Modern Russia

Autumn in St Petersburg

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:21:49 +0000

Back in 2005 when covering St Petersburg for Lonely Planet I rented an apartment beside the Mikhailvosky Gardens overlooking the dazzlingly decorated Church on Spilled Blood. On each visit to the city I love to return to these gardens which are surrounded by beautiful wrought iron gates and fences. This time what caught my eye were the wonderful range of autumnal colours as the trees had started to shed their leaves.

I then came across Lisa and Lena, students in the city from Novosibirsk, who where having fun taking pictures of themselves in crowns to the browned and golden leaves - over the next week or so I saw many other women gatheing up bunches of the big leaves as if they were roses, and similarly enjoying this final blast of colour before the long monochrome and cold season of winter set in.

A Tale of Two Banyas

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:54:21 +0000

Before leaving Moscow, I spent a couple of very relaxing hours at the famous Sanduny Baths. Sweating it out and scrubbing up in a banya (bathhouse) is a ritual that many Russians continue to practice on a regular basis even though most apartments and houses have long since had their own bathrooms. The Sanduny is Moscow’s most luxurious banya with three categories of bathing for men and two for women. I opted - as I always do - for the highest grade and headed upstairs into the palatial ante room that leads into dark wood paneled changing rooms with a vaulted ceiling that’s very Gothic and Victorian. Here I stripped down and purchased a toga like cotton towel and pair of slippers to wear in the bath.

Hanging on the walls of the Sanduny are snaps of the many famous people who have frequented the baths - mainly notable Russians, but among them I spotted Naomi Campbell who made it as far as the men’s luxe dressing room but not into the baths themselves with their Roman Empire-esque swimming pool surrounded by columns and classical statuary. The parilka (steam room) itself is large with space for at least 20 people or more - there was a group of businessmen who had brought along their German colleague for the experience. He was being thrashed by an attendant with the venik - a bundle of birch branches. Pieces of the leaves littered the floor and clung to his sweaty body.

I opted instead for a traditional soap scrub in which an attendant takes a loofer to every part of your body. The process of soaping up and scrubbing happens twice over and by the end of it I had shed several layers of dead skin and was left feeling as fresh and smooth as the proverbial baby. Before leaving I cooled down in the ante chamber over a pot of tea and some cherry-filled vareniki (dumplings) while the man opposite me caught on world events via his iPad.

Like many countryfolk, Vitaly and Svetlana in Pola have their own banya. It may not be as luxe as the Sanduny but it still proved to be a very fine experience. It takes a couple of hours for the wood fired stove to heat up the rocks on top that are the firey heart of a banya - it’s on to these that pine scented water is tossed to create the steam in the sauna.

“Lie down now, it’s time for me to beat you.” When this instruction comes from a beautiful naked woman you don’t refuse. Of course, I also got to do some beating back. In between these steamy sessions, Sasha, Andrey and I cooled down in the ante room hung with drying venik bundles, drinking kvas (a beer like beverage) and herbal tea.

In the corner of the banya I found this statue of Lenin - which turned out to be handy when Andrey turned the camera on me!

Pola

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 14:57:42 +0000

The village of Pola is an hour’s drive southeast from Novgorod, but by bus it takes closer to four hours because of all the stops and general meandering. I was heading deeper into the Russian countryside to join my friends Sasha and Andrey who had invited me to spend the night at the home of Sasha’s parents, Vitaly and Svetlana. Having lived and worked in Norlisk - a mining centre that’s the northern most city in Siberia (deep with in the Arctic Circle) as well as one of the most polluted places in Russia - it is understandable why they wanted to retire to this green and relatively pleasant village. Until a few years ago the village had managed to sustain itself through manufacturing and exporting wood veneer - when orders dropped the factory closed and now its mainly a place for old people.

I cycled around the village in less than an hour with Svetlana, her dog Tigran sprinting alongside, pausing to engage in barking battles with Pola’s many other territorial canines. We visited the shop so I could add some credit to my cellphone - there was half a pig’s head and one of his trotters on the chiller cabinet.

We continued on past the social club, the school, and a woman out tending her cow in the neighbouring village of Borki. Here Svetlana showed me the “beach” by the river and and several pictureque izba (traditional wooden houses) and their banya along her favourite village street.

In comparison Svetlana and Vitaly’s house is unconventional - for a start it has a huge open verandah, screened off by fluttering curtains, from which hangs a swinging chair from Ikea. Reindeer antlers from Siberia jut out from beneath the eaves. To the side of the front field - which Svetlana and Vitaly have freshly dug up to prepare vegetable patches and orchards for the coming year - sits a blow up paddling pool - a place for cool dips during the steamy summer months.

Sasha and Andrey have renovated several apartments in St Petersburg - they have a unique style that comes from their love of rustic Italy - exposed architectural detail, big ceramic tiles and chandeliers, and masses of eclectic keepsakes. They took on the task of buying and renovating this house a couple of years ago, ripping out the ceiling to reveal the timber beams and to create a huge attic room and extra bedroom. More fixtures and fittings from Ikea were installed along with heavy wooden doors usually used for banya. I wasn’t surprised to hear that one of their friends, while sitting in the flag festooned kitchen/dining area, found themselves momentarily disorientated - were they in the countryside or back at their apartment on canal Griboedova?

The next day I knew I was in the countryside for sure when Svetlana thrust a bucket into my hands and a pair of rubber surgical gloves and pointed me in the direction of the blueberry bush. I got busy harvesting the crop.

Afterwards we headed out to another part of the village to see the railway bridge spanning the river and take photos - Sasha balancing along the rail like a ballet dancer and me posing moodily in the middle of the tracks as if for the cover of my greatest hits album of Russian travel tales!

Before returning to St Petersburg it was time to take a banya - the second of the weekend. I’ll leave details about that to the next post.

Veliky Novgorod

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 05:31:12 +0000

Last Thursday I boarded the night train from Moscow to Veliky Novgorod. Seven hundred years ago this was the most powerful and culturally advanced city in Russia. The styles of architecture synonymous with the country - kremlins (fortresses) and onion domed churches - took shape here. I was excited to be visiting for the first time and was not disappointed. The Kremlin, which encloses St Sophia’s Cathedral - one of Russia’s oldest stone buildings - as well as the huge bronze Millennium of Russia monument, dating to 1862 - is particularly impressive and well preserved. To get the best view over it I climbed the 41-meter high Kukui Tower.

Novgorod may not have the metropolitan glitz of Moscow and St Petersburg or the rural charm of smaller stuck in time villages such as Suzdal, but it does have plenty to see and a magnificent setting on the Volkhov River. Another plus is the incredibly friendly and helpful tourist office - a novelty in Russia! “If you get cold, come back and have a cup of tea,” said Polina, one of the staff there - how lovely is that! It also helped that it was a beautiful autumn day and that there were several wedding parties rushing around town taking photos at all the main locations - I couldn’t eat at one of the nicest looking restaurants as that was booked out for one of the weddings.

Of course, you can’t please everyone. Polina called me later in the day to ask if I would like to give an interview to a crew from the Kremlin-funded TV channel Russia Today (RT). When their correspondent Igor turned up the next day I asked him what he thought of Novgorod. Affecting the air of a bored Muskovite he drawled “I find Russian provincial cities fairly boring - the uninspiring architecture and rubbish hotels.” And he and the crew were staying at the Novgorod’s best hotel, the Park Inn, part of the Radisson group.

The camera man wanted to film me with the walls of the Kremlin in the background - on the way there, we passed the start of an inline skating race in the main square - these skates looked like short cross country skis. The RT producer Olga told me it was a popular sport in town as it is also in Finland.

When I texted my friend Leonid that I’d just been interviewed by RT, he texted back “Are you sure it wasn’t for your FSB data file?” - the FSB being the successor to the KGB. Funnily enough, later in the day, when I’d left the town and was with my friends Andrey and Sasha at Sasha’s parents house in the village of Pola, my phone rang with another request for a TV interview - this time from the main local channel. Sadly, there would be no time to return to Novgorod for a second chance of media fame.

Moskvich

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 15:56:02 +0000

Named after the car once produced in Moscow, Moskvich is perched above the classic auto museum Avtoville. A project of the billionairess property developer Yelena Baturina, the wife of ex-Mayor Luzhkov, both the museum and the restaurant are surprisingly sophisticated affairs, one of several indications I’ve encountered on this visit that Moscow’s style is shifting from the gaudy monied excess of flash capitalism to more refined and discrete exhibitions of wealth.

The restaurant is named after a brand of car produced in Russia between 1945 and 2002 when the company went bankrupt. In the lobby bar of the restaurant a classic version of the car is displayed - and very handsome it looks too - while on the wall of the Art Deco-esque dining hall there’s a striking image of a girl driving through 1950s Moscow in one. There is also a nice view from the restaurant’s big windows across Madleshtama Park.

The menu is divided into old and new Moscow dishes, so alongside the classic Olivie salad and the fish soup Ukha you get things like crab with tomato, basil and pina colada mousse or beetroot soup with wild prawns. I stuck with the old Moscow food, ordering the ukha and a warm lamb salad with wafer thin slices of ginger and persimmon and found both to be very well made and fine on their own for lunch.