses in hand.  The ferry boats are mostly used by locals for duty free shopping and drinking, and most passengers stayed up through the night and didn’t take cabins.

It was our first time in Helsinki where we only spent two nights because we had to get to St. Petersburg to meet up with our riverboat.  We rented a car for one day and headed north to see some of the Finnish countryside.  The car, a tiny two seater Ford Ka, was about the size of a Smart car.  As we sped up the expressway at eighty miles an hour, we thought it strange that no other cars, including luxury European sedans, were going that fast.  That night I asked the hotel receptionist why drivers didn’t speed on the highway, and he told us that a speeding ticket fine is proportionate to your income and some wealthy people have been fined more than a hundred thousand dollars.  He said we were lucky we weren’t stopped.

We next boarded the train for a five hour trip to St. Petersburg, including a passport check when we crossed the border into Russia.  The train was much faster and easier than either ferry or air especially since it takes you from city center to city center.

We were met at the train terminal by a person from the boat and taken to our home for the next ten days, the good ship Valeriy Bryusov, which was to take us from St. Petersburg to Moscow.  We checked in with the purser and discovered that our cabin was small with two single beds separated by a nightstand.  I’m a king size bed guy and like to cuddle with my wife, so I started looking around the boat for a larger cabin.  Lo and behold, I discovered two suites midship that seemed to be empty, and most people were already on board.  I asked the purser if those cabins were available and was told that one was for the band and the other wasn’t being used but was “very expensive”.  I asked what the additional cost would be and was told $25 a day or $250 for the ten day trip.  I said we’d take it and we moved into a suite that was four times the size of regular cabins with a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and living room.  Sometimes you just have to ask.

We spent the first two days in St. Petersburg sleeping on the boat at its berth.  Two days is not nearly enough time to explore this amazing city filled with so much history, wonderful architecture, opera and ballet and of course the Hermitage Museum, one of the oldest and largest museums in the world.  St. Petersburg was known as Petrograd until its name was changed to Leningrad in 1924, and then its name was changed again to St. Petersburg in 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved.  It’s also referred to as the Venice of the North and is Russia’s window on the west.  Seeing today’s St. Petersburg it’s difficult to imagine what the city looked like in 1943 at the end of a nine hundred day attack and siege by the Nazis when much of the city was destroyed with nearly two million casualties.

We settled into our cabin and were told the itinerary for the ten day voyage. It included stops at several cities other than St. Petersburg and Moscow:  Kizhi, Goristi, Uglich, Yaraslav and Kostroma.

None of the roughly one hundred passengers on board spoke any English other than the Maryland college group, their Russian guide and several crew members.  The Maryland bunch were congenial college teachers in their 50’s and 60’s, and they told us that since we were fellow Americans, we were free to join in any of their tours without charge.  We did accompany them a few times but I preferred going off on my own while Misti usually went with the group.

Before arriving at Yaraslav, about midway through our voyage, I told Misti I thought we should see more of the Russian countryside from the land; the boat was great but sightseeing was limited to what we could see on the shore and the few towns where we stopped.  I suggested getting off the boat in Yaraslav, one of Moscow’s Golden Ring cities with a population of half a million.

We decided we should tell someone we were leaving the boat for an overnight so they didn’t think we fell overboard.  We chose the Maryland group’s Russian guide, a somewhat stern woman in her late 50’s who was educated during Soviet times.  She was surprised to hear we were leaving the boat and in her best Soviet attitude said “can you do that?”, as if we needed permission to leave.  Without giving her a lecture on the virtues of American freedom, we assured her that yes, we can do that, and that we’d be fine.  We got our passports from the Purser and after the boat tied up in Yaraslav we left, with the American group cautioning us about the pitfalls of being on our own in a strange Russian city.

At the dock I saw a man in his 40’s who looked like a candidate to be our impromptu guide.  Mikhael (Michael) was a history teacher, soft-spoken, spoke good English and he liked the idea of showing two Americans his city and having an opportunity to practice his English.  He didn’t have a car so we hired a taxi and off we went sightseeing for the afternoon. He told us how his family had lost all their money when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.  He said they weren’t wealthy but were middle class, and then one day, like so many other Russians, they woke up in poverty.  He said we were very lucky to live in the United States.

As evening approached he took us to a nearby hotel where we took a room, with very Soviet looking furniture and décor, for about twenty-five dollars for the night.  I asked Mikhael if he knew anyone who could take us to Kostroma, where we’d meet the boat, and he said he’d have his friend, the ex chief of police, take us the roughly fifty miles.  I asked what the cost would be for the ride and he said not to worry it would be very little, which it was.  I tried to give Mikhael the equivalent of twenty-five dollars and he refused to take any money, saying it was his pleasure to show us around his city, but I insisted and suggested he use it to buy his family a gift.

That evening we wandered around downtown Yaraslav, took a streetcar, and had dinner in a small restaurant.  All this with just a few words of Russian, the most important of which was “etta” which means “that one”.  Since menus were in Cyrillic and not a word of English to be found anywhere, nor an English speaker, we’d watch dishes as they were brought to the tables and then I’d point to a dish and tell the waiter “adheen etta” or “one of those”.  They smiled but we got to eat. Walking around we realized that unlike the US, there is almost no racial diversity, and until we spoke, we looked the same as everyone else.

We left the next morning in a tiny Lada headed for a rendezvous with our boat in Kostroma.  Our driver, the ex chief of police, spoke a bit of English, but with a great deal of effort.  We passed a number of churches that had been leveled and the driver said they had been “crushed” during Soviet times, a simple but good description because they looked like they had been hit with a giant sledge hammer.  We went into several small villages and saw old weather-beaten wooden cottages, bearing witness to very poor people struggling in a hostile environment. 

Using sign language and a bit of English, we asked our driver to stop at a local farmhouse so we could see how Russian people lived.  He randomly chose one, introduced us to the babushka (grandmother) and her granddaughter and they gave us a tour, in Russian of course, of their small house.  This was an extremely poor family living in a one room house, with a giant stove which they both slept on during the severe Russian winters.  When we left we gave both the woman and her granddaughter several small gifts we were carrying with us for just such an occasion.

We met up with the boat and the Maryland group and their Russian guide were relieved to see us, fearful that we might have disappeared after being beset by Russian bandits or whatever.  I must say that the time we spent off the ship was probably the most exciting, interesting and colorful part of our journey, and gave us a glimpse of how Russian people live. To find adventure sometimes you have to look a little harder.

We continued on to Moscow enjoying the amenities of the riverboat including excellent Russian food, lectures describing the countryside and its people, a fully stocked bar with an amazing vodka selection and classical music in the evening.  The boat arranged for a group representing each of the languages, Russian, Turkish, French and English, to sing in a contest.  Misti was part of the US group, they first sang American patriotic songs and ended with a popular Russian folk song, Kalinka (snowball tree).

I became buddies with several of the Maryland group men and we stayed up until the wee hours imbibing great quantities of vodka, a drink I acquired a taste for on this voyage.  We always drank it straight and ice cold, with no ice, and loudly sang songs as we got drunk, lots of fun.

Moscow is the most populous city in Europe and is the heart of Russia.  It’s a city that most Americans have never seen and all should see to better understand Russia and the Russian people, their culture, politics, history, art and architecture. I’m writing this as the US Congress is investigating Russia’s possible interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and from my exposure to the Russian people, I know there is more than Mr. Putin and his nasty group.

Mike gave us the name of a friend, Constantine, that he had met in Egypt, and we called Constatine and arranged to meet him at the Moskva hotel where we were staying, near Red Square.  Constantine struggled to speak English, constantly referring to his pocket dictionary, and he was our guide for two days showing us the sights of Moscow.  He invited us for dinner at his apartment with his wife and parents; so nice that we had Constantine as our host, giving us an opportunity to see Russian life up close.

One highlight of Moscow is the subway system.  One afternoon I set out on my own to explore it and was amazed that many stations are like museums, with beautiful artwork and statues.  The stations were very clean and graffiti free, although now seventeen years later that may have changed.

On our way home we spent two nights in Copenhagen adjusting to what seemed like a decadent Western culture, after our time in Russia.  We flew back to California realizing we’re very lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world, with so much available to us, while people in Russia were struggling with their lives.

Art Faibisch

March 31, 2017