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.

RUSSIA, KALININGRAD: THE CURONIAN SPIT

June 29, 2019

In an earlier post I mentioned the Curonian Spit, a geographical and geological oddity that separates the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon. This UNESCO World Heritage Site (since 2000) shared by two countries is a 61-mile-long sand dune that connects to Kaliningrad on one end and to Lithuania on the other. At its narrowest point (which is on the Russia side) it is only 437 yards across, and at its widest point (which is on the Lithuania side) it is almost 2.5 miles across. The spit is the only national park in Kaliningrad.

We spent our last afternoon of the 21st day of a very long trip driving and walking along this unique landform. We made five main stops: 1. the Baltic Sea, 2. an ornithological station, 3. the Curonian Lagoon, 4. the largest sand dunes on the spit, and 5. the Dancing Forest.

1. The Baltic Sea

Our guide Elena told us that the spit was heavily wooded until the 1500s when German invaders cut down all the trees. Wind and water swept over the spit, covering it with sand. For the last few decades, conservationists have been working to reclaim the spit from the sand, planting hundreds of thousands of pine trees (mostly) and other trees and grasses that hold the soil in place and create new land. It is a very slow, tedious process that will take a century or more to take root. (No pun intended.) The spit, in most places, looks heavily wooded, but pull away the delicate grasses and lichens, and the foundation is sand. It is really bizarre.

There are many hiking "trails" made of wooden planks on the spit. Any footsteps on the fragile growth contribute to erosion. We walked on four or five such paths, including this first one shown below that led to a beach on the Baltic Sea. 

RUSSIA, KALININGRAD: A LAKE, AN AMBER MUSEUM, AND A LUNCH

 June 29, 2020

Remember that story about Bob's grandfather serving a mission in Konigsberg and the missionary who tragically drowned in a lake? Our guide could think of only one lake where that could have happened. It is named Verkhneye ("Top") Lake now, but it was known as the Oberteich ("Upper Pond") while part of Konigsberg until 1945. That turned out to be the name Bob's grandfather recorded in his journal. The lake was created by Teutonic knights in 1270 as a reservoir and fish pond above the castle pond. It covers 102 acres.

Oberteich in 1930 (photo from here):

Verkhneye Lake today:

On the shores of the lake is an art museum unlike any other we've been to. It is housed in a Neo-Gothic fortress built in the mid 1800s. (Photo from here.)

RUSSIA: KALININGRAD CITY TOUR

June 29, 2019

We began our day with a city tour led by our guide, Irina. She had a list she wanted to get through and didn't adjust very well to our interests.

Our hotel was located in an area of the city known as the "Fisherman's Village." We probably did spend too much time getting acquainted with this rakish sailor and his clever monkey . . . 

. . . but they were so friendly.

We could tell that luck-seeking passersby had rubbed their noses a lot.

Further along the walk we saw but didn't speak to this lady of the night. Her nose has been rubbed a lot too.

We rushed right by this fellow, who had set up shop on one end of a bridge.  I had to use Google Translate to learn that his sign says "Sale of finds from excavations in Konigsberg."

Looking at the photo now, I wish we had been able to stop and take a closer look!

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: PANFILOV PARK WAR MEMORIAL AND THE SILK ROAD EXPRESS TRAIN

A large park surrounds the Ascension Eastern Orthodox Cathedral, and in that park is a war memorial that honors both the Bolshevik Revolution (1917-1920) and World War II (1941-1945).

The memorial is a long, stone-paved mall bordered by dense foliage and containing several interesting works of art.

This is the entrance on one end of the park. On the other side of this brick wall . . .

. . . is a giant relief of fifteen World War II soldiers (one for each Soviet republic) who seem to be bursting out of the wall. The inscription on the base translates to something like, "Great Russia will never turn back; Moscow is behind us!"

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: THE ASCENSION CATHEDRAL (AKA ZENKOV CATHEDRAL)

Kazakhstan and Russia share 4,254 miles of border, so it is no wonder that there has been a strong Russian presence in Kazakhstan for centuries, long before what is called the "Soviet period" began in about 1920.

Although Kazakhstan was and is predominantly Muslim, Christianity spread throughout the country with the Russians who immigrated during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1907, a Russian Orthodox Church was built in Almaty, not the first such church in Kazakhstan, but perhaps the most unique and most beautiful.

Unfortunately for us, it was being renovated when we were there:

To understand its construction, it is important to know that because Almaty is located at the edge of the magnificent Tian Shan mountain range, it is prone to earthquakes. After a magnitude 7.3 earthquake brought down many of the buildings in Almaty in 1887, most of the new construction was wood instead of brick, including the new Russian Orthodox Ascension Cathedral, also known as the Zenkov Cathedral (Zenkov was the engineer), which was begun in 1904 and finished in 1907. It is built entirely of Tian Shan spruce and held together not with nails but with iron bolts (I'm not sure what the difference is). Wooden beams were fastened together with rolling brackets, giving it a unique kind of flexibility that miraculously saved it from almost any damage in the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that hit Almaty in 1911 and again destroyed most of the city.

With its 184-foot-tall spire, the Ascension Cathedral claims to be the second tallest all-wooden building in the world.

The fencing around the renovation areas shows pictures of the cathedral in the early 20th century and in the present day:

It looks a lot like the cathedrals of St. Petersburg, Russia:

Photo from here

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA: PETER AND PAUL FORTRESS

On our first day in St. Petersburg, we cruised past Peter and Paul Fortress on our riverboat cruise. It was the last place we visited before boarding our cruise ship to leave Russia.

The fortress was the first building in the city and is considered the site of the founding of St. Petersburg.  Peter the Great (surprise!) built the fortress in 1703 as protection from a feared Swedish invasion. The invasion didn't happen, and as noted in a previous post, the fortress soon became a prison and remained one until 1924, when it became a museum. Like so many other important buildings in St. Petersburg, it was severely damaged by bombing during World War II but has since been restored.

There are numerous buildings in the Fortress, with the most famous being the Peter and Paul Cathedral.  With its 404-foot belltower (the tallest point in St. Petersburg) and the Russian Orthodox crosses on the outside, I expected a typical Russian Orthodox interior, but it was much more like a museum inside, which is really what it functions as.  I must say that while the interior was rich and ornate, it couldn't hold a candle to the cathedrals and palaces we had already seen in St. Petersburg, and the overpowering aqua green theme was not my favorite:

So why do tourists--local pilgrims as well as foreigners--make their way by the thousands to the Peter and Paul Cathedral?  It's because it is the burial place for all but one of the Russian emperors and empresses--tsars and tsaritsas--from Peter the Great (who died in 1725) to Alexander III (who died in 1894). I haven't quite figured out the Russian fascination with the Romanovs, who so often seemed to rule with a heavy hand.

The marble sarcophagi lined up in neat rows fill the interior of the Cathedral and are decorated with gold embellishments, fresh flowers, and artistic representations of the individuals:

Of course, there are plenty of double-headed eagles to be seen:

Some of the most recent additions to the Cathedral are the remains of the last tsar and his family, Nicholas II, Alexandra, and three of their five children, whose bodies were exhumed in 1991. After undergoing testing in laboratories for seven years, they were relocated to the Cathedral in 1998 on the 80th anniversary of their assassinations.  In 2007, two additional partially burned bodies were found not far from the original graves of the other members of Nicholas and Alexandra's family, and a year later DNA testing confirmed that they were the remains of the two missing children. Those bodies have yet to be interred.

We really hated to leave Russia, a place we'd definitely like to visit again.  I am sure we had a "sanitized" view of the country, being shielded from its social and economic problems.  However, that it is a country of rich culture and great beauty can not be denied.

Here are some final thoughts from the notes I took while our Russian tour guide was speaking:

• Although Moscow (population 10 million) is twice as large as St. Petersburg (4.8 million), St. Petersburg has twice as many tourists as Moscow.

• Russia is the largest country (area-wise) in the world, with Canada coming in second and China third.

• Education facts:

     - Primary and secondary school are free and required.  

     - After secondary school, students can go to high school for two more years or can get vocational training.

     - Universities were free during the Soviet era, but no longer.  Some scholarships are available to top students; others pay their own way.  The most expensive courses of study are law, banking, medicine, and psychology.

• Medicine:

     -Medical care was free during the Soviet era (but I wonder how many people could actually get care, and what kind of care that was).

     - Citizens now have insurance through work and school, and insurance is provided for pensioners. Those with insurance can get care at facilities closest to their homes.  (Does this mean that poor areas have poor clinics and hospitals?)

     - Medications are free to those with mortal diseases such as cancer.

     - Some doctors still make house calls.

Our guide taught us how to say "See you again some day."  I can only write it phonetically, but here it is:

"Dos-vee-DAHN-yah, Russia!"

ST. PETERSBURG: THE CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOR ON SPILLED BLOOD

All that exercise of strolling around cathedrals and ooh-ing and ah-ing and gasping with delight makes one hungry.  Following our visit to St. Isaac's, our tour group had a banquet-style lunch in a large hall, complete with Russian entertainment.  Those are usually not our favorite meals. Although the entertainment is fun, the food is usually what you would expect when 100 people are being fed all at once.  This meal, however, was probably one of the better group meals we had.  It included caviar, a delicious cabbage dish, and stuffed pork:

 

After being fed and "cultured" (not the petri dish version, the Russian folk song version), our bus took us to a cathedral with a very unusual name: The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood.  Apparently its official name is Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, but no one seems to call it that.  It looks like a larger and slightly more serious version of St. Basil's Cathedral:

Unlike St. Basil's cramped interior, however, the Savior on Spilled Blood has a large, open, more traditional interior, which would make it a fairy tale location for weddings, although I think this bride was just here for photos. I can't imagine officials would stop the heavy stream of paying tourists for a little wedding:

There are beautiful mosaics on the exterior:

. . . wonderfully prickly onion domes:

. . . and lots of ornate decor, gold leafing, and double-headed eagles:

Unfortunately for my two ice cream-obsessed siblings (you know who you are, Chris and Dave), there are horrible, unfair, Stalin-esque restrictions about what you can take inside with you. This is quite a contrast to the metal detectors found at many historical sites in the U.S., don't you think?

The "spilled blood" part of the name of this cathedral explains its origin.  It was on this very spot that Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1831 by a bomb thrown at his feet.  His son, Alexander III, had a temporary shrine erected at the site, then began a cathedral at the location to honor his father. It was completed in 1907 by Alexander II's grandson, Nicholas II, the last tsar.  Inside the cathedral are marble walls and an elaborate canopy shielding the exact spot where Alexander II's blood was spilled, and the floor of the shrine is made of the very cobblestones that were once stained with blood:

Just a bit gruesome, isn't it?

Besides the gory history, what makes this church stand out is that it contains 7,500 square meters of mosaics, which Russians claim is more than any other church in the world.  However, there is a church in St. Louis, Missouri, of all places, that has 7,700 square meters of mosaics.  From what I can tell from pictures, however, that Missouri Basilica can't begin to compare with this one in St. Petersburg, where every inch is covered with the tiny tiles, including the ceilings and support columns.  I loved the dominant sky-blue color and the mosque-like use of floral and geometric patterns framing the mosaics:

Even the marble floor has a mosaic quality:

Elizabeth, could you use your computer quilting program to make this into a quilt pattern for me?

After the Russian Revolution, the interior was almost destroyed by looters, and the Soviet government closed the building in the 1930s.  During World War II it was used as a morgue, and after the war it was used as a storehouse for vegetables (leading to its less popular nickname of "Savior on Potatoes"). Restoration work began in 1970 and continued for 27 years.

The obvious theme of the mosaics is the life of Christ, but ironically, this church has never really been used as a place of worship.  Although it was consecrated when it was completed, Alexander II intended it to be used as a memorial for his father, and since its restoration it has been considered more of a museum than a church and has never been re-consecrated.  That's a shame, because I thought the art was particularly beautiful and moving:

Mary, Queen of Heaven, flanked by the Twelve Apostles

I love the adult face of Baby Jesus and the "I have a headache" depiction of Joseph.

It was just outside the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood that we made our biggest purchase of the trip, this hand-carved and painted wooden fish that echoes the colors of the church's interior.

It has a secret drawer that opens when you pull the golden ring:

When children come to visit, this Magic Fish somehow always seems to have a goodie or two waiting for them:

You can bet that Savvy and Ella make a bee-line for the fish when they come to visit us.

Just one more church in St. Petersburg to go--the memorial to the slain family of Nicholas and Alexandra.