RUSSIA, KALININGRAD: EEL FOR DINNER, A CAT CITY, AND GOING HOME

June 29-30, 2019

Just before we arrived at the end the Curonian Spit, we stopped for dinner at what looked like a lodge surrounded by cabins. The restaurant had a fun atmosphere created in part by the heads of a dozen or so African animals on the walls. While we were waiting for our food, the bombastic Russian owner, dressed in camouflage pants, a dark t-shirt, and black gloves, invited Bob to sit in a chair "that used to belong to Kaiser Wilhelm and then to Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe."  It was a large armchair with pretty new upholstery, and we suppose it could have been the Kaiser's and Goering's chair, but we were a little skeptical.

The owner brought us a glass of complimentary wine as we were waiting for our food, which we refused, explaining that we don't drink any alcohol. He was very insistent, but we continued to refuse it, and we were afraid we had offended him.

To start the meal, Bob ordered a really good egg, cucumber, and pickle salad . . .

. . . and I had a delicious fresh sauerkraut salad.

Bob was delighted to discover they had one large fresh eel that they would bake for us. (We discovered later that they charged us $70 for it, a huge amount given what we were paying for other things in Kaliningrad.) It was AMAZING (once I could get over its appearance)--tender, moist, and so flavorful. The spine was still in but easy to cut through for individual portions and then to remove. Unlike most regular fish, there were very few little bones.

BERLIN PART 2 ADDENDUM

My sister Angie commented on my last post, "The most moving image of November 1989 for me was Rostropovich playing the cello, surrounded by the rubble of the just-demolished Berlin wall."

I had not seen that impromptu performance, nor even heard of it, but of course YouTube had!

Note: The end of the video shows West Berlin Mayor and future Chancellor Willy Brandt making his way through the crowd and joining an East German official atop the Wall.
 
In an interview in the last year-and-a-half of his life, Rostropovich told a French newspaper reporter:
"When in 1989 I saw on television that the Berlin Wall was being torn down, I took the first plane to go play there. When the taxi left us out in front of the ex-Berlin Wall, I realized that I needed a chair. I went to knock on the door of a house, and someone recognized me. Within 10 minutes, there was a little crowd, and a television crew came passing by. I played the most joyous Bach Suites for solo cello in order to celebrate the event. But I could not forget all those who had lost their lives on this wall in trying to cross over it. Hence, I played the Sarabande of Bach's 2nd Suite in their memory, and I noticed a young man crying."

I enjoyed reading this BBC report about Rostropovich's death at age 80 in 2007.  He was quite the man.  The opportunity to see his grave in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery means even more to me now.

That's the interesting thing about education.  You learn or experience one little thing, and then along comes another piece of information or another experience that builds on and enriches that first piece, and pretty soon a minor curiosity has grown into something of importance or significance in your life, and you start to be more aware of what you might have otherwise overlooked.

Thank you, Angie, for adding another piece!

MOSCOW PART10: WRAP UP (Finally!)

I have a few odds and ends about Moscow that don't fit anywhere but which I want to include:

This postcard-perfect photo is of  Novodevichy ("New Maiden") Convent, which was built in the 1500s.  It was closed down by the Bolsheviks in 1924, then used for a museum, and later for a school.  Nuns returned to the convent in 1994. The Novodevichy Cemetery that I wrote about in a previous post is nearby.

Little white bits of fluff floating in the air everywhere we went turned out to be from cottonwood trees and were the reason I began sneezing almost immediately after we arrived.  Thank goodness I packed Claritin.

Olympic Stadium for the 1980 Summer Olympics, which the United States boycotted to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The very long, very steep, and very scary ski jump.

Note the Seven Sisters building in the silhouette on the front.

Olympic logo.  Do you recognize the Seven Sisters image (again) topped with the Russian star

T-shirt stall in a tourist area.  It was nice to know the Russians have a sense of humor.

The Narva Triumphal Gate, seen here through our bus window, looked like a cross between Paris's Arc de Triomphe and Berlin's Brandenberg Gate.

The Moscow Circus Arena

Performing bears and dogs

Various animals waiting to perform.

Izmailovsky Handicraft Market looked a lot like Disneyland's  "It's a Small World" ride. 

(Photo by Scott Zimmerman)

Matroyshka Dolls (Photo by Scott Zimmerman)

Stall where I bought dresses for my granddaughters

I purchased a pair of wooden dolls hand-carved by this man (his wife handled the business end) to add to my small collection of "happily married" wooden couples at home.

A sweet surprise in the airport on our way out of Moscow

A character in a play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov exclaims, "If only we could go back to Moscow!  Sell the house, finish with our life here, and go back to Moscow."

I don't think I'm quite ready to sell the house, but I do hope to return to this beautiful, intriguing city some day. 

That's it for Moscow.  Next: Berlin.  And don't worry; none of our other destinations will take this many posts to cover.

MOSCOW PART 9: ART IN PUBLIC PLACES

Moscow is absolutely loaded with outdoor art.  It seemed that on every major intersection, there was a massive monument to something or (more often than not) someone.  A few in particular caught my attention.

#1: A monument to the Russian poet, singer/songwriter Bulat Okudzhava (1924-1997) on Arbat Street:

I love the interactive nature of this sculpture. An admirer can join the poet under his arch and be part of the artwork.

#2: Statue of Peter the Great 1672-1725), Czar of Russia
It is hard to miss this monument situated in the Moskva River.  At 315 feet tall, it is the eighth tallest statue in the world. By comparison, the Statue of Liberty stands 151 feet tall and is the twenty-ninth tallest statue in the world.  Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli was commissioned in 1998 to create a work to mark the 300th anniversary of the Russian Navy, and it was installed in 2010 to almost instant outcry of disgust. (See, for example, this BBC article.)

Note that Peter is standing atop a small village.

The base really is pretty ugly.

Muscovites aren't too fond of Peter to begin with as he himself hated Moscow so much that he moved the capital to St. Petersburg.  It is no suprise that they are so negative about what they consider to be a twenty million dollar monstrosity. (To be totally honest, I quite liked it.)

#3: Heroes of Russian Fairy Tales
In the center of Moscow is a park that joins the Red Square/Kremlin area with the business district.  In that park, in addition to a line-up of disturbingly American fast food places, is a series of small canals filled with scenes from fairy tales created in the 1990s by Zurab Tsereteli.  These have been much more favorably received than the same artist's sculpture of Peter the Great pictured above!

Most of the figures are from the works of Ivan Krylov (1769-1844), a Russian writer who was a contemporary and friend of Alexander Pushkin.  Krylov sometimes borrowed from Aesop and others, but added his own touches to give the stories a Russian flavor.  How many can you identify?

 

 

 

My favorite is the story of the poor fisherman who catches a fish. In return for being freed, the fish grants the fisherman his heart's desire.  After consulting with his wife, he asks for a new washtub.  When it appears, the couple grows dissatisfied and the fisherman returns and requests a new cottage. Then he returns again and asks for a mansion and for his wife to be a fine lady.  On his fourth trip, he asks that his home become a palace and that his wife be the tsaritsa. All of these wishes are granted until the wife, full of her own importance, asks to be made queen of the seas and for the fish to be her slave.  When the fisherman asks this of the fish, the fish swims angrily away and the old man returns to find his old wife sitting in their dirty hovel with her broken washtub.

 It is an excellent reminder to be grateful for even small blessings!

Later on in our trip we purchased our own "magic" fish in St. Petersburg.  He won't grant over-the-top wishes . . .

. . . but a sweet treat magically appears in his mouth whenever there are children around!

MOSCOW PART 8: NOVODEVICHY CEMETERY

I have mentioned in several previous posts that I have what may be for some a strange fascination and love for cemeteries.  Up until now, the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is probably the most bizarre cemetery I've been to.  The Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow may be even a bit more strange.  What makes it so unique are the mostly realistic depictions of the departed.  Forget about forgetting what a loved one looks like.  Life-sized statues and friezes on most of the graves will haunt those who were left behind every time they visit.

Opened in 1898, the Novodevichy Cemetery has more than 27,000 graves of mostly wealthy and notable Russians, including politicians, authors, musicians, scientists, and actors. I wish I had some kind of a guidebook that would tell me who lies beneath these intriguing markers.  Some of them I do know from notes I took during our tour and from research I've done at home.  I'll start with those:

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), famous Russian novelist

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), one of the world's greatest playwrights

Nikita Khruschev (1894-1971), much feared Soviet Premier during the Cold War

Khruschev close up.  He looks rather jolly, doesn't he?

Andrei Gromyko (1909-1989), Soviet Premier in the 1980s known fondly in America as "Mr. Nyet"

Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007), Premier who presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Our guide telling us about the grave of Raisa Gorbachev (1932-1999), the dynamic wife of the still living Mikhail Gorbachev.  (Looks like there is room for him there next to her.)

The wall behind Raisa's grave, chock full of Russian politicians.

One of our favorites, the tomb of Aleksandr Bakulev (1890-1967), the founder of cardiovascular surgery in the USSR.

Leonid Sobinov (1872-1934), operatic tenor

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), renowned 20th Century composer. (An amazingly humble marker for such a remarkable man.)

Mstivlav Rostropovich (1927-2007), one of the greatest cellists of all time. I love how the cross looks like the strings of a cello.

Galina Ulanova (1910-1998), considered to be one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th Century

Boris Brunov (1922-1997), a famous Russian actor

Yuri Nikolin (1921-1997), a much beloved Russian actor and circus clown who is being eternally watched over by his faithful dog. (Who wouldn't want a grave marker like this one?)

Of course, there were thousands of monuments that we loved but could not identify.  Here are a few.  

Another clown.  The Russians do love a good circus.

From the world of music:

I know that is his signature, but what does it say?

From the world of art:

From the military:

 Note the missiles on this one:                              And the medals on this guy's jacket:

  See the parachute on the base?  I love the fresh flowers in his hand.

I'm not sure if these guys are military or government, but they are all together and look very important.

He and I would have been friends. I am sure of it.

Unknown:

An architect? A sculptor? A physicist? An engineer?

A finally, a few great profiles:

 

 

Did you notice the ratio of men to women? I don't think there were many famous women during the USSR years.  As this cemetery is still very much in use and growing each year, maybe there will be more women buried in the newer sections.

Someone once said that the only real equaility is in the cemetery.  He or she should have visited Novodevichy Cemetery.

Which one is your favorite?