We got to sleep in today because some members of our group did the late night boat ride on the Moscow River (neither of us chose to go).
So the first activity was a lecture at 11 am by Yegor Kovaldin, a Russian Professor of Economics and advisor to President Gorbachev. He talked for about 30 minutes about the declining population in the country, the salary of the average worker (about 31,000 rubles per month or the equivalent of US$7,200 per year), the fact that 10% of the people own 50% of the wealth, etc. He shared that the population is really declining, which is of grave concern, and that the transition from Communism (in place for 75 years--3 generations) has been very slow from an economic standpoint. They have still not fully recovered from all of the corruption in their banking system. People generally like their "freedom", but except for the minority of the population in the more elite class, it is a tough life.
Then the floor was open to questions. The group asked a lot of good ones, and received some interesting answers. Here are some other soundbites he shared (many common sense and expected but interesting to hear nonetheless):
>Putin's centralization of power started 20 years ago--23 governors were replaced between 2016 and 2018 alone There is a lot of concern about the proposed pension changes
> Tourism makes up very little of the Russian economy. He wishes it were more, but says people just don't want to come here (they prefer places like Italy, France, etc.). Also, most Russians who travel do so out of the country! Many go to Turkey. We learned afterwards that apparently, the VISA requirement is waived for Chinese travelers who visit with a tour group. Over 1 million Chinese visit each year.
> Relations are worsening between the US and Russia-worse than the cold war.
> The economic sanctions are quite damaging "as Russia's economy goes, so goes the US economy".
> The recent World Cup in Russia was a huge success; so was the Helsinki Summit with President Trump.
> Russian people have a negative attitude toward the US (in our interactions, particularly in Moscow, it is hard to ascertain if this is the general sense of seriousness or a true disdain for Americans.)
> The sense of Russian interference in the US election is "overblown -- there is no evidence of misdeeds" (really?). The American intelligence community was very involved in Russia during the Clinton administration.
> "Russia is not America" in terms of gender equality in professional roles--only very few women are at high levels of government and/or business.
> "The health care system in Russia is good if you have brains, connections, and money." There is a state system of heath care with some limits.
> Russia has a special relationship with Israel because of all the Russians who moved there (and he personally admires everything Israel has accomplished).
> He is very much in favor of the Iran deal and is dismayed that "you know who" pulled out.
All in all, a very informative talk.
Today's first stop was the Tretiyakov Gallery, ostensibly holding the greatest collection of Russian art in the world (you remember, there was not that much on display at the Hermitage). One of the interesting things Natalya told us about today was the period in the 18th century. Prior to this, in Russia at least, all art was religious in nature. Indeed they have icons painted on wood dating back to the 13th century. In the 18th century, several artists began to paint actual, everyday people in real settings--beginning with portraits. When this approach was officially approved by the Tsar, such paintings became more widespread.
Here are some of the best examples from the early 1800s:
"The Major's Marriage Proposal" by Fedotov (1851)
Portrait of Pushkin (this guy is everywhere!) by Kiprenski (1827)
"Portrait of an Unknown Woman" by Kramskoi (1883). It caused a bit of a scandal when it
was first displayed as the woman was sitting in a carriage (gasp!) alone!!! The artist kept
the woman's name a secret so she would not suffer any repercussions.
"The Trinity" by Andrei Rublev (c. 1400)--an example of iconography
We visited for several hours, and then went back to the hotel for free time. We then tried to purchase a lithograph, but due to language barriers, credit card / technology issues, and bureaucratic red tape, we were thwarted. It's a long story best told over several shots of vodka.
Then it was time for dinner at......wait for it...….
CAFE PUSHKIN!!!!!! One of the finest and most elegant restaurants in town. Our waiter introduced himself as "Michael", and added "my name is really Mikhail, but you can call me Misha".
Before we get into describing the dinner (which we shared with friends from the group), a word about some of the Russian words. Most of you probably cannot read the Cyrillic alphabet. Some of the letters / sounds are the same, some letters that look familiar are pronounced differently; others are completely different. And some have Greek origins. For example, in the sign above, you can all probably read the first word: café (K A F E). Interestingly, and especially since the early 90s, Russians have adopted many Western words and added them to their language in their own alphabet. So you can see "McDonalds" written in Cyrillic. The same for "business lunch" (a kind of restaurant), "Burger King", "supermarket" (and "minimarket"), "smartphone", and "stop". So if you do know the alphabet (like Wayne does; he took one grueling semester of Russian in college) there are many signs that you can read and actually understand what they say! Certainly there are Russian words for business, lunch, burger, king (tsar!), and stop, etc. But they use the transliterated words instead. We have not seen this before in our travels (or, perhaps we have and did not know it as we do not "read" Japanese, Turkish, etc.).
OK...the dinner. 12 page menu with so many wonderful dishes They even had a half-page section just for pickled items, another for caviars, and another half page for an assortment of mini-pies!
So we had to try the latter. Here we have mini pie a la champignons (mushrooms.....for some reason our menu listed everything in English and French!).
The item below was billed as a mini composed salad with vegetables. It was anything but! Very large and healthy but somewhat boring.
They, of course, had the Olivier salad on the menu, and Wayne was tempted to get it again because the last one was so good. But he instead went for the Arugula with shrimps under ginger soy vinaigrette. Outstanding!!! It also included slices of sweet peppers and two other small whole sweet peppers stuffed with goat cheese.
For mains, Wendy chose trout with crabmeat stuffing (delicious and beautifully presented)….
...and Wayne had traditional Russian beef paprika: small chunks of beef, mushrooms, pearl onions, and more of those sweet pepper slices, with gravy, carefully poured into a ring of fluffy mashed potatoes. Then it was topped with a spray of fresh dill. Tasted way better than the photo would indicate.
Special Pushkin dessert--pistachio and strawberry ice cream in a meringue crust with raspberry sauce.
Our friend Jeffrey ordered a dramatically-presented apple tarte with a flamed meringue. It was sitting on a hard cookie. Under that was a disc of white chocolate that represented a clock. You can see the hours marked on it, and the edible hands peeking out from the meringue. He said it was divine!
We enjoyed our meal at Pushkin (including the string quartet playing Tchaikovsky in the background), and found it particularly intriguing given Napoleon's efforts in Russia in the 19th C, we were wined and dined in a restaurant that used French and Russian in the menu.
Monday, August 20, 2018
The last day of the tour! (Though we have added an extra day for more sightseeing.). We left home 2 weeks ago today. This morning there were party boats at 3:30 AND 4:00!
Once again we have superb weather! We have been so lucky on this trip. Our guide Natalya once again remarked about the temperature, because "....you know winter is coming soon. In Russia, fur is not a luxury; it is a necessity."
Finally, we got inside the Kremlin! It is a collection of many buildings and gardens covering 68 acres. The largest is the Great Kremlin Palace. It used to be the home of the top guy, but no one has lived there for many years. One building used to house the Supreme Soviet, the government of the USSR. Now the Duma (government) meets in another building just outside the Kremlin walls.
Here is a section of the wall and one of the buildings inside.
This is one of the 20 towers placed along the wall. Here is another one, closer up from the inside (later on in the morning) overlooking the modern city.
Here is a diagram of the entire complex, highlighting the buildings that are currently museums.
Our first stop was the Armoury. As you can surmise, it started life as the Royal Arsenal in the early 1500s. It now houses a fantastic collection of treasures of the tsars including icons (religious paintings), silver and gold tableware, gowns and crowns covered in gold and diamonds and rubies and pearls, Faberge eggs, thrones, carriages (one of which weighs 9 tons), armor (duh), those incredible clocks, and on and on. Unfortunately no pictures AT ALL are allowed in this museum. So here are some from the internet.
Bible covers
Carriages (just like in Cinderella!)
Crowns with fur trim
Egg with pictures of al the Romanov Tsars from 1913
celebrating 300 years of the dynasty.
Catherine the Great wedding gown. Note the waist!
Thrones
We then went outside and walked over to Cathedral Square. There are 3 cathedrals and a few smaller churches here. This is the site where the present day president is inaugurated.
Leaving Cathedral Square
Back in the day, members of the royal family would be Christened in one, married and/or coronated in another, and had their funeral in the third. Or as Natalya said as she pointed to them: "Hatch, match, and dispatch." Love that guide humor!!!!!!
In the background is the office building where Putin works.
If you step off the curb or walk outside the zebras, one of the
guards will blow his shrill whistle at you! Don't know what
they thought of our W flag.
Per Natalya, the biggest bell ever made! Of course, it was too heavy
to be supported in any bell tower and a piece (11 tons!) broke off
when they tried to move it to a new location.
That was the end of our official touring (OK....there was another lecture, scheduled for the afternoon, by a former KGB agent. But we decided to skip it and do other thigs).
So a small group of us next went to the "Diamond Fund". It is sort of like the crown jewels of Russia (or the Tower of London), but the emphasis is more on the "jewels" than the crowns. There are about a dozen cases full of pieces, including specific pieces with "13 carat diamonds, emeralds with 136,25 carats (sic) and sapphires with 260,37 carats (sic). Good thing our wedding anniversary is several months off so "you know who" doesn't get any ideas! We especially liked the "unique collection of 20 platinum nuggets from the Urals. The largest--7,860 kg." There are crowns, tiaras, military medals, brooches, et al. Again, don't even think of taking a picture here or it is the Siberian Express for you. Not only that but the guards make you take off your hat (um, why?), and you have to whisper. If you talk aloud you will get a stern "SHHHH!!!!" and a dirty look. When it was time to leave, the guard said "Nyet", and made us wait until a few other people gathered. We guessed they want to open the doors as few times as possible (to protect the diamonds???). Either that or this government employee was trying to make the most of his boring job.
Anyway, thanks again internet!
We walked back to the hotel, had a quick bite to eat. One thing we noticed here in Russia: When you order a soft drink or juice, they may (or may not) ask you "Cold?" or "With ice?". If not, they will serve it to you at room temp!
Then went out to experience the metro on our Moscow Ponchiki (Russian donuts; pronounced PAWN-chick-ee) safari!
We got directions from the concierge: a) to walk to the right Metro stop; b) how many stations to ride; c) where to get off; d) a quasi map of the area where the donut stands were supposed to be.
Did a), b) and c) perfectly. It was a 30 minute ride on the subway. None of the stations we saw looked any different than those in Chicago or other places we've been, although there was a beautiful Delft-like tiled wall near the exit of the Vdonka station.
And this station, like many others has chandeliers on the platform!!!
We found out later that there are only a handful of the really fancy ones, and none are on this line. We will go to those on our extra day on Tuesday.
Subway map from inside the subway car. We took the orange line
from Tretyakovskaya (by the museum we went to yesterday)
to Vdonka. The round trip ride for both of us totaled $3.20!
We came up out of the subway and followed our map. Unfortunately, the map was not detailed enough! We used a big highway as a landmark, but we unknowingly came up out of the station on the wrong side of it! So we set off in the opposite direction we were supposed to go. We walked about 4 blocks through a residential area and could not match up any of the street names with the few on our map. Clue #1! There was supposed to be a big park with a huge gate. We saw a small park and no gate. Clue #2! We stopped at a bakery to ask for help / directions; the lady was very helpful, but could not speak English. We showed her the map and where we were going and she kept shaking her head. We tried to get her to point to where we were standing on the map to know if we were on the right track. She kept shaking her head. We then noticed there was a big area map on a post at the corner. We could match it up with our map, and the "You are here" arrow was a long way from where we were supposed to be! Clue #3! We started heading back to the Metro stop to figure out what happened. We saw a taxi driver and asked him to guide us. He looked and shook his head! Clue #4! (Told you our map was rudimentary). He then flagged a passerby who understood and spoke English pretty well. He told us that we were on the wrong side of the highway! So we went back to the Metro, down the stairs and out the other side. Yes!!!! Now it all made sense. Wayne looked at the name of the park and it was "Cosmopark". A park dedicated to the cosmonauts! There was a museum and an absolutely stellar monument:
About 15 stories tall, there is a rocket ship
perched atop a stylized steel "contrail".
Unfortunately, we did not have time to visit the museum.
With our new and improved directions, it was now easy for us to find the ponchiki store. You walk through the park to the big gate and you go that way....
...til you get to a shopping mall. Go inside, follow the signs....
...til you get to the ponchiki store! For the rest of the story and the donut rating, please go to Wendy's blog starting sometime next week.
The walk back to the Metro station was easy. However, we had a slight snag when we got there. We scanned Wendy's ticket and the stile opened. We scanned Wayne's and it didn't!!!! Gaaaa! Have to buy another ticket. But wait! Suddenly a woman on the other side said "Here...use my pass. I'm from Chicago and I don't see people with Cubs caps very often"!!!!!! WOW!!!!! A nice way to end a somewhat harrowing adventure.
All told, today we walked 8.3 miles.
That was the end of the Tauck part of the tour. The final activity is always the farewell dinner in the hotel. First, they passed around caviar on thin bread.
The best part of the meal was the panoply of Russian appetizers that they offered.
They were: chicken roulade with berry compote, Stolichniy salad (which seemed to us like the Olivier without the seafood), herring tar-tar with green apple and fresh cucumber, ham Okorok Voronezh with salted cucumber and poppy seeds, roasted vegetable salad with soft cheese coriander and basil, and Russian pirozhki with cabbage and mushroom.
Mains were beef (for him) and cod (for her)...tasty, but no pix.
Dessert was traditional Russian honey cake: sort of a layered graham cracker and whipped cream affair...with raspberry sauce and chocolate stick.
Then hugs and kisses and farewell to our new friends.
So an extra day of private touring for us on Tuesday, then home we go. Watch this space for wrap up post(s).
Til then
love, w&w…………...
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